CIRCADIAN RHYTHMS. The human being consists of “biological clocks” that regulate the functions of the organism in an optimal way. This optimization is done 24 hours a day, without these “watches” resting at all. Each “biological clock” of our being, sends a “cronos signal” (signal of time) that arrives at all the organs and systems, and to all the cells of the body. That is to say, they carry out a perfect synchronization of all the organs and their respective functions, during every 24 hours; at the end of that period, they reinitiate their synchronous functional operation again, using the 5 external senses, and managing to optimize the functioning of the organism (physical and mental), and that of the operation of all the organs and biological systems of the being.
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The positive
changes, both organic (the functional, in the production of glandular
substances, etc.), mental (ideas, images, thoughts, etc.) and emotional, that
we experience while walking, respond to circadian
rhythms defined throughout the 24 hours of a full day, according to the
schedule in which the walk is made. These circadian rhythms facilitate and
regulate the performance of biological activities at a precise and specific
time during the day and night.
It should be
noted that in this daily and incessant operation, the intensity of the
participation of each of the 5 external senses, varies according to the
“biological clock” that is operating during the day and night
periods, and the activities performed by the individual.
As it is to be
supposed, the walks do not have the same effect on our organism, if we carry
them out during the day or at night, in the morning (early morning), at noon or
in the afternoon.
Walking to the sides (right or left) or doing it backwards, would not be correlated biologically with the circadian rhythm that we execute when we walk normally forward, because we have always done it that way. Circadian rhythms are probably a reptilian part of the human brain.
Without
exaggerating this, I could say that just as it is common sense to consider that
it is not the same to start walking daily at 20 years of age than at 60, so we
can also say that there is a difference in doing so at different times of the
day, and it is defined by the circadian rhythms, which are our endogenous
biological clocks.
Personally, in
this present time, I put into practice the WALK-RWD system, three times a day,
in the morning (8-9 am), at noon (1-2 pm) and in the afternoon (5:30-6:30 pm).
However, each person, depending on their time availability, should select their
program, and experience the daily periods of walking (1, 2, 3, etc.), observing
how they feel better and which one gives the best results, in the intelligence,
that the effects on circadian rhythms are different when we read, write or draw
while we walk.
Let’s match our
biological clocks with our daily walk.
The pleasant or
positive stage we can distinguish in our behavior seeking simply to develop
certain activities in solitude, unrelated to any person, and in extreme cases
outside the urban-city contact, which could refer to being alone in a remote
place (with partial isolation), in the middle of nature. In this stage, the
human being tries to use his free time to rest from social contact, social
conditioning, social ties, and tries to take refuge many times in leisure, with
no commitment, with anyone and sometimes, or with him same.
In this stage,
we can enjoy solitude in several ways, in dialogue with oneself or else, simply
in the absence of dialogue, without any thought, where our mind is inactive.
Hardly the lazy human mind. There are occasions that one does not tolerate
talking to anyone, nor to oneself, in which we are not able to address a single
word, we do not want to talk to each other, and therefore we do not want to
listen to each other. When we are in this circle of not wanting to say or
wanting to listen, the walk in solitude, without people next to it, without
books, without blocks of notes or drawing, is truly significant, revealing and
decisive. Thus loneliness could become 1) Enjoy leisure, 2) Enjoy free time,
doing something or doing nothing, 3) Simply waste time. But all these
possibilities without company, in the dominant solitude.
The second stage of loneliness, I would like to raise it from the point of view of freedom, and not as a state of psychological disturbance or disorder, even if it contains it. It is a state where the human being feels physically and mentally immersed in an absorbing, overwhelming environment, which does not let him breathe, and of course, the person feels loneliness, makes her feel bad when having social contact, and this propels her to get away from people. It is a state of mind that forces him to stay away from everything and everyone. Many times the withdrawal takes him to an antisocial position, which takes him away from society and in some cases he encounters misanthropy.
I have used a dozen authors who have written works that explain precisely this binomial of “freedom-solitude”, with the aim of clarifying what is happening to the human being in modern times.
