Upgrading and Downgrading Your Health:  How Imbalances Can Affect the Performance of your Body to Maintain and Enjoy Optimal Whole-Body Health

Most of the time what I write and share on my blog are my thoughts, comments, and exercise tips and perhaps an occasional guest article post.  But today, I’ve got something special!  I’m blessed to have had many wonderful health practitioners and healers come in and out of my life.  Some are life-long friends, some have helped me on my journey to re-gain whole-body health, and some are only acquaintances that I’ve met briefly during my studies of Pilates and other mind-body alternative health care practices.  The bottom line is that as health care practitioners, we’re all striving to keep our bodies healthy and pay it forward to help others too!  Optimal whole-body health for some is easy to achieve.  Yes, it takes hard work and dedication, but for some it seems to be no big deal to make it happen.  For others, there always seems to be something wrong, out of balance, or “off” just enough that the body hurts.  It’s learning to pay attention and take the steps needed that can help us quickly re-balance and make whatever corrections are necessary that can help us achieve and maintain better whole-body health.

My friend, Eric Goodbar, from Fast Track Pain & Mobility Solutions  (who is an amazing guy if you ever need his help!) shared what I’m about to share with you, in a Facebook post a while back.  It really resonated with me, so I saved it and Eric has been kind enough to let me share it with you!

As a Pilates teacher I’m 100% committed to helping my clients improve whole-body health.  I’ve studied Touch for Health, Kinesiology; Rossiter^® Stretching; BiGu Qi Gong and have spent years getting in touch with my Spiritual, psychic self.  I understand that there is a huge connection to mind, body, and spirit.  But in the fitness world, we focus primarily on the body.  With Pilates, the mind, body connection gets a little more action.  But for the most part, the Spiritual aspect of things doesn’t really get discussed.  It’s a little tricky to toss “Spirit” into conversations because it can quickly become religious which is not the direction it’s meant to go.  Personally, I’m very spiritual, but not too religious – and I struggle, as I’m sure a lot of folks do, with bringing more Spirit into the conversation because “preachy” feels pushy to me.  In a similar way, it’s sometimes challenging to talk about the emotional component that can be a part of pain patterns that might be restricting our ability to truly achieve whole body health.

Eric very eloquently explains the difference between whole body health functioning optimally, or in a downgraded way, and has a pretty cool “Spiritual” connection to add to it.  I’m to the point of babbling aimlessly now, so am just going to cut and paste his entire post in here for you to enjoy.

“People don’t really recognize how everything is connected in so many ways. A little wordy but hang in there….

Some of my clients have gotten a quick blurb from me about how everything in your body works together as 100%, whether in an optimal way or a downgraded way in function. So, if ANY part(s) in your body that is “off” or downgraded (working either too hard or not hard enough) to some degree from it’s normal, or neutral, or center, then the whole body will downgrade in performance accordingly. How much these parts are “off” will determine how much the performance (output) of the whole body is off.

Therefore, if ANY part(s) are brought ANY closer towards functioning more normal, neutral, or center to work better than their current state, the whole body will upgrade in performance accordingly. You will likely never get everything working completely normal, but the closer you get back to normal, or neutral, or center in ANY fashion, the more your whole body will be upgrading to a more optimal state and function better.

So, remember if you ignore a back pain, neck pain, poor movement in a joint, or really any problem, just remember that it’s affecting 100% off you in a downgraded way. Improve the problem ANY and improve everything too.

What I came across this morning that was so cool was that while I was in 1 Corinthians chapter 12 I saw scripture that made me think of what I just wrote out above. Lines 25 and 26 say

“25 so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26 If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.”

That was definitely inspiring to me as a bodyworker, so I wanted to share and maybe will inspire some of you in some way. This truth can really be applied to everything in your life.”

Thanks Eric, I’m super-happy that you opened your heart to share these powerful truths with your friends and clients.  And I’m pleased that you’ve let me share these enlightening words with my tribe too!

Are you working on upgrading your whole-body health, or putting up with compensation patterns that are keeping you functioning at less than optimal? Strive to connect mind, body, and spirit, and take the steps necessary to get your body in balance.  It’s your birthright to enjoy optimal whole-body health!