bodystopia or WHY2K
6 min reading
We have had the following experience.
When we work on computer or mobile. And if too many apps or windows are open, at some threshold stage, the computer/mobile slows down. And if we continue and or open more apps/windows, there is a system hang at some stage.
We could also have awareness of the following experience.
We would be working on something very urgent and important. And committing our attention, energy and effort towards it. Wanting very much for it to reach a certain state or completion. And when it does, we have a deep sigh of relief. In this state of sigh/relief, we also experience a sort of “untensing” or “de-tense” of the body….sort of easing of posture (not clenching or de-clenching).
A similar thing could be experienced when after a long day of work, we drop or crash on the couch or the bed.
What seems to be happening is the following.
The body is the proverbial hardware. With energy management system. Motor movement system. Anticipating and response readiness system. And so on. And as we move from meeting to meeting, or call to call, or task to task, the body hardware keeps certain parts of the system as open and accessible…in the anticipation that we might suddenly open the proverbial app/window of the thing we were trying to process or accomplish, and we have to get-go.
Now imagine we haven’t really looked at what all we have been processing and are planning to accomplish. And we haven’t registered what we have accomplished so far on the various tasks (personal, interpersonal, work, civic, etc). And we have not yet reconciled with the progress or the challenges. And on the contrary, we have been simply running from goals to goals, challenges to challenges, etc.
Chances are that we do not know how many apps/windows we have kept open in our body hardware. And in what ways they are doing the following:
slowing down the body hardware for other tasks or task that we are attending in the “now”
interfering with the task at hand or other tasks
because of the pre-disposed or “not aware” of the body state and emotion state (owing to it being continuously processed in the background), not knowing that our current posture/gesture and the emotional disposition (in the now) is apt or biased or reactive or not.
possibility of not knowing what to do in order to create a healthy body hardware management
possibility of mishandling or misdiagnosis of problems (inner and outer)
and so on…
The remedies discovered over the ages and sages have pointed in direction of various forms of inner scans (inner diagnostic and reset)…breath meditation, posture meditation, bodyscan meditation, etc.
Done intermittently through the day and built over a period of time, these could result in a better presence.
While we have heard, “every action has equal and opposite reaction”, one has never asked that the “action” mentioned in the first place was truly an action or was it already a reaction to something???!!!
And if so, then we might need to rephrase and start using “every reaction has equal and opposite reaction” or better still, “every perceived and felt reaction has perceived and felt reactions, the measures of which are dependent on the science of the day and or the quality of presence of the person”.
These practices of scanning and managing one’s own body hardware is extremely crucial as each of us in some way are cloud computing for our civilization. And in the tightly coupled interconnectedness and interdependencies, which is not anti-fragile, we might be all subscribing and prescribing the very thing that we have been feeling helpless about, or talking to our friends about. Or even if we aren’t feeling so, we could be not aware of the ways in which we are entering the various #RivalrousGames and ratcheting up towards dystopia.
There was a #Y2K revolution at the turn of the millennium. We believe there is an ever bigger #WHY2K reset required. For we find ourselves in #PsychoSocialSavanna.
#WHY2K will have to happen at the level of individual and the #PoliticalEconomicSocial structures. And one of the key element is going to be about holding one’s own body into a refined awareness and “showing up” in a renewed manner. Knowing and regulating what the body is telling us, and also telling (regulating) the body for showing up better or adaptive. Not always … but towards.
