Stupidity About Health And Wellness
This precarious yet definitively palpable experience of your ‘Conscious Self’ summoning and then having an audience with your own Subconscious space is a hugely rewarding feeling. The communication between two layers of ‘I’ or self, is neither new nor is it something somebody has to do. It is an auto-process, keeps happening and the conscious and subconscious layers are entwined in a two-way communication loop in some dialectic causality. This means, the conscious is affected by subconscious and also affects it and the vice-versa. This loop is repetitive yet evolving.
However, this auto-process of communication between the two layers of ‘I’ seems like a silent and mute mechanism and their interactions are not usually registered by conscious self. Moreover, the causality or purpose of the communication is internalized process of different brain states. A fragment of its sparks may be felt either in dreams or thought pop ups in awakened state or very rarely in fleeting epiphanies but seldom registered by our conscious self for active recall and replication. That is, a person is not usually aware of the purpose, process and outcomes of the conscious-subconscious communication.
From health, vitality and wellness point of view, what is very crucial is another dimension or domain of communication between the two layers, which is initiated by the ‘Conscious Self’, the awakened and fully ‘Aware I’, with a purpose that is well designed and thought of, fully mindful of the process that the communication needs to have along with a definitive wellness goal as the finality of outcome. This is what we called the well-aware process of the conscious self summoning and then having an audience with its subconscious self to accomplish a definitive and even tangible outcome. This not only is a very rewarding feeling but also a hugely potent tool for infinite health-wellness successes. This ‘Conscious-Communication’, using the body-mind ‘Media’ is the singular code of health, vitality and wellness. Sadly and stupidly, we seldom understand it, let alone practice the artistry. This needs to be deciphered.
At the very outset, it has to be understood that we are talking of ‘health-wellness’, not disease management. There is a body-mind process that is an auto-mode media and communication, working for us at subconscious levels, which we are never aware of. But, we can be to a good extent and use this knowledge for wellness. This knowledge shall probably lead us to understand how we can use the media and communication at the level of awareness of higher consciousness and what the challenges in effectively doing it are. This shall also answer to the question as what else this ‘generic’ media and communication otherwise do, when they are not doing this ‘specific’ task handed out by our conscious selves? This is important.
This ‘auto-mode’ media and communication process is known as Homeostasis. Contemporary scientific knowledge of body-mind mechanism and processes has begun to reiterate the structure and function of Homeostasis process in its broadest possible manifestations for overall wellness of we all. Globally, aware and empowered people are embracing the holism of Homeostasis process and making conscious efforts to practice the lifestyle choices that facilitate Homeostatic sanity.
Scientists maintain that ageing is 30 percent gene function and 70 percent lifestyle choices. This suggests, Homeostasis decides our wellness and life. Homeostasis is essentially a biological term but has utility and reference in all walks of life and living. Homeostasis is all about balance, poise, equability, equilibrium and what we have learnt since ages - the ‘Golden Mean’. In all our religious books, folklores, spiritual discourses, philosophies and societal wisdom talks, we can find the core concept of ‘balance’ and ‘poise’ in everything we perceive, accept and do. The poise and balance is surely not an external idea or a value that is alien to us. It is in fact what we have been designed for and is very much our central mechanism. We are endowed with it but seldom at it!
The human organism consists of trillions of cells all working together for the maintenance of the entire organism. While cells may perform very different functions, all the cells are quite similar in their metabolic requirements. Maintaining a constant internal environment with all that the cells need to survive (oxygen, glucose, mineral ions, waste removal, and so forth) is necessary for the well-being of individual cells and the well-being of the entire body. The varied processes by which the body regulates its internal environment for cellular wellness are collectively referred to as Homeostasis.
