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In this podcast I’ll be exploring Epigenetics:
- I’ll explain the difference between genetics and epigenetics
- I’ll talk about how your environment impacts the activation and expression of your genes
- Finally, I’ll give a few holistic tips on how to activate and express health-boosting and life-affirming genes
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST HEALING FOODS FOR YOUR GUT
The study of how genes control life is called genetics. Genetic looks at genetic differences, mutations, heredity, and of course of lot of today’s genetic research looks into genetic diseases. Genetics and the study of genes is a very important and valid science, but the belief behind genetics is outdated old-school thinking and that belief is that genes control life.
This belief came from the hypothesis that there is a gene for every protein. The more complex an organism, the more cells and proteins there are, the more genes there would be. That was the idea. This idea turns out to be incorrect.
The Human Genome Project, which started back in the late 1980s, was setup to uncover the entire sequence of genetic information found in human DNA with the side benefit of discovering the genetics of every disease and how to prevent and cure them. The human body has about 100,000 protein molecules, so science expected to find about 100,000 genes. Fast forward 15 years and guess how many genes they found at the end of the project in 2001 – only 35,000. Fast forward another 15 years to today and after further study and research that initial number has shrunk to about 20,000 genes.
There was a lot of hype in the science community about the Human Genome Project, but funnily enough when the scientist’s expectations proved to be wrong, very wrong, there was no big deal made about the unexpected results. This massively incorrect assumption about a gene coding for a protein fell off the radar. Science tends to work this way unfortunately where the good news is reported and the bad news is swept under the rug.
So now we know that there are only 20,000 genes in the human genome and these 20,000 genes code for over 100,000 proteins and alongside this fact is the news that the largest number of genes found in a single animal is 31,000 genes and that animal is the near-microscopic water flea Daphnia. Imagine that, a near-microscopic simple organism with hardly any cells and proteins compared to the 35 trillion cells and 100,000 proteins in your human body and yet this tiny little life form has 11,000 more genes than humans do.
What this shows you is that genes do not control life. No matter the complexity of an organism the number of genes present will vary a lot. It’s not the genes that say how life will be from birth to death. It’s the life that is lived that will determine which genes get expressed or activated or switched on and which genes don’t. Say goodbye to the old belief that your genes control your life and hello to the new way of thinking – that your life controls your genes.
This new way of thinking is actually 50 years old and is called the science of epigenetics, which looks at how environmental signals affect gene expression.
Epigenetics means above the genes and studies how your environment affects the biochemical and physiological processes that are happening outside of your genetic code, but have a direct effect on which sequence of your genetic code to read and which genes to express or not.
Remember the old way of thinking says that genes are in control like a foreman of a construction site. Genes dictate what gets built and so decide the health or disease of your cells.
The new way of thinking, epigenetics, says genes are actually just simple blueprints. They don’t do anything at all. It’s all the proteins and enzymes and cellular signals and every other process that’s going on in and outside of your cell that dictate which blueprints to read (gene expression), which parts of those blueprints to create proteins from (gene variation), and whether or not those blueprints need updating (gene mutation).
What this means is that epigenetics has actually shown that some genes will lay dormant and may never get expressed while other genes will be switched on and switched off and that other genes may undergo spontaneous mutation and transform into a brand new gene all based on your environment, on your surroundings.
So how does your environment impact your genetic expression? How does the environment influence your biochemistry and physiology and determine which genes to read or not, which parts of that gene to express and make proteins from, and which genes to mutate or leave unchanged?
Let me give a little background information first. Your genetic code is one long sequence of molecules like the alphabet is a sequence of letters. Your genes are subsets or small groupings of these molecules like words are groupings of the alphabet. This long sequence of your genetic code is called DNA or deoxyribonucleic acid. Your DNA is covered in a protein sheath. Altogether the proteins surrounding your DNA and the genes contained in your DNA this is called a chromosome. You have 23 pairs or 46 strands of chromosomes in your body. Chromosomes are found inside the nucleus of your cells.
Remember your genes don’t do anything; literally they don’t perform any physical action or function. Everything that happens with genes happens to the gene and is entirely dependent and reliant on signals that come from outside the chromosomes. So your genes are merely blueprints and blueprints don’t build structures.
The life your parents and grandparents lived designed and created your blueprints, your DNA, your genes. You had little say in the matter, but the expression or activation of your genes is all on you.
How epigenetics work can get pretty complex and I’m just going to give a summary here, but I will put a link to a video in the blog post for this episode which will give you more detail and a visual on what I’m talking about.
Your genes get read, expressed or activated, and mutated via signalling, that is the transmission and reception of information that come from your environment and go right down into your cells and ultimately reaching your genes. These environmental signals include everything that your six senses can perceive. Examples of these signals include your thoughts and feelings like fear or love, a physical threat or loving embrace, or digested nutrients from food. These environmental signals are the primary signal the first signal you receive.
Your brain, your heart, and your gut all have nerve centres and communicate with each other and they can be thought of as the primary organs that make up your conscious and subconscious mind. They receive this primary signal from your environment and then based on your beliefs and perceptions about life they interpret and translate this primary signal into a secondary signal, and it’s this secondary signal that is sent to other organs and cells in the form of hormones and neurotransmitters.
When this secondary signal is delivered to your cells it is picked up by a protein receptor in the cell membrane. Once this secondary signal is received this sets of a chain of events where a number of proteins and enzymes in the cell membrane and within the cell itself they bind to each other performing specific functions until eventually they either create a tertiary signal within the cell or they allow a tertiary signal to enter the cell through the cell membrane. This tertiary signal is the last signal that will bind to other proteins within the cell to perform a specific function.
Alright so you get a primary signal from the environment. Your conscious and subconscious mind changes that primary signal into a secondary signal. Your cells take the secondary signal in and they transform that into a tertiary signal and then there’s a function that is performed in the cell.
Now if that tertiary signal is unable to perform its function because the specific protein its wanting to bind to is missing, the signal molecule will enter the nucleus of the cell where your chromosomes are. It will bind to a specific regulatory protein on one of your chromosomes and when it does this that regulatory protein releases itself from the chromosome uncovering a specific sequence of your DNA of your genetic code. This exposes the gene that codes for the missing protein. The gene is then transcribed and copied and finally converted into that missing protein. The regulatory protein returns and covers up the DNA, and the tertiary signal can now bind to this newly created protein to perform its original function. This transcription, copying, and conversion process is called gene expression, gene activation, or a gene being switched on.
Here’s where it gets very interesting. If the tertiary signal is unable to perform its function due to a missing protein and it cannot locate the specific gene for that protein in your DNA, guess what happens next? The tertiary signal will activate a specific genetic engineering gene, which in turn will rewrite another gene in a different part of your DNA. Meaning the signal is now causing a genetic mutation. With the newly mutated gene now in place this tertiary signal can now activate the new gene, creating the missing protein and the signal will bind itself to the new protein and finally perform its function.
There’s nothing random about these mutations at all. It’s the environmental signal creating specific mutations to perform a specific function.
That may have been a lot to take in, so please watch the video for a visual detailed representation of what I just discussed.
Let me give you a real world example of how this works.
