The Foundations of Health
Foundations of Health. If you’re thinking; what are they? What do they mean? Why do we need them? And how do I obtain them? Then you need not think anymore. We will now embark on a journey to help you to get a head start on understanding how you can balance your life and health one step at a time.
Thoughts: These wonderful things control our bodies. Without thoughts, our bodies would have no purpose. Our bodies would never need to do anything. We would be a shell without a reason to exist. Thoughts are at the top of the food chain so to speak, when thinking of the human body. Thoughts are about freeing your mind. Thoughts help us set effective goals; shape our life’s direction, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. It’s important to master these. Training a quiet mind is an extremely hard task. Give it ago. See how long you can just think of nothing. 3…2…1… GO… so.. How long did you last? If more then a couple of minutes then you have done very well. This is just as important as physical training. We must train the mind to be more right brain active which puts us in a greater parasympathetic state. This will require you doing tasks without an outcome, such as drawing. A great way to get your thoughts on to paper and a way to express your most inner desires and spot a direction you may wish to travel. Give it a go.
It’s important to have a positive outlook. After all, your thoughts are VERY powerful and I feel that they can create your reality to an extent. I mean after all you can’t just think you’ll be rich and expect to find wealth by sitting on your butt at home? But it can go a long way into focusing your mental energy into a direction that could help you obtain your goals. This correlates to training in that, focusing your mental state to relax and be focused on your training goals will give you the best possible chance to achieve these goals.
Breathing: I know what you’re all thinking! You’re thinking, “I know what breathing is. I do it everyday, it’s easy”. Then, you might be surprised to hear that it’s not as easy as you may first have thought. Have you ever stopped to think, why do we breathe? What is its purpose? Apart from the blatantly obvious, survival response of course, you breathe for a variety of reasons. For example; elimination of waste, stress release, emotional response, physical demands on the body, massaging of internal organs, balance, postural correction and mediation. All of these reasons can lead to a muddled up idea of the right type of breathing for the right situation.
A lot of people tend to have ‘inverted breathing’ basically, this means that we are breathing the wrong way to which we should. So, what’s the correct way to breathe?
Diaphragmatically! What is this you ask? Well, just think, big belly in, little belly out! ¾ of your breath should be in through your nose with the last ¼ through your chest. It should feel natural, like a wave of energy, in and out. Place your tongue behind your top row of teeth (where it will naturally go when you swallow) this will help you to breathe properly.
Hydration: 1.2 Billion people in this world don't have access to clean drinking water. Can you believe this? I am completely blown away by this figure every time I say it out loud or read it. Something so simple for all of us to be able to do is get access to clean drinking water here in Australia, yet I constantly have clients who do not drink even 1 litre of water daily. Then they present a myriad of common health related problems such as thirst, dry skin, loss of appetite, mental and physical fatigue, weakness, headaches, constipation, muscle cramps, tingling in limbs, weight gain, water retention, confusion, get thirst and hunger mixed up completely and over eat, just to name a few. All of these can be prevented by simply drinking your required amount of water daily, not to mention, helping out your poor liver to detoxify your body of all the stress that you may be putting it through by not drinking enough.
An easy way to find out your water needs is to take your weight in kg and multiply it by 0.033 (75 x 0.033 = 2.4 litres). The simplest way to get good quality water is to drink filtered water over tap water from a re-usable stainless steel water bottle (Klean Kanteen) and re-mineralise your water with a pinch or organic sea salt. By adding a pinch of sea salt to your water you can expect it to help with pulling excess acidity from inside the cells, especially the brain cells, generate energy in cells and help nerve cells communicate, help the absorption of nutrients from the food you eat and help with hydrochloric acid production. Just make sure it’s a clean source of salt, not your typical everyday table salt as this salt will not contribute to a healthy functioning system.
Nutrition: This section is all about the importance of eating nourishing foods to help us utilise our full potential in life. Without nourishing foods we can not focus our energies in to the right areas. We can not heal, we can not grow and we can not awaken to our full potential and experience our birth right of optimal health!
There is, and always will be great debate on healthy eating. There is a simple solution to the mass confusion while shopping for food. You could ask yourself a few simple questions.
1. Is it good for me/us? (Is it good right now based on an impulsive need or will it serve me in the long term, will it help me obtain great health?)
2. Is it good for humanity? (Were people paid good wages to supply me with nourishing food? Such as Fair trade etc. Ask yourself questions like am I supporting big business and companies, or am I helping to support community and farmers?)
3. Is it good for the environment? (What repercussion was had on the environment to supply me with the food I’m about to purchase? Was it transported hundreds or thousands of miles, which would have obvious and considerable impacts on the environment?)
By asking yourself these simple questions you can narrow down the abundance of selection out there on good “healthy” foods. You can own your own health decisions. You can own your own responsibilities. You can obtain optimal health. You can grow and heal your body. You can take charge of your life and not follow one person and put all your faith in them, which may be the wrong choice for you. By choosing to do this you own your own health and your decisions about you and your body.
