Bodies for Dummies

Bodies. We are born with them. And somehow, without anyone teaching us, we know what to do with them. We know how to walk, talk, sleep, eat, breathe, and think. Often, we are not even aware of those processes inside of us. They just happen. Automatically. Easily. Without any effort.

Wrong.

If only, someone had taught us how to use our bodies, we would be operating them much more efficiently. If we had been given a manual during our childhood, or a crash course Bodies for Dummies, we would have known what to do to achieve maximum performance with minimum damage. And we would have automatically incorporated these habits into the way we live our lives.

Take breathing, for example. Many of us will consider it one of the easiest things to do. In and out, in and out. No need to even think about it. Yet, just as many of us breathe sub-optimally, with a huge potential impact on our health and well-being. Even abdominal breathing, which many of us are familiar with, is often performed incorrectly.

Breathing is not the only habit we can improve. We chew too hastily. We adopt bad sleeping habits. We do not know how to turn off our thinking, and we are continuously swept from one direction to another by our emotions.

The result? Stress. Stress can manifest in different ways. When we encounter a virus, this will be a physical stress for the body. So is eating unhealthy food, or having a lack of sleep. A huge workload, or a deadline on the job, are examples of emotional stress. The pathways in the body for both types of stress are identical. Stress leads to inflammation, which in turn is the precursor of the majority of diseases. Before cancer, there is inflammation. In atherosclerosis, too, inflammation of the walls of the blood vessels plays an important role in the formation of plaques. Caught a cold? The consequent inflammation causes your symptoms. If the inflammation is acute, if it resolves itself, as is the case in the cold, there is no problem. However, if the inflammation remains, disease will follow.

By simply learning how to use our bodies correctly, and taking care of our bodies properly, we have the tools to improve our health greatly. This does not start with healthy diets and sufficient exercise, though those are important too. It is not even about what we do.

It is about how we do it. How we breathe. How we (do not) think. How we react to our emotions. It starts with the basics.

Let’s start learning how to breathe again, properly. Are you with me?