Mind Over Body

[say... 2 decades ago]
Growing up as a kid, I once heard a little story about my great grandfather. He had achieved such perfect control of his mind (through meditation), that he could rise up a feet from the ground (in a sitting posture). The man could float in air!!!. (If I remember right they have a picture of him, defying gravity, in my mom's ancestral home!!) I should admit that it didn't mean much to me then. I never gave it so much of a thought.

[Jan 2007]
I was running in the gym nearing completion of the third mile. I wasn't tired (for not being much of a runner), and the breathing was just perfect. Could have easily added a couple of miles to the count.... For some reason I stopped at the end of lap 24. Not a step after that. Why? I was definitely not physically exhausted, but the mind was revolting as though the limit had been reached and shut down on me like some major security breach had taken place.

[Reverberating in time]
I believe the story about my great grandfather that I was told as a small boy, though Newton might not be particularly pleased. With only 1% of that kind of control, I'd probably run 30 marathons a month without breaking a sweat!! The inevitability and importance of the mind's control and understanding of the body in achieving one's goals cannot be over-stressed.

-Vijayasarathy-

Madai thirandhu... late, yet the latest!

I had decided against posting video links and embedded videos in my blog, but this one was so cool that I couldn't resist. Outstanding remix of an old tamil song with hiphop tunes. Tamil Rap is here to stay ;-).

Procrastination - Beat it or Get Beaten!!

Recently I noticed that working out at the gym and running had become a major part of my everyday routine. I was intrigued for 2 reasons. One, I was never big on gym or running as I felt that I got enough exercise from sports (Cricket, Badminton, Basketball etc.) Secondly, I was never motivated enough to take time off and run for 30 minutes or go through the trouble of lifting 40 pounds of weight. It was just not my thing. Given a choice I’d rather prefer to play or sit at home and watch Seinfeld.

So the reason for this change evaded me for many days. The more I didn’t know why, the more I wanted to know. In the process of writing this blog I asked myself a question, which (in hindsight) provided the answer to my gym puzzle. “Why am I writing this blog at this point in time?” Because I had decided to work on a report this weekend but didn’t want to. Suddenly I knew the answer to my gym obsession.

It is a mechanism that I had developed to avoid/ postpone a more important long-pending extremely monotonous thesis work. The idea is to choose the less important (but more interesting) task over the more important task. So if you actually do plan well, you can utilize the time to reduce the number of tasks on your list (even though low priority) to be completed. Then all you need to do is set a deadline for the more important task and finish it. However from my experience it is easier said than done!!