It Doesn't Matter How Much You Know that Isn't True

Many think that simply knowing a lot is good -- but it only matters the little one knows that is actually true that one tests and discovers for themselves.  Probably 95% of what one "knows" may not be true, and be actually harmful -- and that is why simply knowing more, may not help them, but actually hurt them -- and be the cause of all their troubles.  But they think that is all despite of what they know -- than because of what they know that isn't so, and never think to question the validity of.

That is most of the "knowledge" in the world -- and everyone's job in life, is to find out which is true, and which isn't.  Nowhere is that more apparent in one's own health and well-being.  If everything one knows is not working, there is a problem with what they know -- and not the rest of the world's perception -- of whether they are right or wrong.

One's actual results and experiences are not just "anecdotal" but the reality of their own lives.  It does not matter how many others made it across the river without being attacked by the crocodile.  For the one that is, it is a total disaster, and not just the one in a thousand of being "mostly" safe.

That is the deception of large numbers -- when all that matters, is the one actuality one experiences.  Until then, the statistic may be 90% true -- but that is not the reality for the 10% for whom it does not apply.  Theirs would be a total disaster -- or impact.  The ultimate test of anything, was what one experiences in their own test -- and nobody knows that with any certainty beforehand, and often, afterwards even.  Sometimes, what one thinks is the reason something works, is not the real reason it does -- and that is the necessity of having others do the experiment also, and then they can compare notes.

More often than not, the truth is not what one expected to find -- while some people don't care, because they will continue to believe as they do regardless of any outcome; they just want to be "right" -- regardless.  They're not interested in finding out the truth of any matter -- for themselves certainly, and for others, if they don't have answers that work.  Some will insist that nothing works -- but what they know -- even if the results are always disastrous.  It merely confirms everything they "know."

In the field of exercise -- especially in aging people -- the obvious observation is that they have a difficult time with even formerly easy movements, and seeing that, why would a sane person construct even more difficult movements for them to do -- unless they just liked the feeling of making others feel worse than they already do?  The enlightened thing to do would be to discover those movements they could do with ease and grace, and encourage that mastery as the foundation for further gains -- rather than to frustrate them from the get-go.

But many fitness instructors lack that sensitivity -- in wanting to feel superior and all-knowing -- probably for the first time in their lives -- when provided a captive audience.  It's not unlike the basketball player who will never let the others touch the ball again once it is passed to them.  It's not much fun for everybody else -- although for the one so self-absorbed, they think all the cameras are rolling, and the applause is only for their ears.  Of course such people never go very far -- except in their own minds.  In their own minds, everybody else just showed up to see them.

Likewise, it doesn't take a genius to create a movement everybody else cannot do -- or is difficult to do -- but does take a genius to discern what anyone can do -- but doesn't think to do, and because of that, is their disability and dysfunction.  The most obvious, is simply turning one's head -- as far as possible, to ensure one's safety before proceeding out into traffic.  A few will claim that they didn't -- simply because they didn't think to do so, rather than as a well-conditioned action.  That is like our basketball player who once he gets his hands on the ball, never looks around at what is happening, and others are doing -- for the easy basket.  They think making the most difficult shot, scores more points -- when it's not that way at all, and they totally misunderstand the rules of the game -- and what everybody else is trying to achieve.

It's not competition that determines who is most fit -- but Nature.  That may seem to change from time to time -- but it is really all the same adaptation to changing circumstances, and how one is well-prepared to respond to them.  That is baseline health -- and not just one isolated measure of it as though it is the whole story.  There is an even bigger fish behind it.  So rather than requiring 100 pushups at age 100, it is sufficient and more meaningful to ask, who is the best-looking person at 100? -- and dispense with further tests and measurements.  That implies health and all its other attributes.  In that condition, one is ready to go at any moment also -- at the top of their game, and not only after decades, or even a century of decline.  They simply go out on top -- whenever that happens.