Homeostasis in a general sense refers to stability, balance or equilibrium. It is the body's attempt to maintain a constant internal environment. Maintaining a stable internal environment requires constant monitoring and adjustments as conditions change. This constant adjusting of physiological systems within the body is called homeostatic regulation. This idea is similar to what we have discussed earlier. Body’s very natural process of working involves huge complexities of cooperative actions to get it going. The big challenge is to keep its working optimal and right even as we all move in and out of varied and complex milieus that constantly requires adjustments and course correction within body-mind systems. It is only natural that such huge and complex system-working engenders entropic outcomes. Therefore, Homeostasis is always challenged and needs specific regulations and adjustments.
The challenge for Homeostatic regulation is far more intense and complicated in contemporary societies and cultures as we have gone a long distance on the wrong path of lifestyle choices and milieu-sanity since ages. Moreover, the environment we live in is so much polluted, the food we eat is so unhealthy and lacking natural sanity, the lifestyle we lead is so full of excesses and extremities that together they all put us off this precious ‘balance’, miles apart. Most of modern degenerative diseases, also called ‘lifestyle-diseases’ are the result of this affected homeostasis of human body, living choices and external environment.
It is only very natural that the Homeostasis is troubled in contemporary times. Naturally, restoration process of poise and balance is also bigger challenge today. The equilibrium state has physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual and environmental dimensions. The body sure has an auto-process of restoration. Body-mind processes adjust to restore the individual to homeostatic equilibrium through a combination of physical, emotional, behavioral and psychological adjustments. This behavioral readjustment processes are known as Allostasis.
So, the simple point is, there is a constant subconscious ‘communication’ going on inside our body-mind, which is what Homeostasis is all about. Our subconscious self is using the same ‘media’ of neurons and hormones through subconscious communication through languages of physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual and inert thoughts. However, these processes are not felt or registered by conscious self as they are happening in subconscious domain of our consciousness.
What scientists and health guardians keep telling us is that our body’s subconscious, auto-mode or innate in-built mechanism for Allostatic processes for restoration of Homeostatic equilibrium is too stressed in contemporary times as body-mind system entropy has escalated to unprecedented heights. Therefore, we all have to ‘Consciously’ intervene in our own Homeostatic process and be sensitive about ‘Aware-Personal’ initiatives to help strengthen the Allostatic adjustments. And how we can do this? Yes, simply by consciously using the same media and communication plexus that our body-mind system has by installing aware personalized inputs so that our own auto-process of Allostatic routine is bolstered and Homeostasis is restored and sustained. This is what we referred to as ‘the conscious self summoning the subconscious layer for specific and assigned task’.
We simply have to be conscious at two levels – first, be aware of the subconscious process of our internal body-mind media and what communication is going on and secondly, intervene consciously to correct and input new conscious communications so that the subconscious media is altered and managed to our desired goal of life and living. This means, we have to train ourselves to rise to the level of self-awareness where we can receive signals or communications from our subconscious body-mind layers about the emerging entropic conditions. And then, have the conscious initiatives of behavioral and thought adjustments to correct and restore the homeostasis.
This is not something new as thousands of years back, even at early stages of human civilization, humanity could do it. There is specific mention of similar processes of body-mind media and communication in Yoga philosophy and Buddhist traditions of around 3000 years back. It is said that Buddha had mentioned about ‘chemical processes’ within body and had urged to be aware of their causalities on cognition as well as overall consciousness. In contemporary scientific knowledge, there is growing emphasis on this process under the well understood homeostasis mechanism and cognitive science.
It is important to mention here that our body-mind media is always in constant communication with our subconscious self. The neural or hormonal signals do express themselves in some physical ways or at least in emotional psychological ways. The consciousness at its highest levels of awareness has this ability to sense out the signals and realize about something wrong or troubles going on inside our body and mind. If we are in a state of peace, poise and receptive awareness mode, we can realize that the same media of neural and hormonal plexus communicates to subconscious state about a homeostatic crisis and it is communicated through same communication plexus of language, thoughts and emotions to our conscious self. However, as we do not have the required mind training to ‘sense out’ the communication, we fail to diagnose wrongs and troubles.