Let’s say you’re scared of spiders and you see a spider. Or let’s say you’re prone to road rage and you get cut off in traffic. Or let’s say your body is sensitive to dairy, but you don’t know it and you’ve been drinking dairy for a long time, for years and you’ve just had another glass of milk. Seeing the spider, getting cut off in traffic and drinking the milk are examples of a primary signal from your environment.
Since you have a belief that spiders are scary, and that bad drivers are a valid reason to get mad, and your body perceives dairy as indigestible and a possible toxin you transform the primary signal to an emotion of fear, an emotion of anger, and your body’s immune system gets activated yet again – this is the secondary signal. These secondary signals, which are now a bunch of hormones and neurotransmitters like epinephrine, norepinephrine, and cortisol, are sent to your cells.
When your cells receive these secondary signals they activate proteins and enzymes that allow negative tertiary signals to enter the cell activating genes that stop growth, repair, reproduction, digestion and elimination; that cause muscle breakdown and fat storage, and your immune system to go crazy. These negative tertiary signals can also cause gene mutations and enhance cancerous cell growth.
Alright time to flip this around. We’re going to change your beliefs and your perceptions. The primary signals don’t change. You still see a spider, you still get cut off in traffic, and you still drink a glass of milk. But this time you love spiders, you are a calm and relaxed driver, and your body is not sensitive to dairy and can digest it without any issues.
So again the primary signals don’t change, however, because you’re now smiling at the spider, giving gratitude for not getting into an accident, and your body is nourished from the milk you get secondary signals like oxytocin, dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins, feel good hormones are now being received by your cells.
When your cells receive these secondary signals they activate proteins and enzymes that allow positive tertiary signals to enter the cell and activate genes that promote growth, repair, reproduction, digestion and elimination; they promote muscle-building and fat-burning, and regulate your immune system. These positive tertiary signals can also activate genes that suppress cancer growth and cause cancer cells to die.
So what is this showing you? What this is showing you is that it’s not the primary signal from your environment that affects your genes. It is the secondary signal that comes from your conscious and subconscious mind that affects the tertiary signal and your genes. Whatever situation or event happens in the real world, in reality, it is you, your beliefs and your perception of that situation, of that event, that has the final say on which genes to activate and which genes to leave switched off.
It is your thoughts, your feelings, what you eat and drink, how you move, how you breathe, the toxicity of your environment, the quality of your sleep, the quality of your relationships, all of these control your genes.
Your mood, your health, your life these are the stimulus to your genes and your genes simply respond to that stimulus. If you have a sucky mood and are depressed about life then your genes will simply reflect this fact. So if you want to feel awesome and love the life you have it all begins by changing your beliefs about your life, positively changing your perceptions about life itself, which will change your behaviour and change your genes, eventually making the inside of your bodymind reflect the outside world that you positively perceive.
Now I’m not saying the goal is to think positive and live a naturally holistic healthy lifestyle 100% of the time. That’s impossible. What I’m saying is when you are aware, when you are conscious of your surroundings and of what’s going on around you, know that you have a choice in that moment to choose either a positive or a negative experience. I suggest you make the kind choose for yourself.
Here are three kind choices you can make to positively impact your health and to express health-boosting and life-affirming genes.
First, get rid of your ANTs – Automatic Negative Thoughts. Do this through critical thinking and questioning yourself, your beliefs, and asking yourself are your thoughts and beliefs true? For example is it true that you’re worthless, or that you’re not smart enough, or that no one will ever love you, or that you’ll get cancer because of your genes? Really, is that true? I highly recommend doing The Work by Byron Katie. She takes you through a powerful process of inquiry that’ll show you whether or not your current way of thinking is actually worth paying attention to.
Secondly, practise some form of daily meditation. Mindfulness meditation, movement mediation like Qi-gong or even walking meditation, any task that has you focused on one thing is a form of meditation. Meditation has been shown to boost your immune function, reduce stress levels and inflammation, reduce depression, and improve your mood and your outlook on life.
Third kind choice is to choose to live a holistic healthy lifestyle and you can do this by following the 7 Holistic Health Principles as I outlined in episode 30.
- Eat real food
- Drink natural water
- Move often
- Breathe properly
- Purify your environment
- Get quality restorative sleep and
- Form positive relationships with nature, with yourself, and with others
These 7 principles bring your bodymind back into sync with the rhythm and flow of Mother Nature and these principles give happy and healing epigenetic signals to your genes.
Okay I’m going to give a quick recap on epigenetics because I really want you to get that your genes are not your destiny.
“Genes DO NOT control your biology! Your beliefs about your life control your biology.”
It’s your habitat and environment, your habits and behaviour, your feelings and emotions, your thoughts and beliefs that influence your genes.
It is your beliefs that change the biochemistry of your blood and your blood carries the signals sent to your cells, and ultimately these signals determine the expression of your genes.
Perceive love and you get feel good hormones in your blood, sending positive signals to your cells where they read and express healthy genes.
Perceive fear and you get stress hormones in your blood, sending negative signals to your cells where they ignore healthy genes and may read and express disease-promoting genes.
Dr Joseph Mercola creator of the number one natural health website mercola.com says:
“Epigenetics shatters the idea that you are a victim of your genes, and shows that you have tremendous power to shape and direct your physical health.”
Meaning the power to live an awesome happy and healthy life lies within you. Take ownership and responsibility for your thoughts and your beliefs about life and you will no longer be the victim, but the victor in the beautiful story that is your wonderful life.
Links and Resources
- Video — Dr Bruce Lipton Presenting on Epigenetics
- The Biology of Belief — Bruce H. Lipton PhD
- The Work — Bryon Katie
- WGP 030: Want the Good Life? These 7 Holistic Health Principles Will Guide You There
- mercola.com
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In this podcast I’ll be exploring Leaky Gut Syndrome:
- I’ll explain how a leaky gut can lead to chronic disease
- I’ll talk about what causes a leaky gut
- Finally, I’ll give you 5 steps to healing and sealing a leaky gut
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST HEALING FOODS FOR YOUR GUT
Hippocrates was an ancient Greek physician and considered the father of western medicine, although I’m sure he’d be quite upset at the current health-care system and medical model we use today, which is really a disease-care model, but anyways… Hippocrates said:
“All disease begins in the gut.”
And he is absolutely 100% correct and let me explain how. And by the way when I say gut I’m talking about the small and large intestines in your body.
Your entire alimentary canal, your entire digestive system is one long tube that begins in your mouth hole and ends in your south hole so anything you put in your mouth and swallow is still technically outside of your body. If it gets digested and absorbed into your bloodstream then it’s inside your body, but if what you swallow gets eliminated then it technically was never in your body. That’s not to say it won’t affect your body only that the effect will be minimal compared to if what you ate did get into your bloodstream.
Now your gut performs many functions in your body besides digestion and elimination and its primary role is to act as a barrier controlling what’s allowed in and what stays out of your body. Nutrients are allowed into your body and unwanted unknown foreign materials are kept outside of your body. So it’s similar to a mosquito net. It allows oxygen in while keeping mosquitoes out. When this barrier becomes compromised and unregulated or when this mosquito net gets punctured and has tears in it this is called leaky gut syndrome.
