Maintaining wellness is really quite simple. It’s so simple that most people reject just how easy it is. It’s so simple that it doesn’t take a library or a lifetime of learning. We naturally know how to stay healthy, if only we listen to our bodies when we are children and ignore the influence of the adults around us.

When it comes to wellness, there are only five things that matter:

• what you put into your body
• what you put onto your body
• how you use your body
• what you choose to fill your mind with
• who you choose to surround yourself with

What you put into your body is, well, everything you eat, drink, or breathe. If it didn’t grow in a field or on a tree, be thinking about where it came from. The healthiest diet there is consists of water, raw fruits, vegetables, nuts, and grains, and unprocessed juices. There are other things that are fine to eat (including meats, breads, and the above-mentioned items in cooked form), but the further you get from a raw, naturally-grown diet, the more your body has to work and the less nutritional benefit you derive from the food. Similarly, what you breathe should be natural and unprocessed. That basically means air (nitrogen and oxygen) is good, anything else is bad.

What you put onto your body is a simple extension of what you put into your body. It’s obvious if you’ve every paid any attention that the things that touch your skin end up affecting the skin, and, in some cases, penetrate deeper to affect your overall body function. What’s not so obvious is what you actually come into contact with over the course of a day or a year. Water (rain, creeks, the ocean) is good, as are the juices and husks of just about anything edible (fruits, vegetables, fish and animal oils). Pretty much anything else is bad. This includes harsh household chemicals (cleaners), all forms of airborne and surface pollution (car exhaust, cigarette smoke, machinery smoke, non-natural greases and oils). Basically, if you wouldn’t eat it, you shouldn’t be getting it on your skin.

How you use your body is just as important as what goes in. You can eat a perfect diet, but if you don’t move your body regularly and exercise strenuously a few times a week, it will atrophy. Walk more and pursue active hobbies. Find ways to be active doing your job. And exercise regularly. Three to four times per week, you should be working up a sweat for thirty minutes or more. This builds your muscles, sure, but it also changes your metabolism so you stay warmer more easily and burn more calories even when you aren’t exercising. Additionally, it increases oxygen flow throughout the body, which sharpens the senses, reduces the risk of many diseases and ailments, and sharpens mental function. You’ll need less sleep. You’ll build emotional strength. Plus you get a natural endorphine rush, a healthy high, that lifts you spiritually.

What you choose to fill your mind with affects every aspect of your life. What programs you have running on your computer directly affects how the computer works; the brain is the same. Read to be inspired rather than just entertained. Learn new things and ideas. Decide what results you want and then choose to listen only to others who have achieved them (or at least come close). Ignore gossip, mass-media, hype, and marketing. Programming yourself for wellness starts with what sources you choose to listen to.

Who you choose to surround yourself with brings everything else together. The friends you choose directly impact the choices you make about everything: what you eat, the environment you spend time in, how active you are, and what ideas you try and accept. Equally important, if not more so, close relationships heal and lift the spirit. The more people you are emotionally intimate with, the more power you create to live a life of greatness. Physical touch from a close friend is emotionally strengthening and mentally calming. If you surround yourself with negative thinkers, worriers, drama magnets, and those who always seem to be the first to be sick with whatever is going around, you’ll become those people. If you surround yourself with happy, successful, positive individuals, you’ll become those people. Your choice.

Everything else about your life stems from the five pillars above. Wellness is the natural result when the body, mind, heart, and spirit are fed properly. Disease is the result of being out of alignment. Put your attention on each of them and see what you’re filling your body and mind with. Figure out where you need to make adjustments. Then go make them.

In the news

• Your dog is an angel: Need a Walking Partner? Try a Dog
• Your dog is a devil: A Pet’s Bite Can Pass on MRSA
• Well, which is it? Angel or devil? A guide to help you decide: Things to Know If You’re Contemplating a Pet

Quote for the week

The concept of total wellness recognizes that our every thought, word, and behavior affects our greater health and well-being. And we, in turn, are affected not only emotionally but also physically and spiritually. – Greg Anderson

Healthy thoughts,
Jeff

Well, it looks like swine flu could officially be declared a global problem. Cases are showing up all around the world at accelerating rates. People are dying. What should we do?

