Movement Lifestyle

Meditation Doesn't Work!

“Meditation doesn’t work for me” is what someone said to me recently.

I had to disagree with this and explain why I thought so.

If you’re feeling stressed, anxious or low and you think now is a good time to turn to meditation because everyone is always going on about how positive it is, it probably won’t work for you.

Meditation and mindfulness practice is a bit like being a gardener. You need to plant a seed, water it and tend it for days and weeks before you can harvest its fruit.

If you planted the seed of a raspberry bush and watch it for a few minutes in the expectation of fresh, ripe berries for dessert you will always be disappointed.

The strength of your mindfulness practice builds over time and the more you water that seed, the stronger it will grow, and only then can you benefit from its harvest.

It’s most likely that when you start, your mind is so full of thoughts that you get distracted easily and you spend most of your meditation time running over the things left to do on your “to do” list, which sort of defeats the object.

So start now with me and take one deep in breath (pause and breath in) and one deep out breath (pause and breathe out) and make it a practice you integrate so you can benefit when you really do NEED meditation/mindfulness.

Most importantly start small and be consistent.

How To Lower Cholesterol Naturally

I was asked a while back by a client how they could lower cholesterol naturally, as they had been told by their doctor that their levels were on the high side and that they should be taking statins to help lower the cholesterol.

Statins are VERY widely prescribed and cholesterol is VERY misunderstood by the general public, so below is the list of points we went through in our consultation that I thought you might also benefit from knowing:

Only 25% of your cholesterol comes from diet, the remaining 75% is manufactured by your liver to repair tissues. The more tissue damage you have going on, the more the liver will produce cholesterol.

The number one thing that will cause tissue damage is inflammation. Notice I did not mention anything about fat in the diet, which is the first thing people think when talking about cholesterol. To lower cholesterol by reducing fat in your diet (assuming it’s coming from a good source) is a recipe for many other problems.

All hormones are made from cholesterol so without a plentiful supply you can become deficient in many other hormones. Due to the hierarchy of hormones the first ones to suffer are often the s*x hormones (low libido). The body performs something called pregnenalone steel where it takes the cholesterol off to make stress hormones instead as they are part of a group of primary hormones (seemingly more important than increasing s*x drive).
Vitamin D is made from cholesterol, which is a hugely important vitamin, involved in many chemical reactions in the body.

If you already take statins or have taken statins in the past you are accelerating the rate of aging of your cells due to the reduction in a substance called CoQ10 which is inhibited by statins.

With lowered CoQ10 activity you’re also going to be suffering with poor antioxidant activity as CoQ10 recycles vitamins E and C both which are important antioxidants.

So those are the headlines. Below are some action items for lowering the cholesterol naturally:

Follow an anti-inflammatory diet – this means cutting out grains, processed meats, vegetable oils, alcohol, sugar and any foods that you are also intolerant to. The main stay of an anti-inflammatory diet will be cruciferous vegetables (think dark green leafy veg), organic meats, fish and poultry and increasing omega 3 fatty acids (fish oil supplements)

Also flax and chia seeds are excellent sources of omega 3 fatty acids.

Increase aerobic exercise to help improve the mitochondrial function (energy production parts of all cells). Remember aerobic exercise is probably walking for most people (180 beats per min, minus your age gives your aerobic threshold)

Cinnamon – cinnamon has a property called cinnamate which actually targets the same enzymes as the statins so you can get the positive effects without the draw backs of the medicine. Teas or essential oils are a nice way to take cinnamon.

Clargy sage is also an excellent herb to use to balance the hormonal system in this instance. Used as drops in a bath can be an excellent remedy.

From a supplement perspective – garlic capsules, CoQ10 and omega 3 (fish oils) are the big hitters here.

How To Boost Your Energy

If I was feeling lethargic and lacking that little bit of spark in the morning, this is what I would do:

Make sure I was getting in bed for 10pm each night having relaxed by reading, chatting, or perhaps doing some stretching.

I would make sure my schedule meant I could sleep in until at least 6.30am

I would do a little personal assessment and look to see what my biggest stressor was and work out a strategy to reduce that burden/eliminate it from my life (some things may not be possible to eliminate).

I would start practising some form of tail chi/qi gong. This would enable me to boost my energy through movement and therefore benefit from all the other hormonal advantages of exercise/movement without draining myself further.

