WHAT IS HEALTH?
I’m going to share with you some information that not many people know, and fewer understand.
This is actually our natural state of being – it is our birth right! It is the way we are supposed to be.
As I said in the article SUCCESS, coherence and intention, this term coherence comes from the language of Reference Point Therapy. It is also a scientific term: a coherent light pattern is one which is focused. When you focus the beam of a torch, the light becomes more intense; brighter… similarly, when we focus our light, (our awareness, our energy)… we become more powerful. Specifically what this means to us as human beings, is allowing our head (thoughts), our heart (emotions), and our gut (instincts) to be in harmony. When we operate like that, we are coherent, and that means healthy.
If there is something wrong, it is because some part of you is not communicating with the other parts. You are, on some level, incoherent.
What this new understanding means – and let’s be really clear: this is modern, cutting edge information that I am giving you here. Only very recently has this new approach to healing been discovered. What I am talking about here is a NEW PARADIGM, a completely new approach to health and healing.
What this new understanding means, is that we can HEAL ourselves very quickly, very easily, and permanently – now. This is the Holy Grail of healing.
We don’t have to keep on repeating the same patterns of illness, poverty, unhealthy relationship. We don’t have to visit the doctor anymore, or spend thousands of euros on psychotherapy, or keep on going to bio-energy healing again and again. We are able now, if we so choose, to become more coherent!
If health and joy are our birthright, why do so many people suffer from poor health and depression?
The reason why so many people are unhealthy is that our society is unhealthy.
You don’t need me to tell you why and how our society is unhealthy – it’s obvious. Essentially, health is our natural state, but we have become very far removed from what is natural. It’s not natural to spend so many hours inside. It’s not natural to spend so many hours sitting down. It’s not natural to sit in chairs, or to stare for hours at the pixels of a computer screen. It’s not natural to… I could go on, but I won’t because you know all this.
What to do about it?
Well, if you want to be healthy, I offer you here some practical advice:
- The body needs exercise every day. It needs to stretch, and the muscles need to be used regularly. You don’t have to over-do it, but do DO it! (I’ll write an article on proper exercise later).
- Breathe deeply and slowly.
- Diet: You need to eat fresh, healthy food, and drink lots of water. If you eat meat, eat only a little (once or twice a week is about right). The human body is not designed to eat large quantities of meat, and doing so causes toxins. (I will write an article on nutrition and vegetarian diet later).
- Practice deep relaxation daily.
- Meditate. Meditation is relaxation taken to a whole other level. When you meditate, you combine deep relaxation with focused awareness (concentration), and the result is a profound, powerful meeting between YOU and YOURSELF. It’s hard to describe – if you have experienced it, you don’t need me to tell you. If you haven’t… I’ll write an article on meditation later!
If you put these 5 points – exercise, breathing, relaxation, diet, and meditation – into practice daily, you will be well on the way to perfect, radiant health. Remember, that means:
“abundant energy and vibrant wisdom merged with physical well-being and peace of mind, bestowing an all-consuming sense of JOY!”
Practicing these 5 points will help to re-align the different aspects of yourself (for example body, emotions, and thoughts). This means coherence, and therefore greater health.
If you get stuck, it may be that there is a blockage. I highly recommend Reference Point Therapy as a unique, highly efficient alternative healing method – quickly and permanently releasing blockages. One such blockage could be a lack of discipline – lack of discipline is really low self-esteem: when we love ourselves deeply, we don’t need ‘discipline’ because we automatically do for ourselves what is best.
An example of the way in which RPT works:
Perhaps your parents didn’t express their love for you openly when you were a child. Perhaps they worked a lot, or maybe they just didn’t know how to love their children fully. This caused you, as a child, to feel a sense of emptiness; like something is wrong with you; as if something in you is missing. This sense of emptiness is a blockage that causes many problems for many people. It prevents people from living life fully; from loving themselves deeply; and from doing the things that they know they should.
It’s easy to release this kind of blockage with RPT.
I practiced the above 5 points for many years, and I made very good progress. Whereas I used to be ill a lot, and suffer from emotional ups and downs, after years of practicing yoga (which is where these 5 points come from – I’ll write more articles on yoga later!), I felt much better. But something was missing. When I discovered Reference Point Therapy all that changed. I let go of several blockages that were holding me back, and my health, abundance, and self-esteem all shifted: I became much more successful.
