Human life is one of the greatest gifts of
God. It is also one of the most complex phenomena in terms of predictability
and management. The multiple destinations one reaches in one’s life journey,
and how fulfilling some of the sub-journeys would be are in many ways beyond
one’s control. For centuries, therefore, Hindu religion, spirituality and
philosophy analyzed the phenomenon of human life in terms of multiple models
which combine materialism and spiritualism and which harmonize existentialism
and nirvana. All through the models and paradigms of life, the need to keep
one’s mind and body healthy comes through as a constant underlying thought.
Over the centuries, the human race has learnt to understand itself and the
environment better, and seek comfort and security for itself better; modern
lifestyle and modern medicine are products of that awareness. Yet, there
remains much more to fathom, and worse still, the human race’s solutions of
industrialization and commercialization have created new problems; from profligacy
and pollution to domination and exploitation. Economic growth with social
equity continues to be a distant goal even in the most advanced countries.
The knowledgeable individual is at crossroads
today. He or she has to compete on the current rules of society to live a
useful life. He or she also is painfully aware that relentless competition,
without matching competency, is not a winning game either. The Indian family
system has been providing a safety valve; the current generation invariably
gives up competition at some point of time and expects its future generation to
become what it has failed to become (or has given up becoming). Even the family
safety valve is now getting clogged. Life seems so remorseless, for the young
and old alike, with the multiple options that influence and beckon the young,
and the crumbling joint family and community options that stare at the elders.
In a sense, and probably in the only logical sense, the individual in the
contemporary world has no one except himself or herself to rely upon. The mushrooming
of spiritual leaders and institutions points to the fact that the Indian
individual is yet to come to grips with the challenge of self-management and
needs support and guidance. Yet, the prescription for fulfilling life,
independent of any particular stream of religion, spirituality or philosophy
could be just very simple: a mobile body and an agile mind!
Good life, balanced life or wholesome life?
Everyone seeks a good life; unfortunately
like the multiple meanings the word good has, the word good life has also
different meanings for different people. Some of the meanings or implications
of good are high quality, pleasant, sensible, favorable, morally right,
skillful, following rules, kind and thorough, to take some of the more prominent
or popular meanings. Generally, good reflects agreeable. Good life does not
differentiate between personal life and professional life; either or both can
be described by all these nuances or not. There is a natural flaw in pursuit of
good life as a goal it is highly individualistic, and enables high variability
unrelated to one’s capabilities and environmental positioning. Of late, there
is a view that individuals in the competitive world tend to maximize returns
from their professional life in order to pursue a good personal life. This has
led to two types of professionals. The first type is for whom work has become a
passion, an obsession and an end in itself leading to individuals becoming
workaholic to utter neglect of their
personal side; here personal does not mean merely family life, it also means
the life-space for one’s own development. This has led to the formulation of
the concept of work-life balance. This again is a highly variable concept, and
leaving the options to individuals to define balance, and the goodness within
each life segment. There is a third concept of wholesome life, which this blog
post proposes, that could be considered
to as an alternative to the apparently determinate concept of good life and the
truly indeterminate concept of work-life balance.
Wholesome life covers the physical and intellectual
dimensions of life. It is a holistic concept of life that combines the concepts
of goodness and balance in terms of what one can deliver for oneself and one’s
family as well as for one’s organization, society and nation. Every individual,
from the mason who constructs a laboratory, to the scientist or the engineer
who operates the laboratory and its equipment and the financier who funds a project
qualifies for the concept of wholesome life. The dimension of physical
wellbeing is ignored while that of intellectual life is misunderstood. Neither
of these can be pursued independent of the other and, in fact, the two
dimensions are interrelated, interdependent and even synergistic. Physical wellbeing is often seen in terms of athlete-grade
strength, lean frame and even sleek abs. The real wellbeing is maintaining
oneself strong, stable and self-reliant with optimal physical alertness and
responsiveness under healthy circumstances and assured resilience under
conditions of sickness. Physical wellbeing is part genetic but largely
developed through a lifetime as well. Intellect is often linked with formal
education. Everyone has, and does exercise, intellect. The mason who judges the
heights and slopes, understands the strength and malleability of steel, knows
the right proportioning of concrete and builds the building brick by brick with
the right tolerances has as much intellect as a civil engineer would have in
respect of construction. The physical and mental wellbeing is determined by two
factors: mobile body and agile mind.
Mobile body
Human body is a wonderful musculoskeletal
system that is connected with, and operated by, the brain through the
neurological and blood capillary systems, among others. Not one of the human
systems is less or more important than the other. However amongst all the human
tasks, maintaining physical mobility or movement must rank amongst the highest
priorities of life. Mobility is the essence of life; the more mobile a person
is in terms of using all the limbs and muscles the more healthy and more productive
he or she would be for himself or herself, his or her family and the larger
organizations and communities. Today’s industrialization favors largely
sedentary lives (office environments) or stationary lives (factory
environments) with minimal human effort. It, therefore, devolves on the
individuals to achieve as much mobility as possible, both at work and off-work.
Safety and mobility are highly related. The more stable and safer a person is
the more mobile he or she can be. Conversely, the more unstable and unsafe a
person is the more immobile the person is likely to be. Walking, running,
jogging, sprinting and climbing are some of the mobility options one can
exercise. Office systems that confine people
to eye movements on computer screens and factory systems that limit people
movements to machine movements are invitations to progressive immobility. If
one understands the scientific kinetics of movements well, one can master the
intricate dynamics of personal productivity.
