The motivation
that is achieved with this system is so great that it has prompted me to share
it so that it is examined and verified carefully.
I will try to
answer some of the questions they ask me about what are the mechanisms we must
use to achieve that spark of having the desire to take the first step all those
days that we can take a walk.
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Perhaps
everything is reduced to generating that desire to take that initial step,
since after the system itself will encourage one to continue with the process.
Of course, the
motivation is not a simple action of our spirit, but is related to a number of
other physical, intellectual and mental states of our being, such as:
resolution, decision, impetus, confidence, enthusiasm, euphoria, optimism ,
pessimism, physical energy, mental energy, will, positive thoughts, negative
thoughts, intention, discouragement, tranquility, indifference, anguish,
sadness, joy, depression, animosity. It seems incredible, but yes, all this
participates, to a lesser or greater degree, in our motivation. Therefore, sometimes
it is not easy to take the first step every time we decide to go for a walk to
read or write. But once we do it, we will continue to be enthusiastic about the
process. A very important element to have the spirit is to know that the system
immediately generates us that state of confidence that after initiation we
manage to keep walking, with pleasure of reading or writing; but for this we
must discover for ourselves the degree of effectiveness of the method.
We must keep in
mind that to perform a certain activity in a specific place and time, the
motivation, in each one of us, is different. It could indicate different levels
of enthusiasm, because the motivation varies in ourselves from one moment to
another and according to the activity performed.
There are
several elements that we must put into practice to achieve daily motivation and
break that physical apathy and mental laziness. The most relevant are:
a) the patience
we must have with ourselves and empathy with others;
b) the love we
feel for our body and our mind, that is, to love ourselves;
c) the time we
have;
d) the
attraction we feel for the activities we are obliged to develop;
e) the
inclination we have towards walking, reading, writing and drawing;
f) improving
emotionally;
g) the degree of
enjoyment towards our daily activities;
There
are many reasons for the professional and commercial type by which we
learn to draw and we put it into practice, not only to earn money but
also to seek recognition and fame. Desiring to be an artist and
achieve it is a commendable goal, and the resulting achievements are
quite attractive because personal development in this field is broad
enough and is most of the time highly productive and remunerative.
The traditional purposes associated with this activity, depending on
the level and the specialty acquired (painting, design, advertising,
etc.), can be grouped into the following categories:
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1. Communicate and Inform
2. Announce and make known
3.
Illustrate and Disclose
4.
Teach and Instruct
5.
Convince and Persuade
6.
Express and Reveal
7.
Orient and Guide
8.
Explore and rehearse with symbologies
9.
Entertain and have fun, combining the 8 previous points
Already
before, we mentioned that the three activities that give support to
the system: reading, writing and drawing, generate benefits that are
common to them, but also accentuates each of different degrees and
also generate additional advantages.
However,
the traditional purposes that we have mentioned, about regarding the
WHY
AND FOR WHAT TO DRAW
while we walk, the benefits that we obtain, are the following:
1.-Increase
mental abstraction and relaxation.
2.-We
get to know and understand ourselves better.
3.-Allows
us to abstract ourselves in our unconscious interiority through
fantasy and realistic imagination.
4.-Invigorates
the unconscious.
5.-We
essentially increase introspection, voluntary and conscious knowledge
of ourselves.
6.-Increase
imaginary constructions.
7.-Various
sensory capacities are increased, such as creativity, imagination,
inventiveness, etc.
8.-We
induce the processes of consciousness as retrospective acts
9.-The
symbolic means of the unconscious are promoted; symbolic images of
the unconscious
10.-In
relation to the imagination, develops the ability to relive mental
images and increases the possibilities of combination of images. It
stimulates fantasy imagination and constructive imaginings.
11.-Various
parts of the brain are stimulated, which have been slow or diminished
by not using them.
12.-Revitalizes
some mental mechanisms, conscious and unconscious, that lead to an
improvement of health and various physical systems of the body and
mind.
13.-Increases
psychomotor attention.
And
dozens of satisfactions more.
For
the achievement of these 13 benefits that we obtain, while we walk,
and others, it is recommended to avoid oral images, that is, not to
think with words, but to try to achieve pure visual images, for this
we could resort to some special practices within the subject of
creativity or the zen and yoga type (for example, using the technique
of “A-U-M”
repeating it orally so many times until the verbal thoughts are
completely eliminated), in such a way that we avoid thinking as much
as possible orally.
