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December 15, 2009
The Heart of the Holidays
Hi ,
As we move into winter our days are getting shorter. Sunlight, the basic source of the energy for life on this planet, decreases more and more daily. We feel this loss of life right down to our bones (as our vitamin D production decreases and melatonin hormone increases.) Everywhere life is finishing its cycle and closing down. Winter is coming on - a time for endings in preparation for new beginnings in the spring...a time for quiet reflections in order to appreciate all we have learned and gained over the last year.
We begin the holidays with gratitude - a harvest feast to celebrate the fruition of our labors through the year. Our early American puritan settlers called this Thanksgiving - a nice term, but they were practicing a ritual that had been around since humankind first settled down and started growing crops. There is value in touching the true depth and breadth of the feelings this time of year instead of rushing around thinking you are engaging in simply regional or religious holidays. It is actually the other way around - the regional and religious holidays exist to help us focus on the feelings that naturally come up this time of year.
Gratitude, appreciation, community, letting go of the old and taking the leap of faith into the new - these are the feelings of this season as the light of the sun reaches its lowest and least. With the solar solstice the cycle begins anew. Did we learn the lessons of the last year? Did you? How would you know? You know by the feelings of this season. Are you grateful for your experiences of the last year? (Not "did you like the experiences", but have you gained a better appreciation of yourself and life as a result of the experiences?) Do you appreciate (an increase in value) life more? Has that appreciation brought you closer to life, to others?
Sometimes our appreciation is discovering things we don't like and don't want to create again in the coming year. This is called wisdom. Other times it is appreciating things we have discovered that worked for us that we want to keep doing in the coming year. This is also wisdom. Celebrate your appreciations, your wisdom. Share your celebration with your family and friends. Your personal community is your greatest source of support. They are the bedrock that gives you the strength to leap forward into your next season of creation.
Happy Holidays.
Good Journey,
David
A New Offering:
I am a generalist. I love looking at the big picture and seeing how everything fits together. I love learning all the time because it expands my appreciation of the big picture of life.
This relationship to life has its strong points and its weak points. As a doctor this means I keep on top of the latest developments in lots of areas. I spend an hour or two or three every day researching and learning new things. This provides me a large number of options when approaching your concerns when you come to see me as a patient.
The weakness in this stance is that I learn far more than I can hold onto day to day. I have to have specific triggers in the moment to bring relevant memories up to where I can use them.
What this means to you is that I likely have information that could benefit any number of health concerns you may have, but the time we have available during an office visit does not allow us to explore all your concerns. This newsletter is largely an attempt to address and communicate solutions to general concerns most of you have.
I got an idea last night about how I could start to communicate solutions to specific health concerns in a way that is more easily useable for you. Over the years I have come across dozens and dozens of amazing remedies for specific health issues that can be addressed through specific nutrients and supplements that you can self assess and pick up on your own. This newsletter has been focusing more on lifestyle changes rather than specific remedies, so I have decided to start a new series of articles on specific symptoms and remedies.
There is a little more trial-and - error in the realm of self diagnosis based on symptoms and conditions, so if I know of any simple tests to help you pinpoint your needs in this process I will pass them along. The most powerful tool in diagnosis however has always been your history of symptoms. 100 years of advances in medical testing technology, and still to this date the most useful diagnostic tool is simply the question "What's been happening, what have you been feeling?"
Some remedies are simple single nutrients, but most of the time remedies are combinations of herbal, vitamin, and homeopathic products that produce the best results. Many are available to the general public through the Internet or local health food stores such as Elliotts. Many others are available only to doctors. For those I will create a way for you to let me know that you would like me to order them for you.
This is an excellent opportunity for proactive self-care. I hear every day how the traditional medical community is basically ignoring many of your complaints. They seem to be embracing the new national mindset that we just have to expect more dysfunction - feel more aches and pains, as we grow older. Not encouraging, but their real job is to save our lives when things get so serious we are about to die. Modern medicine is not about creating health, but about compensating for disease. Real health comes from a lifestyle of effective action - something that can not come from outside yourself. Health can only come from what you do to take care of yourself. That includes making sure you get the nutrients and nutriceuticals your body needs to build your health.
Dr. Dave
Get Your Health Action Plan Outline Here CLICK HERE
Health Challenge #22
Gratitude and Appreciation
We are near the end of a whole year of health challenges. I have been saving the most important and powerful health challenge for the last. Here we step into the Mind-Body connection and how to use this to improve your health.
I began my first serious study of the Mind-Body connection to health way back in 1972 while I was at UC Davis. I was part of a program called Mind Dynamics that trained us in how to use mental visualizations to heal. This program also trained Dr Carl Simonton, which prompted him to begin his groundbreaking work in healing cancer through visualizations.
The bottom line of 37 years of research on my part - your feelings are the single biggest determiner of your health. How connected you feel determines whether you get heart disease or not. Your sense of personal empowerment greatly decides whether you get cancer. The list goes on and on. Almost every disease or chronic condition has a feeling cause contributing to it.
Medical science intensely knows this and equally intensely ignores this. Every good scientific study is done in a double blind design where some participants are given a real treatment or drug and others are given a sham treatment or drug. The value of the treatment or drug is expressed as a percentage of how much better the real drug or treatment is compared to the placebo or sham. What they blatantly don't report to the public is how effective the placebo is compared to the real. Most studies find the placebo treatment or drug is 80 - 90% as effective as the real thing. That means that 80 - 90% of the reported effectiveness of the treatment or drug is really a mind-body effect and not the effect of the stuff you pay the big bucks for.
The research on the power of the mind-body connection is overwhelming. The point is what you are feeling determines how you will feel physically. So what can you do with this knowledge? Well, happy people are healthier than unhappy people so put happiness on the top of your "must have" list. Empowered, loving, connected people are healthier than dis-empowered, crabby, separate people so get to work. If you have relationships with life in which you maintain negative attitudes, then it is time to see that what you think you can get with those negative attitudes comes at the price of your health. Is it worth it?
If you want to start to turn those dysfunctional attitudes around then a good place to start is with the challenging question "How is whatever is going on in this moment perfect and purposeful?" Life does not care whether you like or dislike what is going on each moment - it is busy following a perfect and purposeful agenda all its own. Your job is to figure out how to effectively participate with life in a respectful way. Do that and your health will improve. Fight it and your health will decline.
Once you accept and align with the perfect purpose you open the doors to Gratitude and Appreciation. These are truly powerful healers. Learn to appreciate the perfection of the moment and you will open your heart to gratitude for life. This powerful feeling will heal you from the inside out.
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visit http://www.fairoakshealth.com"
Trim Challenge
The holidays are here and with them all the holidays foods and stresses. I don't suggest to patients that they even think of trying to lose weight during this time, but to simply practice making the best and healthiest choices they can. If they can hold the line then they are doing just fine. I follow this advice myself at this time.
I learned a powerful lesson from my brother many years ago about eating perfectly. Becoming overly intense about trying to be perfect on a dietary plan produces so much stress that you negate the benefits of that plan. The stress hormone cortisol destroys all the good things the perfect food is doing for you. So relax.
David
Announcing a new service at Fair Oaks Healing Arts
Wouldn't it be great if you had someone to hand walk you through the transition to a healthy lifestyle?
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Ouestions - if you have questions of a health or growth nature we could discuss in this newsletter, or if you have comments or ideas about a future newsletter focus please email me at:
david@fairoakshealth.com
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