Physical health is the conduit.
Physical Health covers a lot of different areas. It covers your nutrition, fitness, measurements, body composition, etc. Really, anything having to do with the body itself should be considered part of your physical health.
Physical health is special because all points of health intersect here. There is something inside of each of us that innately understands this. We all know tying a physical act with a mental or spiritual pursuit helps us grasp or command the mental or spiritual intention more fully. For example, why do we look up or to the side when we think deeply about something? Is the physical act of looking up really necessary to the thought process? It’s not, but linking a physical act (looking up) to a mental task can help with the mental task. Humans do this a lot. It is very natural.
The first time I encountered this was 25 yrs ago. I was a personal trainer at an affluent gym in Salt Lake City. I had been hired by a very successful litigating attorney. He told me in our initial consultation he needed to lose weight for an upcoming trial. I understood the whole weight loss thing for the obvious health reasons, but why for an upcoming trial?
“Juries don’t like fat lawyers. They think fat lawyers are lazy and dishonest. If I lose the weight they’ll like me and trust me more explicitly.”
This blew me away. It was the first time I ever connected the thought that a physical appearance might somehow convey a mental capacity like honesty or an intellectual capability. It was also apparent to me he was hoping to use his physical appearance as an indirect means to strengthen his financial future. If he won the case he’d, no doubt, strengthen his position in the firm. Winning would improve his standing with his professional colleagues and ensure he’d get the biggest cases. Improving physical health as a means to improve his financial health was new to me. Remember, I was a total health nerd. Back then I couldn’t think of another damn reason to work out other than to improve fitness and health. But it turns out this isn’t so rare. It happens a lot, with more things than most people realize.
Here’s another example. Once a lady told me she was joining the gym so her husband would look at her “THAT way” again. In other words, she wanted a romantic connection with her husband. She wanted him to want her the way he did back when they were first dating. She imagined if she looked the same way as she did after high school her husband might be more interested in her. This was going to be difficult because as a mother of 4 who was in her early 40s things will have permanently changed for her physically. This is neither bad nor good. It just is. Not to mention, I knew it wouldn’t really matter. I know her husband personally. He worships her body. There is no way her thought of getting into better shape originated with him. And even if it would have come from him, her problems were way bigger than attraction issues. In any case, hers was clearly NOT a physical pursuit, she was looking for an emotional connection with her husband. This is an emotional and social pursuit. So why then was she gravitating toward a physical aspect of health to gain non-physical benefits?
I believe the physical aspect of health is the conduit to improving all aspects of health. I believe we all know this inherently. It’s why we naturally gravitate toward the physical. Humans intrinsically understand the more senses involved in a learning process, the faster and more completely we will master that process.
The principles of learning are universal. Therefore, the skills and abilities we learn to improve our physical health will be the same as the skills and abilities needed to improve all other aspects of our health. It’s why we gravitate toward the physical.
For example, to improve your physical health you need to complete daily, consistent reps of an exercise over and over. Not too few. Not too many. Wouldn’t this principle apply to our emotional health? Wouldn’t the experience of completing daily, consistent reps of exercises like making eye contact while speaking, help to improve my emotional health in the same way?
Here’s another. In order to improve my physical health, I have to learn to progressively overload my physical body in a way that initiates physical improvement. Not too little, but not too much. Wouldn’t learning to progressively overload my capacity for putting myself into unfamiliar social situations help me to become a more familiar and dependable member of my community? I am an extreme introvert. I hate social situations. My instinct is to avoid people and parties at all costs. Social situations cause me extreme stress. My initial instinct is to avoid them, but avoiding social situations makes me lonely. This causes me even more stress. This is a never-ending loop. I learned to cope with my crippling social anxiety by learning to become accustomed to the stress. I started small, by only socializing with individuals. From there, I progressively overloaded my capacity for interacting with people by expanding my social circle to couples and small groups. Over the years, I’ve become better at social interaction. I’ve become better at putting myself in social situations and also better at handling the social interactions I’ve put myself into. This took progressive overloading.
Learning to use our physical body to improve other aspects of our health is the fastest and most complete way to learn the skill we are seeking. It’s why many of us default to exercise when trying to get back on track after life throws us a few curveballs.
Remember physical health is special because all points of health intersect here. The act of tying a physical act with another less tangible aspect of health (mental, emotional, social, spiritual) helps us learn. Using a physical act to learn a less tangible aspect of health helps us learn that aspect faster and more completely than if we didn’t use it in the first place.
Exercise and using our physical bodies is magic. Increasing our strength, endurance, and ability to move increases our physical health in all of the most important ways. This is invaluable for all aspects of our health.