Saturday, 23 February 2013

3.0 Three Nutritions for a Human

3.1 What is "Three Nutritions for a Human"?
Exist within our environment are three nutritions for the soul, mind and body for any human. This topic is to discuss on what they are exactly and how we can gain or build these nutritions into ourselves. This topic was first initiated by Abu Productive during the Productive Muslim Seminar 2013.

3.2 The Three Nutritions

In actuality, one's life is comprised by three elements namely spiritual nutrition, mental nutrition and physical nutrition. A person lacking in any element would result in a lesser substance of oneself.

3.2.1 Spiritual Nutrition
To begin with, what is a spirit? A spirit, in the context of conventional perspective, is a vital principle within living beings. In the context of Islam, on the other hand, it is defined as somewhat similar to the conventional perspective, but a question arises in addition to it: Where is the source of spirit? A spirit is a soul that is given life to a living form by Allah s.w.t. (glorified and exalted be He), wherein, basically, all types of substances surrounding us have their own spirits. Subhanallah, do we even know that even the immobile wall of our house, or even the unseen inhaled oxygen and exhaled carbon dioxide have their own spirits? Imagine the oxygen, for example, not having its spirit that Allah s.w.t. has given life to it, then can we breathe and live in this very moment? Now, let's look into the possible sources for the spiritual nutrition.

Two basic sources for our spiritual nutrition are Al-Quran and Sunnah. The Al-Quran is the holy book of His knowledge, which Allah s.w.t. has descended it to earth through Nabi Muhammad s.a.w. (peace be upon him), whereas the Sunnah is the contexts of the blessed life of Nabi Muhammad s.a.w..
"The Al-Quran is the medium of Allah s.w.t. conversing to you, and solah is the medium of you conversing to Allah s.w.t." - Muslim Speakers
Other sources of spiritual nutrition can also be derived from Juma'ah (Friday)'s pre-solah (pray) preach, books, people, shura - a meeting to share knowledge/ opinion in scores of people - etc.

3.2.2 Mental Nutrition
What is a mental? A mental is the mind's capacity of the brain, which allows us to think, therein differentiates us - humans - from His other worldly creations. The possible sources of mental nutritions can be derived from education, advises, books, critical thinking, etc. Nevertheless, here we will look into a source that is rarely looked into called You are What You Watch (YAWYW).

The power of the concept of YAWYW is often overlooked. This concept can either develop us into a  person with a positive mentality or negative mentality. How does it work? It works slowly as we live our life with its source, comparatively, a crawling intangible substance to its destination - us. YAWYW can be factorized from countless sources namely, for instances, television, books, influential people, etc. Let's take a youngster as a test subject. In the case that he/ she is a good child to his/ her parents at core, but destined to have introduced to a television show called Modern Family - a show focusing on a non-muslim family and its relatives living their lives against the context of Islam - as such. A negative characteristic found in the show is  the son and daughters raising their voices when speaking to their parents, na'uzubillah. After a month of watching the show, what would happen to the youngster who was but a good child at core? Alert, this concept works on all ages.

This powerful concept of YAWYW is also discussed by a sister in Islam. Her article can be read here.

3.2.3 Physical Nutrition
In studying this sub topic, it is diverged into categories of internal and external. At foremost, the internal factor comes beforehand the external. The internal factor is our dietary. A diet can either be good or bad. A common diet is as per the food pyramid that was taught to us during our days in school. In addition, a diet can be used to maintain weight, reduce wight, or gain weight. Basically, a good balanced diet comprises of three meals per day - breakfast, lunch, and dinner - wherein the breakfast needs to be taken in heavy or medium portion, the lunch dependable on breakfast's portion, and dinner is to be light. Miraculously, subhanallah, a diet can be worked for miscellaneous purposes, where it can be used in curing diseases, and providing good health for the mentality as such. A research was done in working a gluten-free and casein-free diet in treating autism spectrum disorders (Austin et al.).

The external factor, on the other hand, relates to our physique attributes. This physique attributes can be developed individually or in a party of two or more. A good environment is as much vital as breathing for we want to develop not demolish. That is to say, do our recreation activities in a clean and peaceful environment to the highest likelihood. Some good places for feeding our external physical nutrition are to go to the lake, beach, garden, gym, etc. What possible sources can be practiced for feeding the external physical nutrition? Activities to do either individually or in a party are sports, jogging, running, body building, etc.
"Exercise is for the brain." - Abu Productive
Interestingly, maintaining our external physical nutrition actually co-relates to the mental's health. Some researches had been done regarding the relationship between exercising and intelligence quality. Stipulated by a researcher in studying the relationship between the two variables with the subject of children as participants, consisting two groups of those who exercise and the otherwise, resulted in an improved IQ and social scale for the group of children practicing routine exercise whereas nil improvement for the other (Philip D. et al.). In addition, here is some other opinions on building our physical nutrition by a brother in Islam.

I hope this topic has benefited you as much as it has benefited me, insya'Allah. The next topic will be posted in the near future, insya'Allah.

No comments:

Post a Comment