The Art of Being Easy – An Analysis of PNBE

The art of Being Easy is one that required an immense amount of work.

It may not seem like it, but actually you’d be surprised how easy it is to think you’re relaxing when you’re actually not.  Some people may argue that relaxing mentally is more difficult than relaxing physically; I’m here to argue against that notion.  I agree that both are differently difficult to achieve, however, I believe it’s harder to physically relax because most times people aren’t aware of the way they unconsciously use their body.

Here’s an exercise that I did today to examine just how tired I was.  You can do this as well:

1) Take a deep breath a couple of times

2) Close your eyes

3) Do your best to release all muscle control over your face – in a sense, just let your face fall with no control at all

If you’ve never done this or it’s been a while since you’ve done this, you can discover where the tense parts of your face are.  And if you think about those specific tense areas, you can ascertain where your stress is coming from, if you have any stress at all.  When I relaxed my facial muscles, I noticed that prior to doing so I was constricting my eyes and my eyebrows were also in the same manner.  The reason for that is because I haven’t been getting enough sleep recently (that’s just due to irresponsibility) and unconsciously I was doing that to keep myself from falling asleep.  Since this is the case with myself, try this out when you need to take a 30 second break and see what happens.

I picked up the book “Massage for Dummies” briefly during the summer of 2009 and I’ve decided to pick it back up after watching the show “Lie To Me”.  Even before reading the book I understood that there are many benefits of massaging, most notably relaxation and it’s implications on health.  After reading through it, I discovered many different techniques for various kinds of massages that specifically corresponds with the areas of health (mental, physical, etc.).  During my trip to China in January of 2010, I was taught by middle-schoolers how to give myself a facial massage.  I’m not sure if they do this at every school in China, but at least at this particular school the students are signaled via a bell for a 3 minute respite where they are instructed to massage their faces using a series of massaging techniques.  What these middle-school kids were doing were many of the same techniques I learned in the massage book and I was surprised to see that the school cared enough to give them a break to relax so that they could study more efficiently.

With that said, how does this related to PNBE?

It has everything to do with PNBE.  For those who don’t know, PNBE stands for Peace and Be Easy- a phrase that I often use at the end of my blogs.  Many people may just read it in passing and keep in the back of their minds due to the somewhat awkward acronym form of the phrase, but I use it for a more literal intention.  As a college student with friends, associates, family, etc. in similar environments, stress is an everyday agitation for most people including myself.  Not all stress is bad (i.e. eustress), but it is too-often detrimental to happiness and success.  As a person who pays more attention to others’ actions and  style/patterns of speech rather than a literal translation, it usually isn’t too hard for me to tell what’s going on with a person that I know.  With this being the case, along with the fact that people always have their own things to deal with, I tell them “Please take care of your health and overcome whatever obstacles you come across and don’t let stress affect you too much” in the form of PNBE.

I’ll break down what I want PNBE to mean real fast:

Peace:  Be at peace with yourself and everyone around you.  If you are at peace with both, life becomes more enjoyable and less stressful.  And if you’re in a situation that gives you shit and you don’t have to put up with it?  Then just toss up the deuces and peace out.  I’d like to be at peace with myself and with everyone around me, so in this instance I’m encouraging everyone else to do the same.

Be Easy:  No, I don’t literally mean be an ‘easy’ person (e.g. letting people walk all over you, giving it up, etc.), but in a literal sense don’t unnecessarily be a hard ass.  I once read/heard that people with certain personality types respond to aggression the same way a porcupine does- ready to respond with their back facing you with needles ready to defend.  If you be easy and approach people and things with a simple mindset then people/things will have a higher chance of responding in they you want them to.  In addition, being easy is a euphemism/metaphor/slang to simply say “relax and don’t stress”.

To wrap things up, I came across a quote saying :

Life is like an hourglass glued to the table.

I often think about how finite time is for every second that passes and the imagery displayed in this quote coincides well with this way of thinking.  With every grain of sand spent on stress and not relaxing, that’s less time to spend being happy.  Now that the people who read this know that there is more meaning behind this southern-slang/African American vernacular, I hope that the true message sticks with everyone when they think about this phrase.  Remember, the art of Being Easy is not easy, but it does make life more enjoyable.

As a personal request besides this topic, I’d like the readers of this to please pass this blog on to anyone who may be interested in reading.  I enjoy getting my thoughts out there, but it sucks to have less than 10 people reading haha.  So, pass the link to this blog if anyone ever asks a question about blogging and also post a comment on this link to mutual people that also blog (including yourself if you have one).

Thanks for reading and I’m always appreciative of you taking the time to read.

PNBE

Snowfield Rhapsody

#massage #being #easy #life #time #relaxing