Some time ago, a friend talked about something.
Her father, who runs a restaurant and gets up at 2 a.m. every day, has recently occasionally complained of rapid heartbeat and dizziness.
His father was nearly 60 years old, and his friends were very vigilant when he heard this, and repeatedly told him to go for a medical examination, but he never went.
Until a few years ago, she returned to her hometown and forced her father to go to the hospital.
A check, blood pressure up to 200, stomach, liver have different degrees of disease, on-site examination also did the removal of gastrointestinal polyps, father was forced to be hospitalized for a week.
She was shocked afterwards:
How did my father endure this?
Why is he so dull in his body's feelings?
So we had a good discussion:
Why do people ignore and disbelieve the feelings of their bodies so much?
Not only older people, but also young people.
Many people have a habit of collapsing on the couch and playing with their phones until their shoulders stiffen and their waists tingle.
If you don't focus on your own body -
You don't know that your shoulders are stiff at this time;
You can't feel that the leg that was pressed against Qiujiro's leg was a little sore;
You also forget that you haven't drunk water for a day, your lips are a little dry ...
We are too used to enduring discomfort and pain, thus blocking out the sensations in our bodies.
It can be said that among the various choices, physical feelings are the easiest to ignore and the easiest to sacrifice.
My friend's father is a typical example.
Business is more important, so even if blood pressure reaches a critical point, it can be ignored.
What's more serious is that some people are reluctant to see a doctor even if they know that they are sick.
Because they feel that spending money on treatment not only delays work, but also burdens the family, it is better not to watch.
To make money, to support a family – these are "more important" things.
But who decides on this "more important"?
It's the mind.
The mind tells us through so-called rational analysis - things are more important, the body is not.
To some extent, this "mental rationality" reflects the "precision" advocated by modern society.
After entering the industrial society, in order to better social cooperation and production and life, we began to pay attention to the concept of time and pay attention to punctuality.
Therefore, people are accustomed to using the rational judgment of the mind to control their bodies in order to carry out accurate plans.
Especially when working in big cities, "mental reason" often has the absolute right to speak. Like what:
Go to work on time, self-discipline gives you freedom;
To overcome emotions, the workplace does not believe in tears.
However, the physical feeling is more inclined to a vague, natural accuracy. Like what:
Wake up naturally when you are full;
When you're tired, you want to stop;
When you're sick, you want to rest.
The laws of the body are more "unreliable" and more difficult to control. For example, you can control how many hours you sleep each day, but you can't control when you're not sleepy.
And in order to be able to become a passing social person, precision must suppress ambiguity, and the mind must suppress the body.
So, even if we have dry eyes, bladder pain or even low back pain, we still sit in our office seats for a long time – because it's more important to deliver work on time and without mistakes than our bodies.
So, even if the body frequently sends signals of discomfort, we will still procrastinate from going to the doctor - because our normal life order is more important than health.
But this state of division is destined to be unsustainable. That's why a lot of people are in poor shape.
Because in order to live accurately, our brains are always guiding the body through criticism and correction.
We don't really perceive it: the body, it's a good team.
Weibo blogger #hardcore technology fan, once wrote a human body science popularization:
(Swipe up and down to view)
After reading it, I found out:
It turns out that the body also has its own rational system.
The cells in the body cooperate and sacrifice each other for the fundamental purpose of hoping that their owner will live well.
But all the while, we habitually ignore the feelings of our bodies and fear that our bodies will cause us trouble.
The pain is swollen, and it is just treated as a problem that needs to be solved and eliminated by using your brain;
If you have a cold and fever, take special medicine in order to quickly recover and return to work and study, instead of taking the opportunity to rest well, take care of the body, and let it restore immunity.
But this is ignoring the logic of the body. Because pain is actually a precious feedback, it tells our brain:
This will hurt "me", stop!
Only by respecting the body's feedback and understanding the body's rationality can we live and work in a better state.
When sharing her secret to success, Gu Ailing said that she slept 10 hours a day.
But some people immediately refuted, obviously a large number of sleep science research shows that sleep in 7.5 hours is better.
Even they searched the US and Canadian standards, saying that 7-9 hours is better.
But instead of making rigid judgments, it is better to ask your body - wake up every day to judge whether your wakefulness is normal.
