Fish Oils: A Powerful Supplement

I have read many studies out of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and they demonstrated that Vitamin E, Co-Q-10, and Fish Oil could protect the immune system of athletes and prevent disease.  -Bill Toomey, Pro Athlete

Fish oils high in Omega 3 fatty acids are among the rock stars of modern day supplements.  Most people can benefit from daily consumption.  While eating high quality fish several times a week works well, it’s simply not that easy for many of us to do.   Therefore, a 1000 mg daily pill of fish oils will likely have a clear benefit for you.  I’m going to quickly review many of the benefits of fish oil supplements in this blog, but not cite the specific research, which you can find in the links at the end of the article.  Please do keep in mind that fish oils are a food supplement, meaning that the quality of the fish and the processing determines the quality of the supplement—it is worth it to purchase a quality fish oil.  I use Nordic Naturals, but there are several good companies making quality products.

My favorite reason for taking fish oils are their anti-inflammatory properties.  What inflammation?  Medical researchers have become keenly aware that many of our chronic illnesses involve inflammation.  Not limited to acute infection, chronic inflammation is one of the underlying features of many modern conditions—from arthritis to gastritis.  Omega-3 fish oils reduce cortisol, helping reduce the hormone levels that overstimulate the body. Fish oils also help speed up detoxification of waste products such as what builds up in muscles.  Reducing inflammation in the blood stream leads to healthy arteries and veins, supporting the cardiovascular system.

Fish oils help balance the necessary essential fatty acids.  Our bodies need omega 3, omega 6 and omega 9 fatty acids for many purposes—daily consumption is essential.  Yet, processed food has shifted the balance towards excessive consumption of omega 6 fatty acids, found in most vegetable oils.  Fish oils high in Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), both omega 3 fatty acids, help restore the proper balance of fatty acids in our system.  This is key to keeping our cholesterol balanced, lowering the level of bad cholesterol (LDL), and increasing the level of good cholesterol (HDL), again, improving heart health.

Fish oils are widely recommended for mental health.  Studies reveal positive effects in relieving depression, sadness, anxiety, restlessness, and mental fatigue.  Some evidence suggests that fish oils may be helpful in Alzheimer’s Disease. Considerable evidence exists that fish oils are beneficial for ADD and ADHD in adults and children. Given the stressors of modern life and the proclivity for mental activity, daily intake of fish oils seems useful for keeping our minds clear.

Taken by themselves, fish oils alone are not really a weight-loss panacea. Yet combined with exercise, taking fish oils improved weight loss as compared to exercise alone. Studies show fish oils improving insulin sensitivity which is a key player in how our body manages sugar metabolism.  Low insulin sensitivity is found in many people unable to lose weight.  Our body fat has its own inflammatory response and fish oils help reduce this inflammation in the storage of fats.  Fish oils are becoming a regular player in weight-loss programs.

Specifically recommended for macular degeneration, fish oils are good for vision and the eyes in general.  Here too, inflammation has its long-term effects on eye health.  Fish oils help improve skin quality and can be useful for skin conditions that are inflammatory in nature, such as excema, psoriasis, and acne.  Other illnesses that fish oils have been shown to benefit include cancer, HIV, diabetes, ALS, rheumatoid arthritis, and ulcers.

Of course, the most common reason fish oils are recommended is for cardiovascular health, specifically to help support good circulation.  Again, reducing inflammation in the arteries and veins is a key benefit.

As mentioned above, it’s essential to purchase fish oil products that are made from pure high quality fish, processed with the care necessary to create a healthy supplement. If the source material, the fish, or the process is contaminated with pollutants, obviously the oil will not be good for you.

Many conditions will respond well to higher daily doses than the above-mentioned 1000 mg.  Often 4000 mg is used as a dose in research studies.  Without a health professional specifying the dose, 1000 mg a day is a good basic recommendation for a supplement that truly impacts your health in many ways.  We—my wife, my kids and myself—take this one regularly in our home.

Useful Websites about Fish Oils

• Organic Facts

• Mercola

• Chatelaine

Education: Program Accreditation and the Practice Skills Guidelines

In August, the International Consortium for Health and Wellness Coaching (ICHWC), released the long awaited guidelines for full program approval for health and wellness programs.  Since the Certificate Program in Narrative Health Coaching is approved as a transitional program by the ICHWC, a glimpse at the new guidelines held few surprises.  Programs will need to be 75 hours in length, including 15 hours of Lifestyle Medicine and 60 hours of core coaching curriculum.  Of the 60 hours, a minimum of 40 must be delivered synchronously, in real time, either in person or online. Each student attending an approved program is required to be observed and given feedback by a qualified mentor coach three times – totaling 1 hour of observation and 1 hour of direct feedback.  I’m pleased that the Certificate Program in Narrative Health Coaching is already designed to meet these criteria.  The application for program approval will be completed and submitted by Teleosis in the coming weeks.

One document stands out as worthy of further discussion: the Practical Skills Guidelines (PSG), which covers the skills necessary to be a health and wellness coach as defined by the ICHWC.  While the PSG are not organized into groups, I’ve taken the time to organize the skills into three areas – co-creating the relationship, communicating effectively, and facilitating learning and results.

Co-creating the relationship requires relationship skills often overlooked in clinical medicine.  Establishing trust and rapport, demonstrating empathy, ensuring the client’s agenda drives the coaching relationship, and inviting the client to determine the focus of the conversation are not the real emphases of clinical medicine.  Just how the clinical encounter will shift to a more relationship-centered process is directly determined by the skills with which the clinician is able to show up for the client. Bringing his or her full presence to the clinical interaction, investing in mindfulness skills, learning how to prepare for a client session, and holding the space when strong emotions emerge are all key skills for becoming a more effective clinician.

Communicating effectively is not new in clinical medicine. Physician Dr. Timothy Gilligan, MD, Director of Coaching at the Cleveland Clinic, has run thousands of practitioners through his communications program at the clinic.  His basic assumption that clinicians benefit significantly by engaging in skill development for improving communications has proven to be true. Actively listening is more than simply tuning into the client’s wishes.  With active listening, clinicians listen for what is said and what is not said, reading between the lines.  Asking open-ended questions allows both client and coach to dig deeper into the client’s experience.  Gaining awareness of the interior motivations that inform our health behaviors offers a powerful tool for facilitating growth and healing.  Learning how to mirror clients, how to focus the conversation while allowing the client to maintain tempo and the discovery process, matures over time.  These skills can be named, studied, practiced and mastered.

Facilitating learning and results is the third area of the Practical Skills Guidelines.  To begin, exploring the client’s vision of optimal health and well-being is a novel and powerful tool at the heart of health coaching, as are exploring and articulating the client’s values, and sense of meaning and purpose.  Unlike clinical problem solving, health coaches explore broader perspectives meant to inspire interest in change and new possibilities.

One of the aspects of health coaching that has a big impact on my clinical process is establishing long-term and short-term goals.  We create together a healing topic that articulates the long-term goals for the client.  We create learning objectives that become the short-term goals, and the practices I assign serve these objectives. Issues such as motivation, resistance and accountability are all wrapped in the client’s preferences for self-monitoring. In my experience, clients have a considerable learning curve when it comes to self-observation.  Rather than paying attention to symptoms, the learning objectives facilitate clients’ learning to pay attention to their behaviors and their experience in new ways that facilitate learning.  The process of self-discovery is key to clinical health coaching. Actions that foster learning and insight help keep clients engaged in the healing process.

Ongoing coaching conversations help the client anticipate and navigate challenges.  Rather than the coach-practitioner acting as an expert in the field, health coaches serve the role of positive resource, gently supporting positive growth and change. Facilitating learning and results brings coaching front and center in the clinical encounter.  Clients quickly shift from symptom reports to descriptions of the process they are engaged in while working towards their health goals.  In my own practice, clients look forward to the sessions in which they share their experience and anticipate new learning in the next learning cycle. I see clients more frequently when I coach.  Clients look forward to the sessions.

The new Practical Skills Guidelines serve as the basis for professional competency.  As more and more integrative practitioners understand the power of these skills, health coaching will continue to be integrated into clinical care.  Some younger clinicians will be exposed to these skills earlier in their training. For many of us who have been working with clients for decades, identifying, seeking, applying and assessing these new skills will serve as an effective tool for improving clinical care.  Over the coming months, I will be returning to the Practice Skills Guidelines as a way of opening the door to the benefits that health coaching skills offer the integrative physician.

