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The Tao of Blue Collar Zen
“Be Strong to Serve”
The above quote is a take off from George Hebert’s “Be Strong to Be Useful,“ and Gandhi’s, “man acts as a guardian of his body. It becomes his duty to take such care of his body as to enable it to practice the idea of serving to the best of its ability,“ which epitomizes the philosophy of Blue Collar Zen. We live in a time of body-mind-spirit struggling. ”Madison Avenue” chants a never ending mantra equating to external pleasure gratification and material possessions being the keys to happiness and a satisfying identity. We all know better, so I must beg to differ. A cultivated state of body, mind, heart & soul wellness is where true joy and happiness are rooted. Having your life efforts realize their potential, thus allowing for your optimal contribution to life, satisfies one to the soul. To accomplish this, a fortification process from the ground up must be implemented. A strong body, full of vitality and able to perform creates improved mental clarity and endurance, emotional patience and empathy, and prepares us for the natural process and objective so as to continually evolve spiritually throughout our life. This is the purpose of the Blue Collar Zen lifestyle and philosophy.
The Blue Collar Zen lifestyle is a means of managing and making adjustments as needed to the elemental pillars of our physical existence:
Air - Controlled full breathing through sitting or moving meditation exercises stimulates the body from the internal organs out acting like a tonic and metabolic accelerator.
Food - Your performance quality and quantity are predicated by your what you eat!
Water - Activity/weather adjusted hydration with clean water for maximum energy, detoxifying and recovery is irreplaceable.
Physical Activity - We’re animals designed to move and move we must to maintain our physical performance ability.
Energy management - This is the X factor of performance and wellness. Energy renewal is not automatic. Each of our lives is unique and must be managed accordingly to ensure maximum energy regeneration.
Stress management - Physical, mental, emotional, and environmental stress must be recognized and managed; stress kills!
Blue Collar Zen is a means of guidance, motivation, support and accountability to make the changes needed to optimize your lifestyle for health, performance and enlightenment.
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You Are What You Eat
It is irrefutable that 99.9% of men and women in the world eat merely to please the palate. - Gandhi
There is nothing wrong with wanting to look good. It is human nature to want to look our best and if passing by the mirror after getting out of the shower does not elicit a, “That’s what I’m talking about ” response to your reflection, the culprit is, for the most part, your diet, it is not the mirror. What you see is what you have earned. You are what you eat. That is the absolute bottom line. To look and feel your best your must have diet habits that fit your needs. The undeniable fact is that what you eat and drink is a pillar of your health and performance ability. Before you can expect results from your physical activity, you need to ensure you are fueled for the performance. In referring to performance, I am talking about not only game day performance but your every-day performance.
The key to maintaining a base of balanced wellness is a healthy diet and adequate physical activity. Your diet gives you the fuel and your activity maintains or enhances your physical vehicle. They are inseparable. Activity without the fuel breaks down the components and/or limits your efforts. Although the main activity in my services regards varying methods and degrees of physical activity, I always emphatically emphasize diet as an irreplaceable, foundational component in any program whether it be health, fitness or competitive in its objective. A healthy, sufficient diet combined with daily low intensity exercise is more beneficial to wellness than moderate to high-intensity exercise supported with poor nutritional habits. Bottom line is, what you eat is more important than what you do physically. Ignoring a sound nutritional base is the equivalent of building a custom, million dollar home on an unstable, imbalanced foundation.
We are what we eat. As a society we are fat, lacking energy, suffer from sexually dysfunction, depression, and a plethora of degenerative diseases, yet for the most part, are accepting of it. People will take a pill before taking the first step in attempting a holistic approach to self healing, by refining their diet. I do not get it. How is it not possible for our education system to provide an applicable understanding of this? How irresponsible is it for a college course in nutrition to pass a student without equipping them with the knowledge and ability to create a personal diet plan that provides specific nutrition for optimal performance? Think about it.
As a believer in the benefits of the human potential, I promote healthy living to create a foundation of quality of life. Everything we do starts with that foundation. A healthy body leads to a healthy mind which is what’s needed as a base to realizing potential and self. Blue Collar Zen promotes physical culture as a method of creating a base for service productivity and enlightenment
Physical Culture is a philosophy, regimen, or lifestyle seeking optimal physical development through a healthy diet, mental discipline and varied means of physical activity such as martial arts, yoga, dance, weight training, aerobic activity, and athletic competition. Benefits include improvements in health, mental clarity and capacity, appearance, strength, endurance, flexibility, speed, and general fitness as well as greater proficiency in sport-related activities.
As you can see from the above definition, the exact combination of activities you may choose for your own state of physical culture is vast. You have choices to fit your specific needs, personality, climate, facility or equipment availability at your disposal. Just like the wild animal, the human animal needs movement and to expend physical energy to maintain physiological and mental balance. Without that needed movement animals become lethargic, atrophied, stressed, neurotic and fat. Although there are countless recreational activities, sports and fitness approaches that will satisfy our activity needs, your diet has personalized, specific volume and composition requirements.
