Sleeping With Gratitude

Sleeping is essential for your well-being, allowing your mind and body to heal from the day and recharge for the next. What you do just before you sleep is of vital importance and so is your mindset.  The following exercise is a great way to relax the mind and sets a healing tone for a nurturing night's sleep:

"Before you go to sleep tonight, lie comfortably in your bed and begin giving thanks inwardly. Remember everyone who helped you today. Call up their image in your mind's eye and thank them for their support or challenge, niceness or meanness, or simply their presence in your life.  Identify what they were teaching you and how and what they were balancing. Continue until you feel great gratitude for your day - until you see that both sides are perfectly balanced and both are love. Going to sleep with a grateful, open heart is a powerful healing practice. Your dreams will become more inspiring, and you will awaken in the morning with a lighter state of mind."

- Dr. John F. DeMartini

from The Breakthrough Experience

Healthy Reading: "The Starch Solution" by Dr. John McDougall

The Starch Solution is the culmination of over 40 years of successfully treating thousands of people simply with diet, by one of the first modern-day medical doctors to prove that food is truly more powerful than medicine. While this book has some limited popularity overseas, the pervasive and ingrained myths about our protein, calcium, and B12 needs, along with an outright addiction to animal fats, will keep most people from ever reading this book. With so many South Africans jumping onto the "low-carb, high animal fat" highway to chronic disease, they are lumping the refined, simple carbohydrates with the unrefined, complex carbohydrates (starches), but to the detriment of their long-term health. Starches are like rocket fuel for our bodies, providing usable energy and longevity. As Dr. McDougall discusses, every major culture around the world based their diet on some sort of unrefined starch. In recent decades, an overemphasis has been placed on protein and fat, leading to an explosion of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and many other chronic diseases. There is a good reason why we start breaking down starches in our mouths (unlike proteins and fats) via the enzyme amylase found in our saliva: we not only survive on starches, but thrive. If you would like to save money on future medical bills, while enjoying life to its fullest, I highly recommend reading this important book.

How To Avoid Becoming Chair-Shaped

As we get farther and farther away from our natural movements and positions in our increasingly motorized and computerized modern life, our bodies are adapting, but in a way that is not healthy. The optimal health of our bodies is directly dependent on a supple, strong, flexible, and balanced spinal column.  As Joseph Pilates once said, "A man is as healthy as his spinal column."  While prolonged sitting is practically unavoidable, there are some simple steps you can take to help prevent your body from literally becoming "chair-shaped:"

1. Walk regularly:  Our bodies evolved to walk several kilometers a day.  Just as you make the time to eat and sleep, walking must also become an essential component of your life.  Be sure to keep your chin up to improve your posture, and you'll enjoy walking even more.

2. Squat every day:  Before chairs became the norm for sitting, our anscestors were squating.  Since we no longer have to squat whatsoever, it is essential that you make this simple exercise a part of your daily routine. If you can't squat, like all too many people, don't squat lower than your comfort level. As you get stronger and more flexible, you can slowly work toward achieving a full squat.

3. Don't sit when you exercise:  To strengthen your body for your natural upright posture, you should avoid doing most of your excercising while sitting.  Since most sitting exercises never simultaneously involve both your arms and legs, sitting disengages your core and back muscles and effectively disconnects your upper and lower body.

4. Enjoy the present moment:  Keep your mind from focusing on tension, stress, worry and fear about the future. When you think about the future, you subconsciously lean forward slightly, which over time, will change your posture.  As Eckhart Tolle so consicely put it, "You create a good future by creating a good present."

5. Keep your nervous system flowing freely:  Your brain is in constant communication with the billions of nerve receptors in every joint, muscle, and tendon of your body, called proprioceptors. However, subluxations interfere with this communication, making you less aware of poor postural habits. Regular chiropractic care keeps these messages flowing freely, allowing you to have more control of your posture, and enabling you to feel and look human once again.


https://www.walkingwithattitude.com/articles/features/perfecting-your-walking-posture
http://in.bgu.ac.il/en/fohs/SMARL/Publications/effect%20of%20regular%20walking.pdf
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/176843.php

Healthy Thought