Posted by fredjoiners on June 6, 2008
Ten Keys to Happiness By Deepak Chopra
Physical well being is inseparable from emotional well being. Happy people are healthy people. The wisdom traditions of the world tell us that happiness does not depend on what you have, but on who you are. Let’s take a moment to reflect on what really creates happiness in us.
The following ten keys, gleaned from the wisdom traditions, may give us some insight.
- Listen to your body’s wisdom, which expresses itself through signals of comfort and discomfort. When choosing a certain behavior, ask your body, ‘How do you feel about this?’ If your body sends a signal of physical or emotional distress, watch out. If your body sends a signal of comfort and eagerness, proceed.
- Live in the present, for it is the only moment you have. Keep your attention on what is here and now; look for the fullness in every moment. Accept what comes to you totally and completely so that you can appreciate it, learn from it, and then let it go. The present is as it should be. It reflects infinite laws of Nature that have brought you this exact thought, this exact physical response. This moment is as it is because the universe is as it is. Don’t struggle against the infinite scheme of things; instead, be at one with it.
- Take time to be silent, to meditate, to quiet the internal dialogue. In moments of silence, realize that you are recontacting your source of pure awareness. Pay attention to your inner life so that you can be guided by intuition rather than externally imposed interpretations of what is or isn’t good for you.
- Relinquish your need for external approval. You alone are the judge of your worth, and your goal is to discover infinite worth in yourself, no matter what anyone else thinks. There is great freedom in this realization.
- When you find yourself reacting with anger or opposition to any person or circumstance, realize that you are only struggling with yourself. Putting up resistance is the response of defenses created by old hurts. When you relinquish this anger, you will be healing yourself and cooperating with the flow of the universe.
- Know that the world ‘out there’ reflects your reality ‘in here.’ The people you react to most strongly, whether with love or hate, are projections of your inner world. What you most hate is what you most deny in yourself. What you most love is what you most wish for in yourself. Use the mirror of relationships to guide your evolution. The goal is total self-knowledge. When you achieve that, what you most want will automatically be there, and what you most dislike will disappear.
- Shed the burden of judgment you will feel much lighter. Judgment imposes right and wrong on situations that just are. Everything can be understood and forgiven, but when you judge, you cut off understanding and shut down the process of learning to love. In judging others, you reflect your lack of self-acceptance. Remember that every person you forgive adds to your self love.
- Don’t contaminate your body with toxins, either through food, drink, or toxic emotions. Your body is more than a life-support system. It is the vehicle that will carry you on the journey of your evolution. The health of every cell directly contributes to your state of well being, because every cell is a point of awareness within the field of awareness that is you.
- Replace fear-motivated behavior with love-motivated behavior. Fear is the product of memory, which dwells in the past. Remembering what hurt us before, we direct our energies toward making certain that an old hurt will not repeat itself. But trying to impose the past on the present will never wipe out the threat of being hurt. That happens only when you find the security of your own being, which is love. Motivated by the truth inside you, you can face any threat because your inner strength is invulnerable to fear.
- Understand that the physical world is just a mirror of a deeper intelligence. Intelligence is the invisible organizer of all matter and energy, and since a portion of this intelligence resides in you, you share in the organizing power of the cosmos. Because you are inseparably linked to everything, you cannot afford to foul the planet’s air and water. But at a deeper level, you cannot afford to live with a toxic mind, because every thought makes an impression on the whole field of intelligence. Living in balance and purity is the highest good for you and the Earth.
Deepak Chopra
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Posted in Brain, Eating Problems, Emotions, Health, Higher Power, Just for today, Recovery, Relationships, Relaxation, help, spiritual | Tagged: Deepak Chopra, Happiness, wisdom | No Comments »
Posted by fredjoiners on April 25, 2008
Cocoa, but Not Tea, Lowers Blood Pressure
More happy justification for chocolate lovers: blood pressure responds favorably to cocoa, but not tea, a new analysis suggests.
Authors of the study say that while both products are rich in polyphenols, the study findings suggest that phenols in cocoa may be more active than those in tea. The study appears in the April 9 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.
“Products rich in cocoa may be considered part of a blood pressure lowering diet, provided that the total energy intake does not increase,” lead investigator for the study, Dirk Taubert, MD, PhD, from the University Hospital of Cologne in Cologne, Germany, told heartwire. “I believe that cocoa is healthier than other sugar confectionary or high-fat dairy products.”
Cocoa Beats Tea for blood pressure
In the cocoa studies, cocoa consumption was typically flavonol-rich chocolate in the range of 100 g per day; in the tea studies, consumption was in the range of 4 to 6 cups daily.