A
good warm-up practice to invite our unconscious directly to generate
visual images and we can release the hand better by drawing, is to
make quick sketches of what we see and observe, while we are walking;
with a frequency of 3 or 4 of them in a lapse of 10-20 minutes.
The
resulting symbolic visual ideas, after some time (15-30 minutes or
less), can be expressed a) orally, b) through drawings or c) in
writing. You must write what you have visualized (draw the symbols
that have appeared in your mind).
The WALK-RWD
system provides us with a state of meditation that projects us towards two of its
main fields that make it up: relaxation and concentration.
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By applying it we can achieve that the brain waves reach very adequate levels so that the mind is placed in a position of relaxation and relaxation, freed of worries and emotional tensions (Post WALKING, MEDITATION AND CEREBRAL WAVES). Relaxation is a fundamental part of meditation; a state where the mind relaxes and its functions go down from the level of operation, remaining in a semiconscious state, and where the consciousness and the unconscious continue to take care of capturing the external stimuli. As we know, consciousness and the unconscious are not antagonistic, but interdependent functions.
In this state,
some of the functions go down in level such as will, conceptual thinking,
reasoning, logic; but others increase in their degree of operation such as
creativity, imagination, intuition, inspiration, fantasy, all of them
consciously but not necessarily voluntarily. Relaxation is the carelessness of
the greatest number of events and situations, leaving the unconscious to seek
its harmony with the conscience.
Invariably, we
can observe, at 4-5 minutes after starting a walk, that the thoughts of worry,
affliction and anguish that were absorbing us, begin to fade and we are
generally not aware of the moment when they disappear from our mind. We enter,
automatically -without noticing how it is generated- in a process of mental
relaxation, of calm and puts us in a state free of tensions and disturbing
obsessions.
In the same
sense, the concentration is achieved in such a way that each walk is a
“golden vein” for the results obtained in terms of health, knowledge,
creativity and fundamentally feeling good about oneself.
Concentration is
the ideal state to be absorbed in the questions that our mental as well as
spiritual interiority is immersed in order to address and resolve in some way.
Yoga is
representative, in part, of the concentrative application, while Buddhism is
more identified with the type of introspection, although none of these 2
systems, in their characterizations, are absolute of these categories.
It seems that introspection, the examination towards our interiority, is a psychic function that is achieved when we reach an important degree in mental and spiritual relaxation and concentration. In this prosecution, the binomial relaxation-concentration, is when we can get the answers about ourselves. Thus, meditation may tend towards an abstraction of reasoning and thinking, but it is also a concentric attention to an object or subject. Therefore, the WALK-RWD system allows us to direct ourselves towards both stages of meditation, according to our needs, when we read, write or draw, while we walk. Of course, what we intend with the system is not to reach those degrees of abstraction and loss of the senses, but an intermediate level that leads to creation in any of its forms, related to writing and drawing.
If by being too distracted, worried or scattered, you can not concentrate on reading or writing, we can try, at the beginning of the walk, to focus on a specific aspect or object. Of these there is a great variety of situations and forms that can allow us to begin to eliminate those emotions and concerns that distract our attention. Depending on the place we have chosen to carry out our activities, such as a path, a park or a garden, we can accompany our steps with the beating of our heart, in such a way to achieve a synchrony between step and beat, which will cause us a nice abstraction and it will take us away from our worries and afflictions. The same result would throw us counting the number of tiles we are traveling during our walk. With a little imagination -that the walk will generate it by itself- we can select a practice that allows us to abstract and eliminate what prevents us from concentrating on reading or writing. Once we have reached a certain tranquility and relaxation we can again try to open the book or write some lines. Let us put this system into practice and observe how it operates on the paths of relaxation and concentration.
I invite you to read these other writings on the subject:
There are numerous books that inform and instruct us about human habit, a practice that is defined as a repetitive conduct, conscious or unconscious, within the behavior of an individual.
Habits are classified into two great universes, good and bad habits, and within these two universes we find diverse classes that differentiate them from each other: physical, mental, affective, emotional, social, ethical or moral, dogmatic, academic or intellectual, etc., and all of them may belong to two or more categories.
Despite this differentiation between habits, we can point out that all have the same structure in their routine and proceed: they are constituted by a chain of attitudes and needs of the physical, spiritual and mental type, which can be represented in a graphic manner as a conformation of nodes and links.