Besides the indeterminism, in the conception of J. P. Sartre, he thinks that the man, in the exercise of his freedom, drowns in a SOLITUDE and this allows him to rest in a total nihilism.
For existentialism, freedom implies nihilism, anguish, emptiness and a SOLITUDE of being, which defines and confirms a face contrary to the positive. The negative categorization corresponds to the “free-existence” of the human being.
For Dostoyevsky, freedom -as well as for existentialists- is being itself, within a void -nothing- uncertain, within an undefined and absolute contingency LONELINESS.
It is in the big cities, says Georg Simmel, where it is found that the freedom of prejudice enjoyed by the urbanite becomes a refuge in SOLITUDE and freedom is no longer linked to the vital feeling of happiness, as a synonym of well-being. That is, not always the greatest freedom will guarantee a higher level or degree of well-being, as LONELINESS awaits.
Erich Fromm comments that the enormous amount of factors -both internal and external to the individual- leads us to imagine that they potentiate and enrich the scenario in which freedom participates in the generation of various categories of crisis, observing that all of them have been mechanisms political, social and psychological that the human being has used to evade his own being of responsibility in freedom, what has prostrated him as an adaptable being, lacking in meaning and importance, accommodated in an existential solitude and isolation. Fromm tries to find the meaning of freedom for the modern being. Implicitly, throughout his psychological and sociological research, he asks himself and seeks the answer to: when and why was the search for the freedom of the human being abandoned? A search that is circumscribed, in part, to the fact that the being in SOLITUDE can not bear it and tries to escape from the responsibility that represents that freedom and that individuality reached. And although it does not conclude with a definitive proposition -as the author himself comments- we can envision it as a proposal, because it implicitly implies that we should look for another form of freedom that allows him -to be human- again not to be alone, with new relationships leading him to be together with their peers, with interdependent and psychologically sound relationships in a new reality; This new reality is characterized by a less oppressive social and productive system that guides it to develop in an integral way, accepting the consequences of its decisions and actions for having ceased to fear -and to have rejected- the consequences of the use of that freedom.
Zygmunt Bauman expresses that all kinds of freedom have both their costs and benefits. The desire for freedom of each individual being is a function of the social oppression it receives. The social relationship forces the individual, limiting their behavior and producing a loss of freedom, for which seeks privacy with the inherent costs of it, such as the loss in the sharing of desires and objectives, fears, security, protection, tastes, happiness, and others. The fear and rejection of oppression is balanced by the fear of SOLITUDE -isolation- that results from the achievement of obtaining privacy.
A permanent balance is achieved between the desire for freedom, for being in solitude, and the desire for social relationships; the degree of achievement of one, is balanced in a balanced way with the result or degree reached by the other, which could be understood as greater isolation -or loneliness- greater freedom, and vice versa. The degrees of one and the other change in different societies, as well as in different periods.
Krishnamurti recommends, repeatedly, that the individual must take an attitude -for himself- decidedly responsible, in order to free himself from the external constraints, themes that are innumerable and among which stand out: the absorbing and oppressive society, the ignorance of oneself same, beliefs, fear, desires, isolation and loneliness, thought and knowledge, self-deception, self-centeredness, power, patriotism and nationalism, competition and suffering, war, boredom and interest, hatred, criticism and self-criticism, religions and belief in God, memory, sexuality, lying, death; but above all, look for inner strength to free yourself from your conscious self, an entity that is conditioned from the first day of birth. That inner power refers to the understanding of “myself”.
Benjamin Gibbs gives special emphasis to the ideas of J.S. Mill, which encompasses the “romantic liberalism” that “is the doctrine that the restrictions and repressions imposed by society prevent the individual to develop and exercise their dispositions and skills innate professes that man has been solitary and independent by nature, only that he has been handcuffed and enslaved through the ruse of laws, customs and economic systems “His opinions are focused on the study he did in the essay of this author” On liberty “, written in 1859. The analysis of Mill’s thought leads him to examine other concepts related to freedom, as well as necessity and responsibility, such as SOLITUDE, tolerance, utility, autonomy and therefore heteronomy, moral skepticism, Comteano positivism, ethical values, etc.
