A MUST-HAVE Tool for Your Personal Resilience

No one recovers from Lou Gehrig's disease or "ALS" as it's sometimes called.  It's worse... way worse than cancer.  It's a death sentence, where 85% of the victims die in 20-48 months.  There's no real treatment and certainly no cure.  At least, that's what we assumed...

Dr. Ben Johnson, himself a medical doctor, had those same assumptions going through his head when he himself was diagnosed with the dread disease.  Then he came across a very new (at the time) health protocol called the Healing Codes  and gave it a try out of desperation.  The result?  He was symptom-free in a matter of weeks and still is today, nearly a decade later!

The Guy Who Made It Happen

This past Thursday night I had the honor of talking with the founder of the Healing Codes, Dr. Alex Loyd.  Alex holds doctorates in psychology and naturopathic medicine and does he have a story for you!  


You can listen to that story right here on the replay of Thursday's call.  If there's one interview you should really make time for during the next few days, this is definitely it:


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To listen to the replay, click this link:
http://InstantTeleseminar.com/?eventid=21889254


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You'll learn about Dr. Alex Loyd's personal struggle - life with a severely depressed spouse.  His wife, Tracy, was terribly depressed for years.  And if you've ever lived with someone going through depression, you know that words can't express how draining it is.  Yet Alex persevered through this for twelve long years - that's nearly martyrdom in my opinion.  


You'll learn about how Alex discovered what we now call the Healing Codes, although "discover" probably isn't quite the right word.  And then you'll experience his total shock at how effective this protocol really was and at what a wide range of physical and emotional challenges it was blowing right out of the water.  Have a look for yourself...

What He Didn't Know at the Time

When Alex was living through these initial successes, including the cure of his wife's chronic depression, he had little idea how his method worked, only that it did.  Now we have a much better idea what's really going on.


And for the first few years, there were hundreds, if not thousands of letters and emails coming in from people outlining the amazing results the Healing Codes provided.  However, that's just anecdotal evidence - even if there's a ton of it - and not exactly scientific proof.  


Since that last time I interviewed Alex - back in 2006 on the topic of mindset - scientific studies of the Healing Codes have been done and Alex will tell you about those too.  


Another big change since that time is that the cost of the Healing Codes has gone down dramatically.  Five years ago the price was still almost $900, because of the high cost of printing binders full of paper and shipping it.  Fortunately, digital delivery of some components has allowed them to chop the price down to less than a quarter of that. 


If you'd prefer to cut to the chase and take a few minutes to read the facts, you can learn all about the Healing Codes here. 





In our quest for physical, mental, emotional and spiritual resilience, the Healing Codes are, in my opinion, one indispensable tool we should all have on hand and use regularly.  


~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

What "Internal" Exercise Can Do for You

Internal exercise is much different than what most Westerners think of when they talk about going to the gym or getting in shape.  

Internal exercises are different because they've been designed with the whole person in mind, because they reintegrate mind and body and because they are sustainable - in other words, they lead to long-term health and, unlike some forms of exercise, they're not prepared to sacrifice that for the sake of short-term gains.  

                            Hatha Yoga


What's the opposite? Have you ever seen someone running on a treadmill and watching TV at the same time, with their body doing one thing and their mind another?  There you have it - a recipe for limited results, where you're treating your physical life and your emotional / spiritual life as unrelated.  

                                          Tai Chi



What are the classic internal exercise forms available to you today?  Chinese Qi Gong, Tai Chi, Bagua Zhang, Xing Yi Chuan, and Indian Hatha Yoga are all viable options if they're taught properly.  Granted, Bagua and Xing Yi are the least common; however I thought we should list them in case you come across them!  

                            Bagua's circle walking exercise

The Short List of What Internal Exercise Can Do for You

1. Helps Your Heart: improves your aerobic conditioning, oxygen uptake and endurance, while lowering resting heart rate.
   
   
2. Improves Your Flexibility: May not seem that way at first, but you'll become much more physically flexible doing internal exercises like Qi Gong, Tai Chi or Hatha Yoga.  This will reduce your stress, release trapped tensions and help you become more flexible emotionally.
   
   
3. Banishes Your Worries: Chronic worry and anxiety can increase your cortisol levels, which unfortunately correlate with elevated blood pressure, depression, weight gain and increased insulin resistance.
    
   
4. Improves Muscle Tone: Contrary to popular belief, these exercises build muscle like crazy.  This superior muscle tone helps protect you from injury, back pain and even arthritis.  Moreover, these exercises target deep core muscle groups vital to many aspects of your health and promote the flow of blood, oxygen and energy (qi or prana) throughout your system.
   
   
5. Takes Off the Pounds: Internal exercises burn far more calories than most people think and, even better, as a practitioner you're more likely to improve your nutrition.  This will help you drop even more weight, if that's your goal, or at least arrive at your optimum weight sooner.
   
   
6. Lubricates Your Joints:  To keep your joints healthy, internal exercises take them through their complete range of motion.  This bathes the joints in nutrients they might not otherwise get, keeping them healthy, pliable and resistant to injury.
   
   
7. Balances Your Blood Sugar:  Internal exercises promote better sugar metabolic function, improve cholesterol balance and decrease risk of diabetes and its related complications, such as kidney failure, heart attack, blindness and limb amputation.
   
   
8. Kicks in the "