A Good Life Is About Recognizing Unhealthy Mind And Body Patterns And Then To Fix Them

How Americans use of a knife and fork differs from that in Europe, which apparently accounted for a number of American spies having been captured by the Nazis in World War II.

We each possess and display evidence of many patterns of behavior in our bodies and minds (are the mind and body separate things or one entity? I suspect the latter!). Some of these patterns are conscious, such as my overwhelming discomfort with having my back to a room full of people, some are unconscious. But all of these patterns, including destructive tapes running in our heads can negatively impact any attempts we make to undertake a program of safe exercise for better health or to live a happy balanced life.  By the way, when it comes to those poor self esteem-inducing lies  in our heads,  I recommend talk therapy, transactional analysis, and creative visualization.

The Bottom Line: you have to identify negative patterns before you can fix them, which takes work and commitment to your health.

There are human behavior patterns all around us, you just have to watch and wonder. Click image for a closer view.

Male Behavior Patterns In Restrooms: Our fellow humans exhibit interesting patterns of behavior all around us, some of which you would be well advised to respect, such as traffic flow, certain social cues, and creative approaches to career development. I find these patterns fascinating. For instance, one day I was watching a group seagulls competing with each other for landing spots in a Marina, which reminded me of urinal selection patterns by men in restrooms. The latter patterns appear to be deeply ingrained. Take a look at the adjacent image and think about it: if a person is already in slot A or F, there is no way ‘the average guy’ coming into this situation will stand in B or E, respectively. It would be a case of inappropriate crowding, generating some uncomfortable looks. If a man is already in slot C or D, a newcomer will almost certainly choose one of the ends, leaving at least one slot between him and the other person. It goes on, and in fact is so complex that sometimes there is no acceptable urinal, even when two are unoccupied. However, if the place is packed with a waiting line, these rules are suspended, and selection becomes whatever is available with no pressure at all – how odd! Generally this behavior is completely unconscious. What drives these decisions? I attribute this to genetic and social conditioning, including a mixture of security surveillance, politeness, homophobia, and other survival-related issues. Look around and you will see similar patterns everywhere, if you take the time to watch our strange behavior.

This brings us to body patterns, especially with respect to exercise or sports-induced injuries and the value of the study of body awareness through Feldenkrais, Continuum, Gyrokinesis, and other movement methods. As you age you slow down, it’s inevitable, so to improve sports performance or stay as active as you can you have to move smarter. A simple example of his type of work is provided in the video at the head of this blog post.

So keep moving, however old you are. Life is too brief and enjoyable to miss.

-k @FitOldDog