Paul Eluard in one of
his verses of his poem “Freedom”, addressing freedom, expresses:
In the absence without desire
in nude LONELINESS
on the stairs of death
I write your name.
Llano Cifuentes, with respect to freedom and individuality, affirms that life as well as massifying man also frustrates him by the profound SOLITUDE that characterizes him within the mass. Michel Foucault expresses us: Penitentiary architecture is developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, throughout Europe, as part of the state system to punish, and with the firm purpose of manifesting the strength of the sovereign. There were three forms of detention: the prison, as a simple confinement; la gêne, restricting food and light, and increasing the LONELINESS index; and the dungeon, where these measures increased extraordinarily. The author describes the functional system and the basic principles of several of the prisons that were built in Europe, models such as the one of Rasphuis and the Spinhuis of Amsterdam, the correctional one of Ghent and the one of Philadelphia. It exposes the different principles that founded these prison institutions: compulsory work, the duration of sentences, idleness as a fundamental cause of crime, etc., which aroused a concern to promote a certain pedagogy of work in prison systems. In any of the models, it was -with certain variants- to correct and modify the form of behavior they had, a correction that always involved producing subject subjects “reconstitute the legal subject of the social pact, or form a subject of obedience …”
Anthony de Mello proposes us to put aside fears and fantasies in order to live the reality that is presented to us and to be able to develop ourselves integrally as free and complete people. De Mello agrees with the opinion of other psychologists and sociologists that man is afraid of freedom, as well as of LONELINESS and happiness, and prefers to become a slave of ideologies and mental schemes rather than take the “risk of flying” “On their own, that is, with personal ideas and without ties. And even points out: “we bind ourselves voluntarily, filling us with heavy chains and then we complain about not being free […] We have become accustomed to the prison of the old and we prefer to sleep so as not to discover the freedom that is the new. […] Who has to free you if you are not aware of your chains? “
De Mello believes that being awake is the requirement to be able to achieve freedom, but also to be able to exercise it and transmit it, asserting that the only experience that is truly worthwhile in life is to achieve awakening. Likewise, it identifies, congruent with Buddhist ideas, that the source of suffering is in the desires, which within the Eastern tradition are called attachments. That is, sterile desires that end up obfuscating the conscience and producing obsessions that lead to nothing positive, but to keep us asleep. By definition, when an unimportant desire becomes compulsive and all forces are directed to achieve it, because it is believed that doing it will achieve happiness, it is in reality an attachment, which is not wanted or can not be done to the side , because it is believed that without it you will never be able to conquer happiness. But, as the author reminds us, that happiness is a function of inner freedom (in SOLITUDE and society) and truth, in reality, living with those attachments, leads us to suffering, because “insecure people do not want Real happiness, because he fears the risk of freedom and, therefore, prefers the drug of desires “, which keeps them asleep.
Carlos Loya in his poem Liberéstula, in one of his strophe, addressing Freedom, expresses:
Defeated by time
emancipated by the same pain
accompanied by the shaft,
you are the objectified expression
with narrowed eyes
-looking without seeing-
&
Nymph in elevation
you are the Greek ode
the smiling proclamation
you inebriate in SOLITUDE;
the architrave gives you continuity
epistyl of sustenance that extracts
those versifications of the sunset,
even with your diluted silhouette
there is no confusion in you.
We will continue
in a few days with Part II, as we walk firmly grasping the solitude of the
hand, to feel another perspective of the world and of life.
In this post we will deal with pointing out and briefly describing the most important physical roads that have been traveled to a greater extent by the human being, from the most remote times.
We must clearly
differentiate between what are the paths that have been built in history and
what the individuals, men and women, comment on walking and what their
particular objectives have been.
Traducido al Español
Well we can
divide the roads in those of Antiquity that goes back to us several thousands
of years in time and those that have a less remote past, around 1000 years
before our era. Both can be subdivided according to the type of use to which
they were destined: commercial (goods, animals and slaves), religious
(pilgrimage, crusades, processions, penances, celebrations, ceremony), military
(conquest and invasion), migrations, transit and circulation of persons,
funerary and mortuary (death, funeral, mourning), etc.
