The Practice

17. Diaita: the six factors

δίαιτα diaita — from διαιτάομαι diaitaomai, “to live, to conduct one’s life”. It does not mean nutrition. It means the whole regimen of daily life. The contraction of the word to “what I eat” is modern and is perhaps the single largest loss of meaning in the whole vocabulary.

The medicine of this tradition is above all dietetic. Drug and knife come later — and only if the diaita has failed.

The six factors

The list is systematised in Galen and later codified as six factors that must be regulated because they are neither natural givens nor pathological:

Why this is the most important chapter for practice

Three reasons, and the third is the weightiest.

First, four of the six are pairs of opposites. Not “exercise” but “motion and rest”. You cannot optimise one side. The system does not ask you how much you exercise — it asks you whether the ratio of motion and rest is right for you, now.

Second, you regulate variables, not symptoms. None of the six is a treatment. They are all conditions. Health, in the model, is not constructed — it is allowed to arise when the conditions are right. It is, again, physis as healer.

Third — and this is the really notable one — the emotional state is a factor of equal standing. Not an appendix, not a “psychological factor”. The sixth factor sits in the same list as air and food, because it is held to have the same type of effect: it changes heat, pulse, digestion, sleep.

The unification of body and emotion is not a modern discovery. It is a structural element of a two-thousand-year-old system that simply had no reason to separate them.

The practical tool

It is, I think, the best checklist this tradition produced. When something is not going well, run through all six in order, before you look at anything else:

Air and space? Food? Motion and rest? Sleep and its regularity? The elimination cycles? The emotional state?

In the overwhelming majority of cases, the answer is in these six — and usually in two or three at once.

18. Gymnasion and anatripsis

Galen wrote the most extensive ancient texts on exercise — and some are startlingly modern.

The definition

Galen defines γυμνάσιον gymnasion with one criterion, and it is physiological:

Exercise is movement that changes the breath.

Movement that does not alter the respiratory rhythm is not exercise, however tiring. And what intensity is required to change the breath depends on the person — so the criterion is self-regulating.

The three stages

And here is the most impressive thing. Galen defines three mandatory stages:

1. παρασκευή paraskeuē — warm-up. Mild movement and rubbing with oil, until the body heats and the colour of the skin changes.
2. γυμνάσιον gymnasion — the main exercise.
3. ἀποθεραπεία apotherapeia — cool-down. Mild movement and massage until breath and pulse return.

The third stage is not optional in his system: he holds that abrupt cessation leaves “undigested residues” in the muscles — which is, in the language of chapter 6, exactly the description of delayed-onset muscle soreness.

The tripartite scheme warm-up — main work — cool-down is today a basic principle of sports science. It is the most directly confirmed piece of the inheritance.

The best exercise

Galen writes a whole treatise on the ball — Περὶ τοῦ διὰ μικρᾶς σφαίρας γυμνασίου — and explains why he considers it the best form of exercise. His criteria:

• Moves the whole body, not isolated parts
• Self-regulated — can be gentle or intense
• Requires skill, not just strength: it trains attention along with the body
• Is pleasant — and he mentions this explicitly as an advantage
• Is safe and cheap
• Does not deform

The critique of athletes — and it is fierce

Galen attacks professional athletes openly: he considers them unhealthy. The argument: excessive food, excessive exercise, development of oversized muscular mass that serves no vital function, a life that leaves no time for anything else, and a rapid collapse once they stop.

There is also an older example the tradition cites repeatedly: Herodicos of Selymbria, a trainer who became sickly himself and devised a regime of exercise so demanding that, according to the charge, he prolonged his life without being able to do anything else within it.

The principle is clear: exercise serves life. When life begins to serve exercise, something has been reversed.

Ἀνατριψίς anatripsis — massage

Massage is a full therapeutic tool, not a luxury. It is classified into hard (tightens tissues), soft (relaxes), and symmetrical, and in much/little/moderate — and the combination is chosen on the basis of the krasis and the purpose.

It is used in warm-up, cool-down, convalescence, and in the elderly. Olive oil is the main medium.

19. Askesis: the Stoic method

ἄσκησις askēsis — from ἀσκέω askeō, originally “to work material with skill” (Homer uses it for leather and metal). Then it crosses into athletic training, and from there into ethical work.

The origin is important: it does not mean deprivation. It means working-up. Deprivation is one tool among others, not the aim.

The three fields of Epictetus

Epictetus organises the practice into three topoi (fields), with a clear order of priority:

1. Ὁ περὶ ὀρέξεις — what you desire and what you avoid
The first and most urgent. Goal: not to want what does not depend on you. In practice: each time you are disappointed, ask whether you had placed your expectation on something you do not control.