The same thing we’ve always been doing: live our lives. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: keep a level head through all of this. Even if it’s declared a pandemic, it’s still unlikely to be a major problem for you. Yes, it will probably affect you in some way, but no, it probably won’t be all that major a factor to you or anyone you know.

The economy has slowed. Drastically. If you listen to the news, you know you’re supposed to be in the worst conditions that have existed anywhere in your lifetime. But is it really affecting you? For most people, there are changes, granted, but for most people, life is going on basically as normal. Things have changed, but things are not radically worse.

Yes, yes, for some people things are worse. Really worse. Some people are losing their homes, their jobs, their retirement. But most people aren’t.

News businesses are good at finding and reporting the most extreme cases and making it sound like they are representative of the situation at large. But those situations are not representative. At best they are demonstrative of potential outcomes. Warning flags, if you will.

Yes, there are problems out there. Focus on them and you’ll experience anxiety and fear. But choose instead to focus on the good things you have, the life you’re leading, and the beauty around you, and you will experience a beautiful life.

Mother Theresa was surround by suffering and pain. Did she let that stop her from being filled with love and joy and experiencing beauty?

See the world not through the eyes of the news. See the world through your own eyes. Free yourself from being told what to think about what’s going on around you and you’ll find the opportunity for happiness.

In abundance.

In the news

• I believe they should put more effort into getting and staying in shape, and less in fighting the rules: Ohio state troopers fight weight limit rule
• Return of an old problem: Two Ways to Tackle Tuberculosis
• Another attempt to convey an important message: Graphic video aims to stem teen pregnancies

Quote for the week

There are few nudities so objectionable as the naked truth. – Agnes Repplier

Healthy thoughts,
Jeff

Where are your boundaries?

We all have them. Everywhere. We build boundaries around our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual world. We need them, to some extent. To protect ourselves from getting hurt, for instance.

But boundaries are like leftovers: you need to check up on them regularly, and get rid of them after some time. Otherwise they make your life stink.

Take that wall you’ve built up around your heart to protect yourself from loss, because of a relationship gone bad or a death of a loved one. You know, where you don’t let others get too close to you because you don’t want to be hurt again.

Is that wall really serving you? Is it really preventing loss? If you numb the heart (even just a little bit) so that you can’t get hurt, are you improving your life?

The funny thing is, by not letting others get close, you are increasing the likelihood they will leave you. The very effort to protect has the exact opposite effect.

Sure, you won’t lose a deep, loving relationship. You can’t lose something you don’t have. Instead, you will prevent the depths of spiritual beauty that come from being fully immersed into another’s life.

The same is true with all of your boundaries. Each one protects you from something, but at the expense of blocking depth in that aspect of your life.

Here’s a challenge: every day, identify one of your boundaries. Then spend the rest of the day experimenting with not enforcing it. Open yourself to the good and the bad for one day. Tear down the wall and let the world in.

Walk up to strangers and start conversations. Hug someone you feel uncomfortable around. Eat a food that you normally avoid. Attend a discussion on a contentious topic and try to understand all the viewpoints (even the ones you strongly disagree with). Go out for the day without grooming in any way. Try something new in the bedroom. Belch loudly in a public place. Find something that scares or intimidates you in any way and experience it.

Make this a practice that you continue every day for the rest of your life.

Remove the boundaries from your life, and you’ll live easier, happier, and freer. You’ll start to experience living on a new level. Yes, you will get hurt sometimes. But you’ll also feel an overwhelming joy regularly.

The ideal goal, the desired result, is to eliminate every boundary. You’ll feel a kind of bliss that can’t be described, only experienced. Enlightenment.