It is believed that human brain is so complex and it has such a structure of having a cooperative symmetry of different layers evolved in millions of years, it is a marvel of cosmos. Human brain has structures and functionalities that make it capable of sensing even small changes in homeostatic equilibrium. However, the trouble is that our body-mind media of neural and chemical plexus communicates through a language to our consciousness, which an individual has to master with persevered practice. The communication is happening all the time but our consciousness must be trained for deciphering it.
Since thousands of years, humanity has understood the need for a person to accept that the first duty we have is to be aware of ‘Why And How We Are What We Are’. Self-Awareness has always been considered a virtue that everyone should extend highest priority to. However, in contemporary milieus and cultures, average person is so little informed and aware about self and one’s own body-mind mechanisms and processes that he or she fails to sense out what his or her body-mind system is trying to communicate. Also, the constant flux of life-living never makes our consciousness to settle in for receptive-mode awareness.
Our body-mind media and its communication plexus is a potent two-way process. It probably can and does communicate current and evolving body-mind realism to consciousness and as a reverse process, our consciousness probably can and does communicate to our body-mind structures, using the same media platform of neural and hormonal plexus. The two-way communication structures are language, thoughts and emotions and every individual probably can use them to sense out troubles and also correct them.
It is here also relevant to mention about a newly emerging creditable science of Epigenetics. It is a fast emerging scientific process that is being experimented with so many other related ideas to work out a model of ‘Conscious-Enterprise’ for personal wellness and excellence. Epi-Genetics literally means something ‘above’ genetics. This is interesting because earlier, there was this popular scientific belief that we are basically a fixated genetic code and it cannot be changed. Epigenetics is a science that accepts that even though genetic structures remain the same, the way our genes express themselves can be altered by environmental factors. There is this related modern scientific concept of Neuroplasticity.
Epigenetics now delve into aspects of behavioral and psychological elements of our consciousness that have power and ability to alter genetic expressions. Without going into details of its complex and serious scientific descriptions, what we wish to derive out of this new science of new millennium is that part, which we are discussing here. This relates to the strongly emerging hypothesis that our internal linguistic communication, thoughtfulness of aware self and guided emotions together can create a phenotype, which has the potential to alter the way our genetic structure expresses itself. Genetic expressions are very crucial to our wellness and excellence in the sense that our genes express themselves in two ways – activate communication and suppress communication to cells. This in turn decides how our cells of different organs make relevant proteins that work to maintain our body-mind Homeostasis by initiating the Allostatic processes.
What we have to take out of this mention of Epigenetics science is a hypothesis that the primary ‘Media’ of genome and cellular plexus can be used by a ‘Conscious Communication’ to alter the content and intent of cellular expressions. Epigenetics primarily dealt with intervention by chemicals to alter the genetic expressions and cellular communication. However, recent expansion of researches is dealing with how emotional, psychological and thought milieus can affect the body’s own chemical communication to effect the neural-hormonal expressions for a specific change in body-mind homeostasis. This aware intervention by conscious self is aimed at attainment of desired health, vitality and wellness goals.
Now, the next important aspect is to zero down to basics of what possibly can be the ‘Mechanism’ and ‘Process’ of this ‘Conscious Enterprise’ of ‘Media-Management’ of Consciousness layers for attainment of specific and desired health, vitality and wellness goals.
It seems clear that there is this media of electrochemical and nuero-chemical structures present in our bodies that have a wired process of communication, which we are not aware of as everything is happening in subconscious or unconscious layers. What we have to do is to be aware, be in higher conscious mind state and consciously input such ‘Physical, Emotional, Behavioral, Thought and Psychological elements that communicate to our subconscious mechanism the specific goal we wish to achieve.
That process is first to be aware as what probably is going on in subconscious state to understand where and what the troubles are. Then, consciously bring up the subconscious mind to an audience with conscious self and introduce the desired communication we wish for a specific goal. Then sustain this communication of ‘Conscious’ to ‘Subconscious’ in an intense mix of behavioral, emotional and physical signals so that the subconscious ‘Media’ owns this process and begins its wired ‘Communication’ plexus towards attainment of our desired goals. The conscious signaling needs to have a judicious mix of elements of physical language, thoughts, emotions and psychology. That probably together work as right ‘Conscious-Enterprise’ to the ‘Media’ of body-mind to unleash the communication for immediate intervention of all possible Allostatic process to restore the missing Homeostasis.
