Your Awareness leads to Power over your Health

How consistently self aware you are is a cornerstone to your health.  Our culture’s philosophy around health doesn’t help us.  All to commonly we have a attitude of “pushing through the pain.”  If not by force of will, then by pills, and if not by legal drugs, too often by the illegal kind.

This contrasts with the fact that -almost never- does being more aware and more sensitive to yourself make things worse.  Being more aware of your body, your senses, your thoughts, your emotions, your words, actions and interactions is -almost always- better for you and everyone around you.

Some simple examples:

Are you more aware of your feet and your gait if you’re wearing shoes or barefoot?  The answer is barefoot, absolutely we’re more sensitive, careful and aware of our feet while barefoot.  In a large study done comparing lifelong shod people in the Netherlands to lifelong unshod people in Malawi, which population had vastly more foot problems?  The shod.

Which runner is more likely to suffer an injury; the one who runs in the most expensive padded shoe or the one running in the cheapest, least padded?  The expensive shoe relates to more injury.

Which sport suffers more severe injury; huge, fast, strong, unpadded rugby or huge, fast, strong, padded football?  You already know the answer by now.

Yet this certainly isn’t limited to the physical alone.

If you are more specifically and precisely aware of your emotions you’ll more likely have better relationships and be happier yourself.

And one gruesome counter example, there is a well known bacterial infection that damages the nerves of the body.  That nerve damage doesn’t prevent movement, but it does mute the sense of pain.  So what happens when someone lives without feeling pain?  Their body utterly breaks down and actually falls apart from the repeated damage.  You’ve heard of this disease,, it’s called leprosy.

Don’t ignore your pain.  Listen to it.  Notice the things you’ve tried to ignore and push to the edges of your awareness.  You’ll have power over it if you do.  With that power you’ll be able to create something different and more deliberate for yourself.  Good luck.  We love you.

https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/science

https://blog.sisuguard.com/is-rugby-really-safer-than-football

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5488842/

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-020-01310-y

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1201429/

https://www.britannica.com/science/leprosy