Balancing Mental And Physical Work
I’ve been interested in spiritual paths and the different ways of walking them. One of the main ideas I perceive from them is passivity. Most people think it’s a way of avoiding reality, social responsibilities, and in the worst case, just being lazy. At least it is so in the city where my family lives in, in particular my family (except for my parents.) Therefore, it is an idea I feel compelled to revisit from time to time. Especially because I work in a sedentary academical field. And “sedentarism” is something that I always need to fight against.
This week I experienced that familiar inheritance – thinking that spiritual paths are just a passive way to live in this world – break into small pieces. Not only because it’s always about working on oneself (how I do I eat? How do I treat myself? Did I exercise enough?), but because it’s also about helping others with practical knowledge.
To be healthy, one needs to take care of one’s body, which means eating fresh or eating only what grows in one’s own surroundings etc. The other things is to share one’s knowledge. So, if you know how to deal with some sort of pain, spread the word and help others.
Practicing everyday is the best way to being healthy and studying new (and old) ways to help your body. I don’t know if this week was a lot to digest. The one thing I know is that I’m going to have more questions about cupping, scrapping, acupressure points… in the moment I’m digesting these amazing practices.
I feel sad that I cannot be able to have more questions at this time. But the moment was very meaningful and I enjoyed the simplicity and the deeply useful things that I learned this week. The newest thing to me was the “slapping the fire” and I got curious to know if there are more applications to this method. What I most enjoyed this week was the balance between practicing tai ji (physical work) and learning healing methods (mental work.) It’s an example of the specific balance that I want in my life, which I’ve been searching for years. I can have it for a short time, but suddenly it goes way, and then I need to start the search over and over again.
