Practical Tao

Tao for your daily life!

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  • The brain-body relationship

    We tend to separate our mind from our body. More specifically, we distinguish between what we do consciously and what we do unconsciously. We would say that we chew the food and swallow it, and then we say the body digests it. We say that the heart beats itself, not that we are beating it. So, we can say there are two selves – the one we associate with, and the one which does all the stuff we are not consciously aware of. Like hair, for example, we don’t say that we grow it, rather, it grows itself. 

    Now it is clear that we would not exist without our conscious selves and that the conscious self could not exist without us. Walking and chewing are things we always identify with doing, and if we stopped doing those, we would cease to exist. 

    What is also clear is that the unconscious self also would not exist without us, and that we would not exist without it. The heart beating and the body digesting are essential to us living. 

    So, all of our problems really come down to this. What we are and what we identify with are different. Much of what we do that is good for us is really only good for our conscious selves and bad for our unconscious selves. We can separate these two as brain and body. 

    We identify as our brain, and we say we have a body, not are a body. Therefore, we do a lot of things that feel good for our brain and hurt our body. The truth is, we are the brain-body. We are both and also the relationship between them. For many of us in this society, the relationship between our brain and body can best be described as toxic. Let me give some examples.

    When I vape or smoke, my brain wants that, but my body (lungs) doesn’t. When I drink soda, my brain wants that but my body (digestive system) doesn’t. When I watch reels or tv for hours, my brain wants that stimulation but my body (eyes, constant sitting) doesn’t. Even making money, if that involves sitting for 8 hours a day in front of a screen, then my brain wants that, but my body (eyes, constant sitting) doesn’t. 

    It is an extremely toxic relationship where the brain does what it wants at the expense of the body and I recommend that the body break up with the brain. Now, that is not possible since one cannot exist with the other. It is fair to say, then, that our mental health directly correlates with the health of the relationship between brain and body.

    It’s not all bad. There are some instances where the relationship is a win-win. When you are hungry and eat a healthy meal, the brain is happy and so is the body.  Now, if you get full and keep eating, it is toxic again as the body has told you to stop, and while eating more may please the brain, it will also hurt digestion. 

    The simple way to fix this is awareness. Before an activity, ask yourself – “ Is it just my brain that wants this? Does it come at the expense of my body?”. Win-win activities are the simplest – exercise (be sure not to overtrain!), eating healthy (when hungry!), and sleeping (when tired).

    With so much stimulation readily available, we have learned to ignore our body, and our mental health as a society has progressively become worse. The solution is to identify less with just the brain and identify more as the brain-body relationship. Don’t do what feels good for the brain (which is just lots of stimulation), do what’s best for the relationship, because that is what you really are.

  • How to (actually) stick to your resolutions

    It is currently October. Some may think this article is way too early, but my local store is already selling Christmas wreaths. A few people may already have their new years resolution lined up. Come December 31st, most people will. Come January 30th, most people will have quit. There’s a number of articles out there that will tell you that you need a purpose behind your resolutions or someone to hold you accountable. While that may slightly help, I believe they serve as nothing more than

    Why a year? We have a convention to make resolutions for a year. You may say “This year, I will exercise.” Well, what about the year after that? No one makes resolutions every decade for ten years and no one makes resolutions every month for a month. Now, the reasons for this don’t concern us as we are concerned with practicality here. So practically, the resolution we make is generally intended for a lifetime. No one thinks to themselves “In 2026, I will exercise, then in 2027, I will stop exercising.” But, if you tell yourself this every year, then you never stop exercising! The issue is, most people won’t even make it past the first month. Committing to something for a year is quite difficult. I mean, let’s say you are trying to quit alcohol. On day 1, you will tell yourself you have 364 days remaining, on day 2, 363. Even if you somehow make it 30 days, you will tell yourself you have 335 days left. Given how hard the first 30 days were, this is extremely demoralizing.

    Now another approach could be this: since people quit after 2 weeks, I’m going to make a resolution every 2 weeks: Jan 1, Jan 15, Feb 1, Feb 15, Mar 1, etc… This is not unintelligent, but this approach is unlikely to work as intended. That is because come Jan 15, you will want to change resolutions. You’re gonna tell yourself “I just did this for 2 weeks, I don’t want to do this again.”. Totally fair.

    See, I find that the solution to breaking a bad habit or starting a new, positive habit is to accept that you will fail – tomorrow. Wake up on January 1st (or even tomorrow!) and tell yourself “Today, I will exercise, and that’s it! Tomorrow, I can go back to not exercising” or “Today I will eat healthy, and tomorrow, I’m gonna eat a Big Mac!”. Now, the trick is to really convince yourself that tomorrow, you will allow yourself to give up your resolution. You may think “I can’t fool myself that easily!”. Oh but you can! We are masters in procrastination. Don’t we always tell ourselves we’ll do something tomorrow and then a week, a month, perhaps even a year goes by before we take care of it, if at all? We need to use our skill in procrastination to procrastinate breaking our resolution! About to go to McDonalds and demolish a big mac? tell yourself you’ll go tomorrow. Really believe this. Forget a year, forget a month, forget a week, how about just one day? Today. Stick to your resolution just today, and tomorrow you can go crazy – drink, skip the workout, eat fast food, vape. You see, one of the curious properties of tomorrow is that it never comes.

    Hope you enjoyed!