Fitness, Wellness and Health
fitness
|ˈfitnis|
noun
the condition of being physically fit and healthy : disease and lack of fitness are closely related | [as adj. ] a fitness test.
• the quality of being suitable to fulfill a particular role or task : he had a year in which to establish his fitness for the office.
• Biology an organism's ability to survive and reproduce in a particular environment : if sharp teeth increase fitness, then genes causing teeth to be sharp will increase in frequency.
wellness |ˈwelnis|
noun
the state or condition of being in good physical and mental health : when you come right down to it, stress affects every aspect of wellness.
health |helθ|
noun
the state of being free from illness or injury : he was restored to health | [as adj. ] a health risk.
• a person's mental or physical condition : bad health forced him to retire.
• figurative soundness, esp. financial or moral : a standard for measuring the financial health of a company.
• used to express friendly feelings toward one's companions before drinking.
ORIGIN Old English hǣlth, of Germanic origin; related to whole.
The above are dictionary definitions, yet if you take a look at the descriptions for health, they are ALL in relation to illness(!) or, in other words, health merely being the state of non-illness; even though the Germanic origin says it’s related to being whole. If one can see that language is an indicator of what is motivating our way of expressing we can see that even the dictionary definition of health is speaking for our culture’s generally negative viewpoint of the importance of health.
A Different Definition According to Yoga
We would add to this definition that deep fitness (our word invention) really comes from feeling unified as a person. Our favorite expression of this is in the form of a question:
Who can spread his hours before him, saying, "This for God and this for myself; This for my soul, and this other for my body?" -Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
Swami Vishnu-devananda said: ‘Health is Wealth, Peace of Mind is Happiness, Yoga Shows The Way.’
Swami Sivananda said: ‘Health is a state of body when all the organs function perfectly under the intelligent control of the mind.’
By organs, Swami Sivananda is referring to the:
5 organs of action (karma indriyas)
5 sense organs (jnana, or knowledge indriyas)
Yoga, Just A Good Workout?
Many people now are doing yoga for a “workout” or “to get fit”, yet Yoga is a holistic and far-reaching and systematic path to health (this meaning according to Sivananda’s definition) that encompasses not only physical yoga postures, but also accounts for a way beyond mere physical ‘fitness’. Indeed, breathing exercises, withdrawal of the senses, concentration and meditation are awaiting exploration to those who would avail themselves of it. Physical fitness is seen as a mere side-effect or stepping stone to further fitness and wellness opportunities.
It is in this context we would like to speak. Consider these two photos- both of which have made the rounds to many a yogi’s email inbox:
Yoga, A ‘Workout’ That Integrates the Mind
Now we would like to challenge the reader’s mind with the idea of fitness being the art of controlling the mind such that one can have the mind in the body or out of it. By passing out, the person who has drunk far too much in the first photo has left their mind behind through the use of a drug. BKS Iyengar, pictured above, is in the same posture, but has done so through years of training in Yoga. While we don’t advocate the use of props as shown here, except where needed for infirmity of some type, it’s clear enough that one can choose one’s presence of mind in the body through concentration and training. Yoga in the intermediate stages moves into this phase.
So, fitness then comes to mean that one can consciously release or place tension into the muscles as one sees fit; yet generally as practice continues, one discovers that one is holding far less tension in the body in general. Many people think of fitness as being increasingly aerobically or anaerobically efficient - like with lifting weights, swimming, running, cycling, and so forth. This is merely half the picture. By focusing exclusively on the doing nature of exercise, one can easily forget that the body, by design, contains both types of nerve impulses: sympathetic and parasympathetic. There are entire sections of nervous system anatomy, for example, devoted to the just the inhibition of muscular activity, as in the case of the golgi tendon organs.
Yoga vs. Physical Culture
Indeed, there are great differences between Yogic exercises and Physical Culture, and therefore how fitness is defined is quite different.
Click here for a table of the differences in a new window.
Both of us here at Silent Motion Yoga & Coaching have spent many years becoming very, very familiar with the effort side of the physical culture, and in so doing explored deeply how to allow one’s capacity in this sympathetic aspect to grow and expand. One large area that we have ALSO become familiar with is the consequences of doing so from our own mental attitudes in the long term. It is through the discipline of Yoga we have discovered our way back to a more peaceful and harmonious feeling in our bodies AND our minds. It is this process we have undertaken and lived through that motivates our balanced perspective on our teaching of Yoga.
Elite Physical Fitness, But Something Is Missing
In the training of the mind to control the body in our sporting pursuits, we experienced an inner attitude that most athletes would be familiar with. It was encouraged by society, our peers, coaches, mentors and by everything we read. Our passion towards pursuing these reinforcements and our success at doing so earned us praise and congratulations, medals and so on. It was an attitude that said willpower, focused onto a small set of movements or events could allow us to succeed.
