researching and hunting down new microbes, bacteria, viruses, etc., and then developing powerful drugs that kill them. This obsession has blinded them to the fact that it is the constitutional susceptibility (the already existing weakness in the body, mind, and spirit) of the victims that creates fertile ground for disease to exist. This blindness leads to the deployment of increasingly toxic drugs, which themselves are becoming a significant public health menace and disturb even further the fine balance that nature has created in our bodies.
Proactive health means working at the maintenance of your health or homeostasis on a regular basis whilst you are in good health, so as to strengthen your immune and other self-defence systems in the body and therefore lessen your susceptibility to illness. This is a fundamentally different attitude to waiting until we get sick and then going to the doctor and asking them to heal us. Over the last 30 years people have generally become a lot more health conscious and are joining gyms, taking up jogging, modifying their diets or perhaps learning to play a new sport, but although this is a movement in the right direction, a greater depth of understanding is possible through the practice of holistic self-defence where each part, body, mind and spirit are strengthened. For instance, your body must always be exercised in relation to the Law of Gravity (see here), if you go jogging but are not aware of a misalignment in your spine or foot you will soon cause injury there; if you do not train your mind to focus correctly during exercise you will cultivate a dangerous split between your mind and body caused by daydreaming; and desiring the next material affirmation of your superiority (trophies, belts and so on) or cultivating the emotions of winning over losing will have a severe impact on the evolution of your emotional life.
Understanding the cyclical nature of health and disease is one of the keys to maintaining a steady input of energy into our homeostasis. For example, if a person walks with a slouch, they may not notice any detrimental effects to their health immediately, but because this slouch causes a slight compression of the ribcage, their breathing is always mildly impaired. If this slouch occurs only once it will not be dangerous, but if it occurs repeatedly over the cycle of years it will cause serious disease in later life. Proactive health uses the same simple understanding to strengthen homeostasis in the body – for example, if by building awareness to your spine you gradually learn the correct positioning for it and then gradually encourage a movement to the correct upright position at times during the day, over the cycle of years you will then defend yourself against ill health brought on by bad posture.
We could equally apply this concept to poor mental and emotional habits – for example, if patterns of negative thought present at a young age are left unchecked, they can cause serious mental-health problems such as depression later in life, but by learning how to focus and quieten the mind at intervals during the day, we can protect our mental health. Equally, excessive feelings of guilt can spread like cancer. Proactively rebalancing our emotional life can protect us from the hoards of doctors trying to shove antidepressants down our throats (for a nice commission).
This simple concept of cyclical health is significant because it means you can work proactively on your health at any time in your day, for example, whilst sitting at your desk or waiting in checkout queues or bus stops, and so on. The Intelligent Warrior in this way makes a decision to become involved in the maintenance of their health at various times of the day. By cultivating this attitude, we begin to bring our Martial Art training directly into our life and so return to the original precepts of Kung Fu.
Action/Reaction Cycle
In Meditation (see here) we use our awareness to practise bringing together the perceptions of our inner and outer worlds, sensing them together as one whole. Our growing sensitivity to this allows us to study the living relationship between our inner and outer worlds. In terms of self-defence, the link between the two is achieved in this order: an event occurs outside ourselves that our senses interpret; the senses turn the impression into an electrical impulse that is transmitted to the brain via the electrical conductors, the nerves; the brain then , interprets and compares this signal based on previously perceived impressions and then manifests a reaction back through the body in response to the original stimuli. In classic action/reaction fashion, the “world” reacts back to us in a particular way based upon our reaction, which then makes us react again and so the cycle perpetuates. This is the living relationship that continues whether we like it or not. For much of the time it revolves in the background where we do not notice the subtle ways in which we are pulled off balance by various influences, and thus we are unaware of the equally subtle ways that we express our imbalance. Frequently, we carry these reactions around inside us from one environment to another. For instance, when you have a bad day at work you may “carry it” with you home where you continue your negative reactions in the form of being irritable to your partner. The cycle could also just as easily originate from a negative association within oneself, such as suddenly recalling from memory a missed opportunity, which in turn makes you manifest negativity outwardly (by perhaps frowning or cursing). The process of Meditation can build sensitivity to this ‘natural’ cycle of human behaviour, and by so doing can become one of the ways that we consciously participate in the process of homeostasis. Moreover by practising Meditation we begin to understand the action/reaction cycle from a more energetic viewpoint, sensing the stimuli as just energy vibrations coming in via the senses and then in turn sensing the vibrations of our own reaction, this frees us from being caught up in the details of a particular reaction and allows sense of the flow of energy between us an the opponent (stimuli). In this way an Intelligent Warrior stands balanced between their inner and outer life in the knowledge that this is the only place where they can truly effect their life. It understand the cycle from this more energetic perspective it would be valuable here to return to the previous symbol (see Figure 3)
The intersecting arrows represent the three dimensions of the outer world: left to right, forwards and back, up and down. To fully represent this you must imagine the symbol as three-dimensional, with an arrow coming out towards you, so to speak, from the page, or moving into the page. The outer circle is the circle of your awareness where approaching influences are picked up at an early stage.
FIGURE 3
Whenever an influence (which could be an attacker, a virus or a hefty unexpected bill) enters the body it disturbs the body’s homeostasis. Sensing that it is being attacked the body will go into its instinctual defence mechanisms, the fight-or-flight response, the strength of which will depend on the intensity of the situation (see The Principle of Relativity). If the body’s centre is weak then severe and prolonged imbalance will occur, which will lead to illness and possibly, indirectly or directly, death. However, if the connection with the body’s centre has been developed then it will be strong enough to hold the circling energies of body, mind and spirit in its orbit, allowing a quick and speedy rebalancing or healing to occur.
On a lighter note, an influence could be an inspirational work of art, the focused love of somebody near you, some valuable information gleaned from a book. In such cases, the influence is ‘food’ for your higher self, which helps you to evolve a finer sense of balance and therefore increase the homeostasis between your body, mind and spirit.
Higher Health
The concept of higher health was expressed quite clearly in Chinese medicine and is where the healing process is not only seen as restoring balance after illness but also as a means of evolving the individual into a higher state of ‘being’. Moreover, the energy we use to continually heal ourselves from all kinds of disease is not available for this higher purpose. However, participation in the action/reaction cycle allows us to make different choices at critical decision points and so cultivates the Intelligent Warrior within.
The Principle of Relativity
When your body receives an impression of an attack, it will instantaneously react with the fight-or-flight response and, depending on the nature of the impression, will react
