Short story:
The more you know your body inside and out, the more aware you are of yourself and of what’s going on with you, the more control you have over it, the more simple and better quality of life you’ll have.
Long story:
Concentration, attention span, making hard decisions, remaining calm in scary situations, dealing with anxiety, being able to tell the doctor what’s the problem, and accurately describing your symptoms (and I could write a lot more here) are just a few of the challenges we face daily.
Eventually, I find that the bottom line is always the same: the more we know ourselves, the more we can help ourselves. Obviously, mindset and mentality are a big part, but I, personally, like to learn about myself with body-related topics and I find that works backward to mindset, as opposed to the self-development psychological books that don’t seem to work with me the other way around. But you might be different so it does to you.
In early 2020 I started doing mindfulness. Not meditation. Don’t ask the difference, because my definition might not be good. And it doesn’t matter anyway. What matters is to find something that helps us become better. So, I started a mindfulness practice. I watched a raisin, yes, a small piece of dried grape, every day, often twice a day, for seven minutes for a week. Then a jump here, because I don’t remember what the second and third weeks were about, but around week 5 of the program I got to body scanning.
I think everybody should know the major body parts and various systems of the body and understand some basic physiology – because here is the truth: it’s your body. As rude and bold as it may sound, eventually, you decide if you move from the hip when it’s necessary, or break your spine in half because you didn’t know the difference. If we don’t know the difference between the two, that is not the doctors’ (or anyone else’s) fault who will try to treat us, as they might not know what to do due to not having enough valuable information about every patient.
Sadly, the way the educational system, modern media, or the whole fitness industry works, I don’t think good information is made available and is easy to access to anybody, so you have to do your own research and find your teachers.
All I’m trying to do is to share some bits with you, that worked for me. I know. It’s 15 minutes again, and you are busy. (And Coronation Street is on TV in 5. Or whatever.) But. Eventually when the challenge rises, because trust me, it will, you will be sailing through it a lot easier if you know what an unstoppable machine you are living inside and even better, you know how to control it.
So, one of the things that I enjoy, and I think it can help to get us back to owning our body, is this body scanning video. And one more thing. Watching it once, or doing the PRACTICES that I mention once, although is better than nothing, will not work. It’s a practice. Practice owning your own body.