Friends, Romans, Countrymen (Countrypeople)!

If you're a regular visitor to my blog you will have noticed that, well, I've not posted anything in a gazillion years. 'See what happened is this: I got some advice from a kick-ass blogging coach named Michael Martine, about why only, like, 50 people come to my blog. And so what Mr. Martine did, is he helped me to see the myriad and multifarious ways in which my blog totally sucks. Not the posts themselves. They're fine. But everything else. All the things that allow people to actually FIND you on them interwebs. (Just for starters, it should be on Wordpress, not Blogspot.)

So, long story short, I'm hard at work writing (and eventually building) a new blog, which will be like a real, grown-up blog! With all sorts of groovy, helpful, immediately useful articles and suchlike. And I'm going to collapse the my site into it, too, just for good measure.

Anyway, sorry for the long delay in letting y'all know. I am essentially Amish when it comes to internet savvy. I only wrote this NOW, at all, because my non-Amish wife asked me, "Hey, have you been posting?" and I scratched my head, under my big, black Amish hat, and said no. And she pointed out I should let you good folks know what the heck's going on. She's smart.

Dr. God: The Power of Innate Intelligence (Part Two)

If we’re designed for perfect health and perfect bodyweight (as I keep insisting!), why then do we become overweight, fatigued and sick? Why is our body’s Innate Intelligence failing us? Simply put, health problems of any kind—from excess weight, to acne, to allergies, to cancer—mean that laws of nature have been broken.

From the holistic point of view, your body is always only trying to create perfect health. It’s always “wanting” or “tending” to move in that direction. A classic holistic health analogy: Think of every health situation in your body like a cut on your finger. Your body is always “trying” to create your perfect weight and health, just as surely as it’s always trying to heal a cut finger. You don’t have to “do” anything to make your body heal your cut finger. Your body’s not about to just “forget” how. Nor has it forgotten how to bring you to your ideal weight and stupendous health. It’s simply been overwhelmed.

That means that a lifetime of radiant health and slimness is simply about getting out of the way of your body’s immense Innate Intelligence. It’s about not interfering with that intelligence; about cooperating with it, allowing it. It’s about unburdening the body, so that Innate Intelligence can do its work. All you have to do is align yourself to the laws of nature: eat clean and pure, rest, get the right exercise, handle stress wisely. And trust the inherent health of your body, with its infinite genius, to heal everything in its own mysterious way. It knows how. That’s the power and the gift of Innate Intelligence that you’ve been given.

And, if you've not noticed, we're MADE of food. Take your hand and grab hold of your thigh. Feel that leg? That's what you ate over the last several months. Literally. In Hindu and Yogic terminology, they call our physical body "the food-body." That's why eating a broad-spectrum, whole-foods, super-clean diet is the bedrock foundation of outrageous health.

Dr. God: The Power of Innate Intelligence (Part One)

What if you never again had to even think about your health or your weight? What if you could close the book, forever, on questions about portion sizes, which diet is best, what to do about your health challenges, and how to keep your weight and health “under control?”

What if there were an infinitely wise “bio-computer” that always knew exactly what was going on with your body and that perfectly orchestrated radiant health every hour of every day, so that you never had to worry about a thing? Or you can imagine it as a genie, with great powers to manifest your perfect weight, superb health, and vibrant youthfulness. Well here’s the deal: This genie, this dazzling bio-computer, is quite real, and it’s within you right now (but you knew I was gonna say that, right?). Some people have called it Innate Intelligence. It’s that systemic Intelligence built into us by nature or God or whatever you wish to call it (or It).

Innate Intelligence
Innate Intelligence is what formed your whole body from a single cell. It performs the trillions of functions, every second, that keep you alive, thinking, seeing, breathing, digesting and all of that cool (and occasionally disgusting) stuff. In each moment, Innate Intelligence is maintaining perfect body temperature, balancing countless hormonal functions, replacing old cells, eliminating wastes, ordering the harmony of millions of enzymatic functions, coordinating brain and nervous system operations and orchestrating chemical exchanges in the heart and lungs. Billions of such operations are taking place as you read these words. In fact, countless miraculous processes are constantly taking place within just one single cell of your body! It’s freakin’ mind-blowing madness!

