I got sick on Monday afternoon and ended up getting a fever of 101 when I woke up on Tuesday. I didn't want to miss my training for work, because we were actually going to be doing live work.
I never thought I'd utter those words in my life... wanting to go to work, not wanting to miss work. It sends me shivers but it is true. My trainer told me we'd be doing more live work next week so that's good.
I think I'm like most people in that sometimes it's better to be thrown to the lions. I understand the necessity of class training but really things don't gel until you know what you're doing is for real and not just practice.
I was feeling better on Tuesday afternoon as my fever seemed to reach its peak when I woke up in the morning. I've been taking it easy this week and just attending my training.
I care alot about my health and inspite of my young age, my health and vitality is something I value. It's my top priority to make sure my body is in the best state it can be.
I don't like being one of those people who go into work even though they are sick. You're not helping yourself or those around you when you show up for work sick. The body has certain needs and if you don't give it what it needs, it's going to become sicker, maybe not immeditately but most definitely in the long term.
For me, my body is my 'temple'. I enjoy exercising, particularly doing qigong. I think a lot of problems in our society can be solved if people choose a physical discipline and stick to it.
The body needs to move around, period.
If it doesn't get that, people start getting anxious and restless and fidgety and fat and unfocused.
I started doing yoga when I was 18 and abandoned that practice this year because I started learning qigong and found it to be more relaxing, without the muscle soreness.
I think a few months into my yoga practice, I started becoming aware that I had an anxiety problem and that becoming anxious over life events was a common reaction for me. I eventually learned how to relax and I think I get anxious once in a while but I feel pretty calm most of the time. And plus I don't hold onto my anxiety. Our bodies hold onto negative emotions and through exercises like qigong or yoga, you slowly learn how to release them. You also start to learn that you are not your emotions and that emotions come and go. It's important when negative feelings come up to just witness and acknowledge them and let them go.
Who would have thought you could learn emotional maturity through mindful exercises such as qigong and yoga??!!
I learned a back qigong routine in August (see my archive where I briefly mention about the routine) and I had this pain on the right side of my back. After doing this routine a few times I felt anger towards my mother one day and that night I had this dream about how my mother would force me to go to church when I was a teenager and I didn't want to go (as a side note, my mother felt attending church was important and I just didn't like church anymore but was coerced against my own will. My mother has stopped this coercing once I went to university. She wasn't violent but said if I wanted to take the car to school, then I had to go to church. Every Sunday morning was a bitch because we'd always argue. I hold no resentment towards my mother and my mother is usually an understanding and decent human).
I had a lot of anger and thought I had 'dealt' with this issue. I woke up and wrote about this dream in my journal and started to cry. That pain that I had in that area of my back disappeared.
The body doesn't lie!
Because I've been learning qigong, I've also been looking briefly into the theories of Chinese Medicine. I haven't studied it extensively so please keep that in mind that my research is not indepth. In North American medicine, diseases are basically seen in terms of cause and effect. It looks into medicine in mechanical terms and doesn't really seek to grasp the whole of the person and how they may be making lifestyle choices that are making them sick or more vulnerable.
Chinese medicine is based on the whole yin yang concept but it also recognizes the key role our internal organs play into our health. So someone may have a problem that may not be directed related to their organs, however the problem can be because one organ is weak or is too dominant.
I find it interesting to compare these 2 different views on health and they are quite opposite.
I read a long time ago but every year the psychiatric society or something, keeps adding a list of diseases and keeps 'discovering' illnesses.
Our society is so fucked up, it's funny.
Why do we have a medical view that is so clearly negative and just focuses on what's wrong with us? Why are we so pathogen-centric?
Our natural state is health. It's not disease and yet we consider feeling like crap or being mentally dysfunctional as something normal, when it's not. Everyone is pretty much on some sort of drug and maybe people need to realize that you don't need to be.
I'm not anti-drug, but I just think taking drugs should be your last choice and so should surgery. You should look at your diet, your lifestyle and whether you are engaging in activities that are not healthy. You also need to look at your environment because it could be a reaction to chemicals. And most of all getting quality sleep.
But here's something interesting that I've been pondering for a while that shows the key role our organs play in our health. I'm not sure if I'm stating this correctly, but what does the body do when it gets into a coma (it's basically the body has some sort of crisis and I think it's a coma but I'm not 100% sure. Maybe it's hypothermia)?
The body protects the inner organs first. It conserves its energy and directs it towards the major organs.
Nobody cares about the organs in our Western culture. Nobody even talks about them unless they are in serious trouble.
I'm getting tired but probably will discuss health in the future.
But I will say one quick thing.
I have 2 brothers with a serious mental illness and this happened when I was 11. I've always wondered what is the real cause to this problem because the doctor's claim it was stressed induced and it's a brain chemical problem (again this to me demonstrates the doctor's don't really understand mental illness. The brain is more then just chemical reactions and processes).
I basically think we don't understand what mental illness is.
But I'm wondering if maybe mental illness is really a problem that starts in our organs.
According to Chinese Medical theory, our anger is related to our liver. They also attribute various emotions to the organs, but the one that I remember is anger and liver. So people that get angry alot may have too much energy(aka chi or qi) in that area and it's creating an imbalance. Chinese Medicine talks about chi (aka life energy) which is something we don't even have an English equivalent for. Qigong basically means working with qi. I do not know if chi is real based on my qigong practice but I definitely feel warm when I practice qigong. How can moving slowly make you feel warm and make your toes warm too?
Anyways, that is just my speculative theory on mental illness.
I don't know anything about anything!
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