Too much of a good thing.

I’ve been off the gym with a heavy cold for the last week or so. I’d been planning to drop another workout or two into my routine, but after reading this article on the BBC, I’m not so sure.

So it looks like a lot of folks are addicted to exercise, with too much of it being very bad for you. Even from my earliest days, 15 years ago in back street gyms, I was always taught to take rest days. I know that a part of the early body building lore was training every day, but even back then there was dissent.

They’re right, too much exercise will pound you into the ground, you need to give your muscles time to recover and your energy reserves time to replenish. I feel I should add that this is an important consideration in any activity, not just exercise, if you check the dates on my blog entries, you’ll see that I occasionally take breaks from posting, for exactly this reason.

Coming back to philosophy, both Taoism and Buddhism consider moderation to be of top importance. I think this quote from the Tao Te Ching is relevant here, it’s usually held to go a lot further than just speech:

Sparse speech is natural
Thus strong wind does not last all morning
Sudden rain does not last all day
What makes this so? Heaven and Earth
Even Heaven and Earth cannot make it last
How can humans?

Chapter 23, translation by Derek Lin, provided courtesy of Truetao.org.

Positive about the environment.

I stumbled across this story on BBC News Online.  Now, I’ll admit to having Arnold Schwarzenegger as one of the people I hold in high regard and this story is another example of why.  Among the qualities I admire about the Oak is his positive, energetic, approach to things and his refreshing candour.

He’s right, the environmental lobby does have an image problem.  You have to stop telling people about what they’re going to lose and give them a positive picture.  It’s a strange approach really, approaching what is a very positive mission (saving the planet) by focusing people on what they will lose, by trying to guilt trip them.  You need to take an approach that will turn them on to what you’re trying to achieve, not off.  He’s right, it’s time to make the environmental lobby sexy.

Authenticity, revisited

I’m going to revisit the topic of a previous post, I intend to make a habit of this when I think I have a bit more to say on the matter.

Many systems, be they religious, secular or whatever have people who will hold that only a system must be “authentic”, for example, I was taught Cheng Man-Ch’ing style Tai Chi. This is quite a controversial style, as it was derived from the Yang family style without their authorisation. So it can be argued to be not “authentic”. Yet the man who taught me is undeniably effective in applying it, it is most certainly effective, I know he’s sparred and competed with it.

So why push this concept of authentic? I feel it can be a combination of ego on the part of the student, not just of martial arts, but also of religion, and clever salesmanship of their ‘brand’ on the part of the school/church. But also of the attractive desire, to pass the responsibility of deciding what we believe or know to be effective to someone else, and to have the reassurance of a collective.

Let’s think about that a minute. If you do the freethought thing, criticising and deciding for yourself, you always have to face the distinct possibility of being out in the cold, out on a limb, or under fire for heresy. Cheng Man-Ch’ing did his own thing, and the results are still controversial today, never mind the flak Darwin drew for thinking outside the box.

Maybe it is easier to keep your head down, but without people who are prepared to wander off into places marked “Here Be Dragons” and make their own way, we’d probably still be sitting in caves.

More lessons from the gym.

I keep coming back to that old comment of Arnold Schwarzeneggers’ “Everything I learned, I learned in the gym”. I’m starting to see how that works.

I did Bodypump on Sunday, for those of you who haven’t done it let me explain. You have a series of musical tracks lasting for 2 or 3 minutes each, you exercise one part of the body to each one. For example, you have a back track, a squat track, biceps track, etc. On Sunday I failed to complete the Biceps track, even though I knew I could do better, today I only missed 1 rep, which is my normal slowly improving performance.

What was the difference? On Sunday, my thoughts were running along the lines of “I can’t do this anymore, I have to stop”, I get that a lot as I find Biceps to be the hardest of all the muscle groups to work. On Sunday I listened to those thoughts, tonight I didn’t. It brings it home how much of what we do is in the mind, we often frustrate our own best efforts with a negative stance. It also brings out a good point I read in a Buddhist source recently, you and your thoughts aren’t the same thing. You are the part that observes your thoughts come and go, whether you listen or not is your choice to make.

Authentic or not?

I was thinking recently about the way we always seem to want things to be authentic. That isn’t so much of a bad thing, a least in so far as it can act as a guarantee of quality, but can it be a problem?

I see it more in religious thought, but not only there.  Something is labelled as not an “authentic” teaching, usually with the intimation of inferiority.  I don’t entirely see the point of this as most religious or spiritual teachings tend to have a lot of ideas in common, therefore in that context, the argument that something is not authentic doesn’t seem to hold much water.

As a more concrete example, I like to do BodyPump classes, which are by a company called Les Mills.  Now these incorporate various techniques, for example: squats, bicep curls, tricep kickbacks, etc.  But you can’t call those “authentic” BodyPump moves, those exercises have been around for a lot longer than BodyPump.

What matters more is whether what we’re being taught is safe and effective, or to borrow a term from the Buddha ’skillful’.

What kind of soul are you?

Heck it’s a Friday and I’ll take a day off from Philosophy.

You Are a Dreaming Soul

Your vivid emotions and imagination takes you away from this worldSo much so that you tend to live in your head most of the time You have great dreams and ambitions that could be the envy of all… But for you, following through with your dreams is a bit difficultYou are charming, endearing, and people tend to love you. Forgiving and tolerant, you see the world through rose colored glasses. Underneath it all, you have a ton of passion that you hide from others. Always hopeful, you tend to expect positive outcomes in your life. Souls you are most compatible with: Newborn Soul, Prophet Soul, and Traveler Soul

What Kind of Soul Are You?

Now this is amusing….

We’ve probably all seen the Get a Mac ads at the cinema or on TV, well Novell have put together a couple of spoof ads for Linux. I think the second one is better, check them out!

A lesson from the studio

Well, I’ve been hitting the gym again. Not the main gym, if I wanted to pay to see a creature running on the spot, I’d buy a Hamster. I’ve gone back to my old haunt, the Body Pump class.

Interesting, especially in light of my last post. It’s interesting the way the feeling that we should somehow be competing with others kicks in so readily. My focus in the workout was on my form, and my intended focus is on my own personal best, but I found myself comparing how I was doing next to everyone else. Later in the workout, I tried to simply accept what others were doing and make my focus my own form and the feelings in my own muscles.

I found that this freed me to enjoy the workout more, amazing how the competitive impulse simply got in the way of enjoying my workout. Compete less, live more. You know, that could be a good slogan!

Personality Type

Your Personality is Very Rare (INTP)

Your personality type is goofy, imaginative, relaxed, and brilliant.Only about 4% of all people have your personality, including 2% of all women and 6% of all men You are Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, and Perceiving.

How Rare Is Your Personality?

Holding on to emotions.

I’m going to try something that I did with the competitiveness posts, have one post continue from the previous one(s).  I like this as it lets me take my time and think more on a subject.

I was thinking more about the way we hold onto old emotions, not just anger.  We seem to spend a lot of our time, emotionally, living in the past.  If we’ve been wronged in the past, we hold onto it, and bring it into the present.  Coming back to anger, if someone had hurled insults and made us feel bad, then by bringing this emotion into the present we allow them to continue hurting us and that stunts our future growth.

But the principle of Karma says that past actions shape our present and present actions shape our future, surely the same is true of emotions and feelings?  An important thought in my view, is to remember that our emotions are powerful but temporary, we can free ourselves.  For me, the big realisation is that it’s not so true to say we’re in the grip of our emotions, but they are in our grip.  In that light, releasing negative emotions needn’t be huge battle, you don’t need to fight, simply realise that you only need to let them go.