Make sure I was eating more than two hours before bed, preferably earlier if possible.

Look at my diet and make sure I was balancing my blood sugar correctly by eating meals according to my metabolic requirements (the correct ratios of protein, carbohydrates and fats).

Look at taking a COQ10 supplement to help with the energy production pathways within the body.

Take a digestive enzyme particularly if I was also experiencing sluggish bowels/bloating/less than optimal digestion.

Take a cold shower in the morning when I first got up to help increase the amount of adrenaline in the body naturally.

Once I started to feel bit better I would start increasing some aerobic (exclusively aerobic not panting, draining, hard cardio) exercise to my daily routine – for example a brisk walk or slow jog all at or below my aerobic threshold. To work that out take 180 minus your age, then minus another 5 beats. That’s your aerobic threshold.
Pretty simple but no less effective.

Notice, I didn’t say have a coffee, have a green tea, drink a red bull. Just solid lifestyle adjustments all of which improve the energy production pathways within the body.

If this is you, try it and let me know how you get on.

80:20 of Optimal Health & Fitness

I had a discussion this week with someone who was getting a little frustrated, and perhaps even overwhelmed, with everything that they had read and learnt about the challenges they are facing.

There seemed to be a mountain of different things they need to change and it also felt like it was a prison sentence, not a joyful experience doing them.

One thing became apparent to me: the lack of flexibility with this plan of action.

I felt like if one thing fell out of optimal the whole thing would come crumbling down.

I can tell you from experience, both personally and having worked with clients one to one for the last 15 years, the 80:20 rule really does work.

Example:

If you have three meals per day for seven days, that’s 21 meals for the week. If 17 of those meals are ideal, according to your needs/goals, that leaves you with four meals where you can have a little treat. A little MORE of what you fancy.

The problems arise when it’s 17 meals that are ok, but not quite right and four that are “perfect”. That’s usually what I get to see when someone has complaints.

Or if you get to bed by 10.30pm six nights per week then it doesn’t matter if one night per week you go out late until 3.00am, for example.

Have a little think about what your goals are, what actions support those goals and what 20% of “slack” might look like for you.

Let’s stop crucifying ourselves because of external expectations from things we see in the media.

Let’s learn to love and accept ourselves more deeply.

Where Will YOU Be?

I thought we could take today to do a little self reflection.

Ask yourself the following two questions:

1 – What will your health/fitness/wellbeing look like two years from now if you make the changes that you know need to happen to bring better balance into your life?

More energy?
Less pain?
Improved digestion?
Increased fitness?
Happier?

2 – What will your health/fitness/wellbeing look like two years from now if you don’t make the changes that you need to bring better balance into your life?

More fatigued?
Depressed?
Further aches and pains (or worse)?
Poor digestion?
Disease?

One thing is for certain – those two years will pass no matter which option you opt for.

Whether you make a decision, commit to it and follow that through or whether you wait for something external to give you a kick, time is going to pass.

It will be a lot less painful getting uncomfortable with change now than it will when you’re forced to make changes further down the line!

Now, if you want my help to make these changes, just reply and we’ll find a way to work together to make them happen sooner.

How To Break Bad Habits (2 of 2)

Last week I offered you four stages of change that will help to break habits that are not serving you and your goals.

This week let’s get into the second and perhaps most important part…

Countering/Environment/Reward/Relationships

So assuming you’ve made the choice to change something about your life, presumably something to do with health and wellbeing if you’re reading this, there are four tools we can use.

Countering – this is picking things that are a better alternative.

It doesn’t, however, mean the optimal choice in all instances. For example, it’s common to hear someone say, “I couldn’t get my whole programme done so I thought I’d eat a pizza and have two bottles of wine because I’ve blown it for the day, back to it tomorrow!”

This is the all or nothing approach and this type of behaviour stems more from an emotional nature, one of self sabotage that we won’t get into here though. Flip-flopping between “perfection” to “pathetic” (the feeling not a judgement by me!)

Countering can be “better” choices that lead to optimal choices down the line. As I’ve spoken about before, little wins rather than quantum leaps. To get from the ground floor to the first floor you don’t jump the whole way, you climb one step at a time.

