Who’s Uneducated Now?
In our culture, if we were to say someone was uneducated, that could be deemed as offensive. The interpretation of education is also different across cultures.
For this article, I shall define uneducated as “having or showing a poor level of education.”
I’d like to challenge your interpretation of what you see as a poor level of education. Allow me to share 3 examples:
Example 1 - The Tribesman
Example 2 - The Manager
Example 3 - The GP
In these examples, all are male, all are 42 and all are defined as educated within their own culture.
The Tribesman
Overview
The tribesman lives in the wilderness amongst a small community. He lives in a dwelling made of animal skins, branches, mud and leaves. He has numerous children. He is well respected within his tribe. He doesn’t know what technology is, has never seen a ‘house’ or a wheel. He can draw but cannot read and write. He communicates verbally and his community share stories each night. He is highly satisfied with his life.
Health
The tribesman is physically strong, lean, flexible and agile. He hunts for animals, forages many varieties of plants and berries and eats slowly with his family each mealtime. He has straight teeth, a wide smile, a strong jaw and relatively inoffensive breath. The tribesman sleeps well each night when the sun goes down and doesn’t snore. There is no doctor known to this man. He relies entirely on the wisdom passed down from generations before and remains in generally optimal health unless physically injured. The tribesman rests between hunts, foraging, dancing and intimacy.
Breathing
When at rest, this tribesman can barely be heard breathing. Upon close inspection, only his lower ribs and abdomen swell upon each in breath, returning to a neutral position upon each out breath. When active, this tribesman breathes heavier but his breathing is still quite slow until he is actually upon an animal, when his pace and breathing intensify. Once he has caught his food, his body recovers quickly and he is able to hunt again and again. He does not experience allergies, asthma or any restriction to his breath. He breathes through his nose at almost all times unless he is talking or sprinting.
Breathing Education
The tribesman would have his lips gently pressed shut by his mother when he was very young. As he grew up, his community would tell him to close his mouth if he wasn’t eating, drinking, talking, singing or chasing an animal. His tribe would partake in a slow chantlike song regularly where the breath would be slowed right down. He was told that to be strong and healthy, he needs to breathe through his nose. He was told that only sick and dying people breathe through their mouth. He was shown animals who were close to death because they were breathing through their mouths and staggering. He breathed comfortably through his nose his entire life.
The Manager
Overview
The manager lives in a central heated brick built house and drives a car to work for 2 hours each day. He uses chemicals to clean his home. He has a dog. He has 2 children. He is well respected within his community. He is considered an expert in technology and utilises technology wherever possible to reduce having to walk further. He is highly literate but hasn’t drawn or been creative since school, although he enjoyed it. He spends his evening exhausted, sitting still watching TV or catching up on work and leant over his laptop. He feels old and his body often hurts. The manager feels unfulfilled with something in his life, but as he loves his family and enjoys most of his job, he can’t put his finger on it.
Health
The manager used to be physically fit up until university, but over the years exercise has taken a back seat, focusing instead on work and family. He walks his dog at weekends and makes it to the gym once per week. He buys his food online which is mostly processed premade food with very little variety of ingredients. He has a coffee for breakfast on the road, rushes a sandwich whilst catching up on work at his desk and only sometimes makes it back in time to eat with his family in the evening. Often if late in, he’ll eat bent over his bowl in front of the TV. He has slightly crooked teeth but quite a nice smile. He has developed bad breath. He doesn’t sleep well and snores which frustrates his wife. He doesn’t like to go to the doctor and generally suffers from regular colds, allergies, tense muscles, dry lips and an irritable bowel with regular flatulence but not much else. He relies on knowledge from his parents, school, university, work and media. If he really wants to know something he will search for it online. The businessman never feels like he gets a rest between work, driving, kids and intimacy which is less regular than he’d like with his wife.
Breathing
When at rest, this businessman breathes fast and heavily, easily audible within the same room. Upon close inspection, his upper chest and shoulders lift when he breathes, there is also minimal outward movement of the abdomen upon the inbreath and returns to neutral upon outbreath. When active, this manager breathes heavily and fast, gasping for air through his mouth. During and after exercise his body struggles to recover and it often exhausts him for a few hours. He sometimes feels short of breath especially when he is approaching a deadline.
Breathing Education
The manager didn’t go to nursery or school until he was 5. Because of this he was rarely sick as a young boy. He was active and happy and had a small group of friends who lived in his village. They always played outside. His mother cooked fresh food for him every day and he chewed his food because his mother told him to chew his food before swallowing. He breathed through his nose. His parents never mentioned breathing to him. As far as he was aware breathing is as complicated as IN - OUT and FAST - SLOW. He was never unwell so never had any reason to consider breathing as something to look into. As he grew up, he started to feel stressed, run around less, spend less time doing things he loved. He got sick with common colds and spent chunks of time breathing through his mouth. He hated how it felt when he felt congested but he considered it normal as everyone got congested. He saw adverts telling him to use drugs to decongest his nose. He bought these drugs, pushed through the dreadful nights of sleep and carried on working. He started to develop a habit of breathing through his nose in the day for the most part, but he began to sigh and yawn regularly. He would easily feel anxious and he would end up sleeping with his mouth open at night. Various marketing or media channels reinforced that this was normal, without him ever applying conscious effort to learn this.
The GP
Overview
The GP (General Practitioner/Doctor) lives in a central heated brick built house and walks 10 minutes to work each day. He uses chemicals to clean his home. He has a cat. He has 1 child. He is well respected within his community. He is considered an expert in medicine and health. He is highly literate and has studied for many years to obtain the knowledge he now has to help treat others. He spends his evenings with his wife and child and is home on time each night. He sees so many people who are worse off than him and he is conscientious so puts the needs of his patients before his during the day, even if that means not getting up from his desk, missing lunch or not drinking enough. He often feels tired and overworked. He really believes in what he does, but he wishes he had more time for himself and with each patient.
Health
The GP has always struggled with fitness due to suffering from asthma as a child. He often goes for walks at weekends and occasional evenings, but he doesn’t enjoy sports. He buys his food at the supermarket because he enjoys seeking out foods for new recipes. He really enjoys cooking and does this with his family in the evening so that they eat well. He has eggs and porridge for breakfast, eats leftover home cooked for lunch when he remembers and eats a good meal every night. He watches TV but enjoys reading fiction or researching patients’ conditions in the evening too. He has a very narrow and long face. Even after braces he still has crooked teeth and his smile does not show many teeth. He has always had slightly bad breath. He sleeps well, but snores and wakes up unrefreshed. He doesn’t like to go to the doctor because he is a doctor, but attends a check up yearly now that he is over 40. He relies on knowledge from his medical studies, medical conferences and scientific papers. The GP manages to rest in the evening and weekend but not at all during the working day.
Breathing
When at rest, this GP breathes audibly. Upon wheezing, he uses his asthma inhaler. Upon close inspection, his upper chest and shoulders lift when he breathes, his stomach sucks in upon inbreath and returns to neutral upon outbreath. When active, this GP breathes heavily and fast, gasping for air through his mouth. He never really pushes himself hard enough to need to recover from exercise, however sometimes when walking his muscles can feel fatigued. He often feels short of breath especially when in the clinic and behind schedule. He can physically breathe through his nose when chewing but finds it unsatisfying and feels a strong hunger for more air so reverts back to mouth breathing.
Breathing Education
The GP mixed with many other children from a young age. He also had a cat and a dog. He wasn’t deemed a ‘sickly baby’ but developed asthma quite young. His parents took him to the doctor on a number of occasions and they diagnosed him with asthma and prescribed inhalers. They advised he keep the pets out of his bedroom as this could exacerbate his asthma. As the GP grew up, the asthma was normal to him and he wasn’t the only one in his classes who used an inhaler. Some kids used to want to pretend to use his inhaler because they thought they looked cool. He trusted that an inhaler was his only option because he had been prescribed it by a GP. Upon leaving school, he had experienced a few life events which made him want to help people and chose to become a doctor. He studied for many years and attended placements within doctor’s surgeries before qualifying. He knew how to diagnose a number of respiratory conditions, refer for specialist advice and wrote prescriptions for countless drugs, sprays and inhalers. At no point did his formal medical education indicate that his teeth and health could have been affected by his cumulative breathing style since a baby. At no point did he try to train himself to breathe through his nose instead of his mouth.
I hope this article has challenged how you look at education. I’ll now ask you, who is uneducated?
Did you recognise yourself?
LiNK BREATHING offers online Breathing & Awareness Coaching. If you recognise part of yourself in either The Manager or The GP, feel free to get in touch for a free consultation to see how you could be feeling better and living more of a life.
Why LiNK BREATHING? Jane Tarrant, Founder of LiNK BREATHING is passionate about supporting others to feel empowered to improve their own health in a way that is incremental, accessible, habit driven and based on awareness. For many this starts with addressing dysfunctional breathing and general body awareness. Within a short number of weeks, Jane supports her clients to feel more in touch with their own bodies, recognise daily habits which before went unnoticed and start to lay the foundations of a much healthier, happier and kinder (including to themselves) life.
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