Setting Clear Boundaries with Vernix caseosa

Today, I’m interested in talking about boundaries and how to create boundaries. What’s it like when you don’t have the right boundaries and how in the Inspiring Homeopathy system, when there’s challenges around with boundaries, the remedy is Vernix caseosa. You may know vernix as the actual thin layer on a baby’s skin. So if we think of it just in terms of the signature, it’s what separates the baby from the mom, or it creates a boundary. And so in The Journey of Inspiring Homeopathy, the process of finding clear boundaries, of having a real sense of how do I protect myself and yet be vulnerable in a healthy way is a key stage along the way of growing into becoming a full, healthy human being.

With the first stage in inspiring homeopathy system, the remedy mother’s milk or Lac maternum, there’s very much a sense of needing mother and milk to actually fully arrive to get here, to birth, and to have that nourishment to fully incarnate as a human being. But once I’m here, if I’m porous to what’s around me, if I don’t have a clear sense of self, I don’t have willpower, I have no real separation from me and those around me, which in a way right at birth is, you know, you haven’t developed that clear boundary, what is like to grow up that way? What is it like to have that be at any stage in your life? You can have that experiment. So that could be overly involved in other people’s lives or not being able to keep people out of your life. Or it could be really not feeling protected, or it could be really just a lack of awareness around my boundaries. So if I think about it somatically, very often when I have a large body type or I’m overweight or heavyset, I don’t really have a sense of where I end and where others begin. And that can get me in trouble; I can hurt people. Or I may overly be sensitive to the feelings of others. So there’s sort of a yin version of it and a yang version of it when I don’t have any boundaries.

So in a lot of ways, this remedy, vernix caseosa, is a remedy that I use when I want to support somebody having really clear boundaries. When I listen to their story, it just seems like that need a healthier gate on which to know when something positive is coming into my garden or when there’s something that I want to let out or release that isn’t working well. I don’t have that sorting mechanism. I don’t have the security of knowing that my boundaries are well fortified without being overly fortified. So I think of it as having boundaries but having a healthy amount of porous quality to my boundaries. Vernix helps make this happen.

It makes sense that if these boundaries are weak,  a person is weak because I have a hard time generating my energy. I’ve tried lots of different types of healing activities and I’m not getting the success. I don’t know how to stay clear in my program. I don’t have a kind of a strong sense of what I’m going to do and make my practices go. There’s a certain kind of lack of protection.

And so in The Journey of Inspiring Homeopathy, that lack of protection is the remedy Vernix caseosa. It’s a powerful remedy. It’s actually one of the remedies that you can actually use as a spray. You can literally wipe it on you to actually give you a stronger boundary. So feel free to tune into any of my other blogs on The Journey of Inspiring Homeopathy or join me on the journey  through all seven of these remedies. Thanks.

What Can we Learn from Poison Ivy

Health has to be considered not as a stable state but dynamic state. Loss of balance is an invitation to resolve deeper underlying problems and to grow in consciousness to a deeper understanding of the purpose of life and to attain a higher energetic level.  Therefore, the purpose of therapy is no longer to obtain a stable healthy state, but to engage in a process of growth on the physical, emotional mental and spiritual level.

          -Tinus Smits, MD

We tend to think of poison ivy as a rash, an itch from a plant that attacks us or we suffer from. Yet, it’s actually a really great metaphor for the way in which wounds affect us. We receive and suffer pain from our experience of being out in the world. While most people don’t want poison ivy and don’t like to get it, when poison ivy turns into homeopathic remedy called Rhus Toxicodendron, it becomes a very powerful healing tool.
When Tinus Smith worked with it, he uncovered the universal experience of healing from having suffered, a pain, or a wound that we carry around. The wound becomes something that we dwell on, we keep with us such that it becomes part of our body armor. Because we have this persistent experience of this pain, we tend to not be able to sit still. We keep moving, trying to alleviate our suffering. So the remedy, Rhus Tox, as the Inspiring Homeopathy remedy is about resolving old traumas and allowing those feelings that go along with having received trauma a vent, to act out and to integrate.

Based on my own experience of having taken Rhus Tox as part of the Journey of Inspiring Homeopathy, and using this remedy with clients for 28 years, I’ve watched people unravel their traumas of the past with this remedy. When any of us have the experience of having been threatened or abused, emotionally, physically, and we carry this experience around—Rhus Tox helps one integrate and heal these wounds. What makes this experience so potent is that often it brings up these feelings of repressed or expressed anger.  They may not know they’re angry. But often there’s a way that that anger pervades their approach to life. That could be a sense of feeling mistreated. It could be not being able to forgive. It could be being hateful and mistrusting. It could be the tendency to swear or suspicious or a sense that something bad is going to happen.

In general, it’s interesting to see that this place we call home, our body temple, becomes uncomfortable. So in a way, I don’t trust my own experience. And  there’s this incessant desire to move, to go away, to ride, to travel, to walk, to be outside, to be out of the constrictions of our daily sense of home. I don’t trust my experience, I can’t settle, just being present. The feeling is that there’s really no escape. I’m on the move all the time. It’s just exhausting thinking about it.

The keynote of this state is that when I’m in that journey, I’m on that move, I feel better. As soon as I stop, up comes the suspicion, up pops those wounds again. So I often see this remedy for someone that keeps coming back to having suffered unjustly. They keep pointing at what someone’s done to them, how their body isn’t doing the right thing. There is a persistence of a feeling that this wasn’t supposed to happen or how unfair this is that I had to have this experience.

This universal sense of that I’ve suffered reminds me of the work of Arnold Mindell in the Dreambody where he offers the perspective that every pain has two sides. Every pain has a giver and a receiver. Often we focus on the receiver, I receive that pain or I’m a victim to that pain. We consciously or unconsciously have a sense that my experience of being in my body I am a victim to. My symptoms, my headache, my pain, my stiffness, my swelling, my own being, by having these symptoms, I blame something. But what Mindell suggests is that every symptom also has a giver. That symptom is part of us that is saying something that’s giving us information. So my physical sensations, emotions, feelings, are actually information about what my experience is like, and we can learn from rather than squash it down. We can start to integrate these elements of my experience as part of me. That’s a key thing. It’s often that we see our physical and emotional issues as not me, something I want to get rid of, something I’m uncomfortable with. However, it’s all me. I am both my healthy state, my happy state, my calm state, and I am also my suffering and my experience that’s having pain.

So through the use or Rhus Tox, the fifth remedy in the Journey of Inspiring Homeopathy, we start to make friends with that element of self, with my scars, and my wounds. I can begin to feel into that stiffness and that hurt. Rather than saying, “That’s not me,” I can begin to say, “Oh, that’s me too. Can I love myself? Can I forgive myself? Can I start to integrate my past experiences as if those are the bruises, those are the calluses that created me for who I am,  that actually help shape me into the soulful person that I’ve grown up to be?”
Working with poison ivy, Rhus Tox, in a therapeutic setting of the Journey of Inspiring Homeopathy offers a profound experience of integrating self, including not just the happy parts of me but also the parts of me that have suffered, those wounds that still linger that I tiptoe into and say, “Ha, I’d like to know more about me.”

The Coaching Clinic – What Is It, Really?

I’ve trained as a health coach, completing a year of course work at Wellcoaches, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition or Duke University’s Integrative Health Coach Training. As part of my excellent program, I coached and was coached in dyads and triads with fellow students. I did my initial coaching sessions with clients under supervision of a trained professional coach. After I completed my coursework, I began to charge for my sessions, completing most of my 100 hours of coaching for certification at theInternational Coaching Federation. I have some cash coming in from several clients and I get positive feedback. Success is slow but steady. I’m wondering two things: how do I get more clients? And how do I refine my skills to get better results? I know that as I refine my skills, I’ll get more clients, and the more clients I coach, the more skillful I’ll become.

Sound like you? If so, I’d like to meet you. I train health coaches at Maryland University of Integrative Health(MUIH). Through my teaching experience I realize that coaches need specific training at this critical juncture. To improve your skills as a coach, I designed the Online Coaching Clinic,in which you’ll work with expert coaches through the Teleosis Institute – as they coach real clients. You’ll actively participate with fellow coaches unpacking the subtleties of Integrative Health Coaching. Let me explain.

In many professions, as students advance in their field, mentoring with a master of the craft is key to refining skills and learning new moves. For musicians or dancers, this is called a master class. In sports, young professional coaches have to volunteer or get paid very little as assistants to successful head coaches. In medicine, young professionals spend three to five years doing residencies with mentors demonstrating advanced skills. In psychotherapy, therapists complete 3,000 hours of private practice with a skilled supervisor. Are you working with a professional mentor?

I teach the coaching practicum at MUIH, the final class of the one-year certificate program. My students work with three initial clients, completing 21 sessions of coaching. Once complete, I feel they are ready to “put up their shingle” and start charging for coaching. Do I think they are done with learning? Not at all – no successful coach ever stops learning. Do I think they would benefit from working with a mentor coach? Yes, I do.

