In the community of health and wellness we have a developed a substantial fear of anything potentially conceived as “woo”. I would contest that we can limit the grasp of our stoutest foundation of optimal health in confining ourselves to only that which has been summated in a laboratory. Many modern humans are becoming ruled by the all mighty gods of self-quantification.
“Consider that you can see less than 1% of the electromagnetic spectrum and hear less than 1% of the acoustic spectrum. As you read this, you are traveling at 220 km/sec across the galaxy. 90% of the cells in your body carry their own microbial DNA and are not “you.” The atoms in your body are 99.9999999999999999% empty space and none of them are the ones you were born with, but they all originated in the belly of a star. Human beings have 46 chromosomes, 2 less than the common potato. The existence of the rainbow depends on the conical photoreceptors in your eyes; to animals without cones, the rainbow does not exist. So you don’t just look at a rainbow, you create it. This is pretty amazing, especially considering that all the beautiful colors you see represent less than 1% of the electromagnetic spectrum.” –Sergio Toporek
Let’s talk the impact of music on our health for example. There have been numerous clinical studies demonstrating the power of music for developing cognition, immune system, recovering from anxiety and depression. The philosopher Immanuel Kant called music the ‘quickening art’. We can see at a rudimentary level the various physiological indicators of increased vitality via tuning into a catchy tune, but if we stop at our measurements, we begin limiting ourselves. It’s analogous to being moved by the experience of falling in love and whipping out your iPhone to ‘capture the moment’. Is it possible to encapsulate these sensations in a ‘selfy’ or do you have a greater likelihood of ruining the moment with technology.
Ready for some new age hippy ‘woo’ talk? Harmonious music seems to ‘tune’ an individual’s nervous system, if the individual allows herself to become moved by it. Have you ever tuned an instrument to match the key of another instrument? You listen and adjust your guitar strings until you can feel a resonance between yourself and the other guitar. What do you think you are doing when you adjust the rhythm, tempo and style of your movement while dancing to a variety music. There are two types of movers; those that dance to music and those that are danced by music.
We are able to measure symptoms of experience but what remains is a beautiful mystery; the seed of being moved by music, emotion or relationships. If we limit ourselves by our language and our scientific measurements, we run the risk of missing out on the magic that is life. Optimal health comes from these inexplicable, uncontainable miracles of every moment. Filling our heads with facts and statistics does not ensure optimal function and avoiding science all together can leave us ungrounded. I am asking for a middle path. Bruce Lee said we should combine our natural instinct with control. Control would be science and natural instinct is everything else! The staple foundations of health revolve around movement, physical contact, self-worth, whole foods, self-expression and community.