Still Mind, Moving Body - the intersection between sedentary work, dis- stress management \ meditation

 Around 500 BC the Greek philospher Thales wrote:

What man is happy? He who has a healthy body, a resourceful mind and a docile nature 

The Roman poet Juvenals (~50-150 AD) said men should pray for a healthy mind in a healthy body or in Latin mens sana in corpore sano usually translated as a sound mind in a sound body. This motto has been used by many movements and organisations over the ages. In the 1790's, The German innovator GutsMuths commenced his famous book on gymnastics using that sentence. In the next paragraphs he decries the degeneration and weakness of his fellow country man saying that they had not realised they could be strong if they pleased. It seems over 200 years ago, it could be observed that civilisation was weakening people. Sadly, this trend has continued with mechanisation, the reduction in physical education to games, even military fitness standards in some countries have had to be reduced, more than once, over the last 100 years or so; Sedentary work and sedentary leisure has significantly increased.

At the same time the mental complexity of society has increased, the extended family support system has given way to the nuclear family, information has increased and become digital.

Today, many people have busy minds and still bodies. But our genes are designed for the reverse a still (calm) mind in a moving body:


Still Mind, Moving Body                        busy mind, still body
 





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The full quote from Juvenals:
 
men should pray for a healthy mind in a healthy body.
Ask for a stout heart that has no fear of death,
and deems length of days the least of Nature's gifts
that can endure any kind of toil,
that knows neither wrath nor desire and thinks
the woes and hard labors of Hercules better than
the loves and banquets and downy cushions of Saranapalus
What I commend to you, you can give to yourself;
For assuredly, the only road to a life of peace is virtue.                                 Decimus Junius Juvenalis (Satires 10.356)

The peopling of the world - the routes and timing of human migration across history

Humans and chimpanzees diverged about 4.5 million years ago and eventually around 160,000 years ago the global journey of modern man began. This web site shows the routes and timing of migration that resulted in the peopling of the world.


If you are keen on things paleo - primal you will understand a few things more clearly after watching.

Categorising human movement in paleo \ hunter gatherer times

The first step is to categorize the types\range of “natural”

human movements. These are all trends and exceptions to the ratings

of intensity and duration may occur. For example, escape from a

predator is expected to be all out and short duration on the vast

majority of occasions but could be medium intensity for medium

duration in an unusual situation.

 

Function	Movement	Intensity	Duration
Food search	Walk, jog, climb swim [carry children]	Low	Long
Chase\stalk (combined or separate)	Jog run sprint dive swim	Low-high	Short-medium
wound & kill	Jog run sprint hang climb dive swim upper body movement	Medium-High	Short-medium
Gather	Hang climb swim dive bend squat upper body movement	Medium	Medium
Escape	sprint, climb, swim etc	High	Short-medium
Carry food\children	bend\squat to lift) Walk & carry	Low-medium Intermittent rest breaks	Moderate
Fight	Mixed pattern eg hit kick grapple weapon usage	High	Short
Migrate	Walk jog	Low	Long
Sleep	Prone\supine posture	Low	Long
Rest	Squat flat foot, on ball feet, 1 leg crane etc Many & varied	Low	Variable
Toilet	squat	Low	Short
Play eg dance, games, socialise	Many & varied	Low-high	Short-long
Prayer, Rites of passage etc	Dance, rest\sleep type postures, search or escape type activities	Low-medium	Short-long
Sex	You already know...	You already know...	You already know...
Exercise	Did not exist per se.	-	-

Resting patterns are briefly mentioned in the table but the amount

of rest will depend upon the amount of effort. In some cultures,

hunters rest every second day as they are tired after the hunt. In

others, hunting occurs every day but the intensity and duration is

less.

 

 Trends start to emerge:

• lots of walking, some more walking while carrying objects and some running\sprinting
•  the full range of human movements
•   rest schedule is related to the workload. Hunter gatherers behave like predators rather than prey and if oppurtunities allow do not engage in “äll out efforts” except uncommonly in infrequent situations eg fight and escape from predator or other danger.

Why no references?

I am writing for the reader. This blog is not being written for a peer reviewed journal. The peer review process involves editorial boards of specialist around the topics covered in a journal who may also ask other super-specialists for their thoughts. There is an old saying that academics learn more and more about less and less until they know very little about anything. Whilst often used in a derogatory way, this is about the breadth and depth of knowledge - as depth increases breadth tends to reduce somewhat. Specialisation can have its consequences where not reading out side the field can narrow the perspective 

Anyway, little leeway is allowed in journal editorial circles for anything other than fairly strict logic. Other peoples work must be extensively referenced. Supporting facts must be referenced. Conclusions drawn must stick to the known facts etc etc Of course, this will not completely stop biases ie people may selectively cite references that support their views. It will not completely stop denial ( ie disbelief can prevent publication or data may be ignored with alternative explannations sought). However, it is the best filtering system that academic humans have been able to come up with.

Peer reviewed journals are important. But, trying to turn a blog into a peer reviewed journal will greatly reduce readability and clarity . References can be mis-used as well. Someone (Dan John, I think) once said that you should not believe everything you read on the internet. A single reference or a stack of references doesn't necessarily make a particular statement correct. However, broader criteria can help. Might post about that at some stage.

Read critically, make your own checks. Using Google you can do that far more easily than in any time in history. Like you I'm a space digital age person living in a stone age body. Today, I can check something out in a few minutes. Decades ago I can remember having to travel to libraries, interlibrary loans, trips to bookshops etc to try and find information. That same basic "lets check that out" process would take days if you were lucky and hit the jackpot. If you were unlucky it would take weeks or longer if it turned out to be a slog. The point is that you should make your own checks just as you should be about anything else on the internet.

Religious Movements and Sedentary Work

Many would be aware of the Shaolin Temple and its links to Kung Fu. Fewer would know that the original reason that martial exercises (18 Lohans) are said to have been introduced is that the monks spent long periods of time in meditation and the martial exercises were to balance that.

Ancient traditional yogic practices are similar. The popularity of yoga in the west saw growth and expansion in the movement practices as well as bringing yogic meditation to a wider audience. Prior to that yoga exercises including nauli etc were purely health based and included a focus on balancing out long periods spent stationary in meditation.

I have just been reading about a yogi who was said to have been over 100 years old and spent around 16 hours/day meditating, 2 hours in sleep and the rest (6 hours) in various activities including discussion with the people who came to see him. He was serene but stationary.

Tibetan Budhism also has its exercise system. One of these is the 5 Rites. This consists of a series of 5 exercises, again for health reasons and to balance out time spent stationary in meditation.

Various Chinese philosophical\religous systems also utilise exercises to "cultivate the chi". Whether this be Tai Chi Chuan, the Ba Duan Jin or one of the many,many others systems that exist.

There are also hybrid systems where religious, martial and gymnastic aspects are all involved and these, reflective of their aims, have far less emphasis or need to balance out stationary\sedentary activity as this would have been less of a problem due to their intrinsic nature.

It is sometimes said that there are no new ideas or new problems. In many, cultures there is an awareness of the need to balance out significant amounts of time spent sedentary\stationary with time spent in movement.

In the west, several decades ago, prolonged standing was relieved by seating to permit resting of the lower limbs. Now seating has taken over from standing but concerns about sedentary work have re-introduced the idea of standing to undertake tasks to replace seating. The natural pattern of human movement is not standing or sitting rather their is varied movement from point of view of postures, intensity and duration.

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NB Puns on religious movement to one side, religion is about the "why". This blog focuses on the "how" (as well as what, when, where and occassionally who).