Establishing trust, gaining awareness, asking powerful questions and designing coaching exercises, are among the ICF core competencies that are learned at theAssociate Certified Coach (ACC) level, then deepened at the Professional (PCC) level, and mastered – where mastery, in the words of George Leonard, is “staying on the path” – through the Masters (MCC) level. Working directly with clients is the number one way to grow these skills. Working with a mentor coach is number two. There are two ways to work with a mentor coach: first, sit in with the coach and watch what he or she is doing. Next, work in a supervisory relationship with the mentor coach.

This fall, Teleosis Institute ran a new program – the Online Coaching Clinic. Along with my colleague Reggie Marra, I will be coaching clients – one at a time, in the presence of a select cohort of coaches and health professionals committed to refining their skills. These coach participants (not the clients) in the program will have a front row seat for the coaching process. If you join us as a coach participant, you will be working through the entire coaching process with a client – one client at time. This includes the unique integrative health coaching assessment, the formation of a healing topic, constructing the coaching program objectives and a coaching program.

In the ongoing coaching visits, you will see how the initial assessment and healing topic inform the design of coaching assignments such as awareness practices and foundation practices. You’ll get to unpack the coaching/client interactions with the faculty in a participatory online classroom that allows you to share your observations and learn from faculty. All at your desktop. Each session is recorded so you can return and watch at a convenient time. Participants will have access to the program assessment and assignments for each session. The online forums ask for your input about the ongoing coaching program. There is ample room for question and answer about issues that are coming up in each participant’s individual coaching work.

One more thing: participants in the Online Coaching Clinic will join a group of health professionals who are committed to excelling at their craft. As a member of the clinic you’ll become part of a team of health coaches who are transforming health professionals toward more authentic, transparent and inclusive service. Our commitment is to insightful and elegant action and open acceptance of the deep truths found in integrative healing.

Coaching Corner: Motivation 3.0

“Manifesting is a lot like making a cake. The things needed are supplied by you, the mixing is done by your mind and the baking is done in the oven of the universe.”
― Stephen Richards, Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free

Ever wonder why it’s not so simple to motivate people to lose weight or to exercise regularly?  Even with impending illness, I often see individuals who say they know what to do, then return with only minimal success.  My quest to better understand motivation led me to recently read Drive by Daniel Pink.  Though Pink’s book focuses on a business context, his science will help many of us upgrade our thinking about promoting health in our personal and professional lives.  Let’s look inside.

Science suggests there are three essential elements to Motivation 3.0:  Autonomy – the ability to direct our own lives; 2) Mastery – our ability to get better at a skill such that we achieve a clear sense of successful flow; and 3) Purpose – to have a clear sense of why our work matters.   Let’s look at each element and see how this works for motivating optimal healing.

So often, medical advice from physicians to public health officials offer absolutes: don’t smoke, eat a low fat diet, get 30 minutes of exercise three times a week or sleep eight hours each night.  Trouble is, often this has little to do with many if not most of our individual lives.  Yes, in an ideal world, we would do any and all of these activities, but my life doesn’t work that way. How about yours?

Autonomy starts when we learn the difference between intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation.  Intrinsic motivation is to act for the inherent satisfaction in doing the activity.  Extrinsic motivation is action in order to obtain some separate outcome.  A simple example – losing weight to feel light, healthy and strong, versus losing weight because having 30% body fat is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease and diabetes.  While the latter is true, it is still an extrinsic motivator.  In motivation 3.0, focusing on intrinsic motivation is key.  Often in a health coaching setting this begins with mindfulness, learning to attend to our experience. It is here we can connect more fully to our intrinsic motivation.  As a health coach, connecting to internal motivation for a client and helping them choose the way to their own personal approach, builds healthy autonomy.

Mastery comes from regular engagement.  Counter to the quick paced world of easy access to information and media, mastery occurs with countless hours spent engaged in an activity of choice.  I’ve always appreciated George Leonard’s definition of Mastery: “The process where what was difficult becomes easier, a life-long commitment to hone your skills, realizing that the ultimate goal is the path to mastery itself, and practicing, even when you seem to be getting nowhere.”  Unpacking this, one can see how this relates to motivation – when I choose to master something (autonomy) and I stick with it, though at times I don’t seem to be getting anywhere, I’ll come to know that the goal is as much mastering something as it is simply gaining a cool skill.  Yes, mastery means one has learned about mastery.  In health, through mastering somatic practices, healthy eating and sustainable lifestyle choices, I have gained the skills for optimal healing and increased flourishing.  One can easily see this when a client shifts from “having to workout” to “being unable to go more than a day or two without exercising.”

Purpose may be more elusive in a health context, for often purpose has to do with being in service of others.  Why should my health matter?  How do I know that I’m making a contribution beyond myself? This is why a broader, more integral perspective of health and healing is essential.  Rather than conventional perspective of health as physiology within normal ranges on a blood test, or cardio-vascular fitness, an integral health perspective considers the whole body-mind-spirit.  A simple example are the social determinants of health, choosing just three for this example – meaningful work, social cohesion and civic participation.  Evidence continues to mount that meaningful work positively impacts our health.  Social cohesion, the number of healthy friendships, has a very positive salutogenic effect reducing depression as we get older. Civic participation gives us a deep sense of purpose that nurtures our healing resources.  In a health coaching context, helping clients get in touch with their deeper sense of purpose offers a powerful opportunity to support healing and increase motivation: grandparents for the love of their grandkids, parents for their commitment to leave a better place for their kids, and professionals for their commitment to succeed in positive change and innovation.  Individuals more closely aligned with their deeper sense of purpose can use this as motivation for supporting health changes and optimal healing.

Motivation 3.0 offers a powerful frame for a new approach to Optimal Healing.  I have offered the three elements of motivation 3.0 – Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose here without reviewing the science that supports the claims made.  For me, these naturally make sense. I see applications in my Integral Health Coaching practice daily.  If you would like to read the science that supports this perspective I do highly recommend reading Daniel Pink’s well written book.  For a brief start view his Ted Talk – Click Here.

Or choose something you love to do that feels good for your body and start doing it regularly! A good way to motivate yourself to get outdoors more often and get exercise is to participate in the Optimal Healing 30×30 Nature Challenge. For more info, Click Here to watch the video.

Mastery by George Leonard: https://www.thecorporaterookie.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Mastery.pdf

Coaching Corner: Low Energy Resourcefulness and The latest Technology

For many of us, achieving true relaxation is far too uncommon. We mostly live day in and day out in some sort of high energy state. The trouble with this getup and go life is that our bodies and our minds simply can’t keep up the pace. Eventually, we break down a bit or get sick, finding ourselves weak, exhausted and irritable. As an Integral Health Coach, I’ve previously discussed the differences between high energy and low energy states as well as resourceful (healthy) and unresourceful (unhealthy) states. Too much, high energy resourceful attention leads to an unresourceful state, either high or low. Simply put, if we don’t take the time to mellow and relax, our bodies will do it for us.

I often hear integrative physicians and integrative health coaches suggest mindfulness and meditation as key to helping slow down our nervous system, supporting more restful sleep, and providing vital space in our minds and our bodies for relaxing and recharging our system. But many people just can’t or won’t meditate for various reasons. This is why Brainwave Entrainment and Biofield Technology just might be the easy to use technology that will help balance your high energy and low energy. Let’s look more closely.

Brainwave Entrainment is a technology that stimulates the brain in response to certain frequencies of sounds that directly influence neurological activity. When your brain is immersed in restorative and rejuvenating stimuli, through the use of a brainwave entrainment program, new neural pathways and synaptic connections are created that facilitate optimal brainwave frequencies. Simply put, your brain and nervous system begin to work at a higher level of neural functioning. The science of brainwave entrainment is complex and well proven. Find Out More.

For our purposes here, we can say that listening to a brainwave entrainment program on our smartphone can relax and release built up tension of the day. It will naturally and easily support your brain and nervous system becoming healthier and more relaxed. Some of the benefits of brainwave entrainment include, spontaneous release of emotional trauma, feeling more peaceful, becoming more relaxed, increased ability to handle stress, increased access to your intuition, feeling more grounded during the day, improved concentration, and enhanced mental acuity. All of this can and will occur by simply sitting or lying down while listening to a brainwave entrainment recording. Sounds easy? It is.

Biofield Technology is based on the idea that resonance occurs when two energy fields exchange energy and information. Playing one of these recordings, our subtle energy field becomes more balanced, centered and graceful.  The sounds are naturally balanced and centered, with frequencies encoded into a sound file that is easy to listen to. But the essential ingredient is the subtle frequencies that are sympathetically treating our natural energy field with messages of peaceful quietude and harmony.