And here’s what all that means: Innate Intelligence is not just the best way to create vibrant health—it’s the only way. Any other tactics, even ones that seem to work in the short term, almost always contribute to problems further on down the line. They may give you an apparently good result in one aspect of your health, but then you “mysteriously” develop a different problem in another organ or system of your body.

For example, fad diets, including “calorie cutting” deprivation diets and high protein diets, achieve their results (when they do) by creating low-level disease processes in the body. They are true Faustian bargains. That’s why the weight almost always comes back on, and with a vengeance. Drugs, and even many so-called “natural” nutritional supplements, always make you pay a price, sooner or later. There are the obvious, immediate side effects; we all know about those. But there is also a more insidious, long-term, cumulative degeneration of the whole bodily system.

Innate Intelligence and Conventional Medicine
Somewhere along the line, our medical professionals stopped trusting and using Innate Intelligence as the central principle in healing. Many doctors will acknowledge the majesty of the workings of the human body, but, most of the time, it’s purely a philosophical appreciation. Innate Intelligence is not something to actually work with and depend on down in the trenches.

Because, they might say, Innate Intelligence is spotty and unreliable. After all, what else do doctors see throughout their work days other than apparent “failures” of this supposedly magnificent intelligence? The question doctors usually neglect to ask is this: Does Innate Intelligence really just “fail,” or has it in fact been relentlessly overwhelmed, and usually for many years? Instead of asking such questions, physicians typically just persist in their fundamental view of the human body—that it is a helpless victim of random circumstances. In this conventional model of health, things just inexplicably and arbitrarily “go wrong” with our bodies. If you ask medical professionals why things have “gone wrong,” they’ll usually give you one of three answers.

The honest ones will say simply that they have no clue why you “got” that disease. In medical speak, they say it’s “idiopathic.” That means they have no idea what causes it. Currently, 97% of chronic degenerative diseases are classified as idiopathic. If you’re over, say, 35 years old, the second thing your doctor might say is that your disease is “a natural part of aging.” This gets back to our models of normal. The third thing they’ll say, when you ask them why you have this or that ailment, is…drum roll, please…it must be genetics.

The Great News About Genetics
In recent times, genetics has become the handy, one-size-fits-all answer that gets whipped out to explain a thousand ailments. Genetics is the new boogey man, the modern replacement for the “evil spirits” of Medieval times. Never mind the fact that most of these diseases hardly existed 80 years ago, so if it’s “genetics,” what caused them to begin with?

Genetics certainly play a substantial role in our bodily well being. But the Nobel winning scientist, Candace Pert, describes a simple way to understand the role of genetics in our health. She says that in the scientific community genetics is viewed as a factor which can “cock back the hammer” on the metaphorical “gun” of chronic degenerative diseases. But an unhealthy lifestyle is almost always required to “pull the trigger” and actually give us one of those chronic degenerative diseases—including obesity.

Pioneering nutritional authority Bernard Jensen, who worked with over 350,000 patients in the course of his long life, said the same thing in different terms. He said that genetics can give us compromised tissues in a part of the body—the “weak links” in our health chain—but it takes “wrong living” to exploit these weak links. So, when it comes to genetics, the holistic view says that if you were born with the healthy tissues, organs and functions (i.e. no congenital problems), you’ll only develop chronic degenerative problems from improper care and maintenance of the equipment, so to speak. There are exceptions to this, but they are rare.

It’s vital to understand that none of this, either in the case of your own health or that of your children, is cause for blame or guilt. In our culture, we are not educated about these matters. On the contrary, we are proactively “educated” in quite the opposite way. People just don’t have the information about health and how health really works. Most people, and especially parents, do the very best they can with the information they have. Not only that, but some of the lifestyle factors behind these chronic degenerative diseases are environmental toxins, many of which we don’t know about or can’t do much about.

