The best thing I ever did for my health and happiness

Well, ok, the BEST thing I ever did was marry Natalie, but a close second is today's topic.

Today, I'm not going to give a long intro, I'll not keep you waiting and just get right to it:  One of the best things I ever did for my health and happiness was to change my understanding about the way my body works.

Currently, when I look in the mirror, I love who I see because I have an increased understanding of who that is looking back at me.  I understand that this body is merely a shell of dirt, being maintained by an organizing intelligence.  My understanding changed when I realized the absolute truth - that this body renews and regenerates itself continually.  This body is set on automatic to heal and replace itself.  I realized that I am not the same person I was yesterday, last year, or last decade...I realized that my body is earth, it's animated earth.  It comes and goes, it's fleeting - and so is yours.  Take a look:

 

• The lining of the gut is entirely replaced every 5 days.
• Your external-most skin regenerates every 14 days.
• Your blood cells replenish themselves every 3-4 months.
• Your bones and muscles last about a decade.
• Your brain on the other hand lasts a while longer.

All of this put together allowed me to change my understanding of who and what I am.  I am not this body, but this body is a reflection of who I am and everything that's happened to me.  It reflects the environment I'm currently in and every environment that I've been in in the past.  It reflects the choices I am currently making and every choice I've made in the past.  The most important contributors to whether we are sick or well are what the body is fed in terms of nutrition, movement, and thoughts.  Another way of thinking of it is - this body is like my house, only better.  It's smart!  And keeps rebuilding itself constantly - day in, day out - without my thinking about it.

"What I did was change my understanding about the way my body works."  

If I place my body in a poor food environment (feed it poorly), it's like building a house out of rotted wood, if I feed it what it was designed to have, it builds itself very soundly.  This goes for choosing the McFilthy double bacon cheeseburger or the fresh, organic salad with organic, cold pressed, extra virgin olive oil dressing and pasture-raised chicken.  This goes for choosing to sit on the couch day after day or choosing to do squats and pushups. This goes for looking at myself and saying, "I wish [my nose, hair, body shape, etc.] were different," or saying, "I love myself and I'm grateful to have this body today, it's doing exactly what it was designed to do given the circumstances."

I could go on and on about all the choices people make all day long, the reality is that your body is absolutely amazing and it wants nothing more than to be healthy and happy.  Of course it does!  The major reason it's not doing this is the environment it is being placed in day after day.  Achieving a solution requires a shift in YOUR thinking, an increase in YOUR understanding that your body is doing (with few exceptions) exactly what it SHOULD be doing based on your choices about what environment you choose to put it in.

If you want to make better choices about what environment you are placing your body in, a wellness expert or coach is the best option to help you change that stinkin' thinkin' over to beneficial thoughts in line with the way your body really operates.  The reality is that the culture in America acts as if what you put into your body isn't important--that if you get sick, you can blame your genes/parents or some virus/bacteria or plain old bad luck.

The reality is that yes, accidents happen and there is an occasional genetic cause (<2% -- and we're lucky to have medicine for these conditions), but over the long haul, people are primarily sick or well based on the thoughts and beliefs that run through their heads all day long.  This constant stream of thoughts will directly control what you choose to eat and how you choose to move your body.

In order to have the best possible body and best possible life, you've got to get control of that steady stream of thoughts that controls every aspect of your life and is also responsible for your happiness.  The main problem is that most people have never evaluated those thoughts, why those thought are there, and how to improve them.  Wellness doctors are trained to help people improve their environment by making better choices and they offer classes on how to evaluate what's going on in that bean of yours.

Although great at stitching us back together again and helping with the occasional genetic defect (<2% of cases), the "Health" Care System in the US is not very good at helping us make better choices and getting us to place ourselves in environments that produce health.  They simply are not trained in getting us to change our understanding of how our body works and WHY it's behaving the way it is.  It's incredible that this is the very thing that will allow us the best possible health and happiness that we all deserve - naturally.

Here's to health and happiness based on choice not chance.

Reconnecting you to Choosing Happiness and Health, day after day based on New Understanding - Doctor Steve Perry, DC

How do your beliefs stack up?

Do as I say, not ... You know the rest.  Today we're talking about beliefs and how powerful these little things are.  People have lost their lives for them and nations have gone to war over beliefs.  They are relevant today to each and every one of us as they are the very cause of the current "Health Care" mess.