Enough with the new age science jargon? I’ll make it simple. Most of us need more down time, more time in  a low energy resourceful state. Examples are reading a book, watching a sunset, or sitting on a cushion, to name just a few. If these states are less frequent than your busy life makes available, click on the links try a free sound file from iAwake Technologies or Holosync, my two favorite companies working in this field. What you’ll get is a nice sound file that you can play on your phone. More importantly, you’ll be listening to a sophisticated technology that is designed to help you become calmer and healthier.

The nice part is that you can listen in the car, or on a plane, or while walking the dog. Ideally you’ll listen in bed or a chair, but whatever way you do it, you’ll be relaxing your nervous system and from my experience as well as many of my clients, you’ll find that you have more energy, more clarity, and overall increase health in your life. I hope you try it today!

iAwake Technologies

Holosync- Centerpont Research Institute

Coaching Corner: Building Awareness

People need to know that they have all the tools within themselves. Self-awareness, which means awareness of their body, awareness of their mental space, awareness of their relationships – not only with each other, but with life and the ecosystem.

-Deepak Chopra

Some coaches talk about motivational coaching while other coaches attend to behavioral change, and others offer a co-active approach. Integral Health Coaching relies heavily on awareness as a necessary step for motivating change. Key to changes in behavior and achieving optimal healing is building awareness. Briefly, we will look at how to build awareness with our clients and how to leverage behavioral change using awareness-building.

Individuals seeking coaches are looking for professional support for deep change in lifestyle and health habits. While it seems that a coach holding a client accountable provides the necessary ingredients for change, over time external accountability often does not provide lasting motivation. If we think of our behavior as resulting from our internal experiences partly informing the choices we make, both must both be engaged in an Integral coaching program.

In  a previous blog, Four Ways of Being, Which One Are You?  I discussed four different orientations–two of which are a person oriented toward their experience, while another may orient by doing, to name two of the four. Coaching methodologies to favor one of these four orientations. Some techniques focus simply on motivating by doing, while other methods pay close attention to how an individual feels or senses his or her experience. In an integral approach, we allow for both the doing and the feeling in our coaching process. Our coaching does ask for clients to make behavioral changes. To exercise, to eat differently, to learn about nutrition, to speak up for oneself, but this is only half of the work. The interior of these actions have to do with the experience of the client and require engagement.

Using the same examples, if your work is to exercise more, the integral coach asks you to attend to how you feel while exercising, or how does exercising affect the way you feel, or perhaps what feelings come up that interfere with your ability to choose to exercise.  In terms of nutrition, how do the different foods you choose to eat affect they way you feel?  How does the way you feel affect the foods you choose to eat.  I know for me, I have many comfort foods and my choices drastically change based on what is going on for me emotionally.  In terms of speaking up for oneself, what does it feel like in your body when you don’t speak up for yourself.  How does saying what is important feel inside?  This is the awareness that when coupled with behavioral changes supports deep change.

For example, if your work is to exercise more, the integral coach asks you to attend to how you feel while exercising, or how does exercising affect the way you feel, or perhaps what feelings come up that interfere with your ability to choose to exercise. In nutrition, how do the different foods you choose affect the way you feel? How does the way you feel affect the foods you choose to eat. I know for me, I have many comfort foods and my choices drastically change based on what is going on emotionally.

In terms of speaking up for oneself, how do you feel in your body, when you don’t speak up? What happens inside when yo do? Awareness coupled with the associated behavior helps integrate changes in attitude and choices.

We access this type of work through an awareness practice. In Integral Health Coaching, the cornerstone work for the client is the awareness practice. In an effort support deep change Integral Health coaches recommend an awareness practice to help build a new way, the way the client is seeking to access.

Let’s look more closely at Jim as an example. He is working on releasing long-held internal stories about being having ADD and chronic fibromyalgia. His goal is to become a conscientious professional leaving behind old somatic patterns that limit his potential for flourishing. Jim’s current practice is to be more able to sense and connect to others people’s beliefs and feelings while maintaining his balance. Perhaps a simple activity, Jim’s tendency is to adapt quickly to the feelings of others, he is very sensitive and picks up other’s feelings.

The awareness practice constructed for Jim ask that several times a week, when Jim finds himself in a in a social situation, he should pay attention to when he notices that he is adapting to another’s beliefs. When he notices, he assumes a physical Koan posture. (We work on the Koan posture during the session. It is a physical movement that allows him to check inside- without having to close his eyes and breath.) After several seconds in the Koan, Jim is to being to notice ” What are the stimuli that I am adapting to?” and “What do I notice in my gut? ” The attention here is to notice when he is adapting and making space to notice what is going on. This goal is not to change any behavior at this point, rather; it is to interrupt a pattern in gaining awareness. If he can do this, we can introduce another behavior, but for now Jim simple needs to become aware of what the reactive response feels like, when it happens, in what circumstances.

Jim journals about his experience each evening before bed, which will give him and opportunity to see himself in a way that he may not have seen before. Over time, he will be able to make a different choice as he notices his conditioned response. This awareness practice is helping Jim prepare for making a new choices for behaviors.   It will be essential for him as a professional to be able to notice, connect and maintain inner equanimity. His sensitive to the feelings of others is useful this way.

Awareness practices form the cornerstone of the Integral Health Coaching method for motivating change. The blend of doing and feeling form a necessary coupling that greatly supports clients achieving the results they crave. Awareness is a necessary and powerful means for growing, ultimately allowing more freedom to live life fully and with greater health and fulfillment.

Coaching Corner: Integrative Medicine or Integral Health Coaching?

Integrative medicine or Integral health coaching–is there a difference? Indeed, there is. For many people, medicine is essential for healing.  Chronic and acute conditions require the breath of an conventional and integrative medical approaches.  In my practice, this includes nutritional medicine, homeopathy, chiropractic and craniosacral therapy.  These practices all seek to restore the body’s pathological limitations. However, these are not coaching practices.

Is integrative medicine enough? Illness  is more then just pathological processes in the body or mind. Often, the conditions for bodily and mental dysfunction exists in our habits, in the way we live our lives.  High blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, osteoarthritis, and many other conditions are significantly impacted by how we manage stress, our lifestyle choices, and how we healing.  Our choices of food, of exercise, how we sleep all influence our health. What we fill our minds with on a hourly basis, whether we have a healthy social support system, as well as whether we are able to be of service to others or forgive past difficult situations., all influence our heal. Influencing these realms are the purview health coaching and my own practice is Integral Health Coaching.

How is health coaching different then medicine?

Coaching is fundamentally collaborative.  When medicine involves medications or surgery, the physician is charged with providing for the patient.  In a coaching model, the coach and the client essentially work collaboratively.  Rather then the healer offering medicine, the healer was a coach works with the natural resources of the client, supporting their creative  capacity to actively bring about positive change.

Coaching is transformative.  The potential to learn and grow in a coaching approach offers unique opportunities to view illness as an opportunity to learn from rather then something to simply get rid of.  Coaching approaches lifestyle and habits that support the inner workings our our body and mind. With practice we can deliver new ways of being in which we actively choose behaviors that are healing, naturally bringing health and healing into our lives.

Coaching is a process.  As we learn to make new moves in our understand of ourselves, our awareness shifts to a healthier way of being, and the choices we make to support this healthier way.  The work with the client and the coach evolves over time. The goal is often far greater then simply removing symptoms.  The healing topic is just the beginning of looking into the potential how symptoms can lead to more fulfilling and healthier living.

Coaching supports self-motivation. Often in the convention and integrative medical model, patients are given advise and actions that will most definitely lead to healing and removal of symptoms.  However, less frequently do patients actually follow through with these interventions.  Health coaching attends to the motivation required to make the behavioral changes necessary for healing.  Coaching practices are tailored specifically to the clients unique circumstances.  The goal is to support success, allowing early successes to provide healing momentum.  As clients feel the new emerging muscles, commitment and motivation grows. The focus is less on reduction of symptoms and more on strengthening new ways of being and motivations for healthier beliefs and behaviors.

As an Integral Master Coach™, my approach views change as potentially occurring in any or all of the four domains: experience, behaviors, cultures, and systems.  Healing comes with strengthening muscles in these four areas.  We can focus on deepening our awareness, improving healthy behaviors, finding the right people to spend time with or improving the resources and systemic structures the support healing.  The integral approach assesses these four domains and uses strengths to help heal weaknesses.   We each have things we are good at and area’s that could use some attention.  The Integral Health Coaching seeks to leverage our strengths to grow new muscles in areas that need to be improved.

Integrative Medicine or Integral Health Coaching, do you have to choose?  Not really.  Each individual seeking relief from illness or suffering can have the best of both.  Integrative medicine fundamentally is not exclusive of conventional medical approaches.  Integral Health Coaching uses whatever is working best for the client to broaden healing potential through guided support and action. With the goal of relieving pain and suffering, Integrative Medicine and Integral Health Coaching are vital options for healing.

Coaching Corner: The Healing Topic

An essential feature that differentiates coaching from medicine is the identification and clarification of a coaching topic.  In Integral Health Coaching, I call this the healing topic.  Whether a patient or client comes in for coaching or for medicine, I always take the time to find and clarify a healing topic.

How do we arrive at a healing topic? Through dialogue and discussion.  Most clients see me with a medical condition that is taking their attention, a chief complaint.  The implied understanding is that the goal of our work together is to “remove” the condition or symptoms that are causing pain or limiting health. In a conventional medical setting as well as many health coaching settings, success is removal those complaints- headaches, joint pain, excess weight or smoking, for example—all necessary and good outcomes. Yet notice that these goals are about getting rid of something, without much regard to the  underlying experiences of self that might be wrapped up together with condition. We have all grown up in a medical system committed to reducing pathology with little emphasis on positive health goals.

In my own practice, after exploring the chief complaint thoroughly, a wonderful moment opens up in which I am able to shift the focus of our conversation to the positive, to a potential healing topic.  The most common question I ask is “let’s just say we’re able to find the right treatment to really get you better from your headache (or whatever the condition).  If that were to happen, what would you like to have in your life instead?” Invariably, this is question causes the client to pause, reflect, and offer an intimate longing for something currently not accessible. The discussion that follows investigates an aspect that they would love to see grow and succeed.  Together we explore the possibilities and consequences that such longings create, and how that would impact their health.  As an Integral Health Coach, I use the four quadrant template to explore this topic, considering behaviors, experiences, shared meaning and the social systems in my effort to deepen our understanding of the healing topic.
What emerges?  Here are a few samples:  a retired women in her 70’s has a chief complaint of chronic excema-her healing topic is “to be more able to be patient, open and present to the people who are close to me.”  A middle aged man comes with a chief complaint of tinnitus- his healing topic is “to be more trusting in my own healing abilities (healing topics are in the 1st person).” A mother of four, whose kids have all grown and left the house has a chief complaint of menstrual irregularities and frequent acute illness- her healing topic is “ to be more able to get the care that I need from those whom I love.” A unmarried women in her forties, hasn’t been able to get rid herself of what she thought was allergies, but it seems to be a chronic low grade chest infection—her healing topic is  “to be better able to choose actions that will bring me fuller, more meaningful life experiences.” A young women, a recent university graduate, struggling with severe  digestive weakness, constipation, and an inability to tolerate most foods yet, still gaining weight, has a healing topic- “ to be more able to nourish myself with greater ease and resilience.”

I hope you can see from these samples the contrast between chief complaint and healing topic. With both a chief complaint and a healing topic, the conversation shifts from one of only “removing disease”  to one of including health promotion.  While not everyone finds this shift to be inspiring, most do.  In terms of our working together, having both chief complaint and healing topic allows our process to focus on both fronts, ridding illness and promoting wellness.  For most, this is a real opener and perhaps the first time they are able to consider both the negative and positive aspects of a given illness.  As well, it offers clear direction for improving health in new and novel terms specific to the individual.

Finding and identifying a healing topic is an outgrowth of a positive psychology that focuses on growth, satisfaction and positive feelings. Health is more than just the removal of negative symptoms, rather, heath and healing are ongoing challenges and opportunities to improve ourselves physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.  Approaching healing with a positive focus, facilitates internal health resources and increases the meaningfulness of the challenges we face. In doing so, we grow healthier and more resilient, facing new health challenges with more resourcefulness.

For me personally, articulating a positive healing goal or healing topic is something I do annually. I think we can all do this. Why not start right now. Consider what ails you today.  Close your eyes and breathe into the sensations, feelings, and thoughts that go with your ailment.  Lose yourself in your breath for a minute and see if you can hear in the silence, what you might really be needing.  Ask yourself. “What would I really like to bring into my life. Listen closely, and write down what you learn.  With a little help, you can turn this into a healing topic.  Return regularly to your topic and you just might find yourself a little closer each time you look!

Coaching Corner: Four Ways of Being, Which One Are You?

Are you a doer?  Or do you feel things first, then act.  Perhaps your instinct is to check in with friends.  Or do you need the big picture first, then you can make a plan?  As an Integral Master Coach™, we seek to identify and help our clients recognize the tendency to orient primarily in one of these four ways-doing, feeling, attending to the group, or attending to the larger system.  Let’s look more deeply at these four orientations.  Perhaps you’ll see yourself in one of these ways being in the world.

In Integral Theory, the work based on the work of Ken Wilber, there are four primary domains for any occasion. These are often called quadrants, due to their representation in a four quadrant system. These four quadrants are experience, behaviors, culture, and systems, which correspond to individual interior- experience, how do I feel. Individual exterior-behaviors, what I am doing. Interior collective, how am I part of a community or group. And exterior collective, how does the system fit together? With out going into too much detail this graphic from www.integralhealthresources.com gives a nice summary of the four domains or quadrants.

Over time, Joanne Hunt and Laura Divine, the founders of integral Coaching Canada, Inc noticed that folks tend to favor one of these four perspectives. To be clear, that doesn’t mean that we only use one perspective, rather, each person has a habit of attending to one of the four domains more then the others.  Learning your habitual way of orienting can be useful in supporting self understanding. Learning how you orient is also helpful when interacting with others, you may begin to see how colleagues or family members favor a way of orienting and this might provide useful information for creating positive outcomes when working with others.

Let’s look more closely. An orientation towards experience: This person attends to her interiors, feelings, values, beliefs.  She seeks meaning in situations.  She’s aware of thoughts, feelings and sensations as they occur inside and the meaning that goes with them.  As she looks at her behaviors, her community and the system, she will attend to how these other domains effect her subjective experience.  If you want to know something about her, you have to ask, it’s inside.

An orientation towards behavior: He goes with his body, observable actions, and what he’s doing.  He favors objectivity or at least, he’s not always aware of what he feels, rather it’s more about accomplishing action.  What he eats, what he says, what activities he chooses to do are the emphasis.  He sees the other domains through the lens of action.  What can I do with my feelings, what can I do in the group and how does the big picture make room for my plans.

An orientation towards relationships: This is the ‘we’ domain, the part that we share with our family, our culture, shared meaning and language. When he orients from this domain the focus is on fitting together with his colleagues, how he relates to his family, his work, his children.  This orientation is concerned with belonging and with the rituals that bind people together.  The way to know this perspective is through being in the group.  He considers other domains with an attention to his tribe, his behaviors that relate to the collectives and how the shared culture of the we.

An orientation towards the system:  She considers her actions in the larger framework.  How are we in our environment.  What structure needs to be in place in to order to move forward.  She considers the larger trajectories of logic and systems such as the lessons of history and the underlying conditions form patterns. She filters her experience, behaviors, and culture back to the map that holds the big picture.

So which are you?  Not enough information to tell?  Or intuitively you know.  There really is no right way to proceed. Just learning to understand yourself and see what that can do for you.  For me, I orient towards doing.  I tend to measure my days through the actions I take.  I forget to pay attention to my feelings.

12 Practices for Optimal Healing: The Healing Power of Affirmation

I’m sure you have heard of the power of positive thinking.  Easy enough to dismiss, yet, setting a clear intention and reminding yourself of the positive outcome you would like does makes a difference.  Let’s look more carefully. “Affirmations help purify our thoughts and restructure the dynamic of our brains so that we truly begin to think nothing is impossible”, says Dr. Carmen Harra, a clinical psychologist.

Evidence continues to mount that our brains do grow in response to the thoughts that we have.  This growth is called, “plasticity.” Our neural pathways can play a role in determining our thoughts to some extent, and this reinforces thought and reaction patterns as our neural networks grow.  When we meditate or when we repeat positive affirmations, our brains find it easier to return to these pathways.  So choosing to repeat phrases or to focus on positive thoughts over time will reinforce these patterns in our brains.  Positive affirmations and other positive thinking techniques help develop a positive outlook on life and are essential to a healthy life. Affirmations help focus healing and certainly speed up the healing process.

The word affirmation comes from the Latin affirmare, originally meaning “to make steady, strengthen.”  When we find ourselves weakened through illness or painful experiences, setting our minds on a positive outcome and repeating a simple phrase has the effect of steadying our thoughts, reinforcing the outcome we so desire.  My first experience with using an affirmation for healing occurred after I read Dean Ornish’s, Program for Reversing Health Disease, in which he describes the use of affirmations.  I discovered my cholesterol had risen above 200, going up to 225 actually. Following Dr. Ornish’s program, not only did I initiate a low fat diet, I began to repeat to myself at least three times a day, “My cholesterol is 175.”  That’s it!  2 months later, my cholesterol was 175.  You might say, well he was dieting, and indeed, I’m sure my diet helped.  What fascinated me was that my cholesterol hit the target number exactly.

