Gymbivalence

Caught myself completely stuck and in a joey-type dysfunctional mode today morning. Story goes like this. I had promised the gym instructor last evening that i will go to the gym twice today, to have got off early to go for an academic programme in the evening. Got up today morning in a half-out-of-sheets-groggy way yearning for coffee in bed and cursing the whole programme where the sun pops up at 7 sharp, and sets things in motion. On those lines I am completely for a nuclear war, with perennial deep winters. Anyway, I digress.. So i was generally feeling woozy and had convinced myseslf that i was unfit to go to the gym, woke up another hour later to realize that was rounds was postponed by an hour. Guilt came up like a tide.../puke, and I ran to the gym to catch a quick work out. Got there to realize that my instructor is going on his morning break. Somehow, instead of staying back and catching up on my work out, i ran back with the excuse of having to read for rounds.

Am not very sure whether there are psychological reports on gym attitudes; but then these days psychologists abound and there is a study on everything. Its not that i don't like going to the gym , and the whole episode got me wondering about what it is that really gets me to the gym. There could be the insecurity-pride continuum, the regularity of a routine, external push from the instructor etc. What seems possible is that the balance between external and internal loci of control for the decision could be upset, and maybe the reason why we vacillate. More curious is the question on a larger scale; whether gym attendance is fostered by a sense of better-being,<:)> or a sense of insecurity. A friend with whom I've had this discussion believes that this is a dichotomous concept and even that it is the latter which prods more gay men to flock to the gym. I should think that we are on a continuum of ego-security(so to speak), and we slide along this at times and both the ends could push us to the gym, a tangible and easy mode to self improvement.

And some of us have the opportunity of being able to lech at the gym.. :)

osho

Wheezing geezers..

Some of the most interesting takes on life is offered by patients with hysteria. That if I am not able to deal with the anxiety that my 'unconscious' turns up, my 'unconscious' will act crazy or ill. Not kind of course, but one is definitely distressed by patients waking u up at 3 am on a night duty complaining of breathlessness, where nothing organic could be found; and you re-assure the patient and try to go back to sleep.

A slower reappraisal might suggest that this could be another instance of according relatively less sympathy to a symptom of mental causation, despite being critical of our medical colleagues for not being 'sensitive' to psychological distress. Being a learned response, one slips from this high ideal at times, often later into the night and with more sleep backlog. There may be multiple facets to this particular problem. The primary being that, in the absence of any real evidence organic brain disorders in hysteria, we're forced to rely on freudian concepts of dissociation which are, incidentally close to the idea of malingering, give or take a little gain. :) The more curious idea being that we are somehow programmed to give less credit to a 'software' defect of our mind than a brain disease and that even less than for a general medical illness. I am guessing it is related to the primal position with which the mind is treated, as it is root of identity of self, and thus the self of pride one has in oneself(refraining from 'go'). And that any problem 'in your mind' may thus reflect poor control over our own 'self'.

A toast to the control freaks of the world..and the hysterics. being some of both myself. :)

osho

The outside of the asylum

One often wonders if sanity is relative as insanity may only be a perceptual phenomenon coloured by the state of the person who lords over the decision of deeming one sane. This, is a relative attmept at sanity. As much as can be reasonably expected to be left behind after days of working in one of the oldest of the asylums in India.

As it often reminds the few students who pass by the now defunct main gate of the department of psychiatry(picture), the flowers and impressive porticos in stone only serve to mute the cries of some of its inhabitants. That's right, it is the junior residents under the payroll of the henious Vogons who lord over the throne of this century old insituition; the patients having gone on to much higher levels of existence as ensured by chlorpromazine and the NHRC.

This post hopes to echo the cries of all those who languish till late, bitch at the coffee shop and embarrass ourselves in therapy, thesis and academics through an MD degree and to chronicle the few pickled anecdotes from within the beautiful stone walls.

and thus,

with due respects to Douglas Adams, and Wonko the sane.

from the outside of the asylum,

osho