This is a continuation of a definitive guide to magical health, in case you missed the first part you can read it here. QUEST FOR FITNESS After about 6 months of undoing toxin accumulation and glowing for the first time in ages, I signed up for personal training sessions with a physical fitness instructor. For the first few weeks, I couldn’t manage the simplest of warm-ups without having to constantly take breaks thinking I was going to pass out. I was a weakling. There I sat, with other 50-70 kilo killer bods eyeballing my fragility, quite emphatically might I add. After a month of warming up while fitting in daily strength training sessions, I wasn’t the near fainting scarecrow and I felt excellent. From there on I was motivated enough to not need an instructor and started exhaustive stamina training progressively from biking, to trekking, then jog-walking and finally barefoot running. Sometimes I added in more demanding routines like Parkour. Others could try free skating too. I calculated how many calories I was burning a day, and maxed out on macro-nutrients to consume more than I was burning. Daunting, for a wannabe vegetarian, but a few trips to the mart and I settled for oats and nuts with complex sugar sweeteners (honey and dried fruits), canned beans, kombucha, homemade nut milks with a protein-powder, some veggies and fruit, salads and lots of water a day. I found that my new diet could be cheaper and easier than what I’d been getting before. That’s about 3000 calories a day of carbs, protein and no-fat. Dig it? I was good to go, and didn’t have to cook my meals or go around hunting for places to eat everyday. Soon I was back to strength training with weights, push-ups, crunches, squats, jump-squats, pull-ups kegels & lunges. After a few months of four to five sessions a week, each an hour long, I’d put on a few kilos, in a good way, and at last, I could see a clear path for the first time. I’d only taken a few steps on it. What to eat, when to eat. How to manipulate anabolic and catabolic states. Bulking and cutting. Endless supplements to sort. Sleep habits. After researching supplements for a while, I settled for the basics: high quality whey protein with a dextrose chaser, slow-burning casein protein to drink before bed to absorb while sleeping, a full spectrum multivitamin, DHA and EPA-inclusive flax oil, and creatine (for vegetarians to put on muscle mass quickly by adding water weight). The more I found my way into the strange world of fitness, the more I was exposed to the online bodybuilding subculture. A dedicated cult of transhumanists if I’ve ever seen one, who devote daily physical and mental effort to pushing the limits of the human form, consistently obsessing over how they can overcome the barriers of time, genetics and aging to reach a physical perfection that they may have been told was impossible for them to aspire to every day, until they decided to ignore all that and go for it anyway. HEADING EAST Then I was introduced to the 5 Tibetan Rites – a system of exercises reported to be more than 2,500 years old. It was like the proverbial Diamond Bullet Head-shot. I’d taken yoga classes as a kid and knew the basics of this ancient technology, but nothing could’ve prepared me for what these set of dynamic exercises unlocked. Critically, I learnt how syncing the breath to otherwise static poses, amped up the entire experience to the nth power. Some basics: Yoga could mean many things, but it doesn’t have much to do with the yoga currently fashionable. There are endless types of “yoga,” especially in our modern, commercialized yoga world. But to go to the root; Swami Vivekananda, the first Hindu to bring the philosophy of classical Indian yoga to the West (at the 1893 Parliament of World Religions), defined the principle four types of Yoga as such: – karma yoga, or unity with oneness by work in the world (think Mother Theresa); – jnana yoga, or unity with oneness by knowledge and study (think St. Thomas Aquinas); – kundalini yoga or unity with oneness by isolation (think typical cave-dwelling yogis); – bhakti yoga, or unity with oneness by love and devotion.(think Krishna Das) In a preliminary sense, it is an excellent way to keep the body flexible and healthy, or hatha yoga (Yoga of the body). Yoga also means an auspicious time based on planetary alignments noted at birth which gives a grand rise in prosperity when the alignment repeats, or raja yoga (Yoga of royalty). Other sources indicate raja yoga to be similar to, though not quite the same as, kundalini yoga. Yet yoga, the real type, which for our purposes we’ll keep nameless, is a cleansing of the soul, a method of harnessing the being and training it to rest in its divinity. Patanjali, laid down a scientific framework to follow the essential stages in this process of union with one’s divinity, called the Yoga Sutras. In modern parlance, these are divided into the 8 limbs of yoga. Composed in the 2nd century BCE they together comprise what is perhaps the most elegant and precise system of spiritual development known to man. After a few years practicing, developing variations and adding in a few more from various sources to suit my practice, my understanding of it is continually transforming, like some mythical phoenix’/ouroborus’ journey. There’s something very misleading about these explanations. You see, its not just about stretching. It isn’t about stretching with the breath either. Neither is it about singular mental focus with the stretching and the breath though these are all part of the discipline. Yoga ultimately is a complete science of self transformation. Real yogic practice based on the science leads inexorably towards the experience of yoga, union with the Absolute, the Cosmic One. It is not fun in the sell-out sense, be prepared for it. Remember, these are a series of practices which exist outside of the framework of ideology, i.e. yoga is not a religion or belief system. Rather, it is a system of practice which can be applied within the framework of any belief system (or without one) to accelerate one’s evolutionary progress. This exceedingly amusing trick can be studied in the classical manual of yoga, but authentic practice takes a lifelong commitment to the path, daily discipline, and a qualified teacher (one who has trod the path to its completion which, ironically, a student has no way of knowing in advance). It is quite easy to con the world by learning some lingo and navigation of the practice, but try not to make the terrible mistake of falling into your own elaborate trap. For a better idea of what the process entails, try Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. These ways of living work in the east, where the culture tolerates the idea. In western traditions, more emphasis is placed on meditation, and this is all fine but eventually we’ve got to roll up our sleeves and contribute to the whole. A combination of both pilgrimage and meaningful work, appropriate to our experience, seems an authentic goal at this point. Am I a monster disguised as a fitness Guru yet? No, I’m just a mere beginner, still figuring it all out. To the reader I should be nothing more than a pathologically neurotic narcissist pretending to be better off. Who I am barely matters, but in a few years of practice I’ve deeply changed my personality profile, enjoy listening to new and diverse forms of music, from hard dance to mellow chill, instead of the same ‘favourite’ crap on random repeat, and have rearranged my mental outlook, assisted by art and sacred substances. From seeing life as something that is happening to me to something I’m passionately surmounting through self-discipline, a mindset that has spilled over into and improved every other area of my life, even if I sometimes hit the bed so tired I’m almost unable to move when asleep. In a world of mediocrity, vagueness and open-ended tasks, doing this gives me the satisfaction of a win every time, something that I can say I did right, did for myself and completed. Tripping hard and straight into the dense matter of the physical world is a weird ride, but it’s a great one and well worth the ride. Also see: 7 basic things you’re all doing wrong 10 stubborn exercise myths 12 common workout myths 17 fitness truths
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