Active danger?

Recently I was exploring the functionality available on my iPhone, and discovered the Heart Rate app. Before sleeping, my heart rate was consistently in the late 50’s or early 60’s. I then went to Thailand, and due to the change in climate from around 15 degrees celsius to 30, and the intensity of training 2-3 times a day for a few days outdoors in the heat without a brief patch to climatise, I managed to get dehydration through a combination of inadequate water intake, combined with the drastic increase in training frequency and intensity. It was impulsive because I was in Thailand and I had the facility and daily routine that could afford it. It wasn’t planned or well thought out. I got into work on return from Thailand feeling extremely tired, and due to a bug going around, I managed to add to my fatigue and dehydration, with flu. I went straight to the doctors in the afternoon, and was forced to take the afternoon off with severe fever and a doctors note to take time off work after that too. Before I knew it I was in bed for half a day and when out of boredom I checked my heart rate, it was consistently in the 90s. My body was actively doing something even though I was doing nothing but lying in bed. It was active as it was in trouble.

A year or so ago, I needed the help of a chiropractor in recovering from an injury, and due to his passion about what he practised, he would explain the concepts and detail of his process of diagnosis, aswell as explaining how his tools worked. I would visit him roughly once a fortnight, and he would ask about any changes in how it felt to check for improvements or if there is stagnation in the evolution of the injury. He explained that as long as the injury is changing i.e. if pain is felt in another closely area rather than the original affected area, then there is likely to be progress as it shows the body recognises the need to rehabilitate and cure, and is actively working on it. He then introduced an interesting tool. This tool was a handheld device that he would use to scan the area, and give a reading of the voltage. The reading represented how ‘active’ the cells in area were. He explained, if someone has cancer, the concerned part of the body is inactive as the body for some reason cannot be active when and where it needs to be active, this leads to the inability to recover. Low readings in afflicted areas are therefore not good. The area I had the injuries had a higher voltage than the equivalent part of the body on the opposite side. This was good, and showed the body had recognised the need to use more energy to enable change and healing in that area. The reading was high in areas that needed to recover. The areas with issues, had high levels of activity. The other areas which were not injured had low readings and were less active.

In the book entitled ‘How the Mighty Fall’ by Jim Collins, he refers to the various stages of corporate demise, beginning with pride and overconfidence leading to a corporate or individual not changing, out of arrogance. The next stages were the competition taking over. Then position would begin to demise. When demise is visible, the arrogant company or individual panics and begins to change, in some cases making sweeping changes. The changes are not necessarily based on intelligent decisions, but sometimes just attempts to salvage something. The example of Hewlett Packard was cited, when they were at a stage where competition was taking greater market share, and a new CEO was then hired, who made sweeping changes, which led to no improvement, in fact things got worse for the company. The level of activity increased when there was trouble. When trying to recover, the company, not the body in this instance, increased activity.

When I started training jiu jitsu, in my first few weeks, I would often come in with other beginners. Sometimes these were amateur or semi-professional fighters in other disciplines such as boxing. They had big, and/or athletic body frames, were aggressive sometimes in approach. They would be up against small guys who were very welcoming, warm, and gentle in nature. When these rough boxers would be paired up with the smaller, more experienced guys, I would worry for the smaller, more experienced guys in the dojo since the level of activity and desire to win from the beginners was so much, and based on my limited understanding, this could end badly for the small guys. So I watched as the beginner requested to spar with the small guy . He just sat there with very little aggression, smiling. The boxer prepared himself and charged into him. The small guy was really doing very little, wasn’t moving much at all, almost no activity except a few hand movements to block the quite crazy attacks of the beginner. After a few minutes at most, the beginner was tapping. The inactivity of the experienced guy was due to his understanding of what is really dangerous and what isn’t. This gave him grounding and confidence to be able to smile and be gentle. I was intrigued by the way dedication to learning the proper techniques and their application would succeed over power and strength. It wasn’t a one off, this would work every time.

Questioning the purpose of our actions, the purity of our motives, are therefore all very important whether this is at work, in sport, or our social and family lives.  

“There are four classes of men; i) lazy intelligent, ii) busy intelligent, iii) lazy fool and iv) busy fool. So first-class man is lazy intelligent. Just like you'll see the high-court judges. They're very lazy and most intelligent. That is first-class man. They are doing everything very soberly. And the next class: busy intelligent. Intelligence should be used very soberly. And the third class: lazy fool, lazy, at the same time, fool. And the fourth class: busy fool. Busy fool is very dangerous. So all these people, they're busy. Even in this country, everywhere, all over the world, not this country or that country.”

Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada