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Sitting is the new smoking. Spending hours at a desk or computer is an act of self-destruction. Our circulatory, lymphatic, immune, and endocrine systems all require physical exercise to function properly, and the more we get, the better. Our bodies evolved to move, not to sit. By remaining stationary for too long, particularly on chairs, we interrupt the natural workings of our body, many of which occur beneath our conscious awareness. What’s more, the air indoors is often polluted and full of mold, dust, and industrial pollutants. Set an alarm to remind you to get up, stretch, take a walk (outside if possible) every twenty minutes or so. Make it a habit, and you will live longer, suffer fewer afflictions, and have more energy, too.
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Extreme exercise—indeed extremes of all kinds—is best left to entertainers. While very much in vogue in a culture that embraces risk and requires constant titillation, extreme exercise is incongruent with health and longevity. Despite generating short term pleasures, seeking thrills by flirting with injury and death reveals a numbed, desensitized state, completely contrary to a quiet, harmonious, awake, aware, and sensitive mind and body. Life-affirming pursuits such as swimming, traditional Asian martial arts, yoga, walking, or jogging are better long-term rectification options. Beyond that, or perhaps even better, how about vigorous sex with an enthusiastic partner?
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Dependent upon artificial energy sources and confined in buildings that insulate us from both the elements and natural light, we lose touch with the circadian rhythms upon which a healthy body depends. If we cannot live in an unadulterated natural environment—and both the burgeoning need for sustainable agriculture and the communication options opened by the Internet make this more feasible than ever—at least we can make healthier lifestyle choices. Work when the sun is out and sleep under the moon’s watchful eye. Slow down in winter, relax when it rains, and take advantage of brisk temperatures to exercise. These habits put us in better accord with natural cycles.
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My teacher’s teacher, Chen Quanzhong, seventeenth-generation teacher in his family’s line, may be the greatest living practitioner of the martial art of tai chi ch’uan. In his nineties at the time of this writing, Great Grandmaster Chen lived through some of the toughest times in modern Chinese history, including the so-called Great Leap Forward (1958–1962), during which as many as fifty-five million people were murdered or starved to death. During the inaptly named Cultural Revolution, the Maoist government expropriated his factory and reduced his position there to that of floor-mopping janitor. Despite this, and at times nearly starving while raising seven children on a handful of dollars per week, he managed to lift his personal practice to dizzying heights. To this day, Great Grandmaster Chen strides about with the gait and the physique of a healthy, powerful, much-younger man, eclipsing his rivals in the martial arts and setting an example for us all.
Decades ago, I interviewed him for a leading martial arts magazine. One of the first questions I asked him was about cross-training, as exercise gurus and advocates then and now continue to advocate the practice.
“Cross-training?” he asked.
“Using weights, running, swimming, rowing, bicycling.”
“Ah,” he said, as I scribbled his response on my notepad. “Very, very important. Wonderful. Useful. Popular. Don’t do it.”
It took me a while to sort out that what he meant was that tai chi, being a Daoist practice, was all about creating connections inside the body. This is achieved by recruiting both stabilizer muscles and connective tissue so as to engage the entire body whenever any part is moved. Such connection also requires relaxing and sinking to embrace the effects of gravity, as opposed to fighting them in the way of a ballerina. He went on to explain that, once we learn to do so, we can bring that particular skill to bear during any activity. The emphasis, of course, was on creating the right mindset and physical attitude before doing external work.
Later, while critiquing my own practice, the great grandmaster reminded me that slow, correct, fully-relaxed tai chi is major isometric work and requires good nutritional support.
“Eat more beef,” he suggested.
I couldn’t bring myself to tell a man for whom beef was an almost unheard-of luxury that I was a vegetarian. I could not explain to someone who had experienced starvation that the world had changed, that the torture chambers we called factory farms were far more destructive than they are beneficial. I could not bring myself to tell him that I felt unnecessarily killing animals was morally wrong and that a balanced, plant-based diet was both ethical and healthy. Instead, I chose to take to heart the underlying message that if we want to achieve great things, we have to begin by taking great care of ourselves.
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Thousands of years before the field of epigenetics was born, Daoism considered the environment’s power to affect our mood, as well as the connection between mood and mental state. One of Daoism’s key precepts is that, in order to reach an enlightened state of mind, we must have a strong body; with both we can weather life’s most violent storms. No practice builds the body/mind—while simultaneously training us in conflict resolution—more perfectly than authentic, original tai chi ch’uan. Moving in natural spirals, cleaving to no plan, going with the flow, and embracing one’s nature are the building blocks of the art, and are present in every movement. Tai chi is a path to both longevity and enlightenment.
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Because we are complex biological and spiritual beings, we are subject to the effects of countless, constantly shifting inner and outer forces. Sensing the world around us with trained eyes, ears, touch, and tongue, we can everywhere see yin and yang in an intimate dance. The binary on-off position of switches is what makes our digital world possible, for example, and the gradual swap of winter and summer defines our yearly cycle. While we might be tempted to focus on the simple duality of this setup—the existence of opposites in all things and the tension between them—it is actually the way the two opposites change positions, like kings on a chess board defecting to the other player’s side, that defines this universal game. There is no yang without yin, no yin without yang, and one is constantly in the process of becoming the other. Thus, in noticing what causes us stress and what helps us relax, who supports us in our work to grow and improve and who holds us back, we can create our own balance and move ourselves forward. There is a yin and yang to relaxation, see, and one to rectification as well. Embracing this truth, we can create harmonious lives filled with compassion, wisdom, and awareness of resources.
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Dreams reveal important insights and truths, yet one of the most pervasive plagues of our time is sleeplessness. People brag about how little sleep they need, some even taking it as a badge of honor or machismo to stumble blearily through the day or rely on stimulants to function. Scientific research now shows that sleeping less than nine hours per night costs us brain cells. Sleep is the time when the brain’s version of the lymphatic system actually cleans brain tissue, removing (among other toxins) the plaque associated with Alzheimer’s Disease. Why not reprioritize and spend less time pushing so hard and more time in rejuvenating sleep? If we do, we’ll live longer, enjoy our lives more, be able to discover true relaxation, and have more opportunity to contribute work of meaning and quality.
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All creatures above a certain phylogenetic level need to sleep. This means that once the nervous system develops a brain and reaches a certain level of complexity, it shows the obvious yin/yang of wakefulness and sleep. Daoist theory, which presaged binary theory, thus applies directly to our state of consciousness. I’ll call sleeping yin and waking yang, because from a Daoist point of view,