The purpose of this blog is to share the secret of that success with you. I hope it is helping…
With love,
Ben
Do you agree with this article – anything you disagree with?
Do you feel that something is blocking you from the life you WANT to live?
Have you experienced RPT yourself? – If so, share your experience by leaving a comment.
RELAXATION 1 – WHAT is relaxation?
So this is the first of a series of guides on relaxation. It’s a big subect – one that in reality few people really think about, but it’s so important. It’s fundamental – without proper relaxation we cannot be successful in any area of our lives. So I’m breaking it down into three manageable chunks:
Today I will tell you WHAT relaxation is (it’s not so obvious!).
In the 2nd article I will tell you WHY it’s so important.
And finally I’ll give you practical advice on HOW to incorporate relaxation into every day life.
WHAT is relaxation?
Relaxing means “going back”.
Going back where?
Inside, where we BELONG!
Ok, but what does that mean?
Almost all our waking lives our attention (and energy) is directed outwards. It goes out through our eyes, our mouths, our bodies (our senses) into the world around us. It is attracted to other people, sounds, advertising, media… all of which are competing for our attention, 24 hours a day…
So to relax means to break this cycle – literally, to regain control of our own attention, our own energy.
Try something:
Take a deep breath into the abdomen, and as you exhale, let go of any physical tension. Taking another deep breath, simply acknowledge what is happening with you right at this moment – physically, emotionally, and mentally… breathing deeply, letting go of tension, and observing how you feel. It’s best to do this with the eyes closed.
Go ahead.
Doesn’t that feel great?!
That is a 10 second relaxation. Now, imagine if you were doing that all the time, 24 hours a day – breathing deeply, letting go, observing. Imagine how good you’d feel, how much energy you’d have!
It’s very simple isn’t it? So why don’t we actually do it?!
The reason why we don’t stay relaxed is because:
a) we were never told the importance of it
b) we were taught that other things are important
c) the combination of a + b causes STRESS
I want to tell you something different: relaxation is the most important thing in the world. It is the foundation of all health, happiness and succes.
Stress is the opposite of relaxation. Quite literally, in biological terms, stress is the absence of relaxation, and relaxation is the absence of stress!
Our nervous system has two possibilities – either the sympathetic nervous system is dominant (stress), or the parasympathetic nervous system is dominant (relaxation).
The sympathetic nervous system reacts to perceived threat in the environment.
Let’s say that a dog behaves aggressively towards you: your body will automatically react in several ways – your eyes dilate to enable faster reactions; your chin drops to protect your throat; adrenalin is released to enable more strength or speed, depending on whether you choose fight or flight; the heart rate goes up to bring more oxygen to the muscles; blood and energy flow is redirected from the organs to the muscles (center to periphery); and so on. All of this is very good – it helps us in difficult sitations, and without it, we would never have survived as a species!
The parasympathetic nervous system on the other hand UNDOES all that the sympathetic nervous system does – when the stress is over (the dog stops barking and goes home) your body needs to calm down. So the parasympathetic nervous system releases hormones to relax the body – releasing the adrenalin, calming the eyes, the heart, and so on.
So, the sympathetic nervous system is all about stress response, while the parasympathetic nervous system is all about normal, regular function.
So far, so good. But what happens when you live in a society where your body is always under stress? For example, what if you live in a city with lots of traffic; lots of people in a hurry; noise, air, food and water pollution creating toxins (stress) in the body; constant bombardment of the senses by media, advertising, etc?
I’ll tell you what happens: the body is permanently in a state of stress. In other words, the sympathetic nervous system is always being stimulated.
This is the primary reason why so many people are so ill, depressed, and unhappy.
I’m not kidding! I lived in London for 14 years and I know from experience!
But let’s be honest: it’s not only city life that is to blame. It’s really the speed of 21st century living – and that can affect anyone, even in the country.
What’s the solution?
The solution is that we have to consciously relax. We have to take time to really come back to ourselves, allowing our body to slow down, and giving time to the systems in our body to balance each other.
