Balance- March Blog

Balance

   We all seek to achieve balance in our lives.  Excess tends to invite problems in many ways.  Excessive waste invites pollution, degradation of our environment and leads to things like a break down of the ecosystem.  Excessive intake of bad food can lead to a multitude of health problems:  diabetes, high cholesterol, heart disease, and many degenerative diseases.  Excessive cell production is of course cancer. 
   Achieving balance can be difficult.  We are inundated with opportunities to engage in excess:  fast food restaurants galore, fast cars, drugs and alcohol, and media overload.  Balance on the other hand requires discipline.  The ability to temper impulses and desires with what is healthy and safe, right and wrong, dark and light, etc.  This is much the ying yang concept of the orient.  In the health area, balance can be a very difficult challenge.  We are busy as a society:  rushing, rushing constantly.  It is far too easy to grab a fast food burger or a donut than to fix a healthy breakfast or prepare some fruit.
   Some thoughts on balance:

1. Take the time to find quiet.  Find or set up a special place in your house where you can just sit and have quiet with no interruptions, no phones or internet, no noise, and minimal light.
2. Breathe.  Learn to breath properly and practice breathing.  There are many types of breathing exercises available from yoga, chi qong, tai chi and martial arts that have rejuvenating abilities.
3. Clear the mind.  Practice prayer or meditation or whatever your method of getting in touch with the ethereal or energy of your spirit.  This is a good place to practice breath as well.  Learn to get all the noise that courses through our minds to be quiet.  One person said a long time ago that "all of mankind's ills come from the inability to sit quietly in a room and be alone."  Or something to that effect.
4. Practice relaxation.  Relax the mind, relax the body, relax the breath.  Let all the tension progressively release from your body.  You can lie or sit and start with an area of the body and relax it totally.  Then move to another area and work through the whole body.
5. Learn to make balanced decisions.  Help your body function best by choosing positive alternatives to fat, sugar laden fast food meals.

   Balance can also be addressed other ways in the body.  Often times musculoskeletal injuries are a result of imbalances in the function of muscles.  Over time muscle imbalances cause joints to break down and cause pain and dysfunction.   An example is low back pain caused by weak hip flexor muscles.  I find almost all the time in women with low back pain, for example, that either the major hip flexors or secondary hip flexors on one or both sides are weak.  The result is the body has to recruit other muscles to walk and perform normal activities.  Like a misaligned wheel on your car, over time your start having problems (breakdown) due to repetitive stress. 
   Muscular imbalances can be treated with the laser to restore the energy connections, unless there is severe nerve injury.  By fixing the connections further or future injuries can be prevented.  It allows balanced stressors and minimizes wear and tear.  Maintaining balanced muscle function is essential to an effectively functioning musculoskeletal and nervous systems.