lid of the pressure valve

We all need a way to release the pulsing hot pressure that affects us on a day to day basis. everybody feels pressure in some way or form and we all have different responses, some adaptive and others a bit more maladaptive to our situations.

The Orang Asli tribe is indigenous to Malaysia. They're a tribe who have been subjected to forced conversions to Islam and encroachment of their forested territory. A conflict averse community, from a young age the members are taught to avoid physical violence and confrontation at all times. Each adult models conflict averse behaviour, and the children lacking any examples of violence, demonstrate very little tendency towards it. Problems that arise are generally solved at intertribal resolution sessions.

This technique and lifestyle while effective within their tribe with likeminded conflict avoiders, is drastically ineffective when faced with outside interference. When the tribe has run into conflict with invading forces or conquerers their level of internal stress has risen and they have tended to suppress the instinct to fight. Unsurprisingly, this tribe has suffered from high levels of stress induced and stress associated diseases. The members of the tribe who have most successful adapted to the stressful encounters that they were unprepared for and who have largely avoided these diseases were the ones who embraced the regular cultural dance sessions. These sessions were unique in that they were the one time when the Orang Asli tied themselves to a deep rhythmic drumming and danced with dynamic and erratic movement to the point of exhaustion, releasing all their pent up stresses and frustrations.

I'm an internalist. my emotions, pain, and stress, both physical and psychological, get packaged up and my defuser is my sport, most especially the zen component of my sport...swimming. This year I didn't have it in my life since my shoulder injury brought me to a forced vacation from Triathlon competition. Being a water baby, the feel of the water has always brought me a yoga like zen. Luckily, I could still run and bike which allowed me to blow off the steam that would have sent me totally off balance if I even made a feeble attempt to suppress it.

Personally, I can't exist without regular hard physical exertion and lots of fresh air. I sink into an anxious depression very quickly if I go longer than a day without some hard effort. If I could sell this method in a bottle, I'm sure we'd have far healthier populations.

We need the high heart rate and the healthy sweat to rid ourselves of the emotional toxins that we collect on a day to day basis. If we don't release them then we set ourselves up for all kinds of physical ills that appear in the longterm. Our bodies function in an equilibrium and even if we don't think that we're affecting ourselves by throwing one component off, our bodies respond.

I guess to some extent we need to prioritize finding a pressure release method for ourselves as preemptive self-care. Maybe packaging and selling that could be the next big thing in middle east peacemaking. Probably more so than massive israeli-palestinian conference calls for compassion. My cellphone is a genius at stress inducing...