2. Ὁ περὶ ὁρμάς — how you act
Duty, relation, action. Goal: to act rightly and with reservation — to pursue the outcome without demanding it.

3. Ὁ περὶ συγκαταθέσεις — what you accept as true
The subtlest and last. Goal: not to assent automatically to impressions.

The order is explicitly didactic and Epictetus insists on it: students want to start from the third, because it is the most impressive and looks like logic. And it is the most useless if the first has not come first.

Three concrete techniques

προσοχή prosochē — continuous attention. Epictetus answers the objection “I cannot pay attention all the time”: neither does the craftsman pay attention all the time, but when he is working, he pays attention. And “the work” here is every moment you are awake.

προμελέτη τῶν κακῶν promeletē tōn kakōn — the premeditation of adversity. To think ahead about what can go wrong, calmly and specifically. It is not pessimism. The purpose is double: it reduces the surprise force of the event when it happens, and it restores appreciation for what is now. A warning: the technique has a limit. In someone with already high anxiety or a tendency to anxious rumination, repeated rehearsal of catastrophes feeds rather than relieves. The tradition itself intends it as a brief, periodic tool — not a habit.

ἐφήμερος ἐξέτασις ephēmeros exetasis — the evening review. Seneca describes it as a daily habit: before sleep, he reviews the day and asks what he did well, what wrong, what can change. The critical thing in his formulation: it is done without self-punishment. He himself stresses that he speaks to himself like a judge who has already given pardon. Guilt is not a tool of correction — it is noise that prevents observation.

20. Hesychia: the bodily method of prayer

Here is the only explicitly bodily technique of concentration this tradition produced. And here the greatest historical accuracy of the whole text is required.

The honest dating

The μονολόγιστη εὐχή monologistē euchē — the repetition of a short phrase as a means of concentration — is ancient. Attested from the 4th–5th century in the Desert Fathers.

The connection with the breath appears in the 7th century: John Climacus writes the famous instruction to unite the memory [of the Name] with the breath. One phrase, with no technical detail.

The full bodily technique — body posture, head position, direction of gaze, regulation of breath, descent of the mind into the heart — is attested only in the 13th–14th century:

• Nikephoros the Hesychast (13th c.), On Watchfulness and the Guarding of the Heart
• The text Method of Holy Prayer and Attention, attributed to Symeon the New Theologian but almost certainly not his (Pseudo-Symeon)
• Gregory of Sinai (~1265–1346)

That is: the technique is not apostolic nor early Christian. It is late Byzantine — a thousand years after.

And it was not accepted without opposition. Barlaam of Calabria attacked it openly, mocking the ascetics as ὀμφαλόψυχοι omphalopsychoi — “those whose soul is in the navel”. The dispute was serious and theologically crucial; Gregory Palamas defended the method in the Triads in Defence of the Holy Hesychasts, and the Constantinopolitan synods (1341, 1347, 1351) vindicated his position.

And one more thing, for completeness: the Philokalia itself as a corpus is an editorial undertaking of 1782 — an anthology compiled by Nikodemos the Hagiorite and Makarios of Corinth. The fact that we read these texts as a unified “tradition” owes largely to their selection.

The technique

As described in the texts of the 13th–14th century:

1. Place and time. Quiet, dark, without stimuli. A set hour.
2. Posture. Sit on a low chair. The seat is deliberately low and uncomfortable: it allows neither over-stimulation nor sleep.
3. Head and gaze. The chin toward the chest, the gaze directed toward the centre of the body. (This is the detail that caused the mockery. Functionally it is simple: it removes visual input and closes the stance inward.)
4. Breath. Slowing and regulation of rhythm; coupling of the phrase to the inhalation–exhalation cycle.
5. Descent of the mind into the heart. The attention moves from the head to the chest. This is the central element and the name of the whole: νοερὰ προσευχή noera proseuchē — prayer that is done with the nous, not with the lips.
6. The prayer. A short phrase, repeated, without variety and without elaboration.
7. Ἀφαντασία aphantasia — and this is the most important rule. The prayer is explicitly without images. No visualisation, no scene, no form. If images, lights, voices or sensations appear, the instruction is not to accept them (see chapter 22).

Why it works, without metaphysics

Five things, all measurable:

• The slowing of the breath alters autonomic tone — this is well documented today.
• The removal of visual input drastically reduces the most demanding sensory channel.
• The repetition of a stable phrase occupies the verbal resources that feed rumination.
• Shifting attention to the chest turns attention to an interoceptive signal — and the thoracic region is indeed where emotional change is first located.
• The uncomfortable but steady posture maintains a middle level of arousal.