In Order To Finish First, One Must First Finish
This athletic maxim applies also to whole of life. One’s physical, mental, emotional and spiritual peaks and valleys must be gradually shallowed so that one’s overall set point is quite high, yet ups and downs are generally minimized and the effect of circumstances tends to be reduced also. This allows one to first finish be spreading one’s considerable resources and energy out over time.
It's not how fast you can go
The force goes into the flow
If you pick up the beat
You can forget about the heat
More than just survival
More than just a flash
More than just a dotted line
More than just a dash
Marathon from the album Power Windows by Rush
All Willpower, All The Time
This ‘Type A’ personality that uses mainly willpower- needed when one’s main focus is furthering the same narrow activity through endless, grueling and monotonous efforts- and thus one comes to believe that ALL effort in life will go one’s way if one can only apply an extra helping of willpower to the pursuit. The idea of working ‘harder’ as a requisite for success becomes ingrained in athletes, and Westerners, from a young age. Indeed, many Westerners would have a hard time understanding a context that didn’t contain, and that is widely known as the ‘Type “A” Personality’ that we personified, eventually on the behalf of the groups who would praise us so heartily.
Business owners, those seeking to get ahead in life or a corporation, athletes, parents who see their children as projects; we all fall into some form of this disconnect through the overuse of willpower subject to the whims of ego. If ego makes the heist of the mind happen, then it’s willpower that is the engine driving the getaway car. Here is an exposition on how this process happens.
Still, when one departs from such a narrow, repetitive, mechanistic (we do live in the Iron Age, after all) focus, we find that real humanistic life cannot be viewed any longer in the small focus that such a willpower-driven set of blinders has given us. The narrowed division of labor in our real-world jobs and the endlessly repetitive and mechanical ways in which we are often expected to live out our lives doesn’t fulfill us and make us fit for all that we can be, much less have the capacity to be.
Burnout
For us, following on from our athletic careers- we found that our interests became focused on wider pursuits. Wider and wider those pursuits became until we saw a spiritual light at the end of the tunnel. A place where we could reside in some peace and contentment. We began to look toward pursuits where much broader skills are used in conjunction with other people (whom often, disappointingly, do NOT succumb to our willpower exertions!). Additionally, there are often wider technical, mental and manual skills that go into bringing about the successful conclusion of a project or goal, especially spiritual goals. The learned discipline certainly helps in other pursuits, if one only can maintain it.
Being so narrowly focused can often lead to a desire to never be so focused again- or complete burnout that affects many other areas of life. This is also the case with the work addict to spends too much time at work and without his family, for example, just as much as it could apply to the elite athlete. Since burnout tends to be diagnosed by observing mental behaviors and attitudes, it’s useful to examine this in light of fitness.
Training The Mind To Be Whole
So, is there anything we can do to train the mind differently? Can we experience a deep fitness, one whose base is far broader and more comprehensive than mere physical exertion? Can we avoid the trap of being so narrowly focused on one thing that we forget our wholeness?
It can be challenging to recover from so many years of this Type A kind of thinking. One scarcely knows what attitudes or gentler methods of speaking or approaching a subject or how to “get things done” where the mind isn’t pushing one to achieve at all costs the goal. When one shifts from this thinking, one finds that relationships can build more naturally and things can still get done.
Removing doer-ship is a key spiritual skill in being fit for life after retirement from the ‘ALL WILLPOWER’ team. Gaining this perspective on life changes it’s fundamental context and small incremental changes are possible with an ease that many have never been felt before. Since larger changes consist of small incremental changes, then all things become possible in a really nourishing way- and fitness for a greater range of skills, attitudes, and competencies arrives.
Yes, and yoga shows the way. One needs a holistic system of training the mind back to this wholeness. Yoga provides this kind of system. Once the mind comes or goes, the body moves along with it. We have experienced this ourselves. Many aches and pains that we once had have slowly faded away with time. Imbalances become balanced with meditation, one pointed concentration and relaxation. More than this, these practices create a unifying force for the body/mind/spirit connections we often miss by plowing ahead in pursuit of something.
It’s really excellent because it’s trainable, although this kind of change is not any less challenging that any other goal one might take on. In fact, it’s more challenging because the very assumptions one has been making must be examined and consciously chosen differently and reinforced over time, along with the physical changes that happen.
Emotional Fitness & Wellness
Still, the goal is to become fit and well over the other areas of one’s life, not merely the small area one might have made important in the past. Practicing a unifying method, rather than one centered on a small goal to the exclusion of other things, one is also gaining back a greater perspective in emotional fitness as well.
Intention Takes Over
As I point out in another blog post on New Year’s Resolutions, especially in emotional life, evening out one’s ups and downs assists one with the maintenance of motivation and the power of intention that is the REAL power behind mere will.
noun
the condition of being physically fit and healthy : disease and lack of fitness are closely related | [as adj. ] a fitness test.