After these questions have helped you to decide on the food choice you then could ask yourself questions such as:
1. Source. Where did the food come from? Was it sprayed with pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and grown in chemical fertilizers? If an animal, was it treated humanely and killed with respect. Did it travel many miles to get from the soil to your plate? Has it come from a source such as a feed lot where the animal was fed food it was not designed to eat? Or did it come from a source where it was allowed to graze in its natural environment and be happy and stress free?
2. Process. Asking yourself this question is good to help you understand. What process has gone on to get the food to look, taste or feel a certain way? How did it get to my plate? Did it look like this when it was alive? What will I need to do to the food to be able to eat it?
Movement: There seems to be an un-spoken understanding that we all need movement in our lives. We all know that with movement, we feel better, healthier and fitter. So, why is it that a lot of the population these days decided that they have no time? They don’t have enough energy? They don’t know how? They can’t afford to move? Well, let me try to help and address each of these points.
No time: This is something I hear day in and day out, people constantly telling me that they don’t have any time to exercise. Everyday we are each given 24 hours. With this 24hrs we have the choice to either use it effectively or waste it away.
I ask my clients. “What will you do with the 24 hours you have been given today?” This put’s it into perspective and sometimes this question alone is enough to make people sit up and think, maybe they don’t have there priorities in check. Maybe they do in fact have the time, but have chosen to waste it. I also can tell you that not all movement will take up any more extra time then going to the toilet for example. I suggest to people who say they “honestly do not have time” to evaluate their days; we can always manage to scrape together a few extra minutes a day. This will also tell me how important their goals are. The more dedicated, the more time you may find to allow yourself to achieve these goals.
You can maximise your time in so many ways. A few simple ways to do so are: While watching your favourite TV show, listening to music, reading, emailing, texting, face-booking or anything pretty much a part from driving you can use this time to squat, lunge, push, pull or twist. Use the “down-time” of these activities. Be creative with it. While waiting for a page to load on the internet use that time to get extra movement. If using facebook, play a game such as every time someone comments on your profile you will stop what you’re doing and do a set of squats, lunges or push-ups. This makes it fun and a great way to maximise your time. These are just a few ways. Use your imagination!
They don’t have enough energy?: This I hear a lot also. To me it’s a cycle of bad habits. Normally people who ignore the foundations of health find they have very low amounts of energy, in turn they drop movement out of their life. Who can blame them, I mean let’s look at it for a second. They have bad thoughts, poor nutrition, possibly de-hydrated and as most of the population inverted breathing of course you don’t have energy to move. So, the take home message here is to focus on getting better at the foundations of health and this will bring you closer to ending a lot of your ailments.
Can’t afford it and don’t know how: Movement is FREE this is the best part. You have been given access to so many wonderful locations on this planet for you to use, free of charge. You don’t need to pay a gym membership to get a good movement session in. Your local park will have a NATURAL gym built into every one of them. Do what comes natural when thinking of what you can do in a park to get good movement. Run, jump, roll, walk, jog, swim have FUN!!
For the how? We all have access to a wonderful thing called the internet. With thousands of great minds out there and loads of Web Pages for you to look through. You have no real excuse to not learn. One of my favourites is www.originofenergy.com check out what these guys are doing. Live by example. Also check out http://www.ovvioorganics.com.au/ for some awesome herbal teas and fantastic natural products!
Rhythm: Rhythm is simple, or so it would seem at first. However, it still amazes me that people will sacrifice their sleep for a TV program, an email, a deadline for a job they hate, a late night movie. What we have to understand is that if we can not calm our thoughts and get a good nights rest then how can we possibly fully ever recover so that we are able to tackle the next day head on?
As I have said before, you get a gift everyday of 24 hours to use up. You need to split this in to so many sections but one section that you can never really give the short straw too is Rhythm/sleep. This section I feel, in my opinion this is one of the most important areas to focus our time and energy on.
Some simple rules to live by to maximise our recovery is.
1. In bed and optimally asleep before 10:30pm every night.
2. Rise with the sun naturally and peacefully.
3. Don’t over sleep. If you are getting to bed at 10:30pm you could rise at around 6:30am. A solid 8 hours sleep.
4. Complete darkness. This will help you fall into a deeper sleep.
5. Try to limit the electro magnetic stress in your room. Keep your room for sleeping. This means NO computers, phones or televisions that are on standby or on at the power point. Ideally, turn your power off at the mains to not only get rid of the electro magnetic stress that surrounds you but to also save on energy and help our planet.
Following these simple rules will help you with all your health related goals. How can it not? After all you’re now giving your body the best chance to do what you want it to do, which is trust you and work with you. Rather then it feeling like it can not trust you and has to do things to sustain its own life!
Even after all this information, make sure you keep loving life and keep smiling!
This is a lifestyle and not a quick fix, so it’s important to realise that this can take a while to master. Step by step, day by day, hour by hour you will get there. There is always a way and we can all do it.
Health & Chi,
Shane Richards
Fitness First – Personal Trainer
0405 477 843
