Is it safe to say that we all want to be the best version of ourselves?
We want to feel alive and vibrant, not stagnant and numb. But sometimes we lack the tools to get to that sweet place…
Welcome to biohacking, a fairly new health movement that does just that- propels us to be the best we can be. Finding flow and balance, utilizing technology to our human advantage, biohacking teaches the principals to stack the deck in our favour.
I want to be clear and say that biohacking isn’t about inserting chips into our bodies and embracing some sort of cyborg lifestyle (at least not to me anyways). It’s not about embracing technology to a point where we lose touch with nature, in fact I see it as quite the opposite. Biohacking can help us to grow a stronger connection to our nature so that we can live in more optimal ways. Its no secret that the path humanity walks along at present isn’t working too well. Collectively, people and the planet are sicker and more disconnected than ever. Bringing back that connection to ourselves and our environment is crucial to finding healing in a crazy world. Why not utilize what’s proven to propel ourselves forward on this journey of constant improvement?
Blending together ancient fundamentals with modern technology, we have access to a lot of information about our human nature. We can learn from the past and use the tools of the present to track our progress. Harnessing this knowledge enables us to quantify data and apply it to improve our lives. Through nutrition, fitness, sleep, meditation and our environments we can implement certain techniques to hack our way to wellness.
What works best is a question that can’t be answered unless we quantify and track our progress. For anyone who has a website or business, tracking key metrics is critical to growth and ultimately success. The same principles apply to many things, people often track calories for weight loss, profits and expenses for taxes, mileage for gas, the list goes on. When we apply tracking principles to our health and wellness we optimize our chances for success. We strive to move forward, to improve- if only by .1% every day, we’re still improving.
Since there’s no such thing as perfection, improvement is the name of the game. What would happen if we actually noted how many times a day we check our phones? Usually this is an unconscious activity and something we do without thinking, but is it necessary, is it helping us move forward or is it a waste of time? We can navigate everything from mundane energy wasting tasks that are best outsourced, to balancing our blood sugar levels for optimal energy and focus.
Often biohacking gets grouped into the categories of either body building or futurist theories. It’s a lot more than that, and I think its time the principles were explored a little deeper in order to apply to everyone.
Biohacking is cracking the code of body, mind and spirit. Dave Asprey calls it a state of high performance. I think it’s more than that, it’s understanding ourselves better so that we can achieve a state of high being. Finding out of the box solutions to our woes, working with technology yet still understanding its limits. Heck you don’t even have to use technology, really there are simple hacks like sleeping in pure darkness or cutting sugar from the diet that literally can change everything.
One must have the utmost respect for the human life-force, we’re pretty complex! But if we can get within our complexities and understand the root of our problems, then bam- we hack our biology and we attain something greater than we thought possible. Knowing is half the battle, which I why I like to spend my free time reading scientific studies, teehee.
So far what makes the most sense to me is coming to grips with certain manipulatable human tendencies that cause us undo suffering and fixing them. Like hormones, so many people have hormonal imbalance, but when we have the tools to fix that, life becomes more manageable. Biohacking is just another way of looking at a set of tools to help us be even more awesome.
Over the next few weeks I’m going to delve deeper into the topic of biohacking. Stay on the look out for detailed articles on biohacking the body, mind and spirit.