Each node and link in the chain works in combination with the rest of them. The following graphic is a schematic representation of that dynamic and vigorous structure.
The nodes Ai represent the different attitudes, behaviors and needs that in each performance of a habit, participate for its exercise and release.
What we are particularly interested in dealing with within these 2 universes and in the wide range of the world of habits, is the sector of those in which the human being seeks an evasion of their commitments, obligations and responsibilities, even without existing no authority that imposes them, just by feeling responsible for taking an attitude or performing any action. That is, those where the human being consciously or unconsciously refuses to play certain roles, and does not know, does not understand and does not want to do so, either for the achievement of a satisfaction or rejection of negative behavior. We must also note that within these 2 universes and their types, we find in the behavior of each individual and according to their emotional and mental inclinations, the dominant habit type, which reaches a certain level of oppression and emotional-mental power, which gets become a very dangerous and harmful mania.
Now, with respect to the acquisition of a new habit, the repetition of an action is usually recommended, a certain number of times, and under certain identical conditions, until it becomes inherent to the self. Let’s go to its definition: Habit is the conduct acquired by the frequent repetition of an act or action. It simply suggests what is in its essence of conformation. It is correct, however, in addition to the concrete action must be considered the entire chain of links that lead to its performance and acquisition, becoming aware of the attitudes and activities that are exercised in a controlled environment, and behavioral conduct of the person who I’m putting it into practice.
On the other hand, to eliminate harmful habits, it is recommended to replace the unwanted action with a new one, as well as change the environment where the individual can no longer carry out the habit. Also here we can say that these suggestions are acceptable.
When talking about drugs it is also recommended that the person should not have access to the stimulant, and in extreme cases the punishment is suggested, a situation that is not advisable.
On the acquisition of new good habits, I would like to mention some factors that, through the System of walking, reading, writing and drawing (WALK-RWD System), are articulated.
One of the concrete products obtained through the application of this system is the achievement of the habit of walking. The certainty and infallibility of it, as we have explained in several previous writings (OBJECTIVES OF THE SYSTEM; HARMONY OF THE BODY WITH THE MIND;THE SYSTEM IS MOTIVATIONAL BY ITSELF), is that the activities of reading, writing and drawing, serve, each of them, as triggers of the rest. I have mentioned it many times: reading is the activity that motivates me most personally and this drives me to walk, a little or a lot; this practice has never failed me, because reading is invariably the driving force for me of the other 3 activities. As these 4 activities co-operate with each other, the habit of carrying them out in pairs and sometimes in triads is created, which at the end of everything -after a few weeks or months- we can see that this habit has been incorporated in a way inherent to our being. What is a habit, after all? It is an implanted need repeated -and linked- that our being has to put it into practice, at certain times and under certain circumstances for the achievement of any objective and our being identifies with it in some way, for better or for worse, from that we feel that guide to realize it, likewise during its development and even after having consummated it. This need, thus created, is presented periodically, recurrently and usually under a certain emotional, physical and spiritual state, and under circumstantial conditions, which lead the individual mentally to make it concrete.
All the benefits that are obtained directly in our body, either preventively or corrective, are increased with the advances that are obtained, day by day, in the fields of reading and writing. After a few weeks, you will feel better, both physically and culturally because of the new documents read and the literary creation you have made.
The only thing that you have to decide is to start this method and be tenacious at the beginning, because with the same achievements that you will start to obtain from the initiation, you will have your own motivation to continue for the rest of your life.
There are studies where it is mentioned that during the adolescent years it is when the bad habits are generated in which the human being -man and woman- project him towards his adult age, with a high percentage, to suffer any of the heart diseases, gastric , pulmonary, etc., and that can be avoided, changing those habits, by incorporating this type of disciplines that guide us towards a healthier physical, cultural and mental development.
For people of early age (14 to 18 years old) it is highly recommended because it is when you start to acquire habits that transform us into sedentary beings; we prefer the car instead of walking. In this period is when we must strengthen the heart, circulation and lungs, and what better than by a habit of walking daily and also reading and even initiating us in a creative writing.
I could almost assure that a young person who works with this system, at 14-15 years old, will reach adulthood being an excellent reader with good discipline in all the activities he develops and also with a taste for writing, which will facilitate his development as a professional, and could become, as an adult, a good writer.