In the cocoa studies, blood pressure dropped; however, in the tea studies, no differences were seen in blood pressure. The authors point out that while the 2 substances contain similar amounts of polyphenols, the components of these polyphenols differ between cocoa and tea: cocoa is particularly rich in procyanidins, whereas black and green tea are rich in flavan-3-ols and gallic acid. It may be that the polyphenol components in cocoa are more bioavailable, Taubert and colleagues propose.
According to Taubert and colleagues, the effects of cocoa on blood pressure were comparable to those achieved with antihypertensive drugs. “The magnitude of the hypotensive effects of cocoa is clinically noteworthy; it is in the range that is usually achieved with single doses of medication,” they write.
“At the population level, this level of reduction of blood pressure would be expected to substantially reduce the risk of;
- stroke (by about 20%),
- coronary heart disease (by 10%), and
- all-cause mortality (by 8%).”
Research article published in the Arch Intern Med. 2007;167:626-634.
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Posted in Eating Problems, Health, Just for today, Recovery, Relaxation, Research reports, Stress | Tagged: disease, chocolate, tea, blood pressure, cocoa, stroke, heart, mortality | No Comments »
Posted by fredjoiners on April 19, 2008
Orthorexia: Good Diets Gone Bad
Her parents are health food nuts, says the 32-year-old North Carolina woman, who asks that her name not be used. “I can’t remember a time when they weren’t. It just got worse over the years … much worse since they retired.”
When she was a child, her parents first phased sugar from the family’s diet. “Then they progressed into herbal remedies and supplements … major pill popping … then a vegan diet,” she tells WebMD. “They tried every extreme trend that came along in the ’80s.”
Growing up, she says, “I can remember always being hungry because there was no fat in the house. … My middle sister ended up with anorexia. Another sister goes to Overeater’s Anonymous.”
When she read an article in Cosmopolitan magazine– about an addictive disorder called orthorexia — her parents’ pattern became crystal-clear. It was healthy eating gone out of control.
Full story at Web MD
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Posted in Eating Problems, Families, addiction | Tagged: USA, anorexia, orthorexia, Carolina, WebMD, Overeaters Anonymous | No Comments »
Posted by fredjoiners on March 14, 2008
Not smoking and other healthy habits may add years to your life
A recent study indicates that you might add up to 14 years to your life by adopting four health habits:
- staying smoke-free,
- drinking moderately or not at all,
- eating more fruits and vegetables, and
- being physically active.
“These results may provide further support for the idea that even small differences in lifestyle may make a big difference to health in the population and encourage behavior change,” noted the study’s authors.
This study—part of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition—involved 25,639 men and women aged 45 to 79 living in the United Kingdom. Findings were published in the Jan. 7, 2008 issue of PloS Medicine.
Each participant in the study received a health behavior score that included one point for each of the following:
- Being a non-smoker.
- Consuming 1 to 14 drinks per week. (A single drink was defined as a half-pint of beer, a glass of wine, or a single shot of spirit alcohol.)
- Exercising for a half-hour daily or working in a non-sedentary job (such as being a nurse or plumber).
- Having blood levels of vitamin C consistent with eating at least five servings of fruits or vegetables daily.
Researchers recorded deaths among the study participants from 1993 to 2006. The results: Ninety-five percent of people with four points survived the study period. But only 75 percent of those with zero points survived.
In fact, people with a score of zero were four times more likely to die during the study than people with a score of four. People with a score of two were twice as likely to die. The main factors in these differences in longevity were due to cardiovascular disease.
In summary, the authors note that the “mortality risk for those with four compared to zero health behaviors was equivalent to being 14 years younger in chronological age.”
“We’ve known that individually, measures such as not smoking and exercising can have an impact upon longevity, but this is the first time we have looked at them altogether,” said lead researcher Kay-Tee Khaw from Cambridge University’s Institute of Public Health. “And we also found that social class and BMI—body mass index—really did not have a role to play. It means a large proportion of the population really could feel health benefits through moderate changes.”
The results strongly suggest that meeting relatively simple, achievable health goals can lead to years of added life for large numbers of people.
“Nothing is really new here on the science, but it is new in terms of public health messages,” said Alexander C. Wagenaar, professor of epidemiology and health policy research at the University of Florida. “What this does is take the existing research and calculate the benefits of healthy behaviors, and their combinations, into units the public will understand.”
So you may have a score of 10 on the looks scale but a score of 4 will keep you there.
Alive & Free is a health column that offers information to help prevent and address addiction and substance abuse problems. It is provided by Hazelden.
Posted in Eating Problems, Health, Smoking, alcohol | No Comments »
Ten Keys to Happiness By Deepak Chopra