So if your goal is to remove sugar from your diet, the perfect way would be to remove it all and never look back! The countering approach might look like this:

Currently – occasional consumption of commercial sweets, chocolate, high fructose drinks and alcohol

Step 1 – organic sweets, chocolate and only freshly-squeezed fruit juice from organic sources, plus organic/biodynamic alcohol

Step 2 – homemade deserts with unprocessed sugar or sugar alternatives (coconut sugar for example)

Step 3 – high sugar fruits and starches such as potatoes, rice, pasta

Goal – only low sugar fruits such as berries and dark green leafy vegetables eaten according to your metabolic type (metabolic needs)

Environment – your environment dictates your performance. All top organisations (Apple, Google, Ferrari..) know this and this is why they create environments for high performance, to ensure each individual on the team has the best chance of performing to the highest level.

If your environment is not conducive to your goal, you need to change it.

In the above example of sugar, if you’re about to move to Step 1, don’t buy any commercially produced sweets, chocolate and low quality drinks to have in the house. Be sure to buy things that are supportive to your actions at Step 1 such as organic dark chocolate or organically-produced alcohol for example.

If you are trying to reduce alcohol consumption and you’re used to going to after-work meetings or social events where the norm is a bottle of wine and a chat, then perhaps it would be more conducive to have those meet-ups in a coffee shop where, hopefully, there is no alcohol sold.

Reward – quite self explanatory but this is key to get a dopamine spike which will help you to move in the right direction and remind you, hormonally, of what and why you are doing and what you are aiming for.

Dopamine is that feel-good state when you have completed something you set out to achieve. You can then start to associate new behaviours with this feel-good state and all cells are programmed to move towards pleasure and away from pain.

One thing I would say is try to avoid rewarding yourself with sub-optimal food choices, particularly if your goal is to improve your health and wellbeing. It’s a common reward strategy but can actually be undermining your bigger vision.

Rewards might be – an hour to yourself to soak in a relaxing bath and read your favourite book / to buy an item of clothing you’ve been looking at / an afternoon off work to do something fun. The list is endless and depends on you.

Relationships – a supportive relationship is arguably one of the most powerful tools out of the four.

A coach, support group, friend or therapist can see things that you perhaps are blindsided to and if they’re in a strong/balanced state themselves will be willing to call you on your dogmatic behaviours, as and when appropriate.

You need to make sure that a relationship is not there to reinforce patterns that you are comfortable with.

Again there is a saying that I heard years ago and it’s so true: “misery loves company”. You must have experienced it – your friend or partner asks you what you want to drink and you say, just a glass of water and they come back with, “Come on, what’s up with you, just have one!” Before you know it you are beating yourself up because your desire for an alcohol free day/week/month has gone up in smoke.

A good friend or coach can also be there in moments of doubt, trouble or when you are in need of emotional support. Just make sure that you are both aware of the boundaries to this before entering an agreement with this person.

Maintenance

So up until this point you have become aware of the need to change, you have developed/identified the desire for this change and you have made steps to attain a level of change that you are happy with.

The most important thing to do now is to maintain what you have and not fall back into old habits.

Whilst it is often quoted that it takes 7-21 days to change a habit, I’m yet to see this actually be the case in the long term.

If you made that 7-21 months you might be closer to reality.

Therefore we need some tools to maintain the change. Those tools are the same tools that you have used already in the prior phase – Countering/Environment/Reward/Relationships.

You may choose to upgrade and go a step further as a means of maintenance or you may choose to halt stations and bathe in your glory.

Until it becomes so subconscious that you don’t even give it a second thought, you will be well-served to use the tools above, particularly Rewards and Relationships. These two perhaps never really go entirely.

***

Thank you for reading this two-part series. I sincerely hope it has been eye-opening to learn a little more about how change can be brought about through, perhaps, more practical means.

How To Break Bad Habits (1 of 2)

I’ve written about change before and in particular how changing habits is so difficult for most.

The stats back that up too, with 95% of people starting a health, fitness or wellbeing programme failing to maintain any meaningful change beyond the 12 month mark. Most don’t even make it that far.

We can look at the emotional nature of why that might be but there are also some more logical approaches that might help you make the difference.

In its simplest form, change is difficult because you develop a path of least resistance to an area of your life and then, unless you have certain elements in place, the nervous system is designed to preference those paths of least resistance.