The system counteracts sedentary habits, helps in the elimination of excess calories generated by too much food, mitigates psychological problems, but usually can not help anything in the hereditary genes. The hereditary issue can be explained by the process that some people remove fat more slowly than average, so it could be corrected by a reduction in the amount of food in the three meals a day, or by eliminating a meal, for example, dinner. It could also be corrected, increasing the miles of walk.
In a future post (COMBATING SOME ENEMIES WITH THE WALK-RWD SYSTEM: OBESITY) I will make the exhibition of how to lose weight using this System of walking, reading, writing and drawing (WALK-RWD System), procedure that is explained in the corresponding manual of my authorship; however, the pattern of habit formation, which I have previously exposed, as a chain of attitudes and needs of the physical, spiritual and mental, graphic types of events and links, allows us to eliminate any type of harmful habit. To eliminate a habit you have to break with the respective chain in any of its activities; for which it is necessary to look for the weakest and most accessible points in order to break the chain of activities, behaviors and needs.
I have always remembered that when I walked to read a document or book, I immediately began to write notes and draw pictures on its pages. It was a circuit composed by these 4 activities, notes and drawings that illustrated what I was reading and learning.
We must keep in mind that this process of reading-writing-drawings is like a factory-warehouse that we can be permanently filling and emptying.
I have already pointed out that in drawing, as in writing and reading, there is a virtuous circle, which we are now going to explain and which is expressed in my Manual for Walking, Reading, Writing and Drawing.
During reading or writing, images are generated that we must be attentive to capture, comprehension and interpretation.
The process generated during read-write can be appreciated through an analogy (Manual for walking, pp. 51-57), and I recommended it in the case of generating images and capturing them while drawing.
Now, what kind of reading or writing can we develop? You yourself will get to know which are those types and genres that your artistic creation encourages, in all orders.
I have also pointed out that this process is reversible, back and forth. In my practice it has happened to me that writing feeds my paintings and at the time, after months or years, that painting inspires me a poem or some story; in fact, some of my sketches that I have developed during my walks I have used them in some novel, concretely, there are several that I am using in this epoch in the accomplishment of my novel Dialogues in a place of La Mancha.
Nevertheless, what is important is to point out the strength that exists in this virtuous circle of reading-writing-drawing that propels our unconscious to recover part of what has repressed the consciousness and that it exposes as graphic and mental images.
There is a relationship between these three activities, that of reading, writing and drawing, so I will expose some ideas on the subject, hoping that there will be a motivating effect to carry them out.
One can suppose that these activities are flows, and both are constituted by words and images, with the consideration that they have opposite senses; one has as source of origin the mind of the individual, that is to say, it emerges from there, and the other has for destiny this organ, that is to say, it arrives at him.
In no way should they be considered as opposite activities, since they belong to the same circulation, which are developed in the same conduit, within which are transported those fundamental elements that are words and images, as well as the different categories of knowledge, such as ideas, propositions, concepts, etc.
We must place a little emphasis on the conceptualization and functioning of this means of conduction -of two senses-, since knowing it and understanding how it works, allows us to prepare ourselves in a better way to develop these activities.
We can imagine a scheme and consider it as a virtuous circle, that is, that it can produce an effect according to its material, spiritual or artistic essence, and that is flowing through the image of a “pipe” through which the different elements of knowledge are conducted. Through it comes, with a sense, the information to the human mind, in the case that concerns us, by means of reading, and once processed, it must flow, in the opposite sense, out of the mind, through writing or any other means (oral, thought, images, drawings, etc.).
The better we understand the functioning of this virtuous circle, the better we will be able to advance in the joint development of these three activities; which are intimately related, even if we are not aware of it, because the information that reaches our mind, through reading, is processed and remains to be used. What it procures and provides itself is an immense “arsenal” that can be used to process any product, such as writing or drawing. I must clarify that everything we indicate regarding writing can also be considered attributable to drawing, including certain varieties of plastic.
We can idealize this virtuous circle in the following way. The information that accumulates that way in point “A”, by means of reading, is equivalent to a pressure in the conduit, which will have to be released in point “B”, by means of writing; and at the same time, as we dislodge that information in point “B”, it will bring as a consequence a need for greater pressure, which must be generated in point “A”.
That is why many writers say: who reads assiduously becomes a writer.
LoyaLopategui, Carlos, Diálogos en un lugar de La Mancha, EMULISA, México, 2019. Distribuido por Amazon, disponible en edición Kindle: https://www.amazon.es/dp/B0BSB15WS6.