The Pendulum of Health

We can learn about health through Newton’s third law of motion that states: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. When you exert a certain force on a pendulum it will swing the exact same distance on the other side. The greater the force the more the pendulum will swing on the other side. Now pretend the pendulum represents your health. For instance look at someone who is a chain smoker. He always has to have a cigarette in his mouth almost all the time. A big part of his life is spent on smoking cigarettes. Where to buy cigarettes, where to find places to smoke, and even going to meetings to protest more public places to smoke cigarettes. There is so much time, energy, and money spent on smoking cigarettes. Then all of a sudden the next day he wants to quit smoking. In order to quit smoking he needs to go to the other extreme. He starts with the chewing gum, nicotine patches, drugs, hypnotherapy, acupuncture, and many other things. Since the pendulum has swung so far to the extreme on one side it has to swing to the extreme on the other side to balance it out. You can see the wasted time, energy, and money on both sides of the pendulum. If we can keep the pendulum in the middle without it swinging so much from one side to the other, we can move forward in our life because our health doesn’t have to go to such extremes all the time.

When we make decisions about our health they should be made with the thought of the pendulum in our mind.  We need to have the pendulum as close to the middle as possible with little swings from side to side. The pendulum can swing too much to the seemingly positive side too. We can start exercising all day long without taking a break. The pendulum will swing to the same amount on the other side because you are putting yourself at a greater risk for injury and then it might cause you to be bed ridden for days.

We must always remember to have daily health habits when it comes to exercise, diet, and sleep. Exercise moderately instead of just being a weekend warrior and having to recover the whole following week. Let’s think about what food we put inside our body to make us healthier and more energetic. Be sure to get enough sleep every night so our bodies have time for our innate intelligence to heal ourselves, but not so much sleep that we become Rip Van Winkle. Go see a Chiropractor on a regular basis for adjustments to the spine to correct any nerve interference, instead of waiting for severe pain to show up and then having to see the Chiropractor when it could be too late to make any meaningful corrections to the spine.  A quote from Jostein Gaarder from Sophie’s World explains the balance of health. “Health is the natural condition. When sickness occurs, it is a sign that Nature has gone off course because of a physical or mental imbalance. The road to health for everyone is through moderation, harmony, and a ‘sound mind in a sound body’.”

Healing Journeys Book Cover