Here’s the take-away lesson: You are not genetically “destined” for illness or for being overweight. You’re designed for perfect well being. That “blueprint” shines bright in every cell of your body. Eating a rejuvenative diet of whole, nutrient-dense foods (along with exercise and stress reduction, of course), will give you radiant health and slimness your whole life long.

(For those keeping score at home, yes, it's true, the image I chose has nothing much to do with the post, except, um, y'know, it's Medieval, which I sort of mentioned...And it looks cool. Shiny objects and all.)

Abby normal

I’m always studying why we Americans eat so astonishingly bad. What on earth keeps us committing suicide by fork? I’ve come up with about 9 major reasons so far, and one of them is a massive and deadly confusion about what’s "normal.” To wit:

I had this client some years back. We’ll call her Nancy, on accounta that being her name and all. Anyway, Nancy had been retired for almost a decade when she came to see me. She wanted to learn to eat better to lose a stubborn thirty pounds, something her doctor had encouraged her to do. Nancy also told me that she had high blood pressure, aching joints when she woke up—especially in her hands—and osteopenia, the precursor to osteoporosis. Sometimes she suffered from a little indigestion, headaches and heartburn. All kinds of stuff. The usual suspects.

Over the course of our first discussion, Nancy revealed she had one of the nastiest little myths you can carry around with you, and it’s a belief that’s epidemic in this country. She believed that her ailments were “normal.” After all, every one of her friends had a list of health challenges just like hers. Our country is so plagued with poor health that most Americans have come to see chronic degenerative diseases (and a thousand other “minor complaints”) as normal. And the constant bombardment of pharmaceutical ads only drives the message deeper into our minds.

Headaches, indigestion, heartburn, fatigue, hypothyroid, hemorrhoids, aching joints, high blood pressure, constipation, IBS, gum disease—all normal as can be. They just "happen." Business as usual. Nothing to see here, folks, move along. Diabetes, heart disease, asthma, arthritis, osteoporosis, cancer—these are things we should all expect. Yippee!

There’s a funny way in which we even regard being overweight as normal. Yes, we say that obesity is caused by how we eat and by not exercising. But there’s an odd sense we have here in America that our body is always somehow “trying” to get fat. That’s why most people think they’re supposed to go through all sorts of struggles, their whole lives, to stop that from happening; to engage in the constant uphill battle to stave it off. It’s a very strange belief when you think about it. And it is big-time outer space silliness. When you eat clean, pure, whole food, with lots of raw plant food (fruits & veggies; nuts & seeds) you can eat virtually as much as you want, never counting or measuring anything, and remain always lithe and radiant.

Why? Because human beings are made for perfect health. All around the globe there have been cultures who show us this. These are peoples I’ve mentioned on this blog before, like the Hunzas of Northern Pakistan, the Vilcabambans of Ecuador, the Abkhasians or Georgians of Eastern Europe and many others. Chronic degenerative diseases—even dental cavities—were, at one time virtually unknown to these peoples. Before they became “modernized,” like us, illness of any kind was all but nonexistent. They were strong and vital and sharp into their hundreds! You can find photos of the Hunzas in their 90’s and even hundreds playing volleyball! These people aren’t mythical. They’ve been studied a lot and the conclusion is unavoidable: vibrant, dynamic health, including effortless slimness, is normal for us homo sapien types. It’s just how we’re made. It’s how you are made. I know it sounds odd, but you really have to work to get ill and overweight.

Here in the U.S. we’ve had many examples of this kind of health. These are people like nutritional pioneer Norman Walker who died at age 97. He drowned while doing one of his favorite activities: surfing. Or Paul Bragg, who, after his daily gardening work took his regular afternoon nap and died peacefully in his sleep. He was about 120 years old. Or Jack La Lane, who at age 95 is an incredible dynamo, lecturing around the world and working out two hours a day. There are countless examples like these. They are not the flukes or anomalies. They are examples of our true normal; the massive super-health we are structurally designed for. All we have to do is stop obstructing it, and a diet of fresh, whole, nutrient dense foods is the foundation and centerpiece of it all (exercise and happy emotions are key, too).