The other avenue to change, which is a lot less common, is those that force it come hell or high water.

This is an incredibly stressful way to bring about change and one fostered by slogans on social and traditional media, beliefs about yourself, or programming from family or even religion.

Then there is the element of self-esteem, unfortunately severely lacking in many. Another phrase for self-esteem could be, self-will. That is your ability to convert “desire” into reality through the conversation of that energy within your being.

Interestingly, the area of the body that relates to self-will energetically is the abdomen. So if the abdomen and the digestive system are sub-optimal we can also say that there is an imbalance with the area of the psyche related to self-will.

The body reflects the mind and mind is reflected in the body. You don’t have a body and a mind, you have a body-mind.

So what has all this got to do with changing habits?

It means that if you are to change habits to ideas and actions that are more empowering for you, you need to be healthy in the first place to make those changes effectively.

If your goal is upgrades to your health and wellbeing because it’s below where you would like, you then have a harder time.

Change will typically come in four phases:

Awareness
Commitment
Countering/Environment/Reward/Relationships
Maintenance
Awareness

In this phase we are building a picture of what might need to change in our lives. It could be that someone has given you some news about an aspect of your health (doctor, therapist, coach). You may have read an article about a better way of doing things or you’ve observed someone else doing things in a way that you would like to adopt (on social media, for example).

This stage is all about moving from the unknown to the known.

Commitment

The awareness phase can last a lifetime! There are many people that become aware of the need for change of an aspect of their health, for example, but never do anything about it.

For example: someone who knows that their back is hurting because a lack of exercise or adherence to their programme is a problem. Or that their weight is an issue due to the way they live yet they choose to do nothing about it.

Someone much wiser than me once said, “When the desire for change is greater than the resistance to change, change happens.”

This is very true, and unless you have a burning desire to make changes, it is likely just a wish that won’t come true. If you were to grade this on a scale of 1-10, it’s fairly safe to say that unless you are at an 8/10 or higher change will likely be a painful and fruitless experience.

If the awareness phase is leading the horse to the water, the commitment phase is the horse choosing, of its on accord, to drink.

So the commitment phase can be summed up really by CHOICE.

***

Thanks for reading part one of this two part series. I’ll be back next week with the second instalment.

9 Things You NEED To Know To Be More YOU ​

This week I’m going to address one of the questions that was posed to me a few weeks ago when I asked for your feedback.

Q – What is my take on being true to yourself and authentic living?

Firstly I have to say this is something that I am quite passionate about as I’ve seen how much stress it can cause someone when they are not willing to live in accordance to their deepest needs.

I also studied this back in 2008/09 because even then I saw how it undermined so much of what I was trying to do to help people with corrective exercise and holistic lifestyle coaching.
So what does it mean to be authentic and true to yourself?

I think professor Stephen Joseph summed it up brilliantly in his book “Authentic” when he said, being authentic is the willingness to Know Yourself, Own Yourself and Be Yourself.

So first of all you need to get to know yourself. You need to understand what it is that makes you tick. What you love and also what you don’t like.

Most importantly you need to understand what your core values are. I believe without knowing your core values you are going to be compensating in all the other areas of your life.

Your core values are your values. They do not involve your loved ones, your partner, wife or husband. That is the first piece to consider.

Don’t think of others needs when considering what your core values are otherwise you’ll leave a piece of you behind and your relationships will be anything but authentic and this will cause stress down the line.

There are nine values that I teach which are absolutely essential to get clear on before you can have an authentic relationship with yourself and therefore with others:

Physical needs – What do you need for your body that will keep you feeling in optimal health to live your other values?

Mental needs – What conditions do you need for your mind to be peaceful, calm and centred most of the time?

Space needs – What environment do you need to live in and work in to feel at your best?

Time needs – How much time do you need to spend on activities per week that make you feel at your best. Eg – You might say you need one hour for lunch every day and an hour to decompress and relax at night after work. How much are you currently getting?

Rhythm needs – What times of the day/week do you operate best? Are you happy getting up early each morning or are you a night owl? What other rhythms are essential for you to be healthy and content?

Family needs – How often do you need to connect with your family and for how long? How much is too much?

Purpose – What is it that you are contributing to? What is your legacy? What gets you out of bed in the morning?

