What is pressure living?

• Each of us is born into our family, relatives, homeland & surrounding conditions
• With subsequent experience, molding & relationships, the in-born characteristics mix with the acquired characteristics to assimilate into new characteristics
• This is the phenomenon of adaptation in order to survive & hopefully, prosper subject to circumstances
• However
• Even though we can & do have dreams, we do not live in them; if dreams represent what we want & desire, realistic circumstances are often otherwise - opposites attract, equals repel in line with balance & equilibrium
• If neural functions are considered, emotions like anxiety, frustrations, dissatisfaction & disturbances do & often occur, exceeding those of pleasure, happiness & satisfaction
• In fact, we are pressure living, as if under some imposed weights that simply refuse to go away

What leads to pressure living?

• Everything
• Many of us often feel uncontended, unfulfilled & unsatisfied
• As any student of economics would have learned, resources are limited but wants are unlimited
• This desire for satisfaction has helped in artificial development & growth, but this in turns fuels further dissatisfaction
• This spiraling phenomenon feeds nothing but pressure living, weighing upon our shoulders & making us breathing under the load

Can't we choose?

• Yes, we can & do choose our lifestyles - that is according to our wants, perceived or imposed upon us
• It is often said that there is a fine line between needs & wants - the criteria is our perceptions
• Only in times of crisis that we learn to separate needs from wants, the necessities from the clutter
• Yet, how many of us would choose to be in crisis or to live in sustained vigilance?
• We like to live fully, yet we are bounded by the burden of our perceptions (heavily influenced by our surroundings, culture & system)
• We like to & throw away all these weights & go away, yet when we run, we often find there is nowhere to hide - the cause: we bear the seeds of these weights; the result: pressure living; the implication: need for pressure living techniques

What are pressure living techniques?

• In order to cope with the disparity between dreams & reality, we can choose between the following two ways:

1. When in luck & up, active development
2. When in misfortune & down, active maintenance

• A balance or thoughtful mixture of the above to cater to all situations that we face in our lives
• This is similar to:

1. Ups & downs of waves
2. Push & pull of tug-of-wars
3. Compression & tension of engineering structures

• With the guiding principles of active development & maintenance, techniques for living can be inferred
• The techniques are individual & personal - essentially, no one can actually teach the techniques, but we must adapt by ourselves
• 勿有形無實, 勿施以求受
• Hence the silence of the wise, the facilitation of the talented & the noise of the ignorant

My own techniques

• With respect to my circumstances, psychology & physiology, I am still developing, refining & personalising my own pressure living techniques
• Some techniques are adapted from habits, some from what I feel, some I consciously learnt, some I trained for & others by deep observations of myself & others
• How do I decide if the techniques are suitable?

1. They must lift the weights off me
2. I try not to shift the weights to others

• The following are my existing techniques:

1. Breathing: deep, long breaths down to the stomach; slight sounds of inhalation & exhalation; feel elated & refreshed from the breaths; during heavy exercise, short, forceful breaths
2. Posture: straight back, stomach in, chest out & up, shoulders down & back, head back, legs apart; for flexibility
3. Stretching: flexing & pulling contracted muscles (as muscles can only contract) to release the physiological accumulation; rotate neck, stretch & bend back arms, bend back, reach toes & grab ankles (teacher); the focus is not on the stretched muscles, but on the relaxed, unstretched ones; akin to Rolfing, Pilates, Yoga, kungfu & martial arts
4. Massage: pressing & soothing my joints, stomach & shoulders; rubbing when cold, wiping when hot; acupressure
5. Conduct: hope for the worst, the worst is yet to be, humorous vigor, calm excitement, anywhere is (Enya)
6. Mannerism: coughing for disapproval, clearing throat for vigilance, straightening back for attention, joking to lighten, patting for company
7. Perception: visionary, failures are successes in disguise; there are only friends & strangers, no enemies; nothing is worth anything else; is it healthy to do?