Happy December!

I would suspect there is more than just a few of us who perceive the pace of life to be accelerating, and certainly part of the fuel behind that pace is technology. If we look just in the area of communication, what a revolution has and continues to occur. For thousands of years to get a message to someone a hundred miles away took someone with great stamina to travel that distance, then someone discovered the homing pigeon and that was a communication breakthrough! 

In relatively recent times, the pony express gave way to the telegraph, and then Mr. Bell came along and that was a game changer. Let the revolution begin! After that point a big focus was advancing technology to allow communication to flow along a wire faster and farther. And now, we do not even need wires to communicate. The momentum for technological change, as it develops the infrastructure for research, begins to advance faster and faster, and so we get into the exponential growth of these changes over time. It took thousands of years to get from the homing pigeon to the telephone and maybe 100 years to get to the cell phone. This only begs the question, “What will the next 100 years bring forth?” 

In the days of old (which really is not that long ago), life required much more physical effort to get by. The revolution of the human body over thousands of years has been one of efforting against the forces of nature to survive, and much of that effort came from our muscles!  One of the purposes of technological advancement early on was to take the effort out of life, and this was a welcomed change. Washing machines and cars are nice tools to make life easier, but we have long since passed many of the areas where reducing effort is the prime motivation to help humanity. 

We are on the precipice to a wave of “brave new world” technologies that will blur the line between what is human and what is artificial. It is hard to appreciate a future where the human contribution to living will be needed less and less as self-thinking machines advance more and more.  

In practice, we as a society cannot expect the forces for technological advancement to govern themselves. There is a whole research machine out there thirsty for discovery and development. Technology in all its forms presents many opportunities for solving problems and creating a life of convenience, while it is simultaneously generating side effects that are having a  negative influence on our physical health. 

As convenience continues to be the side effect of more technology, and since convenience often means less physical effort, are we not insidiously being drawn into the antithesis of how the human body’s physiology was historically programmed? At our core could there be, deep within our DNA, the “effort gene” — a gene so fundamental to all the reactions that follow, that if not regularly stimulated, creates more problems in how the body is going to maintain health over the course of its life?   

In general, there seems to be a natural inclination by human beings to welcome more convenience and so effort less. It does not help we are being sold in every way the idea that more convenience is good. Literally, we have gone from a bulky wooden phone on the wall to a phone on our wrist in a blink of historical time. 

However, at some point the feeling may start to emerge that if the road of less effort, both physically and mentally, is traveled indiscriminately with our new conveniences, at what point is there a collision between convenience and fulfillment? The allure is that advancing technology and its side effect contribute to greater ease in the moment, but will the long-term effect create more alienation from our own bodies and minds? One stays connected to something by interacting with it, whether its nature, people, God, or even our own body. Neglect is the root of alienation. 

The balance between fulfillment and convenience sits on a scale unique to each person. One of the weights to put on one side of the scale is “How heavy is technology going to play a part in my world?” and on the other side is the question of our own effort.  If a “fulfilled” life is the goal, then what is the balance point where fulfillment garnered through self-challenge is maximized? Or, another way to say it, “Where is the line where convenience creates a diminishing return to my fulfillment? And, could part of that fulfillment come about by staying active through challenging the body in some satisfying way?” 

What is clear is our “effort gene” is waiting to be stimulated; we don’t remove thousands to millions of years of how the body survived as a system in frequent motion in 100 years and think all is going to be “good under the hood.” Technology will forever be part of our lives; it has been for decades in some form. A television or car is not really seen as cutting-edge tech as they have been around for decades but the truth is — anything that encourages you to be sedentary is working against the “effort gene”.  Today, we just have a lot more choices of what is going to contribute to sedentariness. It boils down to each of us needing to find the balance between inaction and action. This is the new dilemma in the world of convenience that will only grow, and not slowly like in the past! 

Physical therapy is the perfect health creating profession for this unique point in history. In practice, we help people rebuild their relationship to their body because we have an awareness of that “effort gene” and the role it plays in getting more mobile, stronger and able.  We bring your recovery full circle so you can apply yourself to your unique path to self-fulfillment and keep balance to the side effects of technology.

If your body is standing in the way to what contributes to your fulfillment in life, your joy and happiness, Full Potential Physical Therapy has a successful track record of reconnecting you to what you love or need to do. Call us or visit our website, fullpotentialpt.com and find out how we can help you.

And, don’t wait till next year — procrastination is part of the momentum of sedentariness!