A Chance to Learn Building Self-Health Amid COVD-19 Lockdown
The whole world is ravaged due to the COVID pandemic. Businesses, schools, colleges, firms, and factories are all locked down. People are living at home. Some people who have the privilege to work in Information Technology still can work from home. Meetings are taking place online and at least distanced social gathering is in place for the sharing of information and insights globally. Poor and minority communities have a greater risk of suffering from this pandemic. Reports already coming in that African Americans and other people of color are losing more lives, and are more greatly impacted economically due to our racialized division of labor. These are foreboding signals — as they demonstrate ways in which pandemics expose and exacerbate inequalities. It prompts us to consider what we can learn from this crisis in order to promote enduring mutuality, beyond this crisis moment. If we can learn from this moment, lessons learned from responding to COVI 19 can help us better coordinate our hopes for a more sustainable and resilient society, that is also broadly inclusive and deeply equitable.
The Art and Science of Breathing
Breathing is a natural or simple phenomenon but there are several principles underlying breathing that we should be aware of. First of all, breathing is a great exercise that intakes oxygen and releases carbon dioxide. Several Indian or other eastern cultures have practiced a disciplined version of breathing for a long time. The “Art of Living” by the great South Indian sage Sri Sri Ravi Shankar teaches “Sudarsan Kriya”, meaning self visualization through breathing. This is a kind of rhythmic breathing that reduces stress and anxiety that the person breathes in and out in a synchronized way. Some scientists do not recommend doing this without careful guidance. If you do this with guidance and achieve perfection then it is good to follow. By doing this one can feel a light bodyweight, eliminate negative thoughts, and stay in a relaxed mood after doing this. This author has practiced this several times and experienced a lot from these techniques.
The term “Pranayama” as explained in several Sanskrit literature (the ancient Indian scriptures) stipulates that one of the tools to get prepared for meditation is the control of the breath. The belief is that regulated breathing maintains our physical self as well as increases the power of concentration focusing on breath-in or breath-out (inhale and exhale). Buddhist scripture recommends that while inhaling you say “So” (I am) and while exhaling says “Hum” (am that). So every time you breathe you repeat I am that. The belief is that it builds your will power and you can concentrate more on creative thinking. When you go to the doctor for a heart and lung check, the doctor says “take a long breath and exhale”. When a woman is delivering a baby, the doctor’s main instruction is to take a long breath. This controlled breathing is natural and important; I would recommend making it a regular exercise or habit every day. You’ll feel the change.
Heart-Healthy Movements
Sometime we may not pay much attention to the very vital part of our body: the heart. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the fetal heart starts to beat within 1 to 3 weeks of conception. It continues beating until a person dies. Break-in heartbeat for 10 minutes is fatal; people may die from a heart attack. The heart muscle is the strongest muscle in our entire body as it is constantly moving, expanding and contracting. The heart is such a vital organ, but how much do we think about it and do exercises to build the heart muscle? Systematic breathing itself helps the heart to build muscle. Rapid breathing that results from exertion causes the heart to work harder. The heart muscle expands and contracts; the aerobic exercise makes the heart healthier. I and my wife regularly do a Heart-Healthy Exercise. This is a three-mile walking exercise sponsored by the American Heart Association. To make the heart more healthy, the CDC recommends that we get moving, quit smoking, lose weight and remain stress-free. Simple walking around your house, climbing up and downstairs, walking around the lawn every day will be sufficient movement to build heart health. Just browse the internet and search for “ways to to make your heart healthier” and you will get some answers. Just do it.
Culture of Eating What our Body Require
Our eating patterns have drastically changed between the time when humans were hunters and gatherers and the present time. In those days food was available only after doing intensive labor like walking long distances, running fast, even risking one’s life from dangerous wild animal attacks. In those days nature balanced our mind and body in such a way that we used to eat what our bodies required or what was readily available. However, these days we can just use the cell phone and within 10 to 20 minutes our food reaches our plates. Our eating patterns are dominated by our taste buds. We never realize that what our tongues enjoy for a few brief moments can be detrimental to our whole body and mind. As a result, several food-related diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and obesity have become common to most people globally.
Professor Craig Hassel, Specialist Food and Nutrition is conducting research by bringing intercultural aspects of food and nutrition. He draws on several cultural knowledge bases to study food patterns and teach courses along this line. There is so much knowledge that we can gain from the native and immigrant communities. The traditional or indigenous knowledge from immigrants is generally overlooked by mainstream economists in the U.S. This author, with funding from the Minnesota Department of Agriculture and Dean Current, Faculty at the UoM is conducting research with Bhutanese refugees. The research is to document cultural knowledge of growing and processing food for climate justice. Poor and minority communities have immense knowledge about dealing with environmental problems; nevertheless, policymakers do not draw on this valuable resource to further climate justice including equitable distribution of resources such as access to health and education. This author has also engaged in promoting social enterprise The Diversity Intelligence in Climate Action. This is to conduct action research on the immigrant culture of dealing with the environment through maintaining self-health, and wellbeing. The idea behind this enterprise is to correct the misappropriation of cultural knowledge. The minority immigrant or refugee community has immense knowledge about planning, growing and processing food. Amid climate change, such knowledge carries an abundance of benefits to save the environment as well as maintain good public health and wellbeing
We have the benefit of increasing diversity in Minnesota, with a growing base of farmers, scientists, health practitioners, herbalists and more — from many cultural communities. The embodied ecological knowledge in the region, when connected, can provide a powerful regenerating resource that we can connect and utilize to increase soil health, restore biodiversity in the eco-regions of Minnesota, sequester massive sums of carbon, and promote linked local living economies that support the well-being of planet and people (Sam Grant, personal communication)
This article is written from the reflections of a poor community living in the hills and mountains of Nepal. This community maintains a sustainable healthy lifestyle by consuming simple and healthy food that grows in the mountains of Nepal. Eating just chicken and goat meat is a luxury to them. I am inspired to write this article looking at those communities. If we can copy their patterns of living then many food-related diseases can be cured. Regarding the emergence of COVID-19, there is a strong belief that it transferred from bats to the pangolin (the scaly anteater) and finally to humans who eat pangolin meat. The disturbance in the natural world caused by consuming these wild animals have created such a devastating result. We should be more careful and aware in the future to analyze where the food comes from that reaches our plates.