When you have a leaky gut unwanted unknown foreign materials get into your bloodstream and then all hell begins to break loose in other parts of your body. When undigested food particles, pathogens, toxins, and other irritants that usually get eliminated find their way into your body, into your bloodstream your immune system gets activated and this causes an inflammatory and stress response at whatever site the foreign material settles in. The longer this inflammation and stress goes on the higher your chance of getting a chronic disease.
For example, if you have had leaky gut for a while and unwanted material settles in your joints you may get rheumatoid arthritis. If they settle in your arteries your chance of having a heart attack or stroke skyrockets. If this foreign matter settles in your thyroid you may experience hyper or hypothyroid issues. If they settle under your skin you may get rashes, eczema, or acne. If they settle in your brain your ability to focus and think clearly may reduce dramatically giving you brain fog. If this foreign material stays in your gut you may experience digestive issues like bloating and foul-smelling gas that can eventually lead to Crohn’s or coeliac disease. And if these non-nutrient substances don’t settle anywhere in particular this chronic low-level inflammatory and stress response will cause your hormones and your neurotransmitters to get out of balance with either too much or not enough being produced causing body composition problems (fat gain or muscle loss), reproductive issues (infertility), energy imbalances (feeling tired or fatigued), and mood disorders (depression).
Not only does bad stuff get into your bloodstream with a leaky gut, but because your gut wall is damaged you’re no longer able to absorb the full amount of nutrients, minerals, and vitamins from the food that you’re eating and this leads to nutrient deficiencies. This malabsorption of nutrients causes your body to start cannibalising itself in order to meet its own nutrient requirements. So if you’re not absorbing enough calcium your bones will begin to breakdown. If you’re not absorbing enough protein your body will get this protein from your muscles. Not absorbing enough natural fats? Say goodbye to proper brain function. And if you’re not absorbing enough vitamin A your cells will no longer form and grow properly causing dysfunction of many of your bodily systems.
So having a leaky gut is a serious problem with serious health consequences and it’s not limited to your gut. Your entire body is fair game.
“If you’re experiencing health symptoms of any kind there’s a 99.9999% chance that your gut is leaky.”
Your skin is a dozen cell layers thick and you can see the layers of your skin when you get a cut or you scrape yourself. The mucous lining of your gut, also known as your gut wall, is only one cell thick or should I say one cell thin. The cells that make up your gut wall are called enterocytes. This single layer of enterocytes makes it easy to absorb and transport nutrients into your bloodstream, but this also makes your gut very easy to damage.
Your gut wall isn’t smooth, but is made up of very tiny finger-like projections called villi that stick out increasing the surface area of your digestive system and this makes it easier to break down food and absorb more nutrients. Villi are connected to each other at their base by tight junctions and these tight junctions can open slightly to let certain nutrients in, but they remain closed when there’s foreign material around like undigested food particles, toxins, and pathogens.
There are certain substances, however, that can cause these tight junctions to open even in the presence of foreign material. There are even more substances that can cause direct physical damage to your single-celled gut wall. The term leaky gut syndrome comes from the fact that these tight junctions are opened and your gut wall is damaged. The technical term for this is intestinal hyperpermeability.
The unwarranted opening of these junctions and damage to your gut wall is caused by many many things and a variety of factors including:
- Anti-nutrients like gluten, lectins, saponins, and phytates
- Industrial seed oils aka vegetable oils
- Grains
- Instant coffee
- Pasteurised dairy
- Processed and refined sugar
- Foods your body is intolerant and sensitive to
- Nutrient deficiencies
- Inorganic foods raised with inorganic fertilisers and pesticides
- Tap water and water that is deficient in minerals
- Alcohol
- Artificial sweeteners
- Artificial colourings, preservatives, additives, thickeners, emulsifiers, bulking agents, flavourings, and texturants
- Synthetic vitamins
- Parasitic infections
- Dysbiosis, which is not an infection, but simply having more pathogens than probiotics in your gut
- Environmental toxins including personal and homecare products
- Lack of exposure to the sun, to bare skin on the Earth, and to time in nature
- Pharmaceutical drugs like antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, acid-blockers, and pain-killers
- Caesarean birth or being born via C-section
- Sedentary lifestyle
- Lack of quality restorative sleep
- Chronic stress and
- Chronic inflammation
So how do you seal and heal your leaky gut? How do you prevent those tight junctions between your villi from opening when they shouldn’t and how do you repair the damage to the enterocytes the cells of your gut wall?
Here are five steps to healing a leaky gut.
First things first – Redefine your dream for healing.
Without a big enough why, a big enough reason to keep you moving forward you will end up stressed out about the whole healing process. If you stress about how difficult it’s going to be for example to stop eating bread or cheese or having to buy plant-based organic deodorant and homecare products then forget about moving onto the next steps. This stress about changing and healing is just as bad as continuing to eat gluten or drink alcohol. You need to create a dream that matters, a dream that will inspire you to make change happen, to make change stick, and to make healing feel less of a burden and more of a passion, more of a right like you deserve this. Checkout episode 14 for more details about how to build your dream.
Second step – Remove all possible gut irritants.
This includes everything in the list I gave you earlier. Well as much of it as you can handle without stressing out about it. Hopefully your dream keeps your stress levels or your perception of stress in check. Even if you do find yourself feeling a bit stressed about this step you can always practise meditation and movement practises like Qi-gong to help reduce the amount of perceived stress you’re experiencing.
Step three – Refeed your body with holistic nutrition.
This isn’t just about eating real food. This also includes drinking natural water, moving often, breathing correctly, getting quality restorative sleep, and engaging in loving relationships. When it comes to food to heal your gut though you can’t go past:
- Bone broth
- Fermented foods like raw milk kefir and sauerkraut
- Fatty fish like salmon and sardines, and
- Eating more natural animal and fruit fats
Fourth step – Repair your gut with smart supplementation.
You could heal your gut naturally without the use of supplements, but strategic use of supplements will help support and boost your body’s own innate healing abilities increasing your chances for success. The enterocytes that make up your gut wall, these guys love to feed on an amino acid glutamine and you can get glutamine in real foods like bone broth, but you can also find it as a supplement powder called l-glutamine. Digestive enzymes are a fantastic way to supplement your body’s digestive system and will ensure the proper digestion and absorption of nutrients. Aloe vera juice and deglycyrrhizinated licorice or DGL are two very potent plant-based gut-healers. High quality fish and krill oil with their anti-inflammatory omega-3 fatty acids will also help your gut heal. Lastly, a probiotic supplement preferably containing soil-based microorganisms will help bring your gut microbiome back into balance.
Fifth and final step – Remember to laugh.
There’s an age-old saying:
“Laughter is the best medicine.”
A real hard laugh boosts your immune system and lowers your levels of the stress hormone cortisol for at least a day so be sure to watch something funny, go to a comedy show, or do some laughing yoga. Yeah, you heard right, laughing yoga. I’ll put a link in the blog post for this episode to a video showing what laughing yoga is all about. It’s actually quite funny, obviously. Also I’ll put a link to the Chewbacca Mom viral video. It’s a video I’ve come across recently and it made me laugh pretty hard the first time I saw it.
Here are a couple of books to help you on your gut healing journey. How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy! by Paul Chek covers how to heal holistically. Gut and Psychology Syndrome by Dr Natasha Campbell-McBride gives you the GAPs Protocol and this goes deeper into gut healing and is a great option for those with severely damaged guts.
I’ll leave you with this thought. Life is short. Don’t live life so seriously. The time it’s going to take to heal your gut will be long though. So take the time now to heal your gut so you can enjoy yourself later and have more fun before your time is up.
Links and Resources
- WGP 014: Dream Building – How to Create the Life You Really Really Want
- Aloe Vera Juice
- DGL Licorice
- Krill Oil
- Digestive enzyme and probiotic supplements
- Laughing Yoga Video
- Chewbacca Mom Video
- How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy! — Paul Chek
- Gut and Psychology Syndrome — Dr Natasha Campbell-McBride
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In this podcast I’ll be exploring Juicing and Blending:
- I’ll explain why consuming juices and smoothies are important for happiness and health
- I’ll talk about the differences and the pros and cons between juicing and blending vegetables and fruits
- Finally, I’ll share tips on how to turn your juices and smoothies into a healing elixir
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
Everyone knows that vegetables and fruits are packed-full of phytonutrients, plant chemicals that have powerful medicinal and healing effects in your body. Plant power fuels and nourishes animal life on this planet. Without the antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, and immune-boosting benefits you get from consuming plant matter it becomes very difficult, but not impossible, just hard to give your body the nutritional, energetical, and informational support it needs to thrive.
Unless you live in the North and South poles where you’re exposed to cold with its own unique healing powers and are consuming a lot of nutritionally dense rich blubberous animal fats and their offal then plant foods are going to be a necessity in your diet.
Juicing and blending your vegetables and fruits into juices and smoothies are an excellent and simple way to get more plant medicine into your diet.
When you juice you’re making juices and when you blend you’re making smoothies. Juicing is very different to blending, which makes juices very different to smoothies.
Plants are made up of mostly water much like your own body and also a carbohydrate known as fibre. Fibre is indigestible by your body’s digestive system. This fibre though it is the perfect food for the trillions of microorganisms that live in your gut, in your digestive tract and your gut microbiome plays a huge role in your digestion and in keeping your immune system running optimally.
Fibre is the difference between juicing vegetables and fruits into juices verses blending them into smoothies. When you juice, using a juicer obviously, what you’re doing is separating the fibrous plant material from the water and this water contains a majority of the phytonutrients. This leaves you with a very watery drink and a lot of fibre leftover. When you blend, using a blender obviously, what you’re doing here is pulverising, chopping, mashing 100% of the plant material fibre and all leaving you with a thick drink.
There are benefits and drawbacks to both juicing and blending.
The primary benefit to having juices and smoothies is that they are a very simple, nutritious and delicious way to increase your consumption of vegetables. Not everyone can manage to eat 3 to 9 cups of vegetables a day, but you can easily get 3 cups of a variety of vegetables in one juice or smoothie.
For example in my green smoothie that I have for dinner most nights I put in a quarter cup of parsley. You have probably seen a tiny pinch of parsley used mainly as a garnish and sure that tiny amount tastes okay, but can you imagine eating 4 tablespoons worth of chopped parsley? Maybe spread out evenly over a day, but for me I like getting my parsley dose in one hit and it’s so much easier and tastier mixed into a smoothie.
Now the main benefit to juicing and drinking juices is that they are an easily digested and quickly absorbed source of nutrition and energy. For people with digestive issues, energy issues, and for those who are severely malnourished drinking green juices will be easier on your body allowing your body to absorb more of the nutrients in that juice. It takes about 20 minutes for a juice to be fully digested and absorbed compared to a few hours for a full-blown meal.
Also because your body doesn’t need to spend a lot of energy digesting your juice it will have more energy that can be used elsewhere such as for repairing damaged tissues, increasing detoxification processes, and producing more neurotransmitters and sex hormones.
The thing is the main benefit to juicing, easy digestion and quick absorption, is also one of its drawbacks. But this all depends on what you’re actually juicing. Fruit juices are not healing drinks like green juices are. This is because of the high amount of fruit sugars present in fruits. Remember juicing extracts the water and the nutrients and separates them from the fibre and fibre helps slow down the release of sugar from your gut into your bloodstream. Without the fibre in the juice that sugar is going to hit your system very quick and very hard causing a massive insulin response which is something you don’t want to happen on a regular basis. Listen to the previous podcast I did on the blood sugar rollercoaster for more info on that.
Now you may be thinking to yourself, but it’s natural sugar from real food. Whether sugar is found naturally in real food or refined and added by the spoonful once sugar hits your digestive tract your body doesn’t know the difference. Sugar is sugar. Except if there’s fibre present then your body and your gut microorganisms will deal with that sugar differently. Not just fibre, but fats and acids help with this as well, but I’ll talk more about those later. This is why eating fruits in their whole intact form is a lot better for you than fruit juices and it doesn’t matter if the juices are bought from the shop or made fresh at home. Sugar without fibre is processed sugar to your body.
The other downside to drinking juices is that you cannot extract all the water and nutrients bound to the fibre. Even with the slowest spinning masticating juicers you will always be missing out on nutrients when you juice.
Final drawback to juicing I’ll mention is when you’re using a centrifugal juicer, one that spins at high-speed in the thousands of RPMs or revolutions per minute, a centrifugal juicer will suck in more oxygen which creates more oxidation or damage to the nutrients. Not only do high-speed juicers cause damage, but they also do not extract as much juice as slow masticating juicers do. Even if you do use a masticating juicer that can spin as low as 65 RPMs, as I talked about before you will not be able to extract all the water and nutrients from the fibre.
Moving onto smoothies.
The good thing about smoothies, besides being a simple way to increase your vegetable consumption, is that you are eating the whole food, the entire vegetable and fruit meaning you get the fibre, the nutrients, the water, the whole deal. You are not missing out on anything that may be lost when you juice. This means that even if you do add some fruit to your blended smoothies the release of sugar into your bloodstream will be a lot slower than fruit that’s been juiced.
There is a similar drawback to blending just as there is in juicing if your smoothie is made up mostly or 100% of fruit. For people with metabolic disorders meaning they are unable to digest and metabolise sugar properly due to hormonal imbalances, a fruit smoothie will be doing more harm than healing and can be just as bad as a fruit juice.
Last downside to blending again similar to juicing is that these blenders spin at super high speeds that will cause damage both physically by the blades and oxidatively by sucking in more oxygen.
Alright so how do you make healing juices and smoothies?
First things first – you got to reduce the sugar hit. When designing a juice or smoothie for healing, obviously you don’t want to add any additional sweeteners artificial or natural including maple syrup and honey due to sugars ability to upset your hormonal rhythms and to suppress your immune system.
When it comes to juices you want to be drinking healing green juices with little to no fruit added. I like using kale, cucumber, celery, and some ginger as a base for all my green juices. From here you can add whatever else you like. I recommend adding in some herbs as pound for pound herbs are more nutritionally dense than their larger plant cousins.