I was thinking the other day about beliefs and wondered, "Is it possible to know what other people believe?  After all, beliefs happen on the inside and people can say anything they want on the outside."

Gandhi said it this way:  "Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny."

I believe that it IS possible to tell what people believe.  You can SEE what they believe by looking at their actions (choices).  I've heard people say, "I can't hear a word you're saying because your actions are speaking so loudly."  Actions are in fact physical manifestations of the underlying invisible beliefs.

As just one example, let's apply this to food: if people say that they believe eating high quality food will help them be healthy and yet they regularly eat junk (like most people I know), there's one of two things going on:  Either #1 - they don't really want to be healthy, or #2 - they don't believe that eating high quality food actually IS a large determinant of health. The first option -- that people don't want to be healthy -- is an utterly ridiculous concept.  This leaves us with only one option: that people don't really believe that high quality food matters for our health.  If people WANTED to be healthy, and they KNEW high quality food mattered, then they would CHOOSE high quality foods over illness-producing ones every time.

The reason medicine is failing (Health Care Reform anyone?) is because it does not instill the beliefs that personal choice is important for health.  If it did instill this belief and people wanted health, then everyone under medical care would be making healthy choices.  The reality is that people have become convinced that there's some way to well-being other than making good choices, that there's some system that can compensate for their personal shortcomings and that this system is more important than their personal choices as a determinant of their long-term health.  Sounds pretty ridiculous I know, but that's reality.  The reason I know this is based on what people actually DO, not what they say.  Let's take a look:

Currently in America, the number one source of calories is the High Fructose Corn Syrup in soft drinks (soon to be replaced by "real sugar" as if that's any better).  A recent CDC report stated, "In 2009, 67.5 percent of adults ate less than two fruits daily and 73.7 percent ate less than three vegetables daily."  If people are in control of their actions, and if healthy choices result in health, then one could conclude that either people don't want to be healthy or people have some misguided beliefs controlling their actions.

Medicine does a lot of amazing things (heart transplants, morphine to numb pain after car wrecks, etc) but it HASN'T helped people believe that what they do matters for their health.  Medicine as a whole is an utter failure when it comes to helping people live in ways that could result in them actually BEING healthy for a lifetime.  This is the very reason that heart disease, Type II Diabetes (both very nearly 100% preventable), and cancer (highly preventable) are major health threats in America but not in many other countries (until they adopt our way of life).  Why I started blogging was to show people the evidence that what they do matters and they CAN be healthy once they become aware of their actual beliefs.

Here's to believing that what you do matters.

Reconnecting you to Natural health through accurate beliefs.

Yours in Health, Love, and Freedom - Intern Steve

Food, Movement, Thoughts

Yesterday during church the most impressive moment for me was when someone got up and related a profound story. He asked a coworker what the most valuable thing was in his life. He was inspired by the coworker's response-after thinking for a long moment, the coworker replied, "Relationships."

So true. I even took a moment to write this down (a rare thing for me as I'm usually too busy wrestling with the girls and feeding them snacks to write anything during church services anymore).

Indeed relationships are the most important thing we can cultivate in this life. During the Sunday School lesson I gave, I was sure to repeat this sentiment. Critical relationships in our lives are with our families/friends, our Creator, and also with our own bodies (physical, mental, spiritual). When we lose track of this fact, we become less happy and don't often realize why.

Importantly, many of us are removed from the last relationship - with our own bodies.  Because of the constant bombardment of conflicting ideas, many of us don't truly understand what to feed our bodies in terms of food, movement, and thoughts. Most of us have a general understanding and yet we don't act in ways that produce vibrant health.  Interesting... 

Most of us are disconnected with what our bodies try to tell us on a daily basis.  When we take time to listen, we will sometimes hear, but more often feel whether a behavior was beneficial for our body.  When we learn to listen more intently to our bodies, they will help guide us in becoming more healthy.  When we let the film of interference from outside signals fade away by cultivating an innate awareness from within, we can begin to express the health that our bodies are designed to express.

This is the very reason I created this blog - because our behaviors have consequences and what we do will spill over into what our children do. We need to reconnect with a true understanding of what our bodies naturally require and then figure out how to get ourselves to properly nourish our bodies...for our children's sake.

In Health, Love, and Freedom,

Stephen Perry - Wellness Expert and (soon-to-be) Chiropractor