Cultural needs – Are you from a culture that is different from where you live and if so what cultural events are important to you?

Social needs – How much time do you need with others? How much time can you give to others without giving yourself away?

Notice I used the work NEED quite a lot in the questions above. I didn’t talk about wants and dreams. In the space needs you might want an eight bedroom house with two acres of land but you might feel like you need a three bedroom property with a garden. The question is, are you living that?

These are also only starter questions for you. You could expand to a whole sheet of paper for each section above is needed.

This is truly getting to know yourself.

To be yourself you need to look at where you are at currently and how far from your needs you are and what you are prepared to do to cross that gap.

WARNING – Be aware of when you start filling answers in to these questions based on cultural and family expectations. Are these things what you really need or ideas adopted from your environment?

If you struggle to clear on this exercise you can simply turn it on it’s head to get started.
What do you know you definitely do not want in each area any more? What are you not willing to tolerate? That can get the ball rolling.

Finally the question also asked about being true to yourself.

I think to do that you need to develop a keen awareness of your intuition and allow the head to remain quiet.

Are you brave enough to listen to your intuition even when you don’t know where that might lead you?

How can you develop your sense of intuition? Firstly practice, but you also need quiet. A quiet mind, to hear these messages coming up.

The Power of Silence

I wanted to share the concept of “selective watering” which is a mindfulness idea that I picked up from Thich Naht Hanh.

Selective watering refers to ideas and concepts in the mind.

It’s quite widely accepted that the mind can be split into the conscious, the bits that you are presently aware of, and subconscious, the parts that are beyond your present awareness.

Those two areas split by 8% being conscious and a massive 92% being subconscious.

In Buddhist psychology they talk about the dominant area we focus on (in our conscious mind) as the zone of energy.

The zone of energy grows from a seed in the subconscious to a living thing in the conscious and it’s only because we have watered this seed that it has grown.

There is the potential for us to water any seed and we all have the seeds to hatred, anger and greed along with peace, calm and love, amongst many, many others within our subconscious.

If you’re experiencing emotions and feelings that you don’t want to in your awareness, your zone of energy, then that is because you’ve been watering the seeds of these things in the subconscious for long enough and they have grown into full blown “weeds”.

These seeds might also have a path of least resistance and become so easy for you to access and therefore experience because perhaps the seeds have been watered right from as far back as you can remember and even before that, by family.

There is however something I call the “mother seed”. The mother seed is the seed of mindfulness and you can use the mindfulness seed to regain peace and calm amidst stormy weather within.

This is why mindful consumption is so important. Are you consuming news, TV, radio or books that are watering the things you don’t want in life or are they watering what you do want?

For example if you feel like you have to watch the news to keep up to date with all the negative stories don’t be surprised if you’re full of anxiety, fear and worry.

To water the mother seed of mindfulness and restore peace within I teach five simple options:

1 – Mindful breathing – can be done anywhere, anytime and is as simple as breathing in and saying, “I’m aware of my in breath”, as you feel the air coming in through your nose. Then breathing out and saying, “I’m aware of my out breath”, as you feel the warmer air coming out through your nose.

This simple act is restoring your mind-body connection, that is, bringing your mind back to your body.

You might do this each time your phone rings, you take a mindful breath in and out before answering, for example.

2 – Mindful walking – another easy access concept. Any time you walk you can count your steps and breathe in for three of four and then count three or four on the way out as your exhale.

You could simply say each time you walk up stairs you will do this, or each day on the way to or home from work.

3 – Mindful consumption – drinking a cup of tea or glass of water gives you another opportunity to bring your mind back to your body and practice mindfulness.

With each sip hold the liquid in your mouth for a second, become fully aware of it and follow it down as you swallow.

4 – Meditation – this is the one that people jump straight into but sometimes have a hard time sticking with for the long term.

Seated meditation is great and there are lots of guided meditations you can try. Personally I would be tempted to go for one of the first three options before jumping in here, however.

5 – Day of mindfulness – on a day when it is usually more relaxed and calm (Sunday for example), you can choose to do everything that day with slow, conscious awareness and really integrate mind and body.

This takes the first four options above and combines them with all your daily activities. I have done this a few times and really feel the benefit at the end of the day. I have felt more energy and deeper sleep that night.