Every human discovery, made ostensibly to
make life more secure and comfortable, has ended up creating new problems. To
provide flexibility of indoor walking treadmill has been invented. It has
brought in its wake problems of unnatural impact of walking and running. To
cater to the need to provide safety and comfort, running and jogging shoes have
been created. They have started modifying the kinetics of using the foot. The
personal automobile has emerged as one of the greatest inventions, but it ended
up enhancing and curbing mobility at the same time. Escalators and elevators,
ideal for the aged and handicapped, are mobility-curbing temptations even for
the young and fit. The march of technological progress is relentlessly oriented
towards curbing mobility. It is, therefore, necessary for making mobility an
essential ingredient of one’s daily life. It will boil down to how one manages
one’s time to provide for mobility. Five factors determine safe mobility for a
human being in his or her quest for quick mobility. Safe mobility can be
achieved by choosing the appropriate base of support for the feet, low center
of gravity, appropriate positioning of
the center of gravity over the base of support, movements aligned to body mass
and weight, and the coefficient of friction of the movement surfaces. There is
more physics and engineering to the science of safe mobility than is commonly
known. Daily exercise routines and office/factory ergonomics must integrate the
kinetics of safe mobility in day to day life.
Agile brain
If physical mobility is the essence of
physical wellbeing, mental agility is the essence of mental wellbeing. Many
people incorrectly see body and brain apart, with body being dedicated for
action and brain being dedicated for thinking, feeling, cognition, memory and
sensory functions. On the other hand, the end goal of all human body, including
brain, is aimed at action or movement. The motor system of the brain is a
critical facet of physical mobility and mental agility. The brain has a huge
memory of prior knowledge, and every moment it keeps receiving new data as new
sensory inputs. The brain has the intrinsic wonderful capacity to combine both
of these to trigger a motor control mechanism that can physically display
itself as ultimate movement, which could be one of the following: verbal talk,
body language, writing or typing and physical movement. It is important to
understand that the speed and specificity of the brain to store, retrieve and
analyze memory on one hand and to receive and analyze new data inputs on the
other hand leads to the agility of the brain. There is, however, a big catch.
The set of beliefs, some positive and some negative, some action oriented and
some inaction oriented, stifle or speed up, and distort or reinforce the motor
control mechanism of the brain, influencing the ultimate agility of the brain
to proactively or reactively act.
The above illustrates that the agility of the
brain is a function of not only knowledge and sensitivity, which must be at
high levels, but also of the beliefs which must be appropriate to the
situation. There is, however, one more paradigm that influences the agility –
the feedback mechanism. Every movement of the type mentioned above leads to a
new sensation; the brain always has a prediction of the intended response. The
ability of the brain to sensitively receive the physical response and read the
actual response determines the effectiveness of the feedback mechanism. Here
again, the set of beliefs one has, about people, circumstances and outcomes,
influences the effectiveness of the feedback mechanism. The outcomes of each of the feedback
experiences go into the memory bank.
There is, of course, the importance of sleep in the agility of the
brain. A well-rested brain is an optimally agile brain. A sleep-deprived brain
is a negative influence on physical mobility and mental agility. It is,
unfortunate, that not much research has been conducted to enable
personalization of sleep as a daily prophylactic essential medicine that each
person needs to have. In the absence of that individuals tend to adopt erroneous
models of sleep (often benchmarking with other individuals), with unknown
adverse influences on the motor ability and mental agility.
Mobile body with agile brain
This blog post aims to draw attention to the
fact that a wholesome life that is enabled by a mobile body and agile mind is
essential for fulfilling life. There is a larger challenge in understanding the
interdependence and synergy that exists in the mobility of body and agility of
the mind in the context of wholesome life. There is an enormous understanding
of the physical attributes and kinetics of the human body. Though much less
understood, the secrets of the brain are also getting unraveled at a fast clip.
Unfortunately, individuals view the knowledge, even if expressed in layman’s
language, as a subject of medicine rather as a valuable component of active
living. The interrelationship between physical mobility and mental mobility
needs an even greater appreciation. The prescription for wholesome living is in
one’s own hands. The blog post cannot obviously deal with all the associated
factors that have certain fundamental importance to the two goals; factors such
as food and nutrition, lifestyle and exercise, emotional stability support the
two goals enormously.
Today (September 29, 2013) is World Heart
Day. The Indian newspapers are flush with valuable information on exercise and
nutrition, among others, that enables a healthy heart and a happy living. The information
also contains warnings on the deleterious impact of alcoholism and smoking on
the human wellbeing. If nothing else, they adversely influence mobility and
agility. Yet, we see the twin temptations simply not moving away from the
society. There are, of course, several other person-specific detractors of good
health such as carbohydrates, sodium and gluten. Processed foods have an
overdose of these factors. Governing one’s life through these and other ‘gifts’
of modern, instant living is truly a complex challenge. The only way to address
the complexity is to have a simple all-encompassing objective of wholesome
life, whether at work or off-work, and achieve it through a synergistic
combination of mobile body and agile brain. Beyond the God-given DNA, this
requires a carefully cultivated iDNA (Indian Dietary Nutrition Ayurveda). In a
climate when the hoary Indian vegetarian food system is under threat of instantaneous
modernization and westernization, the society, at least in India, requires an iDNA
revolution much like the famous Green Revolution and White Revolution that
transformed the agriculture and dairy scenarios n India.
Posted by Dr CB Rao on September 29, 2013