The worst fate is a prolonged decline into unrecognition as a viable human being.  Way before then, one hopes to have learned a few things in life to avoid that condition and be that proverbial wiser person.  Presumably, that's what life is all about -- growing older and wiser, and not just older horribly -- and drag one's tortured body across some imaginary finish line.  We've already seen plenty of that kind of action.  Health defies aging, but is more than just the foundation for all the other accoutrements of a life well-lived.  That includes personal hygiene, dress and grooming, refined and graceful movements -- and not everything sacrificed for only one thing -- that only results in hideous disproportion.  It is the symmetry that is the whole greater than just the sum of its parts -- but all too frequently, only one part to the diminishment of all the others.

That's why older bodybuilders stand out grotesquely for that disturbing disproportion -- of only developing the biceps, while looking like they can barely hobble on destroyed or neglected hip, knees and feet.  Yet they have biceps.  More than ever, it should be apparent that symmetry and proportion is the whole point -- especially at the ages at which one should know better.  But very obviously, they don't -- and it is not a matter of having lost it, but never attaining in the first place -- and that is what makes them fit to go out on top -- whenever that is.  That is inevitable, and not like the rich people of today think, that if they have enough money, they can simply live forever -- even if it is in a perpetually declining state.  But Nature doesn't allow that to happen.  That would upset all her plans for an evolving better life -- and not simply prolonging the disabled and dysfunctional as long as possible.  There is no room for that in the grand scheme of things.

And so life goes on -- despite every attempt to impede its progress, and evolution -- and keep things as they are permanently.  That is the backdrop in which we live our individual lives -- yet think from time to time, to make a breakthrough and reset the course of humanity.  That obviously, is not simply repeating history -- from time immemorial, to whatever future they wish to control.  It is something far more powerful -- the search for reality.  That always lies beyond the known and familiar.  How it is likely to manifest is only a guess -- of putting it all together in a much greater way than envisioned previously, and even presently.

It is more likely to be the bedridden exercising in bed, and the sedentary exercising in their chairs -- than it is for all 100 year olds to finish a mandatory marathon -- no matter how late into the night they finish, and even how many die along the way.  But the prototypes already exist -- in the most universal postures of yoga from which all subsequent movements derive.  What has been lacking up to now, is the realization that those postures can be effected by a muscle contraction as well as a relaxation -- and it is the alternation of the two, that produces a pumping effect -- just as the heart moves blood throughout the heart -- and as far as there is space to do so beyond it.  

But it can't force the blood to move out of the way -- because that is not how it is designed to work.  For the circulation to be optimized -- particularly to any specific part, the muscles at the furthest extremity activated (articulated), must push the blood back towards the heart -- to create that space for the new to enter.  Lacking that critical understanding, makes that effectiveness impossible -- because the heart can't pump hard enough to push blood through miles of blood vessels.  

There has to be a motive force coming from the other side -- which uses the venal blood system to complete the circuit.  That is the most misunderstood concept in all of exercise -- the thinking that heart rate alone is sufficient in optimizing circulation.  The heart already does its part, unfailingly -- but not so much the muscles of the extremities, which contract and connect back towards the center of the body approximately at the heart.  How ingenious, and clever by design.  One couldn't have planned it any better -- but one did not have to recreate the wheel to benefit from these millions of years of evolution.  One simply has to understand it.

Then the relevant question of how one optimizes the health and circulation to the heads, hands and feet to keep them from failing becomes an easy question to answer -- and doing so activates and ensures the health of all the regions in-between -- simply because it is connected in that obvious fashion.  So the question, "How can I exercise when I can't even get out of bed?" becomes obvious, one doesn't have to get out of bed.  All one has to do is simulate the movement at the extremities beginning with the fulcrum (axis of rotation) at the neck, wrists, and ankles -- to achieve and attain most of the benefits derived from the much more demanding activities of those same articulations.

Any activity can be simulated in that way -- and doing so, enables the much more difficult version of it -- whether that is ballet, running, jumping, pushing, pulling, lifting, rowing, etc.  Those movements can be maintained in whatever condition one is in -- and understanding that, is the best exercise one can do.  Failing to do so, will require much pain, time, and effort -- without anywhere close to the same results.  That is the critical understanding necessary for movement (exercise) to be productive throughout life -- rather than mysteriously failing throughout one's life, and inevitably abandoned at the point in life at which it would be most beneficial -- if they only had that better understanding, rather than the same information that hasn't worked for anyone else.