I believe that many people have had such an experience:
When I was in high school, I thought about getting up early to go for a morning jog and morning reading, so that I could have more time to study; But when it came to class time, it was too sleepy, and the learning efficiency decreased.
It can be said that the evil consequence of using mental reason to set sleep time is to ruin a morning.
And the really reasonable state is to carefully feel the feedback of the body.
Because only the body knows what to call awake.
Deep down, the evolution of the body's efficiency and order is long and slow, starting from tens of thousands of years and shaping into the current appearance, so that human beings can relatively adapt to the environment.
And social development is too fast, the role of people has undergone earth-shaking changes in the past 20 years, and the brain has also put forward high evolutionary requirements in the process of socialization.
If the body is an experienced adult, then our mind is a smart child who is pulled to grow up.
Therefore, in addition to the flexibility of our minds, we also need to cooperate well with the adult of the body.
Recognizing this, we can begin to value the many signals that our bodies give us and make behaviors and choices that are right for us.
(but requires exercise)
Perhaps one might suspect:
Although the body has its own rationality, it also has its own advantages. But after all, if people want to live in society, will it be difficult to believe too much in the body?
But Timothy Galvey, the first person in sports psychology in the United States, believes:
To be at the top of your field, you have to believe in the body.
In his book The Miraculous Power of Mind-Body Unity, he proposes two concepts: "self one" and "self two."
Self 1: Good at giving instructions, criticism and control;
Self two: mainly physical sensation and action execution.
"Self One" will often criticize "Self Two", and the mind will discipline and suppress the body.
Through extensive research on the training and competition of professional tennis players, Timothy discovered:
The difference between a great player and a top golfer is not entirely in technology; It's about being able to make adjustments on the playing field – that is, controlling your mind and trusting your body.
Take a counterexample:
If the opponent plays an extraordinary role in the game and wants to interrupt his advantage, you can use a little trick - praise him. "You played well with your backhand today."
The opponent will be happy at first, but this becomes an anchor in his heart, making him keep thinking about the rest of the game: "I played well with my backhand, how did I do it?" ”
Once he switches from self two to self one, the advantage will be greatly reduced.
This is because once the brain begins to discipline the body's movements, every step is thought hard, energy is spent on correction, muscles are overmobilized, and what to do is not in place.
For example, whenever we want to learn something, our brains will have various "qualified" and "excellent" standards, which limit us and lead to action constraints.
This is because we block self two and switch to self one.
And trust your own body, don't think too much, give up self-criticism, and only then will you focus more on learning itself.
Even, at critical moments, trusting the body will save our lives.
A fire chief used this to save all his comrades.
Once they received a fire alarm, and when they entered the house to extinguish the fire, he suddenly had a sense of foreboding and recalled the team members in front.
Sure enough, shortly after they withdrew, the house exploded.
Everyone was shocked, the fire obviously did not look big, why did it suddenly explode; What's even more amazing is why the captain was able to predict the explosion.
The captain himself had no way to explain it at the time, but when he reviewed it later, he remembered that when he entered the room, he felt that the floor was unusually hot.
The fire in the room is not large, but the floor is overheated, which means that the downstairs may have been burning for a long time.
Such a small detail, the brain misses, but the body remembers.
In fact, in addition to sports, in many jobs and judgments, the mind and body are an excellent team that loves and kills each other.
Without "rational minds", it is difficult for us to fit in and participate in various tasks;
Without "physical rationality," we will harm ourselves and waste a lot of our innate potential.
It can be said that as the complexity of human beings faces work, the brain is weak to fight alone.
Being able to trust the body and the feedback and advice it gives can one live more harmoniously.
Write last
In the 2021 Talent Attraction Report released by Pulse, there is an observation:
Among the post-95s and post-00s generation, more people believe that "physical and mental health" is more important than goals such as financial freedom or career achievement.
It can be seen that after the rapid development of the past 20 years, many people have calmed down: the body is still more important.
Moreover, many companies have begun to increase measures to pay attention to employees' physical conditions, such as "emotional leave", semi-annual physical examinations, regular massages, and body conditioning.
In the past, we were proud to endure the pain, but now we begin to have the right to allow ourselves to stop and rest.
Human beings are increasingly having the dignity of survival, which is progress.
As the old saying goes: the body is the capital of the revolution.
This is not a slogan, but a simple truth, and a scientific prophecy.