In my previous article, Living a Low Density Lifestyle, I wrote about a Low Density Lifestyle, and I explained that this phrase means living in a more relaxed, less stressed, and calm, clear and focused manner on an everyday basis. It is also a way that can lead you to better health and happiness, along with living a more fulfilled life.
I also explained that a Low Density Lifestyle is the antidote for our increasingly fast-paced lifestyle. With each passing day our hectic existence is becoming more and more unbalanced and out of control. The pace of our society is leading us to the complete opposite of a Low Density Lifestyle — a High Density Lifestyle. Collectively, all of us have been afflicted by this and are literally crying for a pause, a virtual time-out from this torrid pace.
We as individuals and as a culture are stressed to the max – we would be better served learning to slow down, decompress, stop burning the candle at both ends, and find our center of being. Yet, this High Density Lifestyle is an addiction to a need for speed and being busy, busy, busy at all times.
Here are 10 signs you are living a High Density Lifestyle:
1. That mother and her three-year-old just don’t seem to walk fast enough through the crosswalk for you!
2. You begin to think there is a conspiracy out there to make you late for work every morning!
3. You’re starting a petition to replace food, water and air as our basic needs with an extra large coffee with triple cream and triple sugar.
4. When you leave the driveway in the morning it looks like a chase scene from your favorite police show.
5. The space around your lounge chair at your kid’s soccer, hockey or baseball games look like your desk at your office.
6. You pray for red lights because you figure that waiting at the light is a great time to get business done.
7. You find sitting anywhere for beyond five minutes is a great time to get into REM state.
8. You’ve developed your own system of increasing muscle tone in your neck and shoulders without the benefits of working out!
9. You have discovered that ten minutes a day of crying is a new way of replacing meditation to release stress.
10, Whenever your heart starts beating fast you get excited because you’re reminded of your favorite disco tune.
Here’s the thing about a High Density Lifestyle: while achieving a Low Density Lifestyle might at first take some work, a High Density Lifestyle actually takes no work, because it occurs when you go through your day on autopilot, oblivious to your body, environment and relationships.
Drugs are how many people cope with their stressful livesOne of the key factors in determining whether you are living a Low or High Density Lifestyle is the amount of stress and overstimulation in your life. The greater these are, the more the body will produce excess amounts of adrenaline, cortisol and other fat-soluble steroids, in order to keep you in fight-or-flight mode and capable of staving off what is perceived as a threat to your existence.
The problems with these chemicals is that they cause tangible densities in the body to develop. Once they are manufactured, because of their fat-soluble nature, the body doesn’t easily metabolize them, leaving their toxic chemical residues to linger in the blood stream and be stored in various regions. The end result is damage to the body, and it can be severe.
Another unfortunate aspect of a High Density Lifestyle is its relationship to dogmatic and inflexible thinking. When you are living a High Density Lifestyle, your thought field becomes heavy and opaque. A thick fog of negativity permeates your body; this cloud contains a knot of tired and draining emotions, including fear, anger, frustration, anxiety, depression and resentment.
These negative thought patterns can become so ingrained in the body that they begin to ingratiate themselves into specific regions, lodging in the muscles, joints, bones, organs and connective tissue. Needless to say, this situation can bring about system overload and breakdown, and can cause chronic and degenerative illness.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. It is not impossible to change. As long as you have a pulse, you can change your life. It might take some work, but it’s worth the effort. It just takes a couple of steps, as I pointed out in the previous article, Living a Low Density Lifestyle: eating a plant-based, whole foods diet; movement; and stress management, by ways of becoming more mindful and present.
The greatest chemical component of the body is water, and water, no matter how hard you try to dam it, will always seek and find an open pathway to flow. If you open the dam in your body and be like water by allowing the blockages to flow, you will find the path to true health and happiness – a Low Density Lifestyle.
“Water flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao,” Lao Tzu wrote in the Tao Te Ching. The wisdom of the sages holds true in any age.