And it all starts by picking a boundary and letting it go.

In the news

• Good for the soul: Music ‘nurtures’ premature babies
• Here’s a man who touched more lives than most: US ‘Viagra scientist’ dies at 92
• ‘Vinny’ might have a job for you: Cancer drug erases fingerprints

Quote for the week

A sound mind in a sound body is a short but full description of a happy state in this world. – John Locke

Healthy thoughts,
Jeff

Do you own your things, or do your things own you?

We all have too much stuff. Even if you think you don’t, you more than likely do. I mean, how much stuff do you really need? Probably just a fraction of what you have.

As a technology and information worker, most of what I need to do the work I love exists as a single computer. That, an internet connection, and a few changes of clothes is about it for my needs. Beyond that, it’s all extra.

I recently moved everything I used to have in a storage unit from Seattle to Anchorage. Besides my motorcycle, there was about a half ton of stuff. Literally. A half a ton. And in my book, that’s too much.

What is actually in there that I need? Not much. There are some tools that I use from time to time. Some fun computer accessories. Some books that I haven’t gotten brave enough to part with yet. And a bunch of crap that I’ll never actually use but that seems like it might be useful someday, if I ever get around to the project I have in mind for it.

I’m slowly coming to terms with being able to part with it all. Very little of it actually matters, but it has history and stories behind it, or plans ahead of it.

Until I’ve detached from my stuff, it owns me. Once I’ve detached, I own it. Once I own it, I can get rid of it. And that will be a good day.

In the news

• And they’re a waste of paper: Point-of-Sale Printers May Trigger Asthma
• Entirely missing the point: Natural birth classes questioned
• Yawn: Snoring ‘cures’ fail for majority

Quote for the week

Identity is theft of the self. – Estee Martin

Healthy thoughts,
Jeff

For the first time in over four years, I’m going back to work in an office next week. Having spent the last (nearly) half-decade in my own workspace, I have come to enjoy having full control of the contents and layout of that space.

I’ve been looking for ways to maximize personalization while staying within the limits, and I came across this article about Feng Shui in the office. If you’re into Feng Shui, of course, it’s probably overly simplistic, and if you’re not, it’s probably overly vague, but basically it suggests ideas to maximize ch’i.

Now I don’t directly accept Feng Shui, and here’s why: some parts of it make common sense for obvious reasons having nothing to do with mystical forces, while other parts are (under scrutiny) silly. For instance, in the article, the suggestion “DON’T: Keep cacti or sharp plants on your desk, as they create fierce ch’i.” could be re-written as “DON’T: Keep cacti or sharp plants on your desk as you will occasionally brush against them causing pain.” This isn’t “fierce ch’i”, but rather applied common sense.

On the other hand, “DO: Position your computer on the west side of your desk to enhance creativity or on the southeast to generate income.” is irrelevant.

It doesn’t matter which part of your desk the computer sits on, what matters is what you believe about which part of your desk your computer sits on. If I told you that putting all your pens cap-end down in your pen cup would bring you harmony, a mysterious thing happens: you think about inner harmony every time you intentionally put a pen in the holder cap-end down. By thinking about inner harmony, you bring about inner harmony.

This is because your beliefs create your habits and your habits determine your outcome.

There is no mystical ch’i, but the basic concepts of Feng Shui can still be useful: think about what you have, how you use it, and the aesthetics of placement. By thinking about how you organize your office, you naturally create an environment that is pleasing to be in and functionally supportive.

And that makes you more productive and more likely to achieve your goals.

In the news

• Quick-fix mentality plus drugs… yeah, makes sense: Impulsivity Raises Alcoholism Risk
• Suggestions paraphrased: pay attention to your surroundings: Ladders, Swings and More Can Cause Peril
• I think I agree with the patient here: Patient wants right to refuse electroshocks

Quote for the week

Consider your house from an aesthetic point of view. – Anthea Turner

Healthy thoughts,
Jeff