THE ROAD TO GOOD HEALTH

A client came into the office for a physical therapy session. Her face was glowing with health. I’ve had clients look that way after a session, but not before.

Make Hay While the Sun Shines

Photo by Alex Blăjan on Unsplash

“You must be having a good day,” I commented, pleased to see her in high spirits.

“I got to ride the big tractor, cutting hay. It’s awesome. I steer and listen to the haybine behind me, so it doesn’t get clogged up.“

“And that’s fun?” I asked, amused.

“Well, it’s a big, powerful machine. The haybine does the cutting. I listen and guide it where to go. We work together.”

Then, she made a very intuitive comment.

“It reminds me of you, the way you put your hands on a body and listen for what’s not working. When something’s wrong, you know what to do.”

She stretched, indicating some pain. “But boy, I’ve had a real workout.”

People come to me, wounded and stressed: their bodies aren’t working. Is it disease, stress, genetics, aging? In fear, they throw obstacles on their own path to health. My job is to point out those barriers aren’t really there.

It Starts with Love

The truth is, love dissolves barriers and creates motivation. Consider love as a free, practical and effective tool anyone can use. Healing begins when you choose to love yourself. Only then will you be motivated to restore your body to an optimum level of health and fitness. Only then can you effectively use the Five Non-Negotiables I teach in my workshops and online retreats: mindset, movement, diet, stress, and sleep.

Step One: Mindset

How you feel about yourself is revealed in everything you say and do. The goal here is to kick out fear and choose to love yourself. It’s a very practical choice that supports good health. Without self-love, we won’t bother to take care of ourselves.

Granted, if you’ve been steeped in self-rejection, saying “I love me, I’m amazing,” will feel like a big fat lie at first. But if you keep making that choice, your affirmations will begin to stick. Then, you know you’re on the right path. You’ll begin to say and do things that support you, that demonstrate love and self-care.

Step Two: Movement

Healing starts with a decision to love. Then you put that love into action. Stretch, breathe, move, every day. Staying active better connects body, mind and spirit, so you function more fully. Running, yoga or a daily walk, the best exercise is one you’ll do every day. 

Step Three: Diet

Pay attention to what you eat and drink. Choose fresh, local foods, more veggies and greens. Nobody should be eating a terrible diet of processed foods.

Our ancestors worked outdoors, eating food they grew themselves, raising their own livestock. There was a great deal of wisdom and common sense behind that lifestyle. We’ve only recently come to realize how much we’ve lost through monoculture, industrializing and isolating farmers. Not only the catastrophic loss of nutrients in the soil, but the loss of families and communities working together.

Step Four: Stress

You could follow the perfect diet, the perfect exercise routine and be less healthy than the person who smokes and drinks beer on the weekend with his friends, not a care in the world. Why is that smoker healthier than you are? He spends time in community, with family and friends. Community can lower stress levels. Isolation increases it. And stress is so damaging, it can wipe out all the good you’re trying to achieve.

Constant stress causes our health to decline and puts us at greater risk for accidents and injuries. That’s because the brain short-circuits; it experiences inflammation and cognitive decline during stressful times: we don’t think straight. Probably one reason we often overeat when we’re stressed. Our tendency is to jump into the midst of problems and flail away at them. A better path is to take a moment to center yourself, and hold your ground. From your center, you can choose wisely.

My job, as Foundational Health Educator for COR Health Solutions, owner of Carpenter Physical Therapy, Health & Wellness Director for North American Training Solutions, as well as a certified HeartMath® Coach/Mentor and Trainer is to use what I know to help people heal. I use science-based tools like heart-rate variability as a measure of the autonomic nervous system. Heart Math reveals how stress affects the body. Armed with this knowledge, I teach people to self-calm.

Step Five: Sleep

Sleep is essential. At the end of the day, let go. If you’re used to getting wound up, if your mind is still churning from stressors at bedtime, you need an evening routine that’s all about self-care and letting go. Give yourself permission to go into deep, healing sleep. Tell yourself it’s okay to relax and feel good. Trust everything will be all right. Maybe journal for a few minutes to get stuff out of your system and be at peace. I love to go for a hike, get out in nature, away from wifi. I eat real food, breathe deep, let go of worries and sleep well, because I’ve given my body what it needs.

That’s how we balance our autonomic nervous system. There’s two branches of it, the rest and digest response and the fight or flight response. As a society, we habitually function in sympathetic overdrive stress response, with hundreds of stress responses a day.  I offer simple, free lifestyle changes to restore good health and build up your immune system.

Daily Self-Care

Mindset, movement, diet, stress, sleep. Make a plan to regain health and fitness, using these five principles. Set a few boundaries to give yourself time for daily self-care. Tell yourself you’re going to be all right, and you will be.