The only fruits I recommend for juicing are lemons, limes, kiwifruit, and a green apple. The acidity in lemon and lime help with your digestion and blood sugar balance. The gelatinous nature and compounds in kiwi also help with digestion and green apples are a bit of a compromise when it comes to taste. If you find green juices too bitter then adding one green apple including the apple seeds, especially the apple seeds, can help make the juice sweeter without being too heavy in fruit sugars, with the added bonus of having the low dose of cyanide that come from the apple seeds. No this cyanide isn’t going to kill you, but it’s a great cancer regulator. By that I mean cancer cells love sugar. So when you eat your juice (yes I said eat, not drink) a lot of the sugars will be picked up by cancer cells. The cyanide will piggyback on this metabolism and will also be taken up by those cancerous cells causing them to do what mainstream medicine fails to do – the cyanide causes cancerous cells to die.
Okay other vegetables to improve on taste while at the same time improve healing are carrots, beetroot, and orange kumara or orange sweet potato. The cool thing about the sweet potato is not only does it give you a bunch of beta-carotene and a touch of sweetness, but it also gives the juice a creamy texture. If a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, then a bit of lemon juice and sweet potato helps the green juice go down, no doubt about it.
To help lower the glycaemic response, the rate at which sugar gets released into your bloodstream, you can mix in some raw unfiltered apple cider vinegar with the mother. This means apple cider vinegar that hasn’t been pasteurised and that looks murky. The bottle should not be clear looking. You should see the mother, which is a collection of friendly bacteria and other beneficial compounds, you should see the mother at the bottom of the bottle so be sure to shake it up before mixing into your juice.
Another thing you want to do when consuming green juices is to eat some fat with your juice. I recommend eating a spoonful of coconut oil or extra-virgin olive oil right before or right after your juice. There are a lot of fat-soluble micronutrients in vegetables and they need fat to be absorbed during digestion. So by eating some fat with your juice you can increase the amount of nutrients your body absorbs and assimilates.
Final tip for designing a very healing juice is that you must use a slow masticating horizontal juicer. A high-speed juicer is destroying a majority of the nutrients wasting a lot of that precious plant medicine. A vertical masticating juicer is much better and does more than just juice. It can make nut milks and sorbets as well. The difference between a vertical and horizontal juicer is that while the vertical is better for getting more juice out of fruits it doesn’t do a good job of extracting water and nutrients from non-starchy vegetables, especially green leafy vegetables. Now a horizontal masticating juicer can also make nut milks and sorbets like the vertical one and it is the best juicer for healing as it gets more medicine out of vegetables. If you have the cash go for a juicer with twin juicing abilities to get more out of your vegetables. Or you can simply put the fibre or leftover pulp back into your juicer a second time to get even more medicine out of the plants.
I do have a tip relating to juicing, but not to do with the juice itself. The pulp, the fibre that’s leftover, don’t toss this in the trash. Use it in your compost for your garden or dehydrate the fibre to make healthy crackers.
Remember the base of the green juice I mentioned earlier and play around and make your own recipes from there.
When it comes to healing green smoothies similar guidelines apply.
I use as a liquid base for all my green smoothies one cup of water, a pinch of sea salt, a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar or lemon juice, and a tablespoon of extra-virgin coconut oil. You can use any healthful animal or fruit fat you like and any liquid you like so long as there’s no added sweeteners and chemicals.
Coconut milk and unsweetened almond milk are okay substitutes for water, but even better than water (yes better than water if you can tolerate dairy that is) is raw yoghurt, specifically raw milk kefir. This gives your body more beneficial microorganisms or probiotics. But wait there’s more and something even better than water and kefir for healing (if you tolerate monosodium glutamate or MSG that is) and that’s bone broth made from bones from happy and healthy animals free to roam outdoors and eating their natural species appropriate diet.
“A good broth can raise the dead”
Is a South American proverb and by using bone broth in your healing green smoothie you will increase your body’s innate ability to heal exponentially. If you don’t have any bone broth handy you can always add a tablespoon or two of gelatine or collagen which have similar health benefits to bone broth including repairing your gut and improving joint and skin health.
You can add whatever non-starchy green-leafy cruciferous coloured sulphurous vegetables you want to your smoothie, but when it comes to fruit I would stick to berries and the juice of lemons or limes to keep your smoothie a healing drink. Celery I include as a base in all of my green smoothies. Celery helps normalise blood pressure and aids with digestion. Adding in herbs and spices is a must for the best tasting and healing green smoothie. Parsley and cinnamon are my go to herb and spice. Parsley is a great blood purifier and it reduces body odour and cinnamon will improve overall flavour and help stabilise blood sugar levels.
Oh and when I say green here, in terms of green juice or green smoothie, I don’t just mean literally green, I also mean a high vegetable low fruit drink. So even if your juice or smoothie isn’t the colour green it’s green in my book if there’s not high amounts of fruit and sugar in it.
A couple of taste and healing combinations I’ve found too good to be true when it comes to smoothies are avocado, a tiny amount of red onion, and coriander aka cilantro aka Chinese parsley. Think a guacamole drink. Also raw cacao powder with mint leaves. Yep a mint chocolate drink and when you add in an avocado to your mint chocolate you get a mint chocolate mousse. Mmm hmm, tasty!
Another taste enhancer, well really a texture enhancer is to add cacao nibs or coconut flakes to your smoothie near the end of blending to give it some crunch or sprinkle some crushed nuts or seeds on top of your drink after blending. And by the way peanuts are legumes, not nuts.
One final blending tip is to add a quarter to half a teaspoon of powdered vitamin C to your smoothie. This acts as an antioxidant and protects against oxidative damage that happens when you blend at high-speeds. Also it gives a little bit of tang to your smoothie.
If you really cannot do without fruits or starchy vegetables in your green drinks then you can still make these healing drinks by consuming them post workout. Your muscle cells are more sensitive to insulin after intense exercise so by timing the intake of your sweet green drink after a workout you reduce the impact the sugar will have on your body.
Final overall tip and this is an absolute requirement when it comes to turning a typical green drink into a healing elixir and I mentioned this earlier and that is you must eat your juice or smoothie, not drink it. Meaning you must chew the watery or thick liquid in your mouth for a few seconds, get your digestive enzyme containing saliva all up in that drink before you swallow. Chewing is one of the early stages of digestion, which I talked about back in episode 9, and without this crucial step you’re literally wasting most of the beneficial plant medicine in your drink as your body will quickly eliminate whatever isn’t covered in your digestive enzymes when it hits your digestive tract. Chewing your green drink will turn it into a more potent healing elixir. So no straws please. Drink it straight from the mug or cup.
I’ll put a couple of links to a juicer and blender I recommend in the blog post for this episode.
Look there’s no limits to how you make your juice or smoothie really. It’s up to you. Whatever floats your boat and makes your taste buds sing. However, there are limits to making your green drink a healing drink.
So remember keep the sugar low, add in some animal or fruit fats, move before you eat, and above all else listen to your body.
“If your green drink makes you feel stink or look green or pink, it’s time to rethink your green drink.”
Okay so which is better for healing? Juicing or blending? Well it depends on what you put in your drink, and also how and when you eat it.
