The SHN #42: Wu Wei, Yoga, Dentistry

🏙️ Greetings from Buenos Aires!

I hope everyone is doing fantastic and is excited for Spring (if in the Northern Hemisphere). I've been thinking a lot recently about how most of our efforts towards self-improvement tend to be focused on the superficial - putting metaphorical "lipstick" on rather than doing the hard work of truly uncovering and embodying our authentic selves.

Having spent roughly 20 years immersed in the physical worlds of diet, exercise, and healthy lifestyles, I keenly understand both their value and their limitations. While optimizing our physical health is important, relying solely on these external means ultimately falls short of catalyzing the transformation available to us.

The model I'm working with goes beyond the physical realm completely. It is a holistic framework designed to initiate a non-linear process of capital S "Self-development" - an unveiling and unbreakable reconnection with the core of our essential being.

What exactly does this mean?

At our depths, we are not the egoic personalities and mental constructs we've come to prioritize and identify with. We have become disconnected from the wisdom of our bodies, the rhythms of nature, our energetic constitutions, and the ever-present source animating our existence.

In doing so, we have blocked access to our full potential, our childlike sense of wonder, our innate skills and creative capacities. We have severed ourselves from our birthright of fulfillment, peace, authenticity and happiness.

This certainly includes me and I am currently on this journey of restoration and re-alignment myself. While the map can be challenging to navigate at times, I believe the prospect of reclaiming our Selves is the “great work” that is missing from our materialist, self-help obsessed society.

If this strikes a chord and you’d like to hear more, I’d love to connect with you and workshop this developing project.

Without further ado, in today’s newsletter I will talk about the Chinese concept of Wu Wui, yoga practice for longevity, progressive dental knowledge, and much more.

Thanks for reading!

☯ Wu Wei

Wu wei: “inexertion”, “inaction”, or “effortless in action”.

The Chinese concept of wu wei— strategic non-action— was first articulated in the ancient text “Tao Te Ching”, written around 600 BC.

The main idea is to “do which consists in taking no action and order will prevail.” That we should stop trying to force action and get comfortable with doing less.

So when we do move, our actions are more natural, energetic, and can get the job done without friction.

Wu wei is cultivated by spending time just observing the natural world in silence, in stillness. When we learn to watch and wait, we are able to see outside forces with more clarity and can make wiser moves.

This can sound like laziness or procrastination but instead is about self-preservation.

Letting go and trusting the natural order of things is not an easy task in the modern world. The fact that we are becoming even more materialist and technological increases the need for intentional retreat.

An excellent place to start implementing this philosophy into your life is by simply relinquishing resistance to the flow of life. Drop all internal attachments and external expectations, if only for a short while, and watch the present moment unfold in unexpected ways.

In the world of personal development this would look like freeing yourself from the pressure of comparison or from unrealistic expectations. It would be backing away from constantly striving and exerting control on the environment and instead allowing space for intuition and inner wisdom to join the process.

"In Wu Wei, we trust the intelligence of the universe and allow life to unfold organically." - Taoist belief

🧘🏻‍♀️ Yoga for Longevity

Through the following two proposed mechanisms of action, yoga can be seen as a beneficial practice for longevity:

1) Breathing and poses increase parasympathetic nervous system activity and down-regulate sympathetic nervous system activity

2) When practicing cognitive muscular control, you reduce hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA) activity. This reduces stress hormones and decreases inflammation.

This study goes into detail on the impact of yoga on aging physiology, determining that “Yoga is a promising approach for frailty prevention and management. Core systems responsible for maintaining homeostasis (stress-response, metabolic, musculoskeletal) are perturbed in frailty. Emerging evidence suggests yoga positively impacts these domains, likely conferring resilience by modulating the stress-response.”

Alan Couzens is a physiologist and performance coach for endurance athletes who also has recently written about the benefits of yoga:

"Said it before and I’ll say it again…. If I only had 30 minutes a day to exercise, I’d choose yoga. If I only had 60 minutes, I’d choose a walk in nature followed by 30 minutes of yoga.”

