MICROHABITS MATTER

 LEARNING NEW THINGS

MICROHABITS MATTER

One of my life long friends who lives in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada for six months and Spain or France the other six months, has befriended a physiotherapist in Spain. She writes intellectual pieces for the users and students of physiotherapy. One such article caught my attention as it further advances my appreciation of QiGong and TaiChi exercising for the health of my body and mind.

Those of you who know me well, know while I was a student at the University of Ottawa, I was required to take a philosophy class. I loathed the thought but after the first class I was riding high and keen to get totally into it! The focus was “logical reasoning” and it introduced me to various philosophers such as Aristotle.

One quote that he adopted, and that the physiotherapist covets, is something like “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”

Through my taking QiGong and TaiChi classes, I have felt the mental and physical benefits of simple repetitive movements. All of them keep the blood circulating and wake up our marrow, joints, muscles, organs and mind. They calm our central nervous system and stimulate our brains.

Our insides do need attention, love attention and thrive on attention. Every careful learned move (microhabit) matters. Every careful learned move makes a difference. Every careful learned move brings happiness to the inner mechanics that keep us alive and healthy. I call it silent inner body education. In fact when people ask me to explain QiGong and TaiChi, the best simple answer is just that: “silent, slow and easy, repetitive inner body education” — its focus is on our inside physiological and mental health. 

The microhabits within both of these Ancient Chinese exercises have raised an awareness and presence within me that I had never considered— my insides are much more important than my outside! Consistent repetition of physically easy exercises is key to our short term and long term physiological, neurological and full body health. The experience gives me inner peace, and that peace is both healing and empowering.

I say go slow and simple for a moment, a few moments, once a day and several times a day — every learned and repeated effort (microhabit) helps, every learned and repeated effort matters. Make it a habit!

Story about Sugar Cane in Colombia

 

                                        

𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐍𝐄𝐖 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒

There are pluses in sugar cane.

While I was away at my home away from this home, standing in a long slow moving line up at the Juan Valdez Café, I looked over at the counter and saw something orange, orange packets of something. I reached over to hold one in my hand. The words on it were foreign; the contents felt powdery. I carried it home with me to investigate later.

Turns out the contents are the best part of sugar cane grown in Colombia. Sugarcane juice is processed into a type of organic raw sugar. It’s called panela. This unrefined sugar is traditionally produced and consumed in Latin America. It is flavourful, aromatic and organic, and contains naturally-occurring vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants that you won’t find in sugars that go through an industrial refining process: potassium, calcium, magnesium, manganese, vitamins A, B, C, D, and E.

Panela is still produced using old school traditional technology by small scale farmers in Colombia and other regions of Latin America. I say kudos to the Juan Valdez coffee shop chain for supporting the specialized environmentally sound sugar cane industry of Latin America, and for providing customers with a sweetener that has so much more to offer than the overly processed white stuff!

Today I mixed the contents of my one packet of Colombian panela with Sri Lankan cinnamon;  it’s become the topping on my carrot blueberry loaf for the neighbourhood work party coffee break this weekend. It will no doubt give me a chance to share the good news with others, and energize the crew to get the new fence completed before the sun sets.