L.I.F.T.

Check out Frank Forencich’s most recent entry on the Exuberant Animal blog.

In it, he describes the ways in which contact with dirt can positively affect (and effect) your mood and health.

As I said in my comment to his post – since we ARE dirt, dirt is good for us. As we used to say when we’d drop our ice cream cone on the playground back in the day – “God made dirt, so dirt don’t hurt.”

Yesterday I posted a review of the book “Anticancer,” in which the author talks about the Tibetan traditional medical approach to the body as “terrain.” That’s a perfect description.

Our terrain comes from our parents’ terrain to begin with (what Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioners call our “original chi“), and then, once we’re off the breast, from the food we eat, the air we breathe, the fluids we drink, the thoughts we think (what the sociologist/philosopher Pierre Bourdieu called “habitus“), the movement we do (or don’t do), and the company we keep.

The larger terrain, our unique, individual habitat, at that point becomes our full “terrain.”

If any parts of our terrain are polluted, it comes into our terrain. If our air, food, water, thoughts, movement, or social lives are toxic, it leaches into us, and causes trouble.

Can you see your environment in these terms? Can you see yourself as continuous with your environment? With your:

• air
• food
• drink
• thoughts
• actions, and
• social interactions?

It’s a good daily meditation, to look at your unique habitat, your full terrain, and to try to see how it’s affecting you on the smallest, middle, and largest scales.

Focus on honing in on these things. How pure is your air? If you work in an office, you might want to try to get outside for some deep breathing exercises.

What about your food? Try to buy organic foods, and eat foods that have been as little tampered with as possible – that is, in their natural state, not processed.

Drink water. Pure water. The author of anticancer also recommends green tea and red wine (one glass per day : ( ) for their antioxidant power.

Keep your thoughts free from anger and fear. If there’s something you’re angry about, or fearful of (worry is a form of fear), resolve it! Life is too short to hold those thoughts, and by doing so, you only make your life shorter!

Try to get good healthy movement into your life. Walking is fantastic. Try to go for a walk after dinner every night!

Make sure your social circle isn’t polluting your life. That’s all I’ll say about that one!

Try it out…let me know what you think!

Just read David Servan-Schreiber’s book “Anti Cancer, A New Way of Life.”

I thought it was a great book. It details David’s own experience with brain cancer. Being a surgeon, he has a unique outlook on the experience, and on his path into alternative therapies.

The thing I liked best about the book was the author’s use of the word “terrain” to describe the body. “How is your terrain,” a friend asked him after his first battle with the brain tumor (it came back).

Essentially, that view involves looking at your body as you would the earth. Are you dumping pesticides, poisons, etc., into your body? If so it will gradually lose the ability to repair itself, become clogged up, and develop terrible illnesses. If not, you’ll probably last a lot longer. [This view is also mentioned in Michael Odent's 1986 book, "Primal Health"]

So how does one take care of their terrain?

Diet
In short, eat organic, whole foods, cooked lightly. Get your veggies! Lots of garlic, cabbage, cruciferi, and everything else. Eat non-farmed/free-range grass-fed animals and their products. Drink plenty of pure water (he recommends a carbon filter), green tea (3 cups/day), and 1 glass of red wine per day (ONE?!). Avoid processed foods of any kind!

Exercise
30 minutes per day isn’t too much to ask. But he only asks for 30 minutes 3 days per week. I say 30 minutes per day. You can combine forces and do some sort of “intentional” exercise like yoga or Tai Chi to get the healing power of the mind involved (and get “deeper” into your body in the process).

Mentality
Meditation is the author’s answer, and I don’t disagree. I’ve always recommended Eckart Tolle’s book “The Power of Now,” or the simple, short book of exercises taken from that book. Shoot for 10 minutes twice a day to start. It’s easiest, usually, first thing in the morning, and later at night, when we’re not so busy. But a mid-day meditation session can give a huge boost. If you’re into “physiology tracking,” you can “meditate” while you exercise by following your body’s response to the movement…find the blockages, find the resonances…seek!

Social/Environmental/Spiritual
I think these all get tied together. While environmental toxins (avoid harsh chemicals in your daily life) aren’t necessarily related to your spirituality, your general environment is, and both are related to your social life. Make sure your environment is supportive and caring, full of love and good times. Laugh as much as possible. Do your best to resolve fears and unhappiness, in any way you can.

That’s about it. Read the book, it’s good!

Seems like I’ve only been posting book reviews lately…other things ahve been happening, honest!