I think I need to do more yoga 🙏

🧐 Observe Don’t Internalize

All of Adam Grant’s books, twitter posts, and IG posts are great, and this is no exception. A quick reframe of your feelings is often all it takes to turn down their temperature.

🦷 Internet Dentist Knowledge

I love X (Twitter). So many smart people sharing their knowledge and experiences. One such character is this dentist, who shares his exam results and oral hygiene routine in this post.

His oral hygiene routine is as follows:

1) Brush with NOBS twice daily with a Burst electric toothbrush

2) Floss nightly with Silk (will occasionally try new products as a comparison)

3) Tongue scrape nightly

4) Swish mouthwash 3x per week, usually after lunch

5) Chew Spry xylitol gum daily

He notes that he makes or sells the above products but he does so because they are effective. I have heard good things about NOBS toothpaste in the past but have never tried it. For many months before I left the US I chewed Spry gum as well but I can’t buy that here 😕 

Another post I found worthy to share is when this dentist wrote about five things he believes that other dentists do not believe:

1- Night guards are worthless for the majority that wear them

2- Listerine & Chlorhexidine are harmful

3- Mouth breathing cause cavities faster than sugar

4- Salivary diagnostics are mandatory

5- Traditional fillings/crowns are based on outdated principles

“Dentistry has experienced so much innovation in the last decade that it’s hardly the same profession.” -Gator Dentist (Internet Dentist)

One last post that may be of interest is that this dentist has found 60% of his patients who take the Ozempic weight loss drug are experiencing horrible breath. Just a fair warning!

𝕏 Thread of the Week

💈 Massage Your Scalp for Increased Hair Thickness: An interesting study for anyone interested in a free way to improve the thickness of your hair. The study concluded that “Stretching forces result in changes in gene expression in human dermal papilla cells. Standardized scalp massage is a way to transmit mechanical stress to human dermal papilla cells in subcutaneous tissue. Hair thickness was shown to increase with standardized scalp massage.”

🤯 Psychological Stress Effects the Gut: This study showed that patients with mental distress are more likely to have gut dysfunction. “These findings uncover a microbe-mediated brain-gut pathway that could be therapeutically targeted for stress-driven gut-brain comorbidities.” Stress shows up as illness in your physical body and should be minimized as much as possible.

🥽 Wearing an Eye Mask Improves Learning and Alertness: Blocking all sources of light at night is a scientifically-backed way to improve “episodic encoding and alertness the next day.” This study found that wearing an eye mask at night is an “effective, economical, and non-invasive behavior that could benefit cognitive function and lead to measurable impacts on every-day life.”

🫀 Blood Flow Restriction (BFR) is Epic: Siim Land’s thread on X does a great job summarizing the benefits of using blood flow restriction while exercising, which can trigger a muscle hypertrophy response at only 20-30% of your one repetition max. Check out his YouTube video about it.

Some of the benefits for using BFR are promoting muscle growth, alleviating age-related muscle loss, growing new blood vessels, accelerating recovery from injuries, and minimizing injury risk. While it’s often used for the aging population or for people recovering for an injury, I find BFR training excellent when I don’t have access to a gym. I travel with and use B Strong BFR bands.

🔗 One Hitters

🪑 How to Improve Sitting (It’s Not Just Posture) (Article/Video)

📱 “Putting in tens of millions of 5G antennae without a single biological test os safety has got to be about the stupidest idea anyone has had in the history of the world.” -Dr. Martin Pall (Tweet)

💊 Six surprising things about placebos (Article)

💭 “Everywhere in his environment he [man] must look for that which demands of him admiration and homage.” -Rudolf Steiner (Tweet)

🥷🏿 The importance of shadow work (YouTube Interview)

💭 “The time will come when the secret wisdom (conferring light, life, truth) shall again be the dominating religious and philosophical urge of the world.” -Manly P. Hall (Tweet)

📅 My Scheduling Page: Go here to book a 15-minute free call to chat about whatever is on your mind.

✔️ That will do it for this time! Hopefully you got some value out of it. If you have any questions/comments/things you’d like to learn more about please don’t hesitate to reach out.

🔗 If you know anyone who loves learning about these types of topics, send them this link!

📰 To read all past newsletters, go here.