Health is Like a Bicycle
Learn balance and you can go anywhere
We typically refer to life and health as nouns, discrete objects that can be examined. But in reality, they are more like processes than objects, more verbs than nouns.
Life is an ongoing action, or a symphony of actions. Things like eating, sleeping, and exercise are major processes that together act like gyroscopes that stabilize our lives. When the processes of life are running smoothly, we show up as healthy.
“When we pay attention - really listen - to our bodies, we can find ways to improve our health and live better.”
In that context, we can see that health is more than the absence of disease or injury. It is stability and resilience. People have all kinds of health issues that are beyond their control, but they can still make choices that will improve their wellbeing.
There are countless things that contribute to health - good or bad - and they all affect each other. When we pay attention - really listen - to our bodies, we can find ways to improve our health and live better.
Why health matters
In case this isn’t obvious . . .
Airplane safety presentations always say that in case of emergency, you should put on our own oxygen mask before assisting anybody else. Why? Because you can’t help anybody if you’re passed out.
The same thing applies in everyday life. When we’re unhealthy, it becomes more difficult to listen, focus, act, or even care. Our perceptions are distorted and our judgment is clouded. In contrast, good health enables the balance and clarity required to make good decisions.
“You can’t help anybody if you’re passed out.”
Even if you’re helping the people around you and doing a lot of good in the world, it won’t be sustainable if you can’t stay healthy. And if your health deteriorates too much (and believe me, this can happen to anybody), you actually become a burden to the people you care about most.
Careful attention to health helps see our lives more clearly, attend to the things we care about most, and live fuller and more rewarding lives.
To live a good life, take care of yourself, first.
Are you healthy?
There are countless different processes that together comprise life, so we couldn’t begin to address them all. It’s easy to observe our sleep, diets, and exercise habits and much harder to access our cellular metabolism, for example. However, the more we learn to tune in to our bodies and emotions, the more we can pick up on subtle and valuable health signals. Important feedback on how we’re doing is available, if we learn to listen.
Here are a few examples of health signals that many people ignore. They can offer important signals of an out-of-balance life:
Sleep - Are you waking up naturally, feeling well rested and ready to take on the day? Too little sleep, or low quality sleep, can be both a cause and an effect of poor health.
Digestion - People don’t like to talk about bowel movements, but they are an important health signal. If you don’t have regular, easy and pleasant bowel movements, then something is out of balance in your life.
Equanimity - Occasionally, really upsetting things do happen, but frequent upsets signal imbalances in mental or emotional health. As with most of these processes, when they go wrong, they can be both a cause and effect of poor health.
If you are already highly attuned to your body, you might notice more subtle signals - sluggishness from a lack of rest, slight headaches from dehydration, a particular stomach tension from worry. When you notice body sensations and connect them to your emotions and happenings in your life, then you’re on the right track. The better we get at listening, the quieter the sounds that we’re able to hear.
“The better we get at listening, the quieter the sounds that we’re able to hear.”
It can be surprisingly difficult to really notice these things in ourselves. Usually, we’re too caught up in our lives to give them real attention. But paying attention, and learning to listen to our bodies, is a skill worth cultivating.
Riding the bicycle
Is riding a bicycle easy? To kids who haven’t yet learned this skill, it’s daunting because they’re thinking about all the pieces separately: pedaling, steering, looking for obstacles, etc. But for people who have practiced, it feels effortless. They’re in tune with the balance of riding and able to make tiny corrections without even needing to notice them.
Daily life is similar. Children haven’t yet internalized a long list of healthy behaviors, so they easily get way out of balance and have a meltdown. Adults experience the same sense of being off-balance, but (usually) with more skill at suppressing their tantrums. It is sadly “normal” to ignore our inner sense, grit our teeth and power through but this is not a healthy or sustainable way to live. There are better options.
“It is sadly ‘normal’ to ignore our inner sense, grit our teeth and power through but this is not a healthy or sustainable way to live. There are better options.”
First, we have to learn balance. Too little sleep is terrible for our brain function, immune systems, and more. Too much sleep makes us lethargic and depressed. Too little food will kill us, but too much food, or too much of various types of unhealthy foods, will disrupt our digestion, metabolism, and more. Too little movement or exercise will make our bodies atrophy, weaken, and fail. But too much can cause all kinds of stress injuries. And while volatile emotional swings clearly represent unbalanced emotions, being flat and emotionless cuts us off from the wisdom of our bodies and our feelings. Finding the happy medium between extremes is a matter of experience and listening to our bodies. Everything in moderation.
Second, as with learning to bicycle, we need to use forward momentum to make balance easier and more natural. When we first start riding, we move slowly and feel wobbly. As we build momentum (and confidence), we start to stabilize and riding feels easy. Eventually, it becomes second nature. Healthy habits add momentum and gyroscopic stability to our lives, creating a feedback loop that makes life ever easier to manage.
I can remember unhealthy days where I went out drinking, slept poorly, woke up late, ate garbage and skipped my workout. One unhealthy thing leads easily to the next. The inverse is also true. A healthy evening meal, good sleep, and morning workout lay the foundation for a productive day that also makes me feel good about myself and encourages me to keep it up. Every choice adds to the feedback loop and influences the next choice.
The key to building that momentum is learning to really listen to our bodies. There is an old saying, when tired, rest. When hungry, eat. It sounds simple, but few people consistently notice and heed the signals of their own bodies. Almost everybody struggles with this, and that’s ok. It’s a skill that improves with practice.
“When tired, rest. When hungry, eat.”
Listening to our bodies is about more than just impulsively doing whatever feels good. It’s in our nature to respond to short term incentives, like I’m hungry and cake tastes good. Without strong body awareness, it takes discipline to avoid overindulging in things that feel good now but have a cost later. But if we develop the skill of listening more deeply, we start to pick up the subtle signals of unhealthy effects. Over indulging in cake creates a sugar rush and crash, bad digestion, and other unpleasant sensations, although they may be subtle.
When we get in the habit of paying attention, we can get better at noticing the consequences of our choices. Over time, patterns emerge and we start to intuitively choose healthier behaviors. In this way, healthy habits become a natural part of who we are. Healthy behavior just feels better. It feels right.
“Healthy habits become a natural part of who we are. Healthy behavior just feels better. It feels right.”
Do we need to live like healthy and perfectly balanced monks every minute of every day? No way! Good health comes from spinning up many different gyroscopes. We can indulge a little in one area and the others will help us return to equilibrium. Similarly, when part of our life isn’t working well, we can use practices in other parts of our lives to help restore balance. This is why exercise is so often a great way to deal with poor sleep and a healthy meal can help with emotional distress. It’s all connected.
Conclusion
Like riding a bicycle, living a healthy life is largely a function of finding our balance. It never stops, but it can get easier.
As in so many other places, listening is a vital skill. With greater awareness of our bodies’ signals, it gets easier to do things that are good for us, to stay in balance.
While it sounds simple, none of this is easy. It takes attention and work. Everybody struggles. If you have a friend, partner, therapist, or anybody else in your life who can help you pay attention and make healthy choices, then that is somebody to be thankful for. And if you don’t have that person, or if you’re just looking for more help, that’s OK too. This kind of work on building awareness and healthy habits is part of what we do with our coaching clients and we would love to help.