There are
several important regions and countries in the world that merit mention for
their distinction in the construction of roads that were made in antiquity
about their territory, which were distinguished by their extraordinary features
in their lattices and configurations, by their design, stroke, amplitude,
architecture and construction. China and India are the most outstanding nations
in this line, in the most remote periods. In the most recent epoch, of 1000
years b. C., we can point to the ancient nation of the Mayans, the Inca roads
with the Chaskis, and those built by the Roman Empire on the many lands
conquered.
The great roads
were initiated by the need to exchange merchandises and goods between nations.
Originally they were performed on foot (pedestrians, walkers), however, they
were incorporating to those crossings the animals of load, and later, with the
invention of the wheel (3000 years b. C. in Mesopotamia) a greater exchange was
achieved by using carts thrown away for animals. The world civilization
advanced as the need to transport and market large volumes of merchandise among
the peoples increased, so that road communication had the imperative destiny to
develop mostly.
There are records that from the sixth century b. C., in the territory of Persia, they began to connect certain cardinal roads with others, arriving to have important networks that communicated commercial zones separated by 1500 to 2000 miles of distance. With the invention of the wheel, in the 3rd millennium b. C., there was a considerable increase in the connection of these roads and the construction of new ones in the region of Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Indus Valley (Pakistan, Afghanistan and part of India).
The most
important route, probably, was the one that was built for the commercialization
of silk, in China, in the 11th century b. C. Likewise, in this same nation, in
the third century b. C., the most important road system was developed, allowing
a network of communications throughout the country.
Already in a
closer time (2nd century b. C. to 3rd century AD), the Romans built a network
of road communications, the famous Roman Roads, which united all the provinces
and peoples conquered with their city-state Rome, which allowed them to have
the administrative and governing control of all of them. The total development
of Roman roads was 55 thousand miles, equivalent to 80 thousand kilometers,
joining together all of Europe along with North Africa.
In America, during the second millennium of our era (Empuaries Huari and Puquina), one of the most important road networks was built, the Inca Roads, which communicated large areas of land in the south of the continent, from Peru to Chile and Argentina, including intermediate countries such as Ecuador and Bolivia, which had an extension of 7500 miles of development. It is important to note that the rugged geography that it had in some parts of its route (rivers, ravines, canyons), forced to build hanging bridges.
In the same American
continent, in its central part, the ancient Mayans built a network of roads
(1st millennium AD), called “White Roads” (in Maya Sacbé or
Cuxan-Sum). Unlike the Roman Roads, the Mayan Roads were not defined to address
a hegemonic center, because there was not, but obeyed the strict communication
needs for the flow of people and goods, among all the villages and housing
centers of this nation.
Let us praise
those ancient roads by daily practicing our walks along the paths near the
neighborhood.
As we have
already pointed out in some of the previous posts, the walk along with reading,
writing and drawing work in a similar way to the different methods and
practices of meditation.
Traducido al Español
Meditation is
the technique that uses the generality of mystical sciences and seeks, through
its practice, to modify the conscious stage in the person. There are a great
variety of methods by means of which one arrives at meditation, all of them are
philosophical disciplines that are related to mysticism. Our system allows us
to achieve results similar to those obtained through Tai Chi, Yoga, Shaolin
Kung Fu, Buddhism and others.
All this great
variety of types of meditation, however, we can group -for our purposes- in two
categories, the introspective and the concentration, since our system, like
some others, covers these two fields of meditation. Yoga is representative of
the concentration meditation, while Buddhism is more identified with the
introspective type.
Any type of
meditation allows us to reach a greater perception, both external and internal,
as well as in our particular case, we can increase understanding and
acquisition in reading and in literary and artistic creativity.
Although it
could be thought that meditation involves only abstraction from reasoning and
thought, that is a mistake, since the objective of meditation is also to get a
focal attention on some object, aspect or theme, free of emotions and worries.
