TEDxSalford

Owning The Skin You’re In

In the spirit of declaring all bias, I may as say this in my opening paragraph; I am a dancer. I practise yoga. I am a runner, a swimmer and I love a day long hike. People bloody hate that. Enjoying physical activity is, ironically, a form of social leprosy. Just like ordering salad when out to dinner with friends, a particular blow this summer as a favourite restaurant of mine had a kick-ass summer salad this year, with all sorts of cheese, fruit and nuts, that I didn’t order as often as I would have liked. It is an odd social element of British society that looking after your body is seen as a metaphorical slap in the face to the rest of the world.

I would, at this point, like to refer to the ultimate source of wisdom from nineties popular culture that is, Baz Luhrman’s Everybody’s Free (to wear Sunscreen):

Enjoy your body, use it every way you can…don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own…

Says it all really. If you think how delicious it is to stretch first thing in the morning after a long luxurious sleep, when the blood roars in your ears and you feel every muscle ripple and awaken; imagine doing that stretch for half an hour, and you’ve got yoga. Take it from me; yoga is not a way to make others feel inadequate but pure, overwhelming, all encompassing indulgence in yourself.

Since Rene Descartes theorised that the mind is completely different from the body, and as different entities it is possible for one to exist without the other, that the mind is superior to the body – well it’s been downhill for dancers, athletes and the like. Descartes, who you may remember from such quotes as ‘I think therefore I am,’ is the frustration and exasperation of many dance scholars. The mind and the body divorced long ago, and to enjoy exercising both is often seen as a bit peculiar (please do imagine that said with a heavy sigh, it most certainly was).

I find disassociation with the body a little uncomfortable. It leaks into everyday language easily enough; how many times did you hear “urgh my liver hates me, I drank so much last night” during your student days?

A fascinating TED talk by Talithia Williams, entitled “Own your body’s data” encourages us to reclaim our bodies. She recounts experiences from her and her families lives, where a little knowledge of their own bodies and what is normal for them made diagnosis easier, under circumstances where something wasn’t right. Her perspective is that we are the experts on our bodies, a doctor is an expert in medicine, and when two experts come together, efficiency and accuracy can only improve. Makes a lot of sense to me!

Not so long ago, somewhere amidst the fear that we will one day become immune to antibiotics, a researcher noted on BBC News that people need to take ownership of their symptoms before they ask for antibiotics, and they should know whether their symptoms are viral or bacterial. Interestingly a week after hearing this, a friend told me they had ‘hurt a muscle in their leg’ and what I thought had done it. Please note, I profess no great wisdom here: I asked what kind of pain and in which muscle, and was met with blank stares from both my injured friend and the rest of our group. For both of these maladies, a cold or a pulled muscle, the ability to describe pain, or differentiate between viral or bacterial infections, will make it easier to pick the right course of action, and take less of a shotgun approach to patching ourselves up.

In these times of extraordinary technology we have at our fingertips the ability to really know our body’s data. With the Nike fuel band and the Jawbone Up, synchronising technology, and apps on every portable device, we can track everything. The two aforementioned gizmos are handy little bands that discreetly hang around your wrist, and to the unknowing eye, seem to do nothing but give an occasional buzz when you’ve been inactive for too long. Whilst hugging your wrist, these devices are monitoring you heart rate, steps, distance, active time, and idle time. They also track your sleep, monitoring your micro-movements to detect the quality of your downtime. If this isn’t enough, the accompanying app means you can not only add age, height and weight (so the band can calculate calories burned), but you can also add in the food you’ve eaten and your current mood, resulting in all sorts of graphs, pie charts and venn diagrams alerting you to the state of your health and body.

I do have to say, as intense as all that sounds, it does seem rather fascinating. I wonder just how possible it is to incorporate this into your daily life. Knowing my own habits I’m positive it would be my new black until one day I forget to put it on and it will all come crashing down from there. But it would seem that it’s possible to be an expert on your own body, and Talitha Williams is portraying a lifestyle we can all emulate. We don’t necessarily need a PhD in statistics to achieve it.