Mind Your Body
Most of us are trying so hard to be everything to everyone else, we forget to be everything to ourselves.
Stress takes its toll. It slowly erodes our physical well-being and weakens our mental calm. We need to act with intention to avoid the ever present risk that our busy behaviour can diminish our health and cause disharmony and disease. Each and every one of us needs to make time and give permission to care for our physical and mental well-being.
With the mindful approaches of meditation, yoga and tai chi increasing in popularity in our affluent societies, we seem be slowly recognising what the eastern traditions have known for thousands of years. Mediation is the body’s natural way to manage stress.
As we gain awareness we can appreciate that the law of nature has inter-connectedness in opposing forces. Just as there cannot be light without dark, day without night, masculine without feminine, we can respect that there cannot be Yang (energy and movement) without Yin (stillness and calm). We cannot afford to ignore the need for balance in the doing and being modes of our life. We need harmony in energy and stillness. We can choose.
It’s not selfish. It’s wise.
The law of nature requires balance.
As a Buddhist monk said “We regularly wash our bodies for physical hygiene but what do we do for our mental hygiene?”
This is often the missing link in balancing our lives. So, let’s not ignore the most important person to nurture first: ourselves. Even giving ourselves permission to take time in small doses to settle the mind is a huge act of kindness.
Choose to balance behaviours so that we nourish our health. Once we realise, recognise and reconcile this with ourselves, we will be clear in what we need to do to make a change for our health.