Walking -jointly reading, or writing, or drawing- is a meditation activity
that, in our system, does include the function of thought, which causes a high
degree of sensitivity of the physical and cultural environment in the subject
that executes it surrounds, and a greater creative index regarding the parallel
activities that develops during his walk. The application of the WALK-RWD
system generates an increase and amplitude in the perception of the individual,
who before starting the walk did not have it; state of inner penetration that
is generated by releasing awareness of the ties that obscure those mental
processes that are related to inspiration, imagination and creativity.
There will be opinions that consider that as long as we have this intermediate level of consciousness, at the same time that we walk, read, write or draw, a deep level of relaxation and diminution of the senses is not reached. There are different levels of rapture when using meditation; the maximum leads to what mystical philosophies call Nirvana, Illumination, etc. Specifically, what we intend is not to reach these degrees of abstraction and loss of consciousness and the senses, but an intermediate level that leads us to creation in any of its forms, related to writing and drawing; achieve what we have described as ecstasy during the walk (See writing: THE ECSTASY IS ACHIEVED DURING THE WALK)
It is true that
the maximum degree that is reached through meditation can be the total
disappearance of thoughts of the rationalist type (they call it transcendental
meditation), however, our purpose is not such; it is convenient to reach the
level where we stop having concerns and ideas that distract our attention
regarding the interest of reading or writing. There is no discipline or
philosophical current that does not consider this last phase of enlightenment
as the most important, although there are other intermediate such as achieving
good health, both physical and mental, tranquility, happiness, abstracting from
material things, relaxation, etc. Specifically, with our WALK-RWD system we
seek, on the one hand, to achieve physical and mental health through exercise
and relaxation; On the other hand, by reading obtain greater knowledge; and
finally, in writing and drawing, artistic creation, what we have called dynamic or active meditation.
When do we know
or we realize that we are absorbed or ecstatic in our walk? That moment is when
we stop measuring our efforts, wishes and requests with ourselves in the
development of the walk: the number of kilometers or miles traveled, the number
of hours or minutes, the number of pages read, the number of pages written,
etc. In that moment of unconcern, we began to avoid letting ourselves be
carried away by time, by distance and by numbers.
I have pointed
out on another occasion: Both space, time and number are continuous and
infinite magnitudes, and they are pure intuitions. Space and time provide the
logical foundations for number, for mathematics, and only under the regulation
of these three intuitions can the representation of the remaining things be
realized, that is, by means of which phenomena can only be produced. in the
human conscience. These 3 magnitudes permanently place us tied to the reasoning
and do not allow us to meditate calmly and imperturbably in the objects,
without the participation of them. Ernst Cassirer has enough solidity and
meaning in his ideas when he assures that access is made to existence -of any
condition- by space, time and number. Each factor or entity that constructs
itself independently achieves a hypostasis that structurally considers the
principles and norms of an entire functional system in which it is immersed.
Let us try to
give ourselves an opportunity to withdraw, for a short time, from these 3
magnitudes and experience what happens inside us, in the body and in the mind.
Surely we will
experience ecstasy, meditating on what is also truly important to us, and not
paying attention to it in the daily life of our existence.
Thus, the fundamental objective of all meditation is to help the individual to develop, deepen and amplify his mental capacity; this process of greater knowledge of reality, and that we have described as an unconsciousness of the mind. This transformation of mental capacity giving greater participation to the unconscious I have described in my book Synchronicity. Predictable phenomenon, EMULISA, 2007 (*).
The ecstasy that
is achieved, apart from moving away from the number, of losing consciousness
with respect to the passage of time and the loss of understanding of distances
and space, generates a kind of insensitivity to our body, because we get to not
feel the contact of our feet with the ground, our 5 senses are obscured,
because they cross a misty threshold (brumal axis) that seems to stop working,
we do not perceive any fatigue, in such a way that it simulates (resembled)
that the wind suspends us with he or we are mounted on clouds.
The truth is
that the WALK-RWD system introduces us into a semi-unconscious state, and when
we wake up from that condition, we realize that we have walked several miles,
read several pages of a book or that we have written several pages or a poem.
