The skulls of modern man are shrinking!!
Yup, you read that right. Our cranial cavities are shrinking, which literally means over time our brains will have less area and less developed areas in which to fully grow and develop - translating to the fact - we are getting de-evolving and basically...becoming dumber!!
And while I would like to write about how our reliance on button pressing technology is likely partly responsible for this, is it really a cause or consequence? From a Chinese medical perspective, the areas of the neck and head constitute the Upper Dantian. The upper Dantian is responsible for distilling our Shen or mind or mental faculty.
Dantian literally translates to Dan = Elixir and Tian = Field. ie: Elixir Field.
Thus, the 3 Dantian are, in fact, physical geometries of our bodily structures which act to refine an "elixir" or "substance".
In Chinese medicine, the Shen is the elixir or substance refined in the upper dantian (neck and head area). And without the correct geometric tensegrity developing through the way we use our neck and head, this geometry does not develop or grow correctly and in the case of modern man, this translates to our shrinking heads and the development of a host of other problems!!
When this area is insufficiently developed our mental faculty also shrinks. And I am not the only one to wonder if this is evidenced by the increased rate of Shen disturbance and mental and emotional irregularities seen in children today.
So let's examine what factors are causing our skulls to shrink and what effects this shrinkage is having on our human bodies and the evolution of human beings.
Chewing. We are not chewing enough hard foods. Our skull records show that the rate of skull shrinkage is correlated to the increase in processed foods. As man moved away from being more hunter/gatherer and began farming right through to the industrial revolution the increase in soft foods that require less chewing has decreased our skull size.
Incorrect use of the Tongue/Mouth breathing. Along with the chewing, our tongues have also become weaker. There are two main factors here. The first is as we increasingly moved into inside dwellings the accumulation of dust caused low-grade sinus infections. These sinus infections caused us to take our tongue off the upper (hard) palate in our mouths and place it on the bottom (soft) palate so we could breathe. This decreases the internal tensegrity on which the skull grows. Thus, with our tongues now sitting on the lower palate they do not get the muscular development they need to sit on the upper palate and therefore no longer help with swallowing as they should. Bye-bye tongue muscle.
Decreased postural strength and efficiency. Decreases in tongue strength and position weakens the neck, causes the sinus cavity to collapse and sink. All these changes limit the internal forces of the neck and head’s tensegrity causing the entire foundational structure of the head to internally collapse and the bones of the skull to sink and shrink due to the lack of internal structural support.
The weakening of the tongue and neck also translates to increase rates of snoring, sleep apnea and sagging of the jowls. This causes a vicious cycle of weakening our entire body by limiting the rest we need to hold our bodies upright and strong increasing our tendency to hunch. Add some modern devices and this problem is rife! This hunching problem becomes even worse because now people protract the head by adjusting their neck position forward causing a host of neck and shoulder tension and changes to the rest of our skeletal structure right down to our feet. Also, the change in structure and increase in neck and shoulder tension can affect the blood flow to and from the brain which can lead to a host of mental and physiological issues often attributed to other areas of the body but can be quite literally coming from the dysfunction of our brain and brain stem/upper spinal column.
All these problems now lead up to the decreased size and efficiency of our airways ability to pull in oxygen. Interestingly, research into respiration has shown that the lung of mammals, and especially the human lungs are designed to pull in a huge amount of oxygen and that this is the biggest contributing factor to humans developing our giant human brain. Therefore, any decrease in our overall oxygen intake is not great for long term brain development, let alone the decrease in available energy due to the decreased ability to oxygenate the rest of our body’s cells.
Decreased beauty. Interestingly, what we are seeing in people whose skull bone structure decreases is a decrease in what humans naturally and unconsciously see as beautiful. Without the internal tensegrity structure in the neck and skull, the facial bones begin to sag sinking the cheek tones and sagging the nose lips, the jawline weakens and rounds as opposed to initiating and supporting forward facial growth, the neck protrudes forward causing the neck to sink changing the shape of the shoulders and clavicle and again, this feeds right through the entire structure of the body.
Dumbing us down. With the entire structure of the skull shrinking the space inside the cranial cavity for your brain to grow into also shrinks. Even small changes in the internal cranial cavity cause areas of our brain to form incorrectly or with limited size and distinction.
All these above facts should be rather unnerving if it is the first time you have read about this and really make us as a species question how we are directing our evolution. This is why there is a trend toward returning to more primal methods of human physical and psychological living. The strength, resilience, natural intelligence, independence, tool and skill development and power of our ancient ancestors to live, thrive and settle in some of the harshest environments on planet Earth should be a testament to their evolutionary sophistication. And our modern decline into weak, soft, unadaptable, fearful, button-pushing weaklings who can clearly measure the physical, mental and emotional decline of our children should definitely be a cause for alarm. Now, like all things as we get older many of these changes to become harder to correct due to the body’s limited ability to grow/change. Once formed, many elements of our mind/body become less transmutable.
However, many of these are still reversible to some extent, and if you want to maximise your life, longevity, mobility both physically and mentally then you need to start as soon as possible.
Now, most people think that Qigong is all about energy, and soft, light movements. This is wrong! Or at least, a watered-down hippy feel-good version of the reality of what building energy is actually all about. What Qigong is actually about is how we grow our bodies into the most profound expression of all we are - physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. To achieve this, all Qigong movement, theory and practice are centred around how we grow the three Dantian and how this growth develops us into more complete and evolved animals through the development, movement and cultivation of our human tensegrity field.
And Qigong doesn't only develop the upper Dantian and the Shen but also grows the lower and middle Dantian, their respective substances of Jing and Qi and bodily regions associated with the geometry of those Dantian.
Growing our bodies in Qigong is hard work. And like any exercise can begin less intense to help the newly initiated begin the journey of strengthening their body and gradually as they grow, develop and evolve become increasingly strong, intense and powerful. After all, you would have to agree that Qi cultivation and development should be about making us stronger and more sophisticated and not about justifying the process of becoming weaker and softer. If you would like to know more about Qi Fit Qigong programs that teach you how to begin developing your mind and body to become a strong, more powerful and more complete beast, feel free to get in contact as I have a new program in the works that is some way off at the moment, but that is going to (hopefully) revolutionise the way that Qigong is understood in our modern culture. A way that will help us all correct and fortify our evolutionary trajectory and hopefully change the public opinion that Qigong is a weak, easy exercise for the old and feeble people, but instead, an exercise that strengthens, develops and evolves the entirety of the human being. If you would like any more information about anything contained in this post, please DM me. I hope you’re in good health.
Nicholas Blewett
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