This process of body-mind ‘Media-management’ seems easy and also appropriately effective as it seems that the conscious self is doing nothing magical or mysterious but simply using the same and already existing system and network of auto-mode ‘Media’. It also may seem like the media is a piece of paper and there are already something written on it. The media is there and the communication etched on it is something the body-mind follows or enacts, accepting it as ‘Script’ of life and living. Then, the conscious self, the ‘Aware-I’ can bring up this piece of paper and use one’s own dark pen to write some lines on the paper so that the same ‘Media’ has a ‘modified’ or altered communication and the body-mind readjusts its enactments to the consciously introduced changes. However, it is not that simple and easy. Why? We shall elaborate that.
The easy part of the ‘Conscious-Enterprise’ of ‘Media-Management’ is probably the first step of summoning the subconscious for an audience with the conscious self or ‘Aware-I’. Globally, there are innumerable spiritual traditions that are popular with billions of people, which facilitate this audience. This is broadly the singular technique of what we know as ‘Meditation’. Meditation processes may have different physical and psychological techniques to bring the wavering ‘I’ to a higher conscious state. Some techniques focus on strengthening the higher consciousness whereas some reiterate on the importance of your conscious self summoning the subconscious domain to watch what’s happening there.
The classic Yoga meditation is probably the most evolved and holistic idea about conscious self being in linearity with not only other layers of self but also every element in the milieus inside and outside body and mind. Yoga is overall a rather holistic life-living concept but most people see and accept only the Meditation part in yoga. Yoga is much beyond meditation and exercises. The other meditation traditions of Oriental world Like Zen methods and Vipasna also restrict themselves to the art and science of conscious self focusing on all other layers of consciousness. As this is only the first step towards communication process with media of body and mind and therefore an easy attainment for an average person, millions of men and women in contemporary world are into meditation. The cardinal mistake and trouble with meditation spiritualism is that it takes us to a stage of ‘preparation’ for a certain journey but leaves us there.
Meditation is just preparing and being ready for some enterprise that is not easy and certainly not simple. First, one must know with utmost clarity as to why and for what he or she is preparing or readying by doing the meditation. Secondly, there should also be clarity on what it takes for the success of the next level enterprise. This enterprise is Media-Management of conscious communication for attaining specific goals of life and living. This enterprise requires persevered practice and pre-hand preparation of specific nature.
To detail, how the ‘Aware-I’ or ‘Conscious Self’ can summon the subconscious mechanism of body-mind’s auto-mode homeostasis process for desired specific task and goal of health-wellness-vitality, in the next few paragraphs, we are narrating the chain of experiences that I had as these would help you understand many aspects of communication within different layers of ‘I’ or self and the huge potential this artistry can have on our wellness and excellence in life and living. What I am narrating is not new as humanity has successfully practiced the artistry since thousands of years and contemporary science approves of it. The core idea is to explain how our Conscious Self, a very ‘Aware-I’ can successfully use the ‘Media’ of body-mind for a ‘Communication’, the purpose and outcome of which we have opted for and wished to.
It started around more than a decade back. I was traversing an age where futility of this conflicted instinctive self, which largely defines subconscious mind states, was settling in. It was beginning to descend down on the horizon of the conscious thoughtfulness that the situational success that I was in, had made the subconscious ingenuity enslave the conscious ‘I’. The protagonist that the conscious self was on the stage of life-living was in fact only enacting the script that subconscious success-benchmark had screen-played in advance. It happened in such unease of tumult of disharmony and dichotomy between two dimensions of the Self.
Third day in a row and my fever was abnormally high, refusing to die down. The pain, unease and incapacitation were calamitous but that was not troubling my conscious self. In the next three days, I had a very crucial event in my office and I had to be in good readiness to match and even surpass the benchmark of excellence that I had established for myself. I desperately needed to be fighting fit.