• the quality of being suitable to fulfill a particular role or task : he had a year in which to establish his fitness for the office.
• Biology an organism's ability to survive and reproduce in a particular environment : if sharp teeth increase fitness, then genes causing teeth to be sharp will increase in frequency.
wellness |ˈwelnis|
noun
the state or condition of being in good physical and mental health : when you come right down to it, stress affects every aspect of wellness.
health |helθ|
noun
the state of being free from illness or injury : he was restored to health | [as adj. ] a health risk.
• a person's mental or physical condition : bad health forced him to retire.
• figurative soundness, esp. financial or moral : a standard for measuring the financial health of a company.
• used to express friendly feelings toward one's companions before drinking.
ORIGIN Old English hǣlth, of Germanic origin; related to whole.
The above are dictionary definitions, yet if you take a look at the descriptions for health, they are ALL in relation to illness(!) or, in other words, health merely being the state of non-illness; even though the Germanic origin says it’s related to being whole. If one can see that language is an indicator of what is motivating our way of expressing we can see that even the dictionary definition of health is speaking for our culture’s generally negative viewpoint of the importance of health.
A Different Definition According to Yoga
We would add to this definition that deep fitness (our word invention) really comes from feeling unified as a person. Our favorite expression of this is in the form of a question:
Who can spread his hours before him, saying, "This for God and this for myself; This for my soul, and this other for my body?" -Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
Swami Vishnu-devananda said: ‘Health is Wealth, Peace of Mind is Happiness, Yoga Shows The Way.’
Swami Sivananda said: ‘Health is a state of body when all the organs function perfectly under the intelligent control of the mind.’
By organs, Swami Sivananda is referring to the:
5 organs of action (karma indriyas)
- mouth
- hands
- feet
- anus
- genitals
5 sense organs (jnana, or knowledge indriyas)
- Sight (eyes)
- Sound (ears)
- Smell (nose)
- Taste (tongue)
- Touch (skin)
Yoga, Just A Good Workout?
Many people now are doing yoga for a “workout” or “to get fit”, yet Yoga is a holistic and far-reaching and systematic path to health (this meaning according to Sivananda’s definition) that encompasses not only physical yoga postures, but also accounts for a way beyond mere physical ‘fitness’. Indeed, breathing exercises, withdrawal of the senses, concentration and meditation are awaiting exploration to those who would avail themselves of it. Physical fitness is seen as a mere side-effect or stepping stone to further fitness and wellness opportunities.
It is in this context we would like to speak. Consider these two photos- both of which have made the rounds to many a yogi’s email inbox:
Yoga, A ‘Workout’ That Integrates the Mind
Now we would like to challenge the reader’s mind with the idea of fitness being the art of controlling the mind such that one can have the mind in the body or out of it. By passing out, the person who has drunk far too much in the first photo has left their mind behind through the use of a drug. BKS Iyengar, pictured above, is in the same posture, but has done so through years of training in Yoga. While we don’t advocate the use of props as shown here, except where needed for infirmity of some type, it’s clear enough that one can choose one’s presence of mind in the body through concentration and training. Yoga in the intermediate stages moves into this phase.
So, fitness then comes to mean that one can consciously release or place tension into the muscles as one sees fit; yet generally as practice continues, one discovers that one is holding far less tension in the body in general. Many people think of fitness as being increasingly aerobically or anaerobically efficient - like with lifting weights, swimming, running, cycling, and so forth. This is merely half the picture. By focusing exclusively on the doing nature of exercise, one can easily forget that the body, by design, contains both types of nerve impulses: sympathetic and parasympathetic. There are entire sections of nervous system anatomy, for example, devoted to the just the inhibition of muscular activity, as in the case of the golgi tendon organs.
Yoga vs. Physical Culture
Indeed, there are great differences between Yogic exercises and Physical Culture, and therefore how fitness is defined is quite different.
Click here for a table of the differences in a new window.
Both of us here at Silent Motion Yoga & Coaching have spent many years becoming very, very familiar with the effort side of the physical culture, and in so doing explored deeply how to allow one’s capacity in this sympathetic aspect to grow and expand. One large area that we have ALSO become familiar with is the consequences of doing so from our own mental attitudes in the long term. It is through the discipline of Yoga we have discovered our way back to a more peaceful and harmonious feeling in our bodies AND our minds. It is this process we have undertaken and lived through that motivates our balanced perspective on our teaching of Yoga.
Elite Physical Fitness, But Something Is Missing
In the training of the mind to control the body in our sporting pursuits, we experienced an inner attitude that most athletes would be familiar with. It was encouraged by society, our peers, coaches, mentors and by everything we read. Our passion towards pursuing these reinforcements and our success at doing so earned us praise and congratulations, medals and so on. It was an attitude that said willpower, focused onto a small set of movements or events could allow us to succeed.