Let us prepare ourselves to enter that world, achieving dynamic meditation.
(*) LoyaLopategui, Carlos, La Sincronicidad. Un fenómeno predecible, EMULISA, México, 2007. Disponible en Amazon, Edición Kindle: https://www.amazon.es/dp/B0CXZDPSSY.
Walking under a
routine (be it habit, custom or rule), more or less strict, allows us to teach
our body and mind that they will permanently receive certain
“exercises” almost equal in periods of time, quality, duration and
effort .
Traducido al Español
Those 2
fundamental parts of our being learn that in the time “T” (minutes)
should react, according to the functions of each of its parts, in a certain way
and during a lapse “L” of time (1-2 hours, or fractions of an hour)
that these “exercises” last; these are composed of instructions,
executions, behaviors, practices, marches, movements, walks, breaks and rest (training,
procedures, field trips, work).
The level and
speed in the physical-neuronal fixation are achieved according to the person
who performs the conditioning and the type of body and mental information that
is impregnated to the organism, in a period of time “G” (weeks); In
general, in our case we apply the WALK-RWD system in a period of 6-10 weeks.
After this time “G”, having performed the exercises in an
uninterrupted manner, we can say that our organism has fixed them in their
physical-neuronal interiority, and will be invited to repeat them, within the
parameters learned T, L and G, in such a way that in the usual schedule -in
which the walk will begin- just thinking that we have already made the decision
to go for a walk, some organs, systems and glands of the body, begin to work
before giving the first step of beginning of our walk.
None of the 3
parameters T, L and G, should be considered as immovable in their magnitudes;
that is, we can make them vary appreciably, in such a way that they do not
become a traumatic or obsessive commitment.
So, that
learning achieved by our body begins to bear fruit even before you start to
exercise walking. Perhaps a small percentage of the organs that send messages
to prepare themselves in their respective functions, as well as those
functions, are only carried out at a small level of operation.
On our part,
with conscious will, we have to comply with the complete routine, in such a way
that the functions of all the organs must be carried out 100% in a satisfactory
way.
The only thing
that is recommended, when aware of this phenomenal existential process,
functional learning by our body, with our own experience, is not to betray that
effort you have made to learn physically and mentally, that you are being
treated as it deserves . I think it is necessary to say that once a week, that
the exercises are omitted, or 2-3 times a month, we will not incur a
disappointment with our being.
Regarding the
variations that we can make in terms of where, how and when, we can comment
that they are normally varied in some of their characteristics by the change of
the season, by the climate, by the place of exercise, the spaces chosen, the
same degree of exercise that we perform from one week to the other, the stretch
of the walk, and the schedule, however, we must be aware that the parameters of
the exercise do not vary much.
To achieve the
habit (virtuous circle) there must be some commitment and precision in the
realization of these parameters, that is, there should not be much variation in
periods or intervals of duration, in quality, effort and in the frequency of
realization of the exercises. Let us be aware that we are giving ourselves an
opportunity to teach our being and learn from him.
The “memory
of our organism” should not be lied to, for its response is always painful
for itself.
So, if there is
no doubt that our body has a great memory, let us put it to the test but
without stopping walking every day, and we will observe, in the respective
times that it is instructed, it will be adjusted and able to respond, that its
manifestations are gifts of our own being, body and mind.
If we examine what we have described in writings “HARMONY OF THE BODY WITH THE MIND” and “WALKING, MEDITATION AND CEREBRAL WAVES“, about the harmony in the physical, mental and mechanical functions, it will illustrate us about all this; and even more, if we review what we have presented in writings “OBJECTIVES OF THE SYSTEM” and “INCREASE OF MENTAL CAPABILITIES“, about the generation (procreation, incubation) of ideas and creativity that are forged (produced) by applying this WALK-RWD system, we will realize all those intellectual and creative functions that are favored by walking. The question would be; could it be that we can also induce, through this conditioning, to provoke, even without walking, an artistic imagination, inspiration and creation?