I just read Percy Cerutty’s book “Be Fit or Be Damned.”

Unfortunately for all of us, this classic is out of print. Why, I have no idea!

According to the All Knowing Wikipedia, Percy was born in 1895 and died in 1975. He was an Australian athletic coach, and coached Herb Elliott, who won a gold medal in the 1960 Olympic games.

Now before you go saying “He only lived to be 80, I’m not taking his advice!” realize that 80 is a pretty ripe old age for someone born in 1895 who once battled with cancer – and who actually died of Motor Neurone Disease (called ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease in the US).

His book is about how to live. I think it sums up Cerutty’s “Stotan” (a combination of Stoic and Spartan philosophies) life-philosophy well.

Through the “manliness” protocol that was very popular in his era, Percy explains that people (men) should exercise regularly. He gives the why and the how in about as simple and down-to-earth a manner as you would ever want.

Check this book out from your local library (or local university library), or buy it on Amazon used for $25. It’s worth the read!

The Ouroboros is a very ancient symbol, depicting a snake in the shape of a circle, eating its own tail.

Yeah, that’s great Josh.  So what?

Well, to me it represents something else, that I’d like to share with you.

Traditionally, the symbol signifies the cyclical nature of things.  The eater is also eaten, and is reborn through the process.

Jung saw it as the feedback process of life.  In human psychology, it would be the assimilation of the “shadow” side of the personality into a cycle of continuing psychological rebirth.

But, just as a hammer only sees nails, I see “systems” in this symbol.

The only reason that a human being would create a symbol like the Ouroboros (and it wasn’t just one, many cultures used this symbol), was if they saw it in nature.  Of course, the “ancients” paid much more attention to natural cycles than we do now, and put much more emphasis on those cycles in daily life (often of necessity – farming requires delicate attention to changes in annual cycles).

The only way they could recognize the cycle outside of themselves, was if they experienced it on some level internally.

The Ouroboros represents the nature of any system.

Any energy fed into a system, automatically is used to reinforce that system.

Now, here’s a “for instance.”

Production (in terms of industrial production, as we use it now) increases the incidence of cancer.

In the system that is the concept of life-via/as/through-production, the solution to cancer must be…

production.

That is, a solution must be produced!  Something must be made to cure the cancer!

The “cure” in such a system is found in pharmaceuticals, radiation treatment, etc.

But those systems require “production” – in a very real, very industrial sense.

They feed directly into the systemic pollution that (actually) caused the cancer to begin with.

The snake eats its tail.

Two weeks ago I headed out to Michigan to see my grandma.  She’s recently been diagnosed with colon cancer.  That being said, she seemed absolutely the same as ever.  Cheerful, optimistic, happy.

My grandma has a couple of habits that I thought I’d share with you.  The first is this – every day, when she wakes up, she says “Happy day, happy day!  Thank you God for another day!”  She told me that she does this, and said she’s been doing it for years.

The other habit my grandma has is to comment on how wonderful things are.  After breakfast at Colonial Kitchen (like a Denny’s for you non-midwesterners out there) she said, ”Well wasn’t that wonderful?!”

Well, I wouldn’t have called it “wonderful.”  But when she said it, I thought, “why not?!”  So I said “YES!  It was wonderful!”

Some people see this type of behavior as silly, or unrealistic.  I see it as imposing the power of positive thinking on your life.

This approach also puts you in control of your life.  Truly, you can’t change external events, you can only change your response to them.  Take this attitude versus diet books, the news, advertising/marketing – whose message is always the same – you don’t know what’s best for you, and we do.

Another thing I like about my grandma’s approach is that it favors simplicity over complexity. While this may not be apparent at first glance, take a closer look at what’s going on.  When she says “Wasn’t that wonderful?!” about a  breakfast, she’s saying “you know what, I can enjoy even the most simple things…and in fact, those things are most wonderful!”

This is the same attitude my friends over at GarageStrength take.  Read their post about dietary fiber, and transfer that to any pharmaceutical cure versus the natural healing powers of the body (when given time and space to perform).  Simple solutions are best.  Get your fiber and nutrients from your diet, and you don’t have to worry about whether or not you took your pill today.  This is also the central theme of Egoscue therapy, which I’m more and more impressed with on a daily basis – surgery versus functional correction.  Simple is always better, but our culture is obsessed with/possessed by complexity.

The thing I like most about grandma’s attitude, if you couldn’t tell, is that it encapsulates what’s known as “Positive Mental Attitude.”  PMA is a choice.  And it’s a muscle.  Use it or lose it!