Beyond the Known

Most instructors can tell one how to make an exercise harder -- but the real genius is in making exercise as easy as possible -- or any skill, for that matter.  It doesn't take genius to make anything harder and more difficult -- taking years to master.  Genius, or true intelligence, is in making the painfully time-consuming, instantaneous.  Then, anything is possible, and immediate -- and nowhere is that more true than in one's later years, when movement no longer seems possible, and increasingly, one attempts to do less and less.  Obviously, that is not the path to greater health and well-being -- which is the capability to do more with increasing less -- effort of course, but also resources and time -- though speed is not the objective.  Economy and efficiency of action is.

In this, one should know (learn) what is worth doing -- and what is not worth the time and effort -- things that are hard, but not productive.  They in fact, may only be injurious -- in the misguided thinking that all pain is gain.  Pain always provides the ultimate message to stop doing it any more.  Not surprisingly, most conditioned in this manner, stop as soon as they can, which is as soon as there is not another to force them to.  Obviously, that is not going to be an effective lifelong conditioning strategy -- to abandon it at the first opportunity.

That is obviously the problem with most traditional and conventional conditioning practices -- and why one doesn't see many of advanced ages continuing with them, even if they might have when they were younger and didn't know better.  At that point, many just put such activities away -- and accept the well-known consequences.  They don't know anything else -- because that was not integral to their conditioning -- to always find a better way.  Instead, they merely spend their years repeating the same things unvaryingly.  Thus the net result is simply more wear and tear -- rather than continued growth and evolution.

But it is not enough just to make a movement as easy as possible -- but as productive as possible -- the gain and not the pain.  Unfortunately, too many people have been waylaid into thinking that the pain is the gain -- rather than the gain is to experience as little pain as possible.  How is that possible?  Obviously, learning a better way.  It is no accident that the results of many years of doing certain movements, inevitably cause disabilities in those who have done them -- all their lives until they absolutely can't anymore.  And then they don't find another way -- that allows them to do it without the crippling disability.  That would obviously be the cure -- for whatever ails them.

One can always create a new movement -- even though they've never seen anybody do it before.  Probably the best example, is to make walking a total body exercise -- that articulates fully most of the major joints, and particularly those at the extremities -- which typical walking does not express -- with its very minimal, or no rotation at the wrists and ankles.  In this, the objective is not just to get from one place to another as quickly as possible -- but to produce circulation maximally throughout the body -- as the ultimate good.  You don't have to go anywhere -- but optimizing the circulation, is the highest good -- and that doesn't mean just making the heart work harder and faster, but using all the muscles to effect the optimal circulation.

That would be the objective of all worthwhile practices.  However, it is taken for granted that that is already being done -- when it should obviously be seen as the problem.  More effective circulation can be cultivated to any particular area -- that one is focused and intent on doing so.  That is especially valid, for any particular problem areas -- that those have to be addressed to optimize the health and balance of the human body -- throughout a long life.  Getting only halfway there is not enough.  And that is the problem of contemporary aging models -- they get halfway there, and then break down irrecoverably -- and just accept that as the normal course of life.

But it doesn't make sense to live half one's life in this decline -- just because one hasn't found a way before.  That is what the second half of life is about -- finding that way -- even if one has failed up to now.  Otherwise, one lives half one's life without anything better to do -- no higher calling.  And life at this age and stage, has to be a calling -- beyond a career and training.  That is the only logical conclusion.

Otherwise, most will simply flounder and lose their way -- their organizing principles of life.  That is sad to see.  And soon, many will be "retiring" at ever younger ages, and what are they to do?  They've simply graduated to a higher level of challenge -- or not.  That would be the ultimate expression of who they are --  and were meant to be.  But only they can find that out for themselves.  Nobody else can do it for them.  They have to go it alone -- and create their own way.

You don't have to be President if you don't want to.  That was the old paradigm -- everybody wanting the same thing, and competing against everybody else for it.  It's not efficient -- nor is it effective.  But when one realizes one can be one's own exercise -- then all the effort ceases, and it is the easiest thing to do -- and continue for the rest of their life.

Only that can be a lifelong fitness program -- and not just theories and explanations that no longer work.  That is a critical failure -- of traditional and conventional exercise -- up til now.  But simply more of the same, is not going to do it.  It just doesn't work.  That is well proven.  So we need to move on to something else -- something that actually works!  Right now, that means discovering it for oneself -- and for the rest of humanity.  That's how life evolves beyond the known.