Late in the evening, I surrendered. My conscious self admitted defeat and accepted that I had lost the opportunity that the event could extend to bolster further success in my career. This very acceptance somehow seemed to have brought my being in sync with present-ness of time and space. I surrendered my conscious self that was living up the probabilities of potentials of a near future. This brought it in close proximity to my own subconscious self that instinctively was there, well-informed of the ‘troubled’ situation at hand. This situationed the inevitability of the interface of conscious with subconscious – both stood in linearity with singular moment of situation of the present. This is the least and simplest of narrations of probably a rather complex body-mind situation that was there.
Probably, both conscious and subconscious layers being in linearity and symmetry, they jointly addressed the singularity of situation – my pain and incapacitation. This linearity and symmetry potentialed the probability of a magnificent magicality. Why I say this? Because now I can say that it is very rare in our busy and multi-tasking world of life-living to have a situation where our subconscious and conscious mind layers stand in linearity for a singular situation of joint enterprise. Almost often, our conscious self is busy with one issue and the subconscious is engaged in another usually unrelated task. The ‘connect’ between the two is either missing or too weak. This dualism, conflict or asymmetry between two layers is something we do not even register but it always happens. This ‘split’ is probably our body-mind make up and an innate situation, thanks to the evolution of our complex brain states. That late evening this linearity and symmetry happened, which I can speak of only now. However, still, something was missing for the magic to unravel and unleash…!
Few minutes later, I consciously began to sing, with lots of gathered strength, a song my departed father used to sing. It was worded as, ‘Suniye Nath Gareeb Nawaj… Aayi Sharan Mein Tujhe Meri Laaj… (Do kindly listen O Lord of the needy and destitute. I have surrendered to you and you have to help me).’ With high fever, pain and incapacitation, it was tough to sing and therefore required a very ‘Conscious’ effort in my part. Also, as the song itself had a deep association and ‘connect’ with the memory of my father, who used to sing this song, I also wept and kept singing for an hour or so. The subconscious state that was completely drenched and drowned in helplessness and debilitation, probably found itself a supportive advocacy of conscious self and together there was a singular, definitive and unflinching expression and communication of an emergency need for immediate ‘help’…!
The night I slept and could not remember much as probably I was in a delirium. Early morning I found myself in the pool of sweat. I experienced untold weakness but my mind felt fresh. My conscious self had clarity of thoughtfulness and fever was down to normal. The day passed and fever did not come back. In the night, when usually fever used to be high, the fever returned but was very mild. Next day, I was normal and on my toes and eventually made it to my crucial office event and did well.
This experience and experiment has been repeated three more times successfully since then and every time a new element was added, even when I could ascertain that the core ‘magic’ remained the same. We shall try to decipher the ‘magic’ after detailing the other three experiments as every other experience had something new in them…
Four years back, my lower back pain came to stay as a permanent thing in my life. Initially, the pain was very crippling in the morning and as the day progressed, it was bearable. I sort of accepted that as it was something very common, especially for tall man like me, I ignored it. I did some yoga exercise but it worsened the pain. In the next two months, pain and stiffness worsened and it became tough for me to do even my daily routine. I had in my mind the ‘magic’ that I had earlier experimented as only a year back, I had repeated this successfully with another fever bout. However, I realized that as lower back was something always there with me, even since my youth days and so I believed it was something related with my skeletal frame, which was naturally deteriorating with age. I was reluctant to repeat my experiment with back pain as I was sure it was not a malaise but a physical reality of a degenerative body that was only natural.