I then spent three months repeating “Every thing is perfect the way it is.”

I come back to that affirmation every now and again, it’s a good reminder when things are not going my way.

I’ve also spent considerable time doing Metta, which is a Buddhist technique that might as well be called affirmations.

An oft recited Metta stanza is:

“May I be filled with loving kindness,

May I be well,

May I be peace and at ease,

May I be happy.”

Try it now, sit with your eyes closed and repeat this line, if you can’t remember the four stanzas just repeat “May I be filled with loving kindness.”  After 20 minutes a day for a week or two, you may notice the gentle changes that will occur in your attitude as well as your experience of others.

Specifically, in the healing context, affirmations can be used to focus the mind on getting rid of symptoms, or on a positive outcome.  I prefer a positive outcome myself, so when I’m not feeling well, I often construct a simple repeatable phrase I can say in my head several times a day.  More recently I’ve taken to repeating an positive affirmation three times in a row, three times a day looking in the mirror.  This seems to strengthen the effect of the affirmation.

The key to any affirmation is to keep the phrase in the present, and to focus on the positive.  Instead of saying, “I will get”, replace that with, “I am” or, “my life is.”  Always be clear and specific as to the outcome you would like, such as, “I run a four minute mile” or, “I recover from my cold quickly and easily.”  It’s usually worth doing an affirmation for at least a week, but for deeper patterns of healing 3 weeks is a minimum.  Often, after three weeks of repeating a phrase, it becomes a part of how I construct my day, then it’s easy to continue on for weeks and months.  I can tell as I repeat the phrase that the meaning is seeping into my bones.

Optimal healing is often improved significantly by focusing one’s mind with clarity and positive thoughts. Creating a positive affirmation is an easy and reliable way to do this focusing while allowing yourself to be clear on the results you seek to achieve.  I encourage you to pick a phrase and repeat generously throughout the day.  Please do let me know how this impacts you on your path to strengthening your healing capacity.

Coaching Corner: Spiritual Intelligence (SQ)

Less common then IQ or EQ (emotional intelligence), spiritual intelligence (SQ) is defined by Cindy Wigglesworth as "The ability to behave with wisdom and compassion, while maintaining inner and outer peace, regardless of the situation."  Perhaps that's not what you might use the term spiritual for, however, Ms. Wigglesworth and her team at Deep Change  set out to define the skills of spiritual intelligence with a particular focus on measuring growth and development. Her system is called SQ 21.  SQ 21: The Twenty-One Skills of Spiritual Intelligence, recently published, offers a in-depth presentation of this novel work. Let's have a look. The 21 skills are partitioned into four quadrants. These are

• Quadrant One: Self/Ego Self Awareness

• Quadrant Two: Universal Awareness

• Quadrant Three: Self/Ego Self Mastery

• Quadrant Four: Social Mastery/ Spiritual Presence

Each of the quadrants have five or six skills.  The following graphic presents all 21 skills.

Within each skill, the SQ 21 assessment offers five levels from 1 (begining) to 5 (mastery).  Let's look at an example of the five levels within one skill level.  For Skill 2: Awareness of Life Purpose:

1. I understand why it is important for me to have personal values.

2. I can specifically state my personal values.

3. My personal values are connected to the voice of my Higher Self.

4. I have rank ordered my values so that I know which values are most important to me.

5. My Higher Self is so strong and clearly in control that decisions become relatively easy-even when the consequences of those decisions are not easy to see and may provoke sadness. Universal Self and Higher Self are tightly connected and values are aligned.

Is it clear the hierarchy of these five levels? Beginning with a basic understanding of personal values, then ability to state those values, the ability to connect the values to something beyond the self, prioritizing values and finally living with clarity by having values connected and aligned with something greater then the self.  Each level requires the previous skill to be on-line. If you are asking, "So what?".  I'll tell you. For me, as a coach, understanding spiritual intelligence is essential, as often my clients have a sense they are part of something bigger, and often the issues they are struggling with are related to this. As a coach, if I have attuned myself with a language that allows me to help others explore their values and spiritual concerns, I can better serve. With greater alignment for myself, I am able to continue my own growth as well. Conversely, if I don't know much about my own SQ I'm not likely to notice these areas in my clients.  This is frequently the case in the doctor/ patient relationships, a role I also have with clients. It's actually a rather bad habit of the medical system to ignore this area of development.  Perhaps, illness and healing have something to do with maintaining inner and outer peace!

Not everyone has a concern for spiritual growth and fulfillment.  It is not essential for working with clients. However, much of the literature notes that many  Americans believe in God or a higher power.  For these people, having a coach familiar with spiritual intelligence seems vital to a deeply powerful coaching relationship. Reconsidering the definition of Spiritual Intelligence that opened this blog. "The ability to behave with wisdom and compassion, while maintaining inner and outer peace, regardless of the situation", you will notice that belief in God isn't even part of the definition. Essential is the ability to align actions and behaviors with values of wisdom and compassion, while maintaining inner and outer equanimity.  This certainly can have a positive impact on health as well as on our relationship with others.  In this way, SQ is about becoming more fully human. Much different then IQ, with its emphasis on cognitive development as well as EQ, emotional intelligence, coined by Daniel Goldman, which consists of self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, social skills.  and physical intelligence or  PQ, which is developed through athletics, fitness, movement practices and dance.  Rather SQ offers a broad perspective that involves all areas of our lives.  It often develops last in life after physical, intellectual, and emotional.  For many years SQ suffered from the science versus religion debate with little neutral language for research. The SQ 21 assessment is unique and a powerful tool for growth. Many thanks to Cindy Wigglesworth and her team for shining a light on this vital area of human development.

Searching for Love, Saccharum Officinale and My Desire for Sweets: The Seven Universal Archetypes of Inspiring Homeopathy

What does it take to deserve my mother’s love? Just how deep is my fear of being abandoned? If so, how can I love myself? Or love another?  How does this affect my behavior? What does this have to do with sugar?

In the decade of the 1990’s a Dutch homeopath Tinus Smits, MD, created a system of healing using seven universal archetypes he called Inspiring Homeopathy. The remedy Saccharum officinale, made from pure cane sugar, the same source as common white sugar, and brown sugar, corresponds to one archetype-- lack of self-love.  I personally felt this remedy applied to me so I began to take it recently, a 30C potency, once a week. Part of what I am learning is the deeper meaning of my habit of needing to eat sweets often.  I’ve since lost 32 lbs in 8 weeks (I don’t’ eat sweets much and even less complex carbs) and I feel for the first time in my adult life that my energy, my mood and my demeanor are not rising and falling every few hours as my blood sugar rises with the morning honey in my tea, and ending the day with my late evening snack of cereal or granola.  Now I have a protein breakfast and I don’t add sugar to anything.  I like sensing me, feeling whatever comes up naturally.  I still like food, small amounts, but I prefer vegetables, fruits and protein at every meal.

Let’s consider a bit more of Saccharum officinale. As part of becoming fully human, many hopefully experience unconditional love from our parents. Yet, at times we experience disconnection or loss of love. What happens when this becomes our basic basic story—a  delusion that we are not connected with the source of Love? Often, different mechanisms of compensation develop for these feelings of frustration from lack of love and affection.  A common compensation is an insatiable appetite or rather a need to put most anything in our mouth, like tobacco, gum or fingernails. The most common seems to be the desire for sweets.  If you know anyone who has a frequent desire for sweets, Saccarhum officinale should be considered.  I never really put it together for myself, but it’s easy to see now the self-soothing that my comfort foods provide me--a scone, an ice cream, licorice.  These are some of the foods I regularly reach out for when I feel lonely or separate from others.

The other significant compensation is the need for attention. As a child this is a need to be cuddled, but it can also turn into loquacity or other types of demand for attention including pranks, doing forbidden things, or jealous behavior.  In adults, this may be an exaggerated need to possess things, acquire new stuff, or just an overall feelings of dissatisfaction, thus the seeking new experiences. Clearly, an incapacity to have a lasting relationship with another reflects a deep seated disconnection.  Somehow, early life frustrations cannot be satisfied.  For me, even with a healthy relationship with my wife, there are many times I can feel distant from friends, isolated or jealous of others success.  Shouldn’t I be the one others are calling?

