Laying Low
“That each should in his house abide, Therefore was the world so wide.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sometimes although we feel we want to keep doing what we normally do, whether it’s a specific workout routine, going out to enjoy the company of friends, eating and drinking the things we love, we are almost forced not to and do something different. Why is this you may ask? Our bodies tell us otherwise.
In a lot of cases, our bodies are smarter than we are and we don’t give them their due credit. Although we may not ‘agree’ with our body, we should listen to it for it can tell us things our mind will not. This can be experiencing anything from physical pains to a physical reaction, getting sick, to spontaneously having an aversion to something we normally used to do regularly. I used just ‘work through’ injuries for example when I was younger. Now I kind of question this attitude I used to hold dear.
It seemed if it wasn’t one thing, it was something else that I had to deal with injury-wise from the hard training in martial arts and pushing myself daily in my workouts. I rarely if ever took some time off to really allow myself time to heal, or ‘lay low’ even in the midst of a lot of pain. Sometimes this pain came as mental fatigue as well when I felt something should have went a different way or if I felt I ‘plateaued’ for example.
It’s tough because we feel like we are missing out, or like if we don’t do something we might regress. This is especially true if you are practically addicted to working out and physical activity like I am. It’s very easy to get angry at yourself and your body. This can also happen with the food we are so accustomed to eating. In order to heal, sometimes our bodies need a break from our usual diet to focus more on healing foods and medicines so they can really do their job.
I have learned to let these types of feelings go more and more though. It just means we can and should focus our energy elsewhere, at least for the time being while we are allowing our bodies to heal themselves. A good place to focus this energy is to go inside.
If we can do that, we can dissipate any kind of annoying or negative feelings to practically nil. In fact, we can rather quickly start feeling much better about ourselves. It really can open us up to new opportunities to do things differently as well, learn more about ourselves and discover new concepts and ideas we may have been putting off and always found interesting.
The fact that this is also winter time also helps. This is the best time of year to stay in and ‘lay low’ to not only heal on various levels, but to work on yourself in a more internal way. Just as nature and many animals withdraw for the cold winter months, when we do it as well it feels more natural for us on a deeper level as this is the natural ebb and flow of things.
Meditation is one of the best ways to going inside and delve deeper into ourselves. It also promotes healing on many levels. There are many other methods we can play with and throw into the mix, but meditation should be one of the core foundations to this process. Also practicing chi gong and different types of breathing exercises can be done in almost any state and this also can accelerate the healing process and goes hand in hand with any introspective and healing practice.
So in the midst of this cold winter, I highly encourage you to go ‘inside’ and lay low if you don’t feel well or just not right. Listen to your body and do some research to find a practice that resonates with you or resdiscover an old one you may have been neglecting.