Your feet striking the asphalt as you feel the heat of your breath again, after having spent weeks cooped up. Even a walk feels liberating after having been disconnected with your body for a while. Your body and mind are the only places you will ever truly inhabit. For all of us, the only residence we have is the confluence of our mind and body. The rest on the outside - buildings, cars, clothes, and whatnot - are just subsidiary tools to use our residences to the fullest.
Mind and body are, for different reasons, considered separate. Flesh and spirit. This distinction is invalid though. Any bodily experience you have is invariably a mental processing and recording of physiological stimuli. And we have a mentality only because we have a physicality; the mind exists because it has a body to exist in. They are both completely fused together, one indistinguishable from the next.
To make it all easier to comprehend, I will continue to use mind and body as separate terms but if you want to expand your scope of life, it will serve you to remember that they are the same.
For the sake of our bodies, we eat well and exercise. For our mental health there is meditating, positive thinking, consuming knowledge from different sources, and relieving stress among many others. But the mistake would be in thinking that working on one doesn’t affect the other. When you practice meditation, you learn to calm both body and mind to experience the present moments. When you go for a sprint or play a sport, the challenge of movement and exhilaration of completion pervades your lungs and limbs as well as your mind.
Disciplining the mind disciplines the body and vice-versa. Cultivating a good physical work ethic also sparks mental growth.
It goes the other way too. Spoiling your mind means that sooner or later, your body will suffer too. Similarly, neglecting your body only spells disaster for what you might do to your mind. We must remain mindful of what we do to our bodies and minds. How we use them in a day, what we nourish them with, what are our intentions with both. It does not take too long or too many unaware choices before you have inundated yourself in habits that turn both your mind and body into toxic cesspools.
To live in the widest, most complete sense, take good care of your mind and body. Use them both in as many challenging and engaging ways as possible. Never hold one higher than the other, because they aren’t separate to begin with. You don't exist as a mind in a body or a body carrying a mind. You, startlingly, are both.
Comments