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How do you change with change?
Bruce Lee is most widely known as a martial artist. He was also a philosopher, husband, filmmaker, father, and actor. Growing up in Hong Kong I recall seeing colorful and bold posters promoting his movies plastered to the sides of buildings. My dad loved the Hong Kong action films, and in particular resonated with how Bruce Lee portrayed his characters in American films. It was not until my adult years that I was able to grasp the depth of Bruce Lee’s philosophical teachings. Now as I deepen my understanding of the human body and yoga studies, I see the wisdom Bruce Lee embodied and generously shared with the world.
“Be flexible so you can change with change.”
-Bruce Lee
The flexibility he is referring to in this teaching is not limited to the pliability of muscles and joints. This is a call to train our whole being heart-mind-body-spirit to be able to change with change. We shall circle back to the mind shortly but let’s first look at the advantage of being able to change with change in the body. Your heart is amazing. Your heart muscle is the most used muscle in your entire body. It’s been beating for you since you were in utero! Heart rate is the number of times a minute your heart beats. Heart rate variability (HRV) is the variance in time between heart beats. This variability is based on breathing patterns and the needs of our body. The amount of time between your heart beats fluctuates depending on what we are doing. When we are relaxed or resting, our heart rate is slower. When we feel stressed or when we are active our heart rate is faster.
Heart rate vari-ability is how adaptable we can be. When needed, our heart rate increases to meet the demand of the action we are taking. For example, say I’m walking towards a bus stop and see that a bus I could take is coming along the road behind me. I decide to try to catch that bus, so I increase my activity level from walking to jogging toward the bus stop ahead. My heart rate increases to match my elevated activity level from walking to jogging. I catch the bus (yay!) and luckily find a seat (woohoo!). Sitting on the bus I am at rest and my heart rate responds by reducing. Therefore “high HRV” means that we have a high level of ability to adapt to changes.
Our heart is not acting alone when reacting to changes. Human beings are a body-mind complex, not separate. We have multiple systems working inter-dependently at all times. Our mind can trigger electrochemical responses in our central nervous system that directly influence functions throughout the whole body. The heart is directly wired to the autonomic nervous system. Autonomic meaning you don’t have to consciously think about these systems. They operate all the time even when we are asleep. In particular the two modes of operation are the sympathetic and parasympathetic. You probably recall from your high school biology class the sympathetic is the “fight or flight” mode and the parasympathetic is the “rest and digest” mode. The moment I decided I wanted to try catch the bus and started jogging my sympathetic system was already working to increase my heart rate to pump blood to my extremities to enable me to jog towards the bus stop. I caught the bus, and my parasympathetic system was already slowing down my heart rate as I was settling into my seat and rest.
Photo: this tattoo of a heart adorns my niece Riley’s forearm. Riley just graduated from nursing school. Riley has been teaching me about heart-mind-body-soul since I met her when she was 6 months old!
Voluntary and Involuntary
The scenario I described is but 75 seconds of a given day. The interplay of sympathetic and parasympathetic is ongoing all day, every day. Our heart rate variance is naturally fluctuating in response to the needs of our body all day, every day. How marvelous that we are designed with these elegant systems. But it gets even more marvelous. Dig this: the parts of our nervous system that are involuntary i.e. the autonomic nervous system (what we just saw is wired directly to our heart) can be influenced by the voluntary nervous system. Breathing, you do it all the time, you don’t have to think about doing it, it just happens (this is an example of an involuntary action), and, AND your breath can be voluntary.
You can consciously (voluntarily) take deep breath in and out.
You can consciously inhale hold it for 3 seconds and then let it out.
You can inhale and slowly exhale out through your lips for a 6 count.
You can block one nostril and breathe in and out using only the other nostril.
All of these are examples of voluntary actions of your breath. Why is it helpful to us to use voluntary breathing to influence involuntary systems?
Let’s take a quick look at a different scenario. I caught the bus and am in my seat enjoying the ride but all of a sudden there is a malfunction in the engine, the bus comes to a screeching halt, and we see smoke coming from under the hood of the bus. The driver opens the doors and commands all the passengers to vacate the bus. I need to move quickly and help others and myself get off the bus and across the lanes of traffic to the sidewalk. My heart rate increases to meet the demand of the situation. Once all the passengers and driver are safely on the sidewalk, we are standing around (a more restful activity than the evacuation process). My heart rate should reduce but it stays elevated because my mind is on “high alert” with the emergency of the situation. My mind is sending the electro chemical messages to my heart to keep pumping fast. This uncontrolled sympathetic mode (fight or flight) is not helping me in this moment and in the long run may be doing damage.
Remember breathing is both involuntary and voluntary. Therefore, I can consciously take deeper, slower breaths. Within a few rounds of the steady spacious breathing my breath sublimates my heart rate and helps my mind to see that being in the “high alert” is not actually needed now that we are all safely on the sidewalk. As my mind gets clear the signals in the autonomic (involuntary) system reflect the mind shift and all systems (heart rate, digestion, hormones etc.) return to their balanced state. We certainly do not need to be in an emergency situation to make use of this inner skill we all possess. If you are reading this, you are breathing, and if you are breathing you have this skill. This is an example of the whole being flexibility Bruce Lee was talking about: to be able to change with change. It can be put into action anytime anywhere.
Photo: Gratitude to this Giant Ficus Tree that allowed me to rest, stretch and lower my heart rate in the middle of a hike, taken in 2019 in Rincon de la Vieja National Park in Costa Rica.
Feel rather than Force.
Modern science has caught up with the roots of yoga that teach us the subtle layers of the mind and our breathing can influence the autonomic systems. When practicing yoga asana (the physical branch of yoga), I often remind myself to feel into a posture rather than force. Feel out the dimensions of the posture rather than assuming you know them and throw yourself haphazardly into your expectations. Feel the pull and push of gravity (root) and ground reaction force (rebound) so you navigate your way into a balance dance between the two. I have forced in physical activities in the past and have injured myself. I have forced in life, and it was exhausting. The roots of yoga teach us while in asana (yoga posture) we want to be in a balance of effort and ease. For some of us the effort may be to maintain the mind in the now present moment, while the ease may be cultivated in breath and body.
“The more relaxed the muscles are, the more energy can flow through the body. Using muscular tensions to try to “do” the punch or attempting to use brute force to knock someone over will only work to opposite effect.”
-Bruce Lee
In any activity we want there to be a sensation of energy flow. When we are cooking the energy of love flows into the food we are preparing to feed ourselves and others. When we are in our daily movement practice the mindset is practice. We are not punishing ourselves, performing for an audience, nor pretending we don’t feel both physical sensation and emotion. We are moving and breathing. We are doing the best we can to let the energy flow through us as if we are conduit between earth and sky.
It takes courage to be flexible to change heart-mind-body-soul. It takes courage and compassion to be present in a daily movement practice. The roots of Yoga advise us we may not love every moment and every movement, but it’s not about likes and dislikes. It is about self-study. Philosopher Bruce Lee teaches us, as we navigate the path or our life long journey, to create our own opportunities to embody flexibility to change with change. The invitation is to move. Move to feel. Breathe and let energy flow. Come with your courageous and compassionate heart to practice.
June 2023