The archetypal situation of the Saccharum person is a desperate search for love, affection and attention.  This comes from a lack of self-love with a fear of being abandoned by the mother because of a fear of not deserving her love.  She may or may not have caused this. It’s the feeling or story that the Saccharum person carries around. I do. You may not really be able to articulate it. I couldn’t, but the physical desires for sweets is a strongly pointing compass to this universal archetype.

What of Saccharum and me?  I resist sweets now, focusing on protein and veggies.  I offer myself an affirmation, “I love and forgive my mother for whatever she said, did, thought or felt when I was three years old that interfered with my ability to be loved.”  I’m not able to describe here how I worked out this affirmation, but I can tell that when I repeat this to myself three times daily in the mirror, my eyes shine more brightly, my energy opens up and I feel grateful of everything and everyone who brings love into my life.  In the morning I feel recharged and energetic, without reaching for carbs or sweets.  Weight seems to be falling off effortlessly, and I feel more close to friends and family. I give more.

It’s still early. I’ve been on a weekly dose of Saccharum officinale 30C for four weeks. This journey with Saccharum will continue. Dr. Smits system suggests moving up potency from 30C, to 200C, to 1M to 10M over time to clear the archetypal layer.  I’m loving more, myself and others, without the need for interfering substances.  How long with this last or will it take? I’ll let you know. It may take a while, but the pearl seems beyond the price!

Coaching Corner: Paying Attention To Your Breath

Breathing seems pretty basic, why bother talking about it?  It is something we do all the time!  Tending to your breath can have a big impact actually.  "Take a few deep breaths."  I'm sure you've heard that before.  In terms of coaching: executive, life or health, at some point, the breath will become the foundation for many different types of work.   I'll take a quick look at breathing from several perspectives in an effort to improve your knowledge as to how useful focusing on the breath can be.

Let's start with the physical mechanics of breathing.  Do you predominantly breath through your nose?  If you can, it makes a big difference.  Your nose is better designed to filter air.  Perhaps your nose seems like it's too often stuffed up.  Did you know that, if you consciously breath through your nose more often, you will find that your nose gets less congested.  It's also true that the side that is clogged alternates during the day.  Sure, a stuffy nose can have something to do with allergies, upper respiratory infections and what you eat. But, if you breath through your mouth all the time, you miss the natural filtering system that your nose provides. Try breathing through your nose when exercising, sleeping and meditating.  With regular practice, you'll find that breathing through your nose comes naturally and easily.

Your respiratory system includes the diaphragm, intercostal muscles, various neck muscles, lungs, trachea, pharynx, larynx, and nasal cavity.  When you focus your breath through your nose, during exercise for instance, you'll find that all the muscles of your respiratory system become engaged. With practice, you'll be able to regulate your breathing more.  This can prove handy if you get excited, anxious or angry.  Learning to slow your breathing is an excellent tool for self soothing.

Often coaching exercises ask people to stop and pay attention to their inhalation and exhalation for one minute.  Why bother?  Many meditation practices use this type of focusing on the breath as a way to train the mind to focus.  In the basic form of Vipassana, a buddist meditation, your attention is on the air passing directly through your nose.  Why so specific?  The purpose? to help you concentrate.  By focusing your mind on your breath, you begin to let go of distracting thoughts, becoming more able just to attend to the sensations of the breath.  This attention coupled with the natural tendency for reducing physical tension by slowing breathing, helps calm the overall mind and body , allowing it to settle and become present.

The term mindfulness is often used for many of the basic meditation techniques.  Mindfulness is more than simply attending to the breath.  Once this attention is regular and easy to follow, mindfulness is the ability to notice the distractions that appear;  such as physical sensations in the body, feelings that arise in your heart or mind, as well as various distracting thoughts that naturally arise.  Mindfulness basically means that you are able to notice these sensations, feelings, or thoughts arising, and then you are able to let them pass, returning to the simple repetition of breathing.  Sounds simple?  In many ways it is. Sounds hard? In many ways it is too!

Learning to attend to the breath is essential for good physical health, allowing one to improve energy flow in your system, to sleep more soundly and use your energy more effectively.  Emotionally, learning to attend to your breathing allows you to pay closer attention to feelings, without having to necessarily do anything about it.  You can feel more fully what is going on.  Focusing on your breath can allow you to reduce overall activated feelings.  Finally, using your breath in a mindfulness practice, allows you to better regulate your thoughts, feelings, as well as physical sensations.  A mindfulness practice supports a fuller attention to your experience, supporting healing as well as growth.

Taking time to practice with the breath is a powerful regular practice.  It's easy and free.  Start today!  Take a few minutes and breath through your nose.  Let me know what you notice!

12 Practices of Optimal Healing: Nutrition Basics

What should I eat when I want to heal?  The answer is of course, it depends!   Depending on what is going on for you when you are not feeling well, different foods will be healing.  That is why there are so many diets and so many healing foods.  No one way of eating works for every situation. However, these three universal principles that I suggest; create dietary rules, control your portions and plan your meals will greatly support Optimal Healing, and help anyone use healing foods.

In  greater detail, the three principles are:

• Consider the types of foods that are most healing for you today (Make dietary rules),

• Choose to eat the right amount (Control your portions )

• Plan and prepare your meal ahead of time(Proper meal planning).

Make Dietary Rules: There are many ways of eating for healing,  if you are reading this likely you have read or tried out a few yourself.  Pause for a moment, think back to when you were young, what did your mom prepare for you when you had a tummy ache?  Chicken soup? Crackers? or maybe Jello?  For thousands of years, our families had clear knowledge of what foods to eat to support healing.  A consequence of the modern technological era seems to be a loss of  convention healing wisdom. We reach for drugs now rather then home cooking.  Yet, even with easy access to over the counter medications, learning what foods support healing can have a huge impact.

One simple way of deciding which foods you should eat for healing is to consider whether your symptoms are from excess or deficiency.  Symptoms of excess can often be found with eating too much, working too much, or burning the candle at both ends.  This may bring on excessive discharges- runny nose, leuccorhea, fever, perspiration, even diarrhea.  Symptoms of excess suggest that the body is trying to correct itself by letting go and discharging.  What types of foods help?  Foods that help bring about contraction, slowing things down.  It would make sense that spicy food and sweets tend to stimulate excess, salty foods and animal proteins are contracting.  Simply eliminating sweets alone helps lower excess. Eating low fat foods help as well.

How about symptoms of deficiency, such as low energy, chilliness, weakness, inability to concentrate.  Healing foods that are expansive help here.  That's where the chicken soup works its wonders.  Fats are naturally expansive, think of fats as concentrated fuel cells.  Simple starches also help provide energy and expansiveness, though not too much, they convert to sugar easily. Eating small amounts often can have a big impact on shifting one beyond  deficiency.  No matter what the illness, take the time to consider what foods will support healing and make those foods the priority!

Control Your Portions:  Once you know what foods are going to heal, next step is to eat the right amounts of these foods.  Not too much but enough for your system.  When we eat too much, it naturally creates excess-- healing slows.  We don't want to struggle to deal with a gastrointestinal system having  too much stress.  Pick the right foods, and proper amounts.  You can break it down to servings of protein, carbs and fats, but no matter, learning to have the proper portions supports healing thoroughly.

Proper Planning Is Essential:  Eating the proper foods and the proper amounts won't really happen if you don't plan ahead.  With a functional kitchen, there is little reason not to prepare enough for several meals.  Having healthy meals easily accessible is a huge benefit for healing and your health in general.  So as you spend time figuring out which foods to eat, consider making the time to prepare the food and the time to eat the food.

Dietary choices can have a profound impact on healing. With so many possible foods to chose from, this post has focused on more the planning and preparation of healing foods.  For Optimal Healing , making dietary rules, controlling portions and planning meals ahead are essential when you need to bring yourself back to health.  Carving out the time for meal planning is well worth it.

12 Practices of Optimal Healing: Fresh Air

The first canon of nursing, the first essential to the patient, is to keep the air he breaths as pure as external air, without chilling him!   - Florence Nightingale

As the days shorten and the sweets entice us, many find themselves struggling with symptoms of excess.  Excess calories, excess food, excess work demands, excess family commitments and of course, not enough sleep and relaxation.  The weather turns cold and the nights run long.  Advertisers call this the flu season.  So what can we do to encourage healing, if we do find ourselves “under the weather?”

Go outside! Turns out there increasingly more and more evidence suggests that fresh air has an antibiotic effect.  While this isn’t new--Florence Nightingale threw the windows open (as well as did other things) in hospitals in the mid 19th century and drastically reduced death rates.  TB sanitariums were notoriously set in the mountain air, and even the World Health Organization urges healthcare settings to use natural ventilation as much as possible.   So what about my home or my workplace?  Am I letting nature support my immune functioning? Am I increasing my protection by having more fresh air?

