Under the regular stresses of life, what is the highest response for our long-term health and happiness? Some popular self-help practices of ‘positive thinking’ advocate to mentally re-contextualize a psycho-emotional stressor in one’s life and change it from a negative event to a positive one, from a sad one to a happy one. Certainly, shifting our worldview and psychological state from worthless nihilism to the interconnected beauty of life is essential for our long-term happiness!
However, positive thinking doesn’t necessarily take away the physical pain caused by chronically misaligned posture, unless there is a significant conscious change in the person’s habitual physical posture. A sincere spiritual aspirant can sit on their zafu – meditation cushion – for hours and days mentally and emotionally affirming freedom from their suffering, yet if their physical form continues to be always rounding toward the C-Curve, the fullest potential of their health and happiness will never be realized.
In the Bowspring method, we open our awareness fully to the reality of both our short-term and long-term life circumstances, including the spectrum of our physical pains and pleasures, our sadness and happiness, and the ugliness and the beauty that we know directly on our own individual path. With a courageous open-heart, not denying the negative, we meet the outer pressures of life by expanding the center of our ribcage as fully as possible. We muster the freedom-seeking power of a butterfly breaking out of its chrysalis, or a baby bird cracking out of its shell. Against the compressive stresses of life, we expand our hearts toward freedom.
Meeting the most terrible life pressures with emotional balance and inner harmony fosters the highest personal growth and most virtuous character development. On a physical level, we choose to meet our daily stresses with the healthiest alignment we can create. For the alignment of the ribcage—the center area of the body—we expand out against the stress in all directions with a radiant heart.
