Lifestyle Changes For Better Health

Trying lead a healthy life in today’s modern world is a compromise at best and a complete failure at worst. Unless you have the money and inclination to work, rest, or play whenever you wish you will be required to face the stresses and strains of modern life.

nature-258149This is another vast subject and just like healthy eating the best way to think about it is to ask the question: what kind of lives did my ancestors before the industrial revolution live?

They walked the earth bare foot. Their days were scheduled according the circadian rhythm of sunrise and sunset, and their foraging and hunting according to the seasons. They breathed unpolluted air. They drank water from natural springs and rivers. They did not have suntan lotion and they looked up at the sky and its sun in all its glory without wearing sunglasses.

Does that sound a little idyllic? Perhaps it is? Hunting wild animals, avoiding natural catastrophes, and surviving infectious diseases (more so when humans lived in close contact) were perennial problems.

The irony of today is that we have solved so many of the problems of the past only to replace them with the man-made problems of today. Therefore my recipe for a healthy lifestyle is to copy our ancestors’ habits as much as we can. So with this in mind here are some suggestions:

  • establish a regular living schedule with as much sleep as you need
  • if you need an alarm clock to wake up you are not getting enough sleep
  • try to be in bed by 11pm every night or even earlier (find out what REALLY works for you)
  • spend some time outdoors preferably every day
  • live and work outside the city if you can
  • wash with hot and cold water ; practise your own hydrotherapy
  • exercise according to your capacity and desire
  • walking is the best exercise and everyone can do it
  • go barefoot in the grass
  • go into nature
  • if you enjoy jogging OK, but beware, it’s not particularly healthy for you
  • play sports you enjoy to get a more aerobic workout
  • practise yoga to combine physical and spiritual health
  • meditate (invest the time to create the time and the desire)
  • drink filtered water (ie: with chlorine, fluoride, and heavy metals removed)
  • go out in the sunshine and expose your body to it sensibly
  • socialise and make connections with others – build a web of social support
  • replace TV evening on your own with social evening with friends
  • seek out positive people and think positively no matter what it looks like
  • practise giving and helping others
  • practise receiving and being given to by others
  • love and express your love as much as you can
  • have fun and laugh a lot
  • enjoy life as much as you can.

namaste, amen.