The basics of staying healthy, part 3 *

To stay healthy and be able to bounce back from occasional illness it is essential to "match your behavior to your design" . This is best done by using the Law of Five Elements and the Human Condition Theory.

According to the Law of Five Elements, every living thing goes through five phases:

Birth & unstoppable growth (Earth),
Maturation (Fire),
Peaking (Earth)
Declining (Metal) and
Dying (Water).

and then life springs again from Water to Wood.

So if there are five phases of our life, what should our behavior look like in each one of them? The Human Condition Theory offers eat answers to this.

The first phase of human life takes roughly 20 years - the amount of time people need to complete their growth. Some finish their physical growth a bit before they turn 20, many grow until 21 and sometimes (rarely) later. This first phase is a Wood phase, the time to act as a Pioneer - exploring the surroundings, discovering new places and ways of being, expanding and galloping for better, bigger, faster. We are supremely resilient at this age and we also feel that way. This is the time to push hard in exercise and physical activity, to find out what are you really made of.

The second 20 years of human life is the Fire phase, the time for connection and intimate pairing. Usually by the time they're around 40, most people give up on the idea of starting a family unless they have a partner to do this with. Usually, not always but even the exceptions to this seem to prove this rule... So human 20s and 30s are the time to seek a partner, find a way to couple up. This is extremely important to our health because we were clearly designed to follow this trend - ignoring it means taking away things on hormonal and emotional level that will deeply impact our body's natural rhythm and balance. We could say that it is very likely that some of the most dangerous disorders and diseases develop later in life because our behavior did not match what we were supposed to do in this phase. This is the stage in life where we should maintain physical effort, exercise hard and long, build a strong cardio system that will help us reach old age.

The third element is Earth, the peak phase of our life. It is the time where we are usually the best version of ourselves in every way. We've been around the block by now, we have seen and felt things that the 20 year old version of ourselves couldn't even imagine. We have gathered so much knowledge as our brains peak and our experience compliments our knowledge first hand. This is the natural age to care for others but it is important to note that this is not necessarily through parenting. From the time we are 40 until about 60, we are in the phase of our life where we can lift more, carry more, go further then before and offer more stability and support to others than we could have done in our 20s or 30s.

In a way, it is a stage where our ego has found peace and confidence to actually go out of our obsession with our own needs and many people find it easy to start their philanthropy at this stage.

Earth is the phase to focus on giving to others, just like mother Earth gives it's harvest in the third season of the year (late summer). Match your design by taking care of someone else, be it a family member, a friend or even mother Earth. Practice your compassion and empathy, allow yourself a break from putting all the attention on yourself like you used to do since your teens. On the physical level, as our attention turns to others, our physical activity should match that. It is time where our physical explosives diminished and we should enjoy good stamina and regularity in exercise.

To match your behavior to your design in the fourth part of your life, you will need to build and lean on your habits. The Metal phase is a time of structure, the time in life where we best operate not "outside of the box" but rather: inside. This is the time of life where all professionals that engage in work related to complex systems peak. From attorneys and judges to architects and medical doctors (western or eastern) - the 60s and 70s represent the peak of their capacities.

The Metal phase is not just the time of habits and good routines, it is also the time of sorrow and grief, the phase where we become present to our mortality, we start losing our dear ones to death and we discover that much of the late years in life are spent in suffering.

Finally, the Metal phase is the phase of conservation, of shifting political views from being progressive and compassionate to being protective and accumulating "for the rainy day". It is the time of life when we are impressed by law and order, suspicious of other people's motives and agendas, the phase when people (and countries) turn to conservatism and fascism. Part of the reason for this profound shift is the battery that weakens after peaking in the 40s and 50s. As our reserves diminish, we know on some level that our reserves are limited, that we will never feel the power or have the energy to do the things we used to do so easily. Moving home becomes difficult, sometimes impossible even if it is within the same community. We become brittle and kurt, start peeing at night (as Bladder, Kidney's partner weakens) and start showing lack of flexibility (using the "my way or the highway" expression more).

To maintain good health and positive outlook in your 60s and beyond it is very important to keep your metabolic rate as high as you can. This means regular physical activity, walking or hiking instead of high intensity (injury promoting) variety. Stay playful and seek partners in exercise, use competition to your advantage but avoid actually competing beyond reasonable effort.

Fight the tendency to become rigid by finding new ways to play, weather it is with others or maybe by yourself. Okay is not "having fun", play means engaging in activity with unknown outcome. An activity that puts one at some level of risk.

The Metal phase takes another 20 years but is the first time where we see many people fall short of that range. Reasons are many but most of the time a combination of high and prolonged levels of stress and unsustainable life style that includes not enough sleep, (unnatural) processed foods and lack of community engagement.

To wrap up this extra long post (sorry for it!), the final phase is Water and it may or may not arrive around year 80. With healthy people, this is the time where they choose to share their wisdom and accumulated knowledge, support other elderly, assist their kids and grandkids and find bliss in little things.

With healthy people, the Water phase is a time in life where they're running their last circle, reconnecting with sweethearts from their youth, staying sexual and contemplating their journey and lessons learned. The key is to stay useful as (in Nature) everything has a purpose it serves. If we are not serving, we are dying. Literally.