This time, it all happened unplanned and spontaneous. One morning not only the back pain was acute and intense but also, the pain moved up to upper back and reached bottom of my neck. The whole day, I had nothing to do and there was no business at hand. I just kept lying on my bed, was silent and as usual, surrendered myself to the situation. I didn’t sing. I could not as even breathing was a tough ask. Didn’t remember my father, didn’t invoke divinity. I simply focused on my pain. It was like I called up my pain and sat with it and respectfully and humbly showed up my tears. I remembered a folklore about a fakeer (hermit) who wailed and wept inconsolably and cured any diseased person who came to him. I wept and wailed and all along consciously focused on the pain as if it was a person and I was directing my tears and wails to ‘him’…
Nothing magical happened next day. Probably, the pain and intensity were the same. However, next day, there were troubles with my mother. She had serious trouble with her health and I simply forgot my own self and almost subconsciously dived into a routine of unending work to extend best possible care and support to her. Almost 15 days passed and as she continued to be serious all these days, I simply could not even register the actuality of severity of my own pain and incapacitation. My mother started to be well and I too had some leisure time first time in 15 days. Suddenly, I registered that somehow I had managed single-handedly everything in past 15 days, even when my condition was such that I even had huge trouble moving around. I realized the lower back pain was still there but very mild and even disappeared for day or two and would again come back. In months to come, the inflammation that was so intense that even slight press of the affected area was impossible, I could now massage it and felt no pain. Of course, lower back pain is not fully gone but it is not permanent; comes back occasionally and that too very mild, whenever I overstretch things.
Similar success happened with what looked like initial prostate trouble. It is common in maternal side of my family and I was already expecting it. This experiment was somewhat similar to what had happened with back pain. Again, it was like summoning the problem, having an audience with it and respectfully expressing my incapacitation with simplicity of honesty and humility. This time, there were no tears, no wails just an intense and long conscious talk with my own ‘self’. Things began to improve after a week and I kept the ‘talk process’ on for two-three times…
Most interesting and very appealing is the last experience, which happened a few months back. I had tooth pain and it had lasted a week. I rarely take a pain killer but I did all home remedies like salt-turmeric paste rubbing, clove oil, etc. No relief. After a week, the pain shot up and spread to ears and forehead. The pain was shooting and pulsating, making it hard even to sleep. I took painkillers reluctantly for two days but it only provided relief for few hours. The pain intensified.
On probably 9th day of my tooth pain, it was unbearable and still, there was no rest possible. I had a long day of work and it could not be possibly avoided. As I mustered up courage to begin the day with my work, it flashed in my mind that I should do the experiment that had thrice been successful. However, deep inside, I felt this time it wouldn’t work as I thought, as I had planned it, my brain has already got aware that I was consciously attempting to selfishly use the experiment for relieving pain and that would alert my subconscious. I dropped the idea.
An hour later, I changed my mind and thought, why not take a chance, the pain is killing me, what is the loss; anyway I am up and doing my work. This time however, very consciously, I changed the core element of my experiment. I chose a song I had heard from the legendary musician of India, Bharat Ratna, Ustad Bismillah Khan Saheb, based on Raag Bhairav Of Indian classical musical tradition that is worded like, ‘Allah Hi Allah Jalle Shan Allah… Rim jhim Baras Ho Noor Tazalla… Allah Hi Allah…(A praise of the almighty Allah).
I kept with my work and recited the composition 40-50 times throughout the day. It is irrelevant, yet being mentioned just for information that I am born Hindu, Brahmin but do not engage in the question of traditional religion and divinity. The day passed and late in the night, I could manage to sleep. It was a dreamless sleep and so deep that I could not even register how long I had slept. Early morning, I woke up an hour before sunrise on my fixed time. It was winter night and I had my quilt over me. As I awoke, I felt numbness in my body. It took a few seconds before I could register that I could move my body. Seconds later I could realize I was in a pool of sweat and as I checked my skin, I could feel that sweating had been profuse and probably the whole night as there was thick sticky layer on my skin. Probably after five minutes I could shift my attention to my tooth pain, which was still there but felt very much bearable. As the day progressed, the pain died down considerably and in the next two days, there was only this somatic sensation that reminded that there was this massive pain there. Third day, everything was normal…
Before we proceed to interpretation of different probable aspects of the experiments and experiences sketched above, there are a few important things that need ca