Super Healthy Eating With Zero Inspiration

The Myth From Hell
There is a popular myth that lifestyle change—eating clean, a new exercise program, quitting smoking, cutting down on your bank robbery habit, whatever—comes from feeling inspired or “motivated.” Hence, when people “fall off the wagon” of their new whatever-it-is, they say things like, “I just couldn’t stay motivated.”

There Is No Viagra For Inspiration
They may try to huff and puff to keep their motivation pumped up, listening to inspirational speakers, pasting affirmations up around their house (which invariably end up looking depressing and forlorn after a few weeks), all the usual suspects by which people try to “hype themselves” into sticking with some new program.

But the truth goes like this: The only reason loss of inspiration is an issue is because we make it one. It's just some bad education that's become a habit. It's superstition, really: a self-fulfilling prophecy. A sort of spell we're under. We think lack of inspiration is the death knell, and so it becomes. We have linked the two, like Pavlov’s dogs linking the bell and the food.

The Mighty Super Power of Indifference
One group of people who typically don’t make this mistake are professional creators. The artists, inventors, composers. They’ve learned a simple but powerful art: the art of not giving a damn what their fickle emotions are up to. Robert Fritz is an author and thought leader who’s spent his life studying and teaching about this stuff (I’ve studied with him and used his concepts in my nutritional coaching work for years).

According to Fritz, consummate creators are indifferent to whether they feel “inspired” or not. It’s simply not a relevant issue to them. Instead, they draw on something quite different, something Fritz calls Structural Tension. He says that Structural Tension is the singular essence of the creative process, whether you’re creating a painting or a super-healthy eating lifestyle. Structural Tension is made up of two things.

Structural Tension 101
First: Acute awareness of your current reality (i.e. “I eat fresh veggies 3 to 5 times per week, I eat refined flour products X times per week, I have such and such health issues, fatigue, headaches…” and so on).

Second: A vision of what you choose to create. A result or outcome (i.e. a radiantly healthy diet, vibrant health, boundless energy, no chronic degenerative issues at all, youthful appearance, slim, lithe, whatever). The point of the vision is not to “inspire you,” to manipulate your emotions or anything else. It’s just to guide and direct your actions.

Between these two—your awareness of your current reality and your vision of your creation—you will feel a tension, a disharmony, a dissonance that seems to compel resolution. It’s a little uncomfortable. That is Structural Tension. Creators simply know how to stay in that tension, to tolerate it. To use it. Most people, however, spend their time getting OUT of that tension. They do that either by watering down their awareness of current reality (denial, minimizing, kidding themselves) or by watering down their vision (compromising). Either one will reduce the discomfort of Structural Tension. But, if you don’t water down either; if you instead STAY in the dissonance of Structural Tension, it MUST resolve in the direction of your creation. How cool is that?

Willpower & Self-Discipline Suck
People (such as the creators Fritz talks about) who have learned this, look, to you and me, like people who simply have some steely magical gift called “willpower” or “self-discipline.” But it’s really just that they’ve learned to rely on Structural Tension instead of emotional motivation or inspiration. Willpower and self-discipline are when someone just grits their teeth, sets their jaw, hardens their resolve and makes themselves do stuff they don’t wanna do. Structural Tension is much easier and more natural. You’re just plugging into the Way of Things! It’s like going along with a strong current in the water and steering it the way you want.

Willpower and self-discipline are what people use to “solve problems.” Structural Tension is what creators use to bring something cool into existence. They don’t bully their way through the obstacles or resistances . They just don’t pay a ton of energy and attention to them. Instead of “making themselves do stuff they don’t want,” they’re doing stuff they do want, because they’re operating from a deeper, more dynamic and resilient kind of wanting. It’s the kind of wanting that is unique to the creative orientation. It’s more playful, agile and artful.

Start Making Cool Stuff (Including New Lifestyle Changes)
We can make that same shift. Anyone can learn it. Usually it’s simply that nobody’s ever told us that, when we notice our inspiration is gone, we can just shrug and continue creating whatever it is we’re creating. We just have an old, dumbass habit of thinking that feeling unmotivated is a problem. Like I said, it’s superstition.

