Journey to Wellness

SPRINGTIME IS MY FAVORITE TIME OF THE YEAR. It reminds me of new beginnings and new opportunities. This last month I have seemed to be reminded of those opportunities everywhere I look. To me it is a time of renewal ̶ a time of reassessing how I am doing toward accomplishing my goals. And of course sometimes it reminds me to stop putting off accomplishing whatever I have made a determination that I wish to complete. It also reminds me how precious life is, and what a short time I/we have on this planet.

All my life I have had a love affair with poetry, and this is one of my long-time favorites. It describes my feelings today . . . exactly.

Actually as a home-owner I find myself with a strange dichotomy of feelings about springtime - especially one like this year. First I love the feeling of renewal that comes in the spring as the bulbs begin to poke their heads through the soil, looking for warm sunshine. Where I live we seem to go almost overnight from cold winter rains to warm, sunny and dry days. Those first warm spring days always make me want to get out my gardening tools and start digging in my yard.

Thanks to a weeks of heavy rains in my area of North-Central California, this year my yard has some of the most healthy weeds I have ever seen. So with some help from a local teenager, I am waging a battle with those weeds.

Actually the cycles of the seasons of the year are much like the cycles of our lives. Sometimes we have dark winters to endure, but it has always seemed to me that those winters are less dark and seemingly shorter when we keep our eye on the springtime of renewal that invariably follows. I believe that the more we concentrate on the coming spring, the shorter the dark period will be and the sooner the renewal of spring will materialize. The reverse is also true if we dwell on the darkness. In the last five years since I lost my son, Kevin, I have found myself counseling people who are experiencing their own dark night of the soul when they have lost someone close to them.

Whether the dark winters of our lives are physical, or psychological, the sense of loss is very similar. I have found that the same "healing tools" I learned to use to overcome my PP MS, were equally applicable to the dark night of my soul, while learning to overcome acute grief. I can look back now and see the same factors at work.

THE GOOD NEWS IS that there is light at the end of the tunnel, and to a big degree we - each one of us - determine when our own personal springtime will appear.

If you have not yet "liked" me on Facebook, or become a "follower" on Twitter, I'll be most appreciative if you'll take a minute and click on one or both of these links. Thank you for doing that. I am trying to make better use of these social networks. In order to thrive on the Internet today, it seems to be essential that social network marketing be part of the process.

Everything I have learned, believe and practice in
my own journey to wellness is included in an e-book,
now available in the Amazon Kindle Store at $5.99.

PEOPLE COME INTO YOUR LIFE FOR A REASON ― People come into your life path for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. When you discover which one it is, you will know what to do with that person.

Betty. Although we have never met face to face, I consider you one of my best friends. You came to me when I needed you most and I credit my current state of wellness to your guiding spirit. Thank you! /s/ Ilona T.

Thanks for writing Gracie. Several wrote about that exercise. It is a great introduction to QiGong.

I have just finished reading this highly acclaimed book on the rapidly declining state of health in our society, on a world-wide scale. Almost every page contained yet another jaw-dropping fact. I have always been acutely aware that a healthy diet forms the basis of health ― we truly are what we eat ― but the scope of the importance of what we eat is startling, even to me.

I can and do recommend to you that you need to cut out processed sugars and flour, but I cannot speak from the scientific perspective with which Dr. Hyman speaks. He covers multiple facets of diet and nutrition, outlining how different factors interrelate to affect the way the body regulates itself.

Every reader of this newsletter NEEDS to read Dr. Hyman's The Blood Sugar Solution. I assure you it will forever change how you feel about food and health.

One of my favorite authors is Gary Zukov, author of The Seat of the Soul. It has been around for a few years, but If you have not read this book, I urge you to get it today. It is one of those life-changing books that comes along all too infrequently.

Creating authentic power is like baking bread. First, you have to want to do it. Then you need to follow the recipe. If you do these things, you'll have lots of opportunities to experiment and be guided by your inner promptings. As with bread, it's your own loaf that you are baking. Unlike bread, no one else can bake it for you. The recipe for authentic power is as simple as the recipe for bread—harmony, cooperation, sharing and reverence for Life. Those are the ingredients. How you put them together depends upon you, but without all of them, authentic power is not possible any more than bread is possible without the ingredients that are required to make it.

This is how to do it. First, clear the countertop of everything but what you will need to "bake" authentic power. That means put every intention aside for the moment except the intentions to create harmony, cooperation, sharing and reverence for Life. Second, keep doing it. Soon you will start to create some harmony, cooperation, sharing and reverence for Life. The bread is baking. Eventually, you will create these things moment by moment, choice by choice. That is authentic power. Experiences of fulfillment, meaning and awareness can be created. This is big news.

Baseball is easy to understand. Becoming a good player is more difficult. First, you have to get into good condition and you have to stay that way. Then you have to learn skills such as pitching, catching and batting. Then you need to practice, practice, practice. You need a team to play on and other teams to play with. Anyone can understand baseball in an afternoon, but no one can become a good player overnight. Everyone needs time to learn, practice, apply, and then learn, practice and apply again. This takes time and intention. It takes focus and determination.