This does NOT mean watching a movie; reading a book; listening to music; having a beer / glass of wine; going out with friends. All of these things, which we have been taught to associate with relaxation, are stimulating! They stimulate our senses. They don’t really help us to relax in a deep, meaningful way.
For real relaxation, silence is needed. So that our hearing is allowed to relax, and the muscles of our throat, vocal chords, tongue, and mouth can relax.
Closing the eyes is needed, so that our mind can stop processing visual information (did you know that literally millions of bits of information are absorbed through the eyes every second? And that our brains have to process that information?!).
Lying on the back is the best position to relax in – and the best posture is the ‘corpse pose‘, a yoga pose known to stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system.
Breathing should be deep and slow.
And our mind should be directed inwards.
There is a practice called Yoga Nidra, many thousands of years old. Yoga Nidra means yogic sleep, or ‘sleep of the yogis’ – it is a state of awareness in which the body is so relaxed that it sleeps, but the mind is awake, fully conscious.
20 minutes in this state of being is equivalent to two hours of sleep. It’s very simple to do. I’m going to tell you how…
- Lie on the back, with the arms and legs slightly apart, and the head in the middle (corpse pose).
First, tense all the muscles in the body, tensing them, and releasing them.
Then get comfortable.
- Close the eyes, and take a few deep, full breaths.
- Then focus the attention inwards… focusing your full attention into the toes. Mentally (silently) repeat: “I am relaxing my toes, my toes are relaxing, the toes are relaxed“
Repeat this phrase until you really feel the toes softening, and relaxing.
- Then shift your attention to your feet, repeating: “I am relaxing the feet, the feet are relaxing, the feet are relaxed…“
Continue this process, going through every part of the body in turn, until you get to the top of your head.
- Then do the same for all the internal organs: brain, heart, lungs, stomach, intestines, and so on. The whole body can be done in 5 minutes. If you are a beginner, it will take longer.
- When you are finished, lie still for at least 3 minutes. Allow your body to be completely still, and simply observe your mind. As time passes, the mind sinks into a deeper and deeper state of relaxation. There comes a point when, with the body and mind deeply relaxed, we touch something inside ourselves very deeply. That is true relaxation.
With practice, we are able to be deeply relaxed all the time. When you can do that, you don’t age so fast. You stay healthy. And perhaps most importantly, when you are in a stressful situation, you have more reserves of energy to call upon should you need them.
This is the secret of the ancient yogis, and why they are known for long life and miraculous acts.
In the next article on relaxation, I’m going to tell you just WHY relaxation is so important for us – I believe that it’s the foundation upon which any success (whether in work, relationship, personal development, or spiritual evolution) must be built.
And I’m going to keep on giving you as much information as I can about these things, because I want you to be successful!
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With love,
Ben
Breath: Bridge between mind & body
You will survive for months without any food.
For a week perhaps without any water.
- Always breathe (whenever possible) through the nose. Inhalation, and exhalation! Guess what – that’s what the nose is for!!
- Breathe from the abdomen. This means that you use the diaphragm, and breathe deeply into the belly. If you find it difficult (if you have a habit of breathing in the chest) then practise lying on your back. Put one hand on your belly, and the other on your chest. Focus on breathing so that your abdomen expands like a balloon as you inhale, and slowly sinks back down towards the spine as you exhale. The chest should remain still. Practice until you master it. Then you can try sitting up – it’s a bit harder… and finally standing.
- Concentrate on the exhalation. Exhalation is active, inhalation is passive. When you exhale slowly and deeply, two very important things happen:
- You stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system (which releases stress from the body), and
- You empty the lungs! When the lungs are empty, just relax the body, and watch as the lungs expand deeply and effortlessly.
This is the natural rhythm of the breath, the body, and the universe. When you begin to breathe better, every aspect of life gets better. Immune system, glands, organs, emotions, feelings, thoughts, relationships… everything is affected in a positive way. BREATHING BETTER is the fastest and most effective way in which we can improve our health and every other important aspect of our wonderful lives – and it’s FREE!
If you have any questions about this or anything else, please contact me. I am always happy to help.
With love,
Ben