What can you do?  For one, make sure you get at least an hour a day of time outdoors.  Something relaxing like walking dog, taking a hike, or gardening, is always nice, but it doesn’t have to these activities  Consider simply sitting outside during lunch, or taking a break in the fresh air throughout the day.  If you live a cold climate, it's good medicine to put on your winter coat and walk to the store or bring in the wood.  In fact, ultraviolet light kills bacteria leaving human cells unharmed.  You don’t need to purchase a UV light, nature provides during daylight hours right outside your door.  Don’t be fooled by the clouds or the rain.

Meanwhile, the air in your home and office too has to be considered.  In this age of green building design and energy conservation, office buildings may not have windows that open.  Homes are super insulated.  If you are not feeling well, rather than sealing yourself up in a sauna, make sure you have fresh air in your room.  If you have to turn the heat up a bit, or bundle up, no matter. The air that you breath is the medicine you are looking for optimal healing.  Fresh air in the car is a must and making sure you have sources of fresh air at work are all necessary for keeping your respiratory system clean.

Of course, the sun provides another valuable healing medicine, it stimulates vitamin D. production, which too has many therapeutic qualities.  Evidence continues to mount that Americans are not getting   enough vitamin D.  Your time outdoors is critical for a host of functions that vitamin D supports.  There are other benefits as well.  Time in nature affords moments of connecting with animals in nature, or the awe of a beautiful sunset. All have salutary or healing benefits.

Another benefit of time in nature is the potential for movement/ exercise.  As we struggle to right ourselves from acute infections, getting out of bed and out for a short walk helps stimulate circulation as well as digestion.  Movement is essential  for healing.  This can be our own movements, walking, jogging, dancing, exercising, as well as internal movement, such as regular digestion and full respiration. And there is the movement of the air that we breath.

Simply put, keep the air moving in you life and as Florence Nightingale said “Never be afraid of open windows.”

Coaching Corner: High and Low Energy States

Ever find yourself wandering around the house getting little done?   Or sitting and glancing through the newspaper though you have a huge amount to do at work?  There must be some purpose for this.  Why wouldn't we simply crank through the day getting our work done, paying little attention to taking breaks or to eating lunch?   Turns out that our high energy states, the energy we rely on to stay focused on our tasks can only go for so long before our energy cycles.  Recent evidence is revealing that just as our sleep goes through cycles of superficial and deep sleep or REM cycles, so to does our daily energy cycles. Our health depends on both high energy states and low energy states.  The term ’states’ in this context, is generally associated with states of consciousness, the most common being waking, dreaming or sleeping.  Other familiar states are altered states , having to do with taking a drug or the healthier version, peak experiences in which we successfully scale a mountain or find a gem of a moment with a loved one.  We do shift through different states throughout the day, including strong emotional states of anger or fright for example.  We experience illness as a state- with its physical and mental challenges to our experience.  A simple but useful state polarity is the contrast between  high energy and  low energy states.

Most of us have healthy experiences of high energy states—those times during the day we are fully focused at work, exercising at the gym, or working together with others on a project.  These performance states are characteristically invigorating.  Our experience can be full of challenge or surprise, with times of joy and feelings of connection.  One might say these are high energy resourceful states. Low energy resourceful states, on the other hand, are characterized by relaxation.  Do you have peaceful moments at home, times of tranquility and serenity?   Low energy resourceful states seem to be a bit underrated in modern times, particularly in the workplace. The push to get work done as well as to fill up our lives with fun activities seems to leave little left for low energy resourceful states.  Much of the natural health interventions we read about recommend more low energy states, the most common practice being meditation.

Interestingly, too much of one state or the other leads to unresourceful  states. You might recognize which of these happens to you.   High energy unresourceful states come with much negative emotion—anger, irritability, resentment, jealously, and worry for example.  Low energy unresourceful states are characterized by exhaustion, apathy, sadness and depression.  It’s common for many, who overly rely on high energy states to find themselves shifting from high energy resourceful to high energy unresourceful. It’s not to hard to see how this pattern plays itself out for parents, professionals, and executives the like.  Stimulants might keep us going, but too many holiday parties are likely to set off a high energy unresourceful state.  Acute illness’s might also be an expression of both high and low energy unresourceful, when characterized by fever, body aches or vomiting. Unless, if we really overdo things, we find ourselves in a low energy unresourceful state, which, can come from burning the candle at “both ends”.   One may see this pattern in persons who have lived with chronic stress over long periods of time.  As well, persons who spend too much time in low energy resourceful  states can slip into unresourceful, not wanting to get out of bed to meet the day—real depression.

For folks I work with, the most common imbalance is the over reliance on high energy resourceful states with the associated lack of reliance on low energy resourceful  time.  For many, it’s not easy to believe that making time to relax fully, through a power nap, or a regular meditation practice, will actually make you more productive.  Even if it doesn't, it will certainly help you feel better, more present and more relaxed. Look at how you spend your time each day for a week, considering the balance of high and low energy states and when you shift from resourceful to unresourceful.   You may find a clear pattern.  Now, adding one regular practice can have a huge impact.  If you need more low energy resourceful, try meditation, relaxation, or reading a book regularly. Cultivating states impacts both your health and your performance at work. If you need more high energy, exercise is primary, put a 30 minute walk into your day, join the gym, or find a team to play on.  Either way, balancing high and low energy states will keep you from falling into the toils of unresourceful challenges.

12 Practices for Optimal Healing

Much attention is given to what we can do to stay healthy.  Healthy diet, regular, exercise, stress-reduction and lifestyle changes all prevent the onset of chronic conditions or limit their causes.  But healing is not the same as wellness, and healing is different from healthy.  Healing has several meanings and the one I’m going to focus on here is healing as what we do and how we experience moving from illness to health.  Healing includes the changes we make, the people we include, the practices we undertake and the container we set for diminishing our experience of illness in order to return to the freedom of health.

Thus, healing can be enhanced and maximized.  There are 12 practices that I will offer that stimulate healing, enhance symptom reduction and hasten movement toward health.  These practice are:

• Movement

• Nutrition

• Relaxation

• Meditation

• Affirmation

• Emotional Release

• Love

• Forgiveness

• Care

• Nature

• Water

• Safety/Security

Movement:  Our bodies are constantly in a state of both stillness and flux.  In our quietest moment, we continue to experience the rise and fall of our breath, and the beating of our hearts.  Movement is essential to life and for healing, movement is an essential aspect…moving our bodies, moving our bowels, moving our minds.  Learning just what our being needs to heal through movement is a lifelong lesson.

Nutrition:  So much has been written about proper diet, and indeed, food can be vital to healing when focused specifically on what foods are necessary for  what types of healing.  Healing nutrition is powerful

Relaxation:  Just as movement is part of healing, so is relaxation.  Often symptoms are an expression of excess. Modern life can reach a frenzy of activity and our bodies break down.  Learning how to relax, sleep, and have resourceful low energy time supports release and healing.

Meditation:  While you may think that relaxation is meditation, I’m suggesting that learning how to focus your mind, calming mental patterns and enhancing deeper mental clarity and focus is extremely healing.

Affirmations:  What we want to see happen makes a big difference in our experience.           Affirmations begin with setting our intention, then focusing our thoughts to that outcome.  Learning how to use affirmations to heal offers a valuable tool for times of aches and strain.

Emotional Release:  Often times, like it or not, illness is due to pent up feelings that haven’t had a chance to be heard.  Listening to deep seated feelings and learning to release them will always healing.

Love:  How much is our experience of healing intertwined how we feel about ourselves and how others feel about us? Loving ourselves and taking care of ourselves is love.  Many feel that all healing comes from these sources of love.

Forgiveness: How often are we holding onto resentment when we get sick?  How is our physical or emotional state keeping us a hostage to the very love we need to have to heal?  Learning to identify what we are carrying around and do the difficult task of forgiving those around us is powerful medicine.

Care:  Many people, upon reflection, remember a parent or person caring for use during illness.  Are there persons who care for you?  When you are sick how does care help you heal?  When others are sick, do you step up and care for your loved ones?

Nature:  The healing power of nature is special.  From sunlight, the beach or simply a room with a view, the natural world is healing.

Water:  Seems pretty simply but learning about just how powerful water is in healing surprises many.  Remember, to keep drinking!

Safety:  Perhaps you may not notice how the conditions for healing require the environment to be safe and supportive.  Some people like a very neat environment, others company, and everyone wants and needs their space to be conducive to healing. THe qualities of our space offers a sense of safety that provides the necessary conditions for healing.

The 12 practices for Optimal Healing.  No you don’t have to do them all! But, I invite you to join me over the next twelve months as I explore these practices, offering you the opportunity to take these practices and use them for yourself.

Many Blessings,

Joel