So does creating authentic power. Knowing how is easy. Just set the intentions to create harmony, cooperation, sharing and reverence for Life no matter what, and keep them. The rest is learning what these things mean, how to do them and practice. You also need other people to practice with. In this case, you don't have to recruit them. They are always there. They are the people you get angry with, jealous of, sad about or frightened of. To improve your ball game, you have to become aware of yourself. For example, you need to become conscious of how your body moves when you swing the bat. Great batters know exactly what they are doing as they do it. They don't close their eyes and swing. They are conscious of every muscle.

Are you aware of your intentions? When you are angry, what are your intentions? When you are jealous, what are your intentions? Trying to change your intentions when you don't know what they are is like trying to go to New York when you don't know where you are starting from. Going to New York from San Francisco is one thing. Getting there from Paris is another.

When you are aware of all your intentions, you are like a great batter who is conscious of every muscle as he moves his body toward the ball. He can change what needs to be changed. He knows how to get where he wants to go because he knows exactly where he is. When you choose your intentions according to what you want to create, that is responsible choice. When you intend to create harmony, cooperation, sharing and reverence for Life, your intentions and the intentions of your soul are the same. When that happens, you become authentically powerful.

Creating authentic power is a process. Each time you choose harmony, cooperation, sharing or reverence for Life, you challenge parts of yourself that want other things. They are the parts of you that are angry, sad, jealous and frightened. The more you challenge them, the less power they have over you and the more power you have over them. Eventually, their power over you disappears. That is how authentic power is created—intention by intention, and choice by choice. You cannot wish it, pray it or meditate it into being any more than you can wish, pray or meditate yourself into being a great baseball player. If you want to bake bread, you have to know how to do it. If you want to create authentic power, you have to know how to do that, too. Then you have to do it.

Change, possibilities, and power that we could not have imagined are reshaping the entire human experience. New values, goals, and intentions are everywhere appearing like grass in the spring. This grass is growing quickly, and wherever it grows, beauty appears. With it come fields of flowers and vast forests. A new and surprising world is emerging in new and surprising ways. We are all students in a new school, explorers in new territory, and pioneers in a new human experience.

This unprecedented transformation in human experience has two parts. We can call them Process A and Process B. Process A is happening automatically, so to speak. No one needs to do anything to make Process A happen. Process A is occurring in millions of individuals, and soon Process A will occur in all humans. Process B is a different story. It requires choice. Specifically, you must choose to make Process B happen or it will not happen in you. Even if others choose to make Process B happen in themselves, Process B will not happen in you until you choose to make it happen. In short, (1) Process A is happening to everyone, or soon will, and there is nothing that you or anyone else can do about it; (2) Process B is happening only to individuals who choose to make it happen in themselves; no one else can make it happen in them; and they cannot make it happen in anyone else.

Featured Books, DVD Exercise Programs and Videos

Please, everyone, do not sit around and wait for testing and treatment if warranted for CCSVI. Even if that becomes the standard MS treatment down the road, you need to get moving and improve your quality of life NOW. Even those who have the corrective procedure done still have to work to recover their quality of life.

How do you do that? I suspect that you already know. Start a simple daily meditation ritual, and move your body with healthy exercise and breathing exercises.

Oh you say you can't exercise? Excuse me, but that is rubbish. There is no such thing as a person who can't exercise. You can do a very effective exercise program sitting in a wheelchair, or even lying in bed. You just begin with some simple deep breathing and very simple arm movements. An example is the simple arm movement exercise I include above. EVERYBODY CAN IMPROVE HIS/HER OVERALL HEALTH WITH A COMMITMENT TO EXERCISE.

If you don't have them, order Yoga for MS (for strength) and/or Tai Chi/Qi Gong for Seniors (for healing) or Gentle Fitness (for overall fitness) and get moving. PLEASE DO NOT WAIT! Then pick two or three things from one or two of these programs and get started. Soon you won't believe what a tremendous improvement you will experience. The only thing hindering you is your own lack of enthusiasm and passion. There is no person who cannot improve the quality of his or her life with exercise. Just get moving!

I absolutely know that one of the primary reasons I live a normal, healthy life today is because of these exercise programs. Come on. Get started today!

CHECK OUT THE DETAILS OF THESE EXERCISE
VIDEO PROGRAMS AND FEATURED BOOKS HERE

Here is a very important video presentation about CCSVI. It is entitled "Untangling CCSVI from MS: The stories, the science, and the need for action.

This video is certainly a must-see for everyone who lives with the challenges of an MS diagnosis. I think you will find it a surprising eye opener.

DISTURBING REPORT: Following is a link to a very disturbing year-long TV investigation by NBC's Dateline into how the big pharmaceutical houses underhandedly scam their way to drug approvals. It is well worth taking a few minutes to watch. My thanks to Karen U. for sending this to me.

That's it for this month. As always I hope you found something featured that will benefit you in your own journey to wellness. Remember that love, smiles and laughter are the best medicine, they have no negative side effects, and can be liberally administered by family and friends.