Links and Resources
- WGP 040: Riding the Blood Sugar Roller Coaster to Hormone Hell
- WGP 009: Digestion – How to Eat Real Food
- Optimum Slow Juicer
- Optimum High Speed Vortex Blender
- Omega Horizontal Masticating Juicer
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Dr. Bernstein’s Diabetes Solution – Richard K. Bernstein MD
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Originally published in 1997, DR. BERNSTEIN’S DIABETES SOLUTION is a unique resource that covers both type 1 and type 2 diabetes, explains step-by-step how to normalize blood sugar levels and prevent or reverse complications and offers detailed guidelines for establishing a treatment plan. Readers will find fifty gourmet recipes, in addition to a comprehensive discussion of diet, obesity, and new drugs to curb carbohydrate craving and overeating.Now in its fourth edition, the book presents up-to-the-minute information on insulin resistance, blood-testing devices, measuring blood sugar, new types of insulin, gastroparesis and other issues, as well as updated diet guidelines. DR. BERNSTEIN’S DIABETES SOLUTION is the one book every diabetic must own.
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A Mind of Your Own – Kelly Brogan, MD
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New York Times bestseller
Named one of the top health and wellness books for 2016 by MindBodyGreen
Depression is not a disease. It is a symptom.
Recent years have seen a shocking increase in antidepressant use the world over, with 1 in 4 women starting their day with medication. These drugs have steadily become the panacea for everything from grief, irritability, panic attacks, to insomnia, PMS, and stress. But the truth is, what women really need can’t be found at a pharmacy.
According to Dr. Kelly Brogan, antidepressants not only overpromise and underdeliver, but their use may permanently disable the body’s self-healing potential. We need a new paradigm: The best way to heal the mind is to heal the whole body.
In this groundbreaking, science-based and holistic approach, Dr. Brogan shatters the mythology conventional medicine has built around the causes and treatment of depression. Based on her expert interpretation of published medical findings, combined with years of experience from her clinical practice, Dr. Brogan illuminates the true cause of depression: it is not simply a chemical imbalance, but a lifestyle crisis that demands a reset. It is a signal that the interconnected systems in the body are out of balance – from blood sugar, to gut health, to thyroid function– and inflammation is at the root.
A Mind of Your Own offers an achievable, step-by-step 30-day action plan—including powerful dietary interventions, targeted nutrient support, detoxification, sleep, and stress reframing techniques—women can use to heal their bodies, alleviate inflammation, and feel like themselves again without a single prescription.
Bold, brave, and revolutionary, A Mind of Your Own takes readers on a journey of self-empowerment for radical transformation that goes far beyond symptom relief.
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Mindsight – Daniel J. Siegel MD
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This groundbreaking book, from one of the global innovators in the integration of brain science with psychotherapy, offers an extraordinary guide to the practice of “mindsight,” the potent skill that is the basis for both emotional and social intelligence. From anxiety to depression and feelings of shame and inadequacy, from mood swings to addictions, OCD, and traumatic memories, most of us have a mental “trap” that causes recurring conflict in our lives and relationships. Daniel J. Siegel, M.D., a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and co-director of the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center, shows us how to use mindsight to escape these traps. Through his synthesis of a broad range of scientific research with applications to everyday life, Dr. Siegel has developed novel approaches that have helped hundreds of patients free themselves from obstacles blocking their happiness. By cultivating mindsight, all of us can effect positive, lasting changes in our brains—and our lives. A book as inspiring as it is profound, Mindsight can help us master our emotions, heal our relationships, and reach our fullest potential.
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The Fourfold Path to Healing – Thomas S. Cowan MD, Sally Fallon, Jaimen McMillan
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The Fourfold Path to Healing merges the wisdom of traditional societies, the most modern findings of western medicine and the esoteric teaching of the ancients. The fourfold approach includes: Nutrition using nutrient-dense traditional foods; therapeutics through a wide range of nontoxic remedies; Movement to heal and strengthen the emotions; and meditation to develop your powers of objective thought.
Disclaimer: This page contains affiliate links that may provide monetary compensation to help support the Whole Guidance Vision of Creating a Happy and Healthy Planet should you make a purchase. We very much appreciate and thank you for your support.
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In this podcast I’ll be exploring How to get Yourself Back on a Holistic Track after Overindulging on Food:
- I’ll explain how overeating can be a gateway to many other dream-negating bad habits
- I’ll talk about some of the causes for overeating
- Finally I’ll share five tips that’ll help get your bodymind back into a holistic way of being after an episode of overeating
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
Overeating, binging, and overindulging on food are habits that other animals don’t seem to exhibit. The human animal, however, practises this habitual way of eating to the extreme a lot more than it should.
When you binge eat there’s the possibility of thinking that since you’re already doing something that’s not exactly health-promoting you may as well do some other non-healthy things like indulge in some alcohol, sloth around all day, or just think horrible negative thoughts like how sucky it is to be you right now for not having the willpower to just say no to food.
As a kid I would binge eat on cookies or crackers and hot chocolate (yummy) and I still have binge eating episodes to this day. I know for myself that once I start going down the binge eating path my return to the path of a healthy way of eating can be a long and difficult one as other healthy habits fall by the wayside as well. My sleeping pattern would go all over the place, I’d forget (on purpose) about keeping up with my usual movement practise, and I’d find my thoughts heading down a dark corridor.
One reason for overeating is not being mindful and conscious of your own actions.
I know many people who literally eat like ducks. They barely chew their food and end up swallowing big portions of food down their gullets. I know many people like this because I used to be one. You can only see what you have within you, so that’s why it’s easy for me to see this because I definitely had this mindless habit for a long time. Back in the day I was one of the fastest eaters on the planet (true story) and I never took the time to chew my food, you know to just enjoy the taste. I was never fully involved in the whole eating process. I guess you could say I thought eating was a waste of time and I had better things to do. Problem is because I ate so fast I wasn’t giving my body the proper signals that I’ve eaten and it’s time to stop now. So I would have seconds, thirds, and all too often a fourth serving. Looking back at it now all I can think is ‘man I really was a pig… or a duck.
Another reason for binge eating is emotional.
Feeling alone or hurt. Feeling like you don’t have a purpose and don’t know who you are and what you want or living a life that you really aren’t in love with. So loneliness, confusion, and fear of life itself will cause many people to turn to food for comfort and this can turn into a long period of binge eating.
Last reason I’ll give for overindulging on food is the season.
What I’m talking about here are special occasions such as birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, and holidays, all of these are perfect excuses to get off the health train and on the indulgence express (my kind of ride). I mean who doesn’t love pumpkin pies, fruit salads with ice cream, cakes, and my personal favourite homemade smoked salmon. Smoked salmon, you may be thinking how is that unhealthy? Well let me tell you how. If you can sit down and eat half a whole salmon including the head in less than 20 minutes that my friend is overindulging of the highest degree. Remember:
“Too much of a good thing is no longer a good thing.”
All right so let’s get into five ways you can get yourself back to living a holistic healthy lifestyle after an episode of overeating.
So the day after your however-long binge first thing you want to do is to get back in touch with your dream. What is your dream? Do you even have a dream? Have you written it down with specific goals and outlined the steps you need to take to get you there? Have you got clear personal core values on when to say yes or no when it comes to your dream? If you haven’t got a dream with clear goals and core values then you’re living life with no real direction.
A dream is your compass, your GPS that keeps you on your chosen path.
As the saying goes:
“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”
So unless your dream is to gain massive amounts of weight or to outdo everyone at a buffet meal or to win an all-you-can-eat contest then overeating, binging, and overindulging on food are not dream-affirmative actions. Listen to the Dream Building podcast I did for more information on using dreams to help guide your holistic lifestyle, it’s podcast number 14.
