Jailbreaking

I'm getting that look from the cashier at Wheatsville. I get this look sometimes when I explain what I'm doing. I guess my actions may be drastic, and I feel compelled to explain them. I'm not crazy after all. Often I'm pursuing said drastic act for a health benefit. Usually said drastic act is mildly uncomfortable and flies in the face of conventional wisdom. In this case it's ice baths ("the only thing that 'chills me out' after a hard day's work, ha!"). I was skeptical of ice baths. Seemed like not much fun. I tried it anyway. I still don't REALLY look forward to them, but the benefits far out weigh the momentary discomfort. My ability to endure the discomfort of the unfamiliar has grown to the degree that I'll try stuff out that sounds crazy. I wasn't always this way. I just happened to notice that a lot of what we take as normal is actually killing us, and complaining about it doesn't help the situation, much. I started out small. I stopped slouching. I breathed more. I took days off. I visited the green belt. I learned a simple method of meditation that didn't force me to become a hippy. I started slow and learned how to judge an appropriate deviation from 'common sense'. The thing is culture is a problem. It is the hammer that hams. You love it because it feels so good when it stops. You confuse it with reality. You are probably losing to culture as we speak. Not just that you're blind to reality as it really is, but that you're body is suffering as a result of it. The screen on which you read this is probably too bright for this time of day. You may stay up too late now because you convinced your brain it's day time. It may draw your head in, now your craning your neck, or sitting on crossed ankles. The solution isn't to rebel by throwing away your laptop. It's to jail break. I borrow this term from the hackers that freed up their iphones from the tyranny of Apple. They repurposed an already useful entity to better fit their needs. To live a healthy life in this culture you have to repurpose it to suit your needs. In the case of the lap top you can get something called flux that takes out the blue light in your screen that tells your brain it's morning. You can get a standing desk, or an adjustable one, or you can take a break. What we think of as crazy could save our lives. Just stop eating sugar,carbs, and wheet, and you may cut your chances of getting Type II diabetes and maybe Alzheimer disease. It's an easy way to dodge an epidemic. Sleep to stay young, meet your goals in the gym at 30minutes a pop, indulge in introversion, take the day off... the list of crazy things goes on. They say it takes a hospital 10 years to act on irrefutable evidence provided by impartial labs. If a hospital's 10 years were like dog years to my one year, I would be ok with that, maybe. Unfortunately ten years to me is too long to wait.     I enjoy this look, but it also makes me a little sad.       For me 'health' refers to a state of physical and energetic balance as expressed through the body, mind, and heart... for lack of a better word.