Once you start to get the hang of this way of doing things, using Structural Tension, you get better and better at it. You get stronger with practice. It develops, like a muscle. The muscle is indifference to the “weather patterns” of your emotions, and focusing, instead, on Structural Tension (current reality plus the vision or outcome you’re choosing to create). This is what Robert Fritz calls the path of least resistance (it's also the title of his first book—it rocks!). I highly recommend using it in every area of your life, including transforming how you eat.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on these ideas! Do you tend to think a loss of inspiration is a problem? Or do you tend naturally toward this creative orientation? Do let me know!

Behold the Freaky Power of Greens!

Okay friends, here's the short version, to wit: Dark leafy greens rule the nutritional cosmos with a vast, emerald, iron fist! If they were any nutrient-denser they'd be made of diamonds! They are the big time, major league, heavy duty, mutant freaky maha nutritional powerhouse in a gazillion ways you never even thought of. Eat ‘em. A lot. Longer version follows.

Greens Kick Cancer’s Ass

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. (author of Eat To Live) discusses (in that book) why greens are the most nutrient-dense of all foods. Romaine, he says, “…is a rich powerhouse with hundreds of cancer-fighting phytonutrients that protect us from a variety of threatening illnesses…” (He goes on to mention that, “In a review of 206 human population studies, raw vegetable consumption showed the strongest protective effect against cancer of any beneficial food.”!)

Another Tiresome Litany of Nutrients

In SuperFoods: Fourteen Foods That Will Change Your Life, Steven Pratt, M.D., and Kathy Matthews tell us that dark leafy greens give us a synergy of multiple nutrients/phytonutrients, lutein/zeaxanthin, beta-carotene, omega-3 fatty acids, glutathione, alpha lipoic acid, Vitamins C and E, B vitamins (thiamine, riboflavin, B6 folate), minerals (calcium, iron, magnesium, manganese, and zinc), polyphenols, betaine. And that’s just for openers.

Green Tornado of Cleansing

David Wolfe, in his classic The Sunfood Diet Success System, says: “Green-leafed vegetables are always the best source of heavy alkaline minerals” calcium, magnesium, iron, etc… “Green-leafy vegetation is also an excellent detoxifier of the liver…The calcium, magnesium and iron in deep green and wild green vegetation bind with heavy metals, chemicals and chemical drugs and allow the body to wash them out as salts through the urine.”

A Chlorophyll Party in Your Veins

He also talks about the chlorophyll in greens: “Chlorophyll is the pigment in plants within which photosynthesis takes place. It absorbs the vibrant Sun energy and transforms it into plant energy. This energy is transferred directly to you when you eat chlorophyll-rich foods such as green-leafed vegetables.” Chlorophyll is a well-known blood and liver cleanser.

And: “The heart concentrates magnesium at a level 18 times greater than what is found in the blood. Magnesium is the primary alkaline mineral in chlorophyll. An abundance of greens in the diet strengthens the heart.” Lastly, he says: “Green leaves soothe the nerves and calm the body. Those with chronic back and muscle pains should be sure to eat plenty of green vegetables. Green leaves relieve pain. Green-leafy foods decrease the overall stress of the body and facilitate yoga practices.”

Protein and Fiber and Silica, Oh My!

Dark leafy greens are also very high in fiber, which not only has countless crucial health benefits, but also is the bulk that actually causes us to feel full! They also have these beautiful lightweight proteins called polypeptides that are great at building new tissue. And silica! Don’t even get me started on the silica! Greens are loaded with silica! Got silica coming out their ears! This you must have for strong, resilient bones and healthy hair, skin and nails. Pound-for-pound, and calorie-for-calorie, greens also have many times the amount of protein that steak does.

The Summing and the Eating Up

So, like I said, eat ‘em up. Woof ‘em down. Big, honkin’ mounds of ‘em. Mostly raw. Juice ‘em, stuff ‘em into your blender for green smoothies, make salads big enough to get lost in, chop ‘em up and put ‘em in wraps and roll-ups, have a bowl of them as a base for a healthy Mexicali feast (Romaine, tomatoes, avocado, raw corn niblets cut fresh off the cob, salsa [Seinfeld was right—say that again, just for fun: “Salsa!”], and, if you want some cooked stuff, some beans.) Hang 'em up all over your walls to keep away the vampires.