Second tip: get outdoors. Strip to the bare essentials (not fully naked, but if you can get fully naked more power to you) and get some sunshine on your skin and ground yourself to the Earth by going barefoot on the grass, soil, or sand. Connecting with nature will help improve your mood, boost your immune system, and help reduce the inflammation caused by the excessive amounts of energy you’ve been putting into your body.
Third tip is to do a little fasting. Digestion is a 4-6 hour process and your body has to focus a lot of attention on this very important function. Nutrients and energy will be diverted to your stomach and intestines to ensure proper digestion takes place, but this means other functions in your body will be somewhat affected.
One process that happens in your cells only during times your body isn’t digesting and when you haven’t eaten in a long time is called autophagy. Autophagy is when cells destroy, clear out, and recycle old, damaged, and unused proteins. This makes for a healthier, cleaner internal environment for the cell giving it longevity and maintaining its ability to function at an optimal level. By fasting you give your cells the chance to clear out the junk and to repair or get rid of what’s not working.
Now there are many different ways to fast. You could do a 24 hour fast once or twice a week, a 48 hour water fast, 3 day fruit fast, couple weeks of juice fasting, or what I normally practise intermittent fasting where you fast between 12-18 hours and eat only within a certain feeding window of 12-6 hours.
Right now I’m doing a 12 hour fast with a 12 hour feeding window. So I usually finish eating dinner before 7 and don’t have breakfast until 7 the next morning.
Fourth tip is to move at high intensities. High intensity movement patterns include lifting heavy (at least 80% your 1 rep maximum) and high intensity interval training where you go all out for a certain amount of time and then rest for a certain amount of time and you repeat this over and over.
High intensity training helps maintain and build lean muscle mass, which is a metabolically rich part of your body, meaning the more muscle you have the more energy you actually need to maintain it. HIT also keeps your metabolism raised long after the workout, up to 48 hours in some cases, allowing your body to burn energy and fat even while you’re at rest. HIT compared to longer endurance activities stops your stress hormone cortisol from staying too high for too long, which is exactly what you want as cortisol is catabolic, meaning it breaks things down including muscle tissue. Last benefit to high intensity workouts is that they can be extremely short. So instead of going for an hour long run you could do sprints on a spin bike with the whole workout lasting no more than 20 minutes and turn yourself into a metabolic beast.
Last tip to getting yourself back on track after an episode of binge eating is to get back to eating real food. Stick to whole foods from Mother Nature and skip the packaged and processed junk from Father Industry. If for one week you can lower your starch and fruit intake that’d be even better.
Remember:
“Real food is real medicine.”
And by eating real food you’re giving your body exactly what it needs to heal and repair itself. Especially important after a period of feeding it an excessive amount of energy or significant amounts of fake pretend food-like products.
So follow your dream, connect with nature, do a little fasting, do intense movements, and just eat real food and in no time you’ll be back on track to living your dream and living a holistic healthy lifestyle.
Links and Resources
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In this podcast I’ll be exploring Emotions specifically Anger and Happiness:
- I’ll explain how emotions run your life
- I’ll talk about how anger is a necessary and healthy emotion
- I’ll talk about how the pursuit for happiness isn’t a healthy choice
- Finally I’ll share how to express healthy anger and to choose happiness to get the most pleasure from life
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
Ah emotions. You can’t live with them and you can’t live without them.
Your thoughts (your ideas) they create your feelings (your emotions) and your feelings well they determine a heck of a lot. It is your feelings that determine your words (what you say); your deeds (what you do); and ultimately your results (what you get out of life).
Let’s take a look at how ideas and emotions in your bodymind really do lead to the results you get in your life.
Human thought begins with the perception of an internal or external stimulus. This thought then creates subtle energies. These subtle energies influence your physical, emotional, and mental ways of being by mobilising chemical messenger molecules throughout your bodymind. Examples of chemical messenger molecules include immune cells, hormones, and neurotransmitters. So once these molecules have energy and motion they travel to, are received, and used by your cells as instructions that drive both your verbal and physical actions.
These molecules of energy in motion or another way to say it would be these molecules of e-motion absolutely, 100%, no doubt about it determine the course of your life because what you say and what you do will always, always determine what you get out of life.
Now there are two main emotional forces that drive the human experience: pain and pleasure.
One emotion associated with pain is anger. The root cause for you to get angry is because you have a need that is not being met. But I’m not talking about basic needs like food or shelter. No I’m talking about deep-seated, inbuilt, animal, innate, primal, evolutionary-rooted physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual needs. The ultimate human need is the need to connect and to share your self with others.
So when your need for connection and sharing is not being met many emotions can come up and anger is the emotion that people think and feel of when they wish to express externally to another person that they have this unmet need. As I talked about earlier this anger really is a collection of molecules of energy in motion. Anger is an emotion that has very hot, unstable energy attached to it so your words and deeds will also be hot and unstable when in an angry state resulting in a heated and rocky outcome to whomever you are expressing that anger toward.
When taken to the extreme anger turns into rage, which has even hotter less stable out-of-control energy associated with it.
Now when anger does not turn into out-of-controlled rage it can be a very beneficial and healthful emotion. In fact anger is one of the most powerful and impactful emotions as anger alone can cause you to change. Your fits, your bouts, your outbursts of anger are all opportunities for change. To change what? To change anything you want.
Whether your anger causes a change in you, in someone else, in your environment, or a global change it doesn’t matter as change of any kind is what life is all about.
Many inventions, services, businesses, restaurants, and even airlines were created because one person got given a crappy deal, got angry, and then got even… an even better idea that is. For example successful businessman Richard Branson he was left stranded at an airport and instead of moping around complaining, getting worked up into a rage and eventually doing nothing about it, he got over his anger and frustration and asked other stranded passengers if they’d like to charter a plane with him and thus the seed for Virgin airlines was sown.
Unfortunately many people use anger purely as a release valve and nothing else and there’s nothing wrong with releasing pent up energy, but if you don’t do something after that release you miss out on the main benefit of getting angry, the benefit of change.
Anger can be a healthy emotion with the potential for unlimited benefits because who knows where change can take you.
Happiness on the other hand is an emotion associated with pleasure. You usually feel happy when you get what you want and need and when personal expectations are met. I say usually feel happy because even when your needs are met you may still find yourself to not be in a happy place as I’ll explain shortly.
The emotion of happiness has an energy signature that is adaptable and stable. Happiness can warm you when you’re feeling cold and can cool you when you’re feeling the heat. Happiness can help ground you to the present moment and keep you centred, even when you think that everything around you is falling to pieces.
The issue with happiness lies in its pursuit.
The pursuit of happiness is an endless everlasting game that you can never win. When you’re told by others such as your parents, well-meaning family and friends, and the media that in order for you to be happy you must act a certain way, own a certain product, buy a certain perfume, wear a certain brand of clothing, follow a certain political party and you end up getting what you thought you always wanted you find yourself still very unhappy indeed. So you begin to pursue the next false idol of desire, get it, and still find yourself unhappy and this perpetual persistent pursuit for happiness goes on and on for as long as you play it.