Whatever one believes about the frame, the mechanics are plausible and consistent.

21. Ten practical principles

There is no canonical list of this kind in the tradition. The following is a synthesis. Each principle is marked [ancient] if it comes from the philosophical–medical branch, [patristic] if from the ascetic, [modern] if it is my own formulation from the above.

1. Eutonia, not strength [ancient]

There are two ways to fail. Before correcting anything, find which extreme you are at: slack chord or over-tightened? The same instruction in opposite states does harm. Most people automatically assume they need more tightening — and often it is the opposite.

2. The criterion is the breath [ancient, Galen]

Exercise is movement that changes the breath. The limit of an effort is not where it hurts, but where the breath becomes choppy or is held. It is the only criterion that self-regulates to each person and to each day.

3. Never cold entry, never cold exit [ancient, Galen]

Paraskeuē — gymnasion — apotherapeia. The third is not optional. The same holds beyond exercise: abrupt entry into and exit from any intense state costs.

4. Measure — and exercise serves life [ancient]

Excess is not a greater virtue. The test is functional: if your practice begins to demand that you sacrifice everything else, the purpose has been inverted.

5. Know what body this is [ancient]

There is no right programme — there is right for this krasis, in this age, in this season, with these habits. And the speed of change matters as much as its direction: the best advice imposed abruptly can be worse than the mediocre one you already follow.

6. Hexis, not intensity [ancient, Aristotle]

You become what you do repeatedly. So the small, repeatable act beats the large, non-repeatable one — always. Not as consolation, but as a mechanical consequence. And there is no attainment — there is only maintenance.

7. Emotion is a dietetic factor [ancient]

The passions of the soul are in the same list as air and food. When something is not well in the body, the sixth factor is checked together with the other five — not afterward, and not by someone else.

8. The locus of freedom is assent [Stoic]

You do not control what comes to you. You control what you sign for. Put a delay between the impression and its acceptance — and examine what exactly you believe at that moment. Almost always there is a hidden proposition that does not withstand examination.

9. Name, do not argue [patristic]

When a persistent thought appears: observe it as an object, give it a name, and do not enter into conversation with it. Arguing with the logismos is already assent in another form.

10. Do not chase experiences [patristic]

The pursuit of impressive states is considered in this tradition the main sign of the wrong road, not of progress. The criterion is not what you felt during. It is how you behave afterward, and how others find you (see chapter 22).

The essential about the essentials

They are not ten. They are one, seen from ten angles:

You do not construct health or attention. You regulate the conditions and let them arise.

The verb is not “to make”. It is “to fit together” — harmozō, whence also the harmonia of chapter 1.

22. Plani: the warning

πλάνη planē — from πλανάομαι planaomai, to wander, to lose one’s way. (A planet is literally “the wandering star”, the one that does not keep a stable position.)

Plani is the self-deception of the practitioner — and the tradition treats it as the chief danger of the practice, not as a marginal case.

The signs

The hesychast texts give an extremely specific list:

• Visions, lights, voices, pleasant sensations. The instruction is absolute: do not accept them. Even if they are genuine, to seek them or rely on them is equally harmful
• Certainty that you are progressing. Considered among the heaviest signs
• Belief that you have a special gift or mission
• Contempt for those who do not do the same — the most reliable sign of all, because it is visible from outside
• Refusal of supervision. The argument “they do not understand, I know what is happening to me”
• Premature isolation from people and obligations

The three protective mechanisms

1. Aphantasia. The prayer is explicitly without images. The reason is functional: a practice that produces images has no way to distinguish what is fantasy and what is not. By closing the channel, the main source of error is closed.

2. Obedience / referral to a third party. Whatever happens is reported to an experienced person. It is not discipline for discipline’s sake — it is calibration: the measuring instrument is the same as the measured, so external reference is needed (chapter 16).

3. The criterion of fruits. The value of a state is judged not by the state but by what the person became afterward: more patient or more irritable? easier to live with or harder?

The scale of the danger

The most interesting element is that the tradition considers plani more dangerous than failure. The person who achieves nothing knows it, and can correct. The person in plani has lost the very instrument with which he would recognise his error.

And the essential thing: the signs the list gives are not internal but social and behavioural. It does not ask you to examine what you feel — it asks you to observe how you speak to the people around you.

This is methodologically extremely clever: it moves the criterion outside the system that may be faulty.