Well, okay, maybe not that last one.

Be Devious With Your Inner Child

And don’t tell me you hate greens. Why? Cuz’ everyone hates greens. They’re bitter, dull and nasty. But eating greens isn’t about eating greens. Eating greens is ALL about what you eat them WITH; it’s the “with” that makes them palatable. So, yummy raw dressings (like tahini-miso!), raw olives and cut up mangoes in your salads (for example). Blueberries and coconut in your smoothies. You get the idea. You have to artfully sneak them down yourself (the secret is thinking of yourself like a 5 year old). Works every time.

Attitudes for Ridiculous Health and Obnoxious Longevity PART TWO!

Okay y'all, here we go with PART TWO of my unabashedly non-foody post.

8) Quiet Mind. Longevity guru Peter Ragnar just quoted (on an interview I was listening to from The Best Day Ever—great site, but it is a paysite, FYI) research showing that we use up 85% of our body’s energy by our thinking! An herbalist I read about (can’t recall his name—sorry!) who is vibrant into his upper 90’s, attributed his superb health and longevity to, “A calm mind.” (NOTE: this is not the same as the not-worrying pointer, in PART ONE, below, or here, because a mind can be spinning frantically even with “positive,” enthusiastic things.) Learn the deep peace (and exponentially greater productivity) of a quiet, silent, spacious mind. Resources: The Journey of Awakening, by Ram Dass, The Renaissance of Psychology, by George Pransky

9) Mental Flexibility. As we age, our thinking tends to get smaller, more rigid, stiff, repetitious, stereotypical and predictable—our bodies follow. Break it up, regularly, always, daily, fiercely. Expose yourself to new ideas, weird people, funky angles, fresh experiences. Listen deeply and openly to people. Take the opposite side of a polarized issue you feel strongly about. Play with Rudolf Steiner’s technique of finding 12 perspectives on any given subject or idea.

Jesus said, “Except ye become as little children ye shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” And Van Morrison said, “I shall never grow so old again.”

Most of all, find your way into meditation that opens you to touch the Source, the “sky of mind,” the unborn, inexhaustible source of life (see above Ram Dass link).

10) Disbelief. Stop believing in aging. Seriously. Enough with the aging, already. The new scientific field of epigenetics is showing how we AGE because we’re hypnotized to BELIEVE we must. Check out the work of Bruce Lipton. His book, The Biology of Belief or his website, which has many free podcasts of cool interviews with him.

12) Happiness, Joy and Love. Again, Bernard Jensen: “Happiness, joy and love bathe the nervous system to such an extent that it heals! It heals! It gets all the tissues well. You cannot be well unless these three things flow through you and work in your nervous system.”

13) Gratitude. An extremely health-giving disposition for humans. Usually, “I’m grateful for this or that particular THING” is hunky dory, but what you REALLY want to open yourself to is an omnidirectional, non-intellectual feeling-quality of gratitude, that you have no words for and you only notice later it was gratitude! For everything and nothing and unspeakable luscious Beingness. Here's a book on gratitude I've not read, but looks cool.

14) Magnanimous Spirit. Give, serve and help others. Unleash your own generous heart. (Be careful not to mistake this with codependency and caretaking, which is actually a compulsion [not a free choice]. In codependency, we may LOOK like we’re always helping others, but our focus is actually on ourselves getting loved and appreciated for all our saintly helpfulness. It comes from scarcity and an inability to know and express our needs directly. By contrast, true generosity and magnanimity come from being centered in our authentic feelings and giving from overflowing fullness.) I think Catherine Ponder has some fine things to say about generosity.

So cultivate these 14 ways of thinking, feeling and being, exercise smart, and eat super-clean and, Mack trucks running you over notwithstanding, you'll be tearing around doing cool stuff in this groovy world for a long, long time.