In Order To Finish First, One Must First Finish
This athletic maxim applies also to whole of life. One’s physical, mental, emotional and spiritual peaks and valleys must be gradually shallowed so that one’s overall set point is quite high, yet ups and downs are generally minimized and the effect of circumstances tends to be reduced also. This allows one to first finish be spreading one’s considerable resources and energy out over time.
It's not how fast you can go
The force goes into the flow
If you pick up the beat
You can forget about the heat
More than just survival
More than just a flash
More than just a dotted line
More than just a dash
Marathon from the album Power Windows by Rush
All Willpower, All The Time
This ‘Type A’ personality that uses mainly willpower- needed when one’s main focus is furthering the same narrow activity through endless, grueling and monotonous efforts- and thus one comes to believe that ALL effort in life will go one’s way if one can only apply an extra helping of willpower to the pursuit. The idea of working ‘harder’ as a requisite for success becomes ingrained in athletes, and Westerners, from a young age. Indeed, many Westerners would have a hard time understanding a context that didn’t contain, and that is widely known as the ‘Type “A” Personality’ that we personified, eventually on the behalf of the groups who would praise us so heartily.
Business owners, those seeking to get ahead in life or a corporation, athletes, parents who see their children as projects; we all fall into some form of this disconnect through the overuse of willpower subject to the whims of ego. If ego makes the heist of the mind happen, then it’s willpower that is the engine driving the getaway car. Here is an exposition on how this process happens.
Still, when one departs from such a narrow, repetitive, mechanistic (we do live in the Iron Age, after all) focus, we find that real humanistic life cannot be viewed any longer in the small focus that such a willpower-driven set of blinders has given us. The narrowed division of labor in our real-world jobs and the endlessly repetitive and mechanical ways in which we are often expected to live out our lives doesn’t fulfill us and make us fit for all that we can be, much less have the capacity to be.
Burnout
For us, following on from our athletic careers- we found that our interests became focused on wider pursuits. Wider and wider those pursuits became until we saw a spiritual light at the end of the tunnel. A place where we could reside in some peace and contentment. We began to look toward pursuits where much broader skills are used in conjunction with other people (whom often, disappointingly, do NOT succumb to our willpower exertions!). Additionally, there are often wider technical, mental and manual skills that go into bringing about the successful conclusion of a project or goal, especially spiritual goals. The learned discipline certainly helps in other pursuits, if one only can maintain it.
Being so narrowly focused can often lead to a desire to never be so focused again- or complete burnout that affects many other areas of life. This is also the case with the work addict to spends too much time at work and without his family, for example, just as much as it could apply to the elite athlete. Since burnout tends to be diagnosed by observing mental behaviors and attitudes, it’s useful to examine this in light of fitness.
Training The Mind To Be Whole
So, is there anything we can do to train the mind differently? Can we experience a deep fitness, one whose base is far broader and more comprehensive than mere physical exertion? Can we avoid the trap of being so narrowly focused on one thing that we forget our wholeness?
It can be challenging to recover from so many years of this Type A kind of thinking. One scarcely knows what attitudes or gentler methods of speaking or approaching a subject or how to “get things done” where the mind isn’t pushing one to achieve at all costs the goal. When one shifts from this thinking, one finds that relationships can build more naturally and things can still get done.
Removing doer-ship is a key spiritual skill in being fit for life after retirement from the ‘ALL WILLPOWER’ team. Gaining this perspective on life changes it’s fundamental context and small incremental changes are possible with an ease that many have never been felt before. Since larger changes consist of small incremental changes, then all things become possible in a really nourishing way- and fitness for a greater range of skills, attitudes, and competencies arrives.
Yes, and yoga shows the way. One needs a holistic system of training the mind back to this wholeness. Yoga provides this kind of system. Once the mind comes or goes, the body moves along with it. We have experienced this ourselves. Many aches and pains that we once had have slowly faded away with time. Imbalances become balanced with meditation, one pointed concentration and relaxation. More than this, these practices create a unifying force for the body/mind/spirit connections we often miss by plowing ahead in pursuit of something.
It’s really excellent because it’s trainable, although this kind of change is not any less challenging that any other goal one might take on. In fact, it’s more challenging because the very assumptions one has been making must be examined and consciously chosen differently and reinforced over time, along with the physical changes that happen.
Emotional Fitness & Wellness
Still, the goal is to become fit and well over the other areas of one’s life, not merely the small area one might have made important in the past. Practicing a unifying method, rather than one centered on a small goal to the exclusion of other things, one is also gaining back a greater perspective in emotional fitness as well.
Intention Takes Over
As I point out in another blog post on New Year’s Resolutions, especially in emotional life, evening out one’s ups and downs assists one with the maintenance of motivation and the power of intention that is the REAL power behind mere will.
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