The problem with the plethora of information and advice on physical activity and diet choices is that they much of the time contradict each other, and are simply attempting to negate the ill effects of unhealthy, degenerating life style habits instead of promoting good health.
I can guarantee if you get your food intake right every aspect of your health will improve. You will have more energy, better workouts day and night, better recovery and improved mental clarity. It astounds me that this is not understood and applied. Getting it close is not good enough. Your oxygenation, hydration and nutrition are the foundation of your health and performance ability.
Healthy Diet Guidelines
- 5-6 small to moderate complete meals per day
- Eat plenty of high-fiber foods such as fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole grains, to get 30-50 grams of fiber daily.
- Consume raw food: green, orange, and yellow fruits and vegetables, nuts, seeds. Eating a salad with raw vegetables and a little bit of raw seeds or nuts with lunch and dinner is a good recommendation. Baby carrots and edamames are good snack and boxed lunch ideas.
- Cut the sugar; eat mainly complex carbs: Limit your intake of sugary foods, refined-grain products such as white bread, and salty snack foods.
- Avoid all saturated and trans fats.” Saturated and trans fat calories hurdle their way past metabolic adjustments and sit themselves in the fatty tissue of the body.
- Consume lean protein products with each meal.
Gandhi on Health & Fitness
I watched “Gandhi” the other night, again, and was inspired to write a post in tribute to the beautiful, little man, with a mind devoted to peace, love and humanity and possessing the heart of a warrior.
“….man acts as a guardian of his body. It becomes his duty to take such care of his body as to enable it to practice the idea of serving to the best of its ability.”
All the great prophets and spiritual leaders are very clear in their belief that creating an optimal state of health and fitness is a primary responsibility for each of us so as to create the energy needed to live a life of harmony, continual growth and contribution. Gandhi was no different. He had plenty to say on diet, hydration and exercise. In his own life he provided a very real example of the effects on health with his own fasts. In his historic Calcutta fast Gandhi used a, fast to the death, threat as a means of stopping the Hindu-Muslim violence uprising. http://www.globalwebpost.com/farooqm/study_res/gandhi/gandhi_fast.html
Gandhi knew very well the fact that quality, balanced food intake was irreplaceable fuel for the physical action of life. He stated it irrefutable that 99.9% of men and women in the world eat merely to please the palate. Gandhi is often associated with strict vegetarianism. For 6 years he was exactly that. Not taking into account the accumulative effects that diet could have, his health forced him to make a change in 1917, and recognize the need for adequate protein in his diet. He said, “In year 1917, as a result of my ignorance, I was laid down with severe dysentery. I was reduced to a skeleton, but I stubbornly refused to take any medicine and with equal stubbornness refused to take milk or buttermilk. But I could not build up my body and pick up sufficient strength to leave the bed. Gandhi believed that he who is able to control the palate, will easily be able to control the other senses, and that there should be an odium attached to those who slavishly pander to the palate.
“modern education…. has no relation with our everyday life. Thus, it leaves us almost utterly ignorant about our own body. ”
Much has remained the same since Gandhi’s time, and much of what he lived and promoted have fallen to the wayside. Almost 100 years ago he was commenting on the need for individual health management. Today many are still starving, most are malnourished, a sub-species of obesity has formed, and the majority of the population apply minimal effort, if that, to their health and fitness. His quote, “The modern generation is delicate, weak and much pampered”, has only multiplied in quality and quantity in time.
“No matter what amount of work one has, one should always find some time for exercise, just as one does for one’s meals. It is my humble opinion that, far from taking away from one’s capacity for work, it adds to it.”
Gandhi was very clear on his opinion of physical labor as part of life and believed, “… a man should be able with ease to walk ten to twelve miles a day, and perform ordinary physical labour without getting tired.”
“Exercise is as much of vital necessity for man as air, water and food, in the sense that no man who does not take exercise regularly can be perfectly healthy. Exercise, as is food, is as essential to the mind as the body. The mind is as much weakened by want of exercise as the body, and a feeble mind is, indeed, a form of disease. A sound mind in a sound body alone constitutes true health.”
Gandhi’s health advice stressed the need of adequate hydration for health and performance, recommending, at least 9 cups of pure water per daily.
‘”…everyone should carry his drinking water with him. Many orthodox Hindus in India do not drink water whilst traveling on account of religious prejudices. Surely, the enlightened can do for the sake of health. What the unenlightened do in the name of religion”
As you can see the game has not changed that much. Whether coming from Aristotle, Hippocrates, Buddha, Morihei Ueshiba, Gandhi, Jack Lalanne, or a Blue Collar Zen master it is acknowledged that health and fitness is an integral pillar in life that has no replacement, and if ignored detracts from our life performance and thusly our happiness and harmony. Make the commitment to yourself, and honor your obligation to God and mankind to be your best by taking charge of your health and fitness.