Do you want a healthier, more meaningful life? Come, learn to put to work time-proven wisdom. What here I am only talking about, you will see in action, hands-on.
Carol Nelson and I will combine for an afternoon workshop at the end of the month in Cambridge/Massachusetts to bring some light into gloomy, cold January. Natural methods help you to bolster immune function for a healthier winter. Bring your health questions to this afternoon, and fulfill your yearning for a more real life.
Our session will be framed Carol Nelson’s introductory yoga session and a closing yoga relaxation.
In between I will talk about the Five Health Essentials: Water – Movement – Food – Herbs – Natural Order to give you natural methods to get through the winter healthily. Nothing complicated – just plain old common sense.
You will find times, address and fee on the event page. Pre-registration required. Read More
Blog: On Health. On Writing. On Life. On Everything.
Getting Down on the Ground
October 28, 2010
If you don’t do a single exercise at all – no walking, biking, swimming, yoga, playing ball – this is the ONE THING you have to do every single day: Getting down on the ground.
Why? Use it, or lose it. Many people who remember fondly crouching under the big family table as a child or romping around in the living room with the dog as if it was just yesterday, can’t get down on the ground anymore, to their big surprise.
Or, let’s rephrase it: Once they are down, there is no way to get up again, alone. The arms aren’t strong enough anymore to push you up, and the legs … forget the legs. So, that is the last time they have been down - voluntarily.
For, you see: down you will come. We all one day end in the earth. What brings us there are often falls. You trip or slip, and the next thing you know (if you know anything at all), the ambulance arrives and drives you off to the hospital. Only because of two things: You couldn’t keep your balance, and you couldn’t get up from the floor.
This is your homework today: Get down on the floor, and get up again. Once you are down, you can try a yoga pose like the fish, or the sphinx. But the point is really to be able to get up again. If you are not sure you can make it up, get help: Make a friend lend a hand.
Let the ground not be your enemy – let it be your friend, the place that gives you strength daily. We will go to the earth, but we also are from it. The Earth, our home, is not only for trampling on her, she is also supporting us. Her gravity exercises our muscles. We are alive as long as we can use her. Read More
The Here and Now
October 27, 2010
Yesterday at yoga, my wonderful teacher Carol Nelson encouraged us to be in the Here and Now.
A great suggestion!
But then I thought: Wait a second!
As a physician I know that the people most in the Here and Now are Alzheimer’s patients. First, in the development of dementia, one loses the future and dwells on the past. Later on even the past dims, and there is nothing there than the Here and Now – a sad state of affairs.
That is not to mean, when your thoughts are churning about a project at work or a past lover who jilted you, it is not a good idea to focus on the Here and Now, take some deep, slow breaths - always start with exhaling! – and feel your diaphragm move.
It only means one shouldn’t stretch a philosophical tenet too far. The Here and Now has it merits – but driven to exclusivity, it becomes hollow and ridiculous. Moderation also is a reigning principle in philosophy.
However - now look at “moderation”, as a concept. When you are falling a love, deeply in love, do you want to “moderate” yourself? Or do you want to live the most important moments of your life?
Questions, questions… Read More