Archive for July, 2008

Streamlining Your Life

NO doubt you’ve seen the word “simplicity” or the phrase “simplify your life” seemingly everywhere. There are numerous books, magazines, and a newsletter on the subject, and even advertising uses the phrase with come-ons, such as “buy our product to simplify your life.” Some associate it with anticonsumerism or even deprivation, while others tout it as an excuse to spend their way to the simple life by purchasing exotic paraphernalia. What is it, really?

However we seek to get there, we’re all attracted by the same profound yearning for more than the hectic, overwhelming, busy, and even numb lives that many of us lead. Life can be more than going to our jobs, going to the store, and going home at night, where we drop, exhausted, in front of the TV—only to repeat the process the next day. We want more, and many of us believe that if we simplify our lives, we can have more. Not more debt, clutter, and overcommitted calendars, but more depth, meaning, and vitality.

Simplicity means stripping away whatever is meaningless and being left with what truly matters:

·         Clearing your calendar of all the “I shoulds” and replacing them with what you love.

·         Freeing yourself from piles of clutter so you can breathe and relax.

·         Stopping foolish spending on your way to financial independence.

Simplicity is about living deliberately, and choosing your existence rather than sailing through life on autopilot. A simplified life is one that you have chosen thoughtfully, and, as a result, can bring you great depth and joy.

The great news is that simplicity is very much what you make it. You can simplify and live in a condo in the city; you can simplify and live in the woods. You can be any age, any race, live in any community. You can have a family, or you can be single. You can be a gourmet, you can love beauty, or you can love the plain and functional. To simplify, really simplify, you need to look inside and discover your own soul, your own heart’s longing, and peel away what obscures and hinders that discovery.

One woman said it well: “Simplicity is an individual thing…it has to be something that springs from the heart because it was always there, not something you can be talked into by persuasive people, or something that is brought on by financial necessity…this is not something we do because we want to be different, or because we’re rebellious to convention, but because our souls find a need for it.”

The most notable proponent of this lifestyle was Henry David Thoreau. The following excerpt from his book, Walden, has become the embodiment of the simple living movement: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I wanted to live deep and suck all the marrow of life.”

Thoreau’s words have come to symbolize that yearning for a life so many of us wish we had, if only we weren’t so busy, so overwhelmed, and so burdened by demands. Thoreau’s maxim is not about literally moving to the woods (unless you want to). Rather, it is about why he moved to the woods: to live deliberately and not, when he came to die, discover that he had not lived. He did not want to die having lived only a mediocre or shallow life.

There are several religious groups who continue to practice simplicity as a way of life, such as the Quakers and Shakers in America, and, indeed, most of the world’s great religions and philosophies have advocated some form of simple living. The Greek and Roman moral philosophers preached the virtues of the golden mean, as did the Old Testament prophets. The author of Proverbs prayed, “Give me neither poverty nor wealth but only enough.”

In more modern days, simplicity was associated with the “back to the land” movement, advocated by those who rejected mainstream society in favor of a simpler way of life. While the outward manifestations of simplicity have evolved throughout the decades, the inner craving for a simpler, less complicated, deeper life has been the steady driving force.

Simplicity will allow you to live purposefully. Beyond just getting through the day or the week, you’ll live as if there were a higher purpose for your life. This can happen once you strip away all that is meaningless, freeing you to focus on what you really love.

What are the three areas of life in which most people need help simplifying? According to The Simple Living Guide, they are time, financial and home. 

Ten Commandments of Health

Want to be healthy, happy and productive this holiday season? You can consider and adopt The Ten Commandments of Health formulated by Justo C. Justo, former journalist and Pasay City councilor and now a businessman.

Here they are:
1. Less meats, more vegetables.
2. Less salt, more vinegars.
3. Less sweets, more fruits.
4. Less eats, more chews.
5. Less clothes, more bathes.
6. Less talks, more deeds.
7. Less desires, more sharing
8. Less worries, more sleeps.
9. Less rides, more walks.
10. Less anger, more laughs.

Detoxing Through Fasting

“Very few people know what real health is, because most are occupied with killing themselves slowly.” – Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Ph.D., Hungarian-born American biochemist and a 1937 Nobel Prize Laureate in Physiology or Medicine
EVERYDAY, many of us eat some toxins. We like to eat foods loaded with artificial flavors and chemically-created coloring agents, pesticides, herbicides and fungicides, insecticides and other toxic chemicals, which overburden our bodies. And as this toxic overload accumulates year after year, augmented also by environmental pollution, drugs and medications, it interferes with normal functioning and spoils the body’s elimination processes.

One way to make up this neglect is through fasting. Scientific studies show that, in fasting, large amounts of these accumulated metabolic wastes and poisons are quickly eliminated through the greatly enhanced cleansing capability of all the organs of elimination — liver, kidneys, skin and lungs.

Scientific fasting has proven itself, over several thousand years, as humanity’s oldest, fastest and most effective weight-loss, detoxification, healing and longevity-enhancing modality known to mankind — both curative, as well as preventive. In fact, Hippocrates, Galen and Paracelsus, all 3 Fathers of Western Medicine practiced and prescribed fasting. They all declared that fasting is “the greatest remedy and the physician within.” For during fasting, our body will self-digest its most inferior and impure materials and metabolic wastes.

An important element of fasting detoxification is mobilizing the toxins from their storage areas. Though, fast does not merely detoxify. It also breaks down superfluous tissue like fats, abnormal cells and tumors, and releases diseased tissues and their cellular products into the circulation for elimination. New cell growth is also stimulated and accelerated during fasting as the required proteins are resynthesized from decomposed cells. Several common symptoms of detoxification seen during this process could be darker urine.

Many people think that fasting needs us to avoid solid foods and just only water for sustenance for 3-7 days or more, depending on one’s health and doctors advice. But to many fasting therapists, this is not advisable. They recommend fresh fruit and vegetable juice instead of pure water. Freshly squeezed and extracted vegetable and fruit juices contain a wealth of vitamins and organically-complexed minerals. The juices all supply excellent energy, minerals, vitamins, live enzymes, and other nutrients necessary to enhance health during the fast. It will also supply the 400 calories or so our bodies require. Without that minimum caloric intake, our bodies begin to breakdown protein structures to get it. By providing much of the body’s daily caloric needs with easily-digested juices, the release of toxins from the fat cells is much more gentle and gradual.

Additionally, fresh fruit and vegetable juices require little digestion, and are quickly assimilated from the upper digestive tract. Therefore, most of the 10% of bodily energy normally involved in our mastication, assimilation, digestion, and elimination is freed up. What’s more, fresh juices have a cleansing effect of their own.

But not all of us can fast. Fasting therapist prohibits those who are thin, suffering with anemia, cancer, having a disease in blood, kidney, liver, and all important organs of the body, diabetic, pregnant and breastfeeding mothers.

Scientific journals boost that scientific fasting enhances longevity, that we humans can double our natural life span like those periodically fasting animals.

“Fasting is, without any doubt, the most effective biological method of treatment… it is the ‘operation without surgery’… it is a cure involving exudation, reattunement, redirection, loosening up and purified relaxation. We can improve our physical health and gain much while fasting. But we have neglected the most important thing if the hunger for spiritual nourishment that manifests itself during fasting is not satisfied,” avers Otto Buchinger, Sr., M.D., Germany’s great, self-described fasting therapist.

Although detoxing is the key to getting better, preventing toxins to accumulate in our body by avoiding harmful foods is the best way to protect our health.