Even if you were to pursue your own goals you will find that at the end of that rainbow there is no real pot of gold. Think of all the personal goals you’ve set and achieved and ask yourself after the fact right now in this moment long after you accomplished what you set out to do, are you happy? Are you happy because you fulfilled your dreams and goals or are you happy for another reason?
I used to always wait for something to happen in my life before I would allow myself to be happy such as earn a certain amount of money or lift a certain amount of weight or to see a certain number on the scale before I would say to myself I was happy and I was finally successful. Now, however, not only am I extremely happy and satisfied once I’ve achieved a goal, but I’m also happy during the goal seeking process. For example, I’m happy and satisfied after eating a delicious, nutritious, and tasty dish, but I’m also happy while shopping for, preparing for, and cooking the actual meal.
What I’m saying is that in my experience being happy isn’t something that you can get out there externally. Happiness can only be found in one place, internally, inside of you. No matter how much pursuing you do to be happy, no matter how much money you make, no matter what you own or how many material objects or awards you accumulate you will never find happiness in any one of these actions specifically. In order to express the energies of adaptability and stability, in order to express true happiness you must choose to do so in any one moment.
In other words happiness doesn’t have to be a destination, but can also be the journey itself and the only thing stopping you from being happy is you.
“In order to be happy, you must choose happy.”
It doesn’t matter who you’re with, what you’re doing, where you’re going, or how you’re feeling, I believe that happiness really is a personal choice and it’s a choice that you can make in any moment.
I’m not saying it’s an easy choice to make. For some people choosing happiness will be such a foreign concept that to make such a choice may look impossible. For other people like the Dalai Lama for example choosing happiness comes as second nature. For me personally I am constantly having to remind myself daily to stop waiting for happiness to come to me and to let happiness come from me.
It’s a simple idea seeing happiness as a choice, but boy is it a bloody difficult choice to understand.
Alright so now I’ll talk about how to express healthy anger and how to make it easier to choose happiness.
Firstly, when it comes to healthy expressions of anger you must give yourself permission to express that anger. Do not hold anger or any other emotion for that matter inside your bodymind.
Remember emotions are actual chemical messenger molecules or molecules of energy in motion and when you experience an emotion and a feeling these molecules of energy are mobilised throughout your entire body. When you express that internal feeling and emotion by sharing it externally those molecules get used up by your cells and the energy releases from your body into the environment.
However, if left to linger inside your body these molecules and energy will build up and accumulate in certain areas of your body depending on your genetics and upbringing. If you chronically and consistently hold back from expressing your emotions this bundle of molecules and energy in your body will eventually create a disease and the most common disease associated with pent-up suppressed emotions is cancer.
Secondly:
“Get mad, then get over it.”
Is a quote by American statesman Colin Powell and it’s a quote that you must keep in mind when it comes to healthy expressions of anger.
Back in the day when I was dealing with depression I was also dealing with anger issues (actually I still am). Whereas back then I would attach to my anger as if my life depended on it and it would grow into full-blown rage and I would totally forget what it was that I was angry about in the first place, now I am able to let go of that anger once I’ve allowed myself the chance to fully express it. Plus I’m fully aware of how I am being and what I’m saying during the outburst of anger, which is pretty weird. It’s like I can see how much of an egg I’m being and all I can do is be a witness to my outburst. This is a good thing though because it helps me remember what I got angry about and makes it easier for me to change what it is I want to change so I won’t be triggered as easily the next time I might get angry.
So do not attach to anger and let it develop into full-blown rage. Stay in control of your aggression by fully expressing it and do not confuse yourself with those molecules of energy in motion. You are expressing anger, you are not anger itself.
Healthy anger is anger that is expressed, let go of, and learnt from.
With regards to happiness there’s a brilliant quote by James Openheim that says:
“The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet.”
As I said before happiness isn’t necessarily the destination, but also the journey itself and the journey is always where you are in the present moment. Happiness isn’t something to pursue, but something you choose to express while in pursuit of your dream. Yes achieving your dream will definitely be a cause for celebration and joy, but you’re allowed to be happy as you make your way toward reaching your dream.
“Happiness is found in the being, not in the having and the doing.”
So in this present moment and any other moment you wish, you have the power to choose to be happy. The choice for happiness is and will always be yours.
So how exactly do you practise letting go of anger and choosing happiness in any one moment… by practising mindfulness.
How many people today are on autopilot waking up to go to school or work, coming home, going to sleep, and then repeating this all over again without being fully present and aware that there were a thousand other events and experiences they had that day.
Life and the human experience is exciting, exhilarating and extremely complex and full of ups and downs and twists and turns, but too much of modern society today is all about numbing the human experience and reducing it down to the most basic of tasks and needs making life appear to be such a boring experience.
Mindfulness practise improves your awareness of how you’re being, how you’re feeling, and what you’re doing in the now the present moment. Mindfulness keeps you in touch with what’s happening internally in your body and what’s happening externally in your environment. When you live your life with a heightened level of awareness you will find that life is so much more than work and sleep.
By practising mindfulness on a daily basis you enhance your ability to express anger and then let it go. You are also able to learn from that expressed anger what changes you need to make to reduce your chances of getting angry in the future and to learn what changes you see are necessary in order to reduce what may upset other people as well.
By practising mindfulness regularly you will come to see that happiness isn’t a reward, an object, or an end date, but it’s an energy that you have inside of you and you can choose to express that energy of happiness anytime you want. Mindfulness gives you full awareness of our ups and downs and during those times that you’re feeling down you will begin to notice, like an observer outside of your body, that you’re actually feeling down in the dumps and this awareness helps you to choose to continue to live in the sadness (and that’s perfectly fine) or to let it go and to choose happiness instead.
The best way to practise mindfulness is to take time out from your day and to just sit with your thoughts. That’s right I’m talking about meditation.
Meditation isn’t about achieving some divine connection with the universe (although that can be a nice bonus if you can receive such a gift). Meditation is about keeping your mind focused on one thing and one thing only and anytime your thoughts start to wonder, stray, and go walkabout you bring yourself back to centre which is your original thought that you were focusing on.
Meditation comes in all forms and sizes:
- Sitting
- Standing
- Walking
- Gardening
- Paddle boarding
- Dancing
- Sports
Whatever experience you can have that will keep you focused on one thing and crowd out all other thoughts you can make into a meditative and mindfulness practise.
The key words here are regular, daily, consistent, and practise.
Meditation and mindfulness they’re like everything else in life. You don’t just take one breath, or sleep for one night, or eat just one meal, you must breathe, sleep, and eat consistently in order to live and learning to enhance and improve your levels of awareness takes time, takes effort, and it’s an ongoing practise.
There’s a brilliant book by Daniel Goleman called Emotional Intelligence that gives great insight into how your emotions influence your life and how they influence your intelligence.
There’s a saying:
“When emotions are high, intelligence is low.”
Meaning your levels of emotion determine your levels of intelligence, which brings us back to my original statement about how emotions run your life.
Don’t be scared to get angry. Use that anger to learn and grow and change to improve your life and other people’s lives.
Don’t be thinking that happiness is some tangible external object that you must get. With practise you can choose happiness whenever you feel you need it.
By learning from anger and choosing happiness sooner rather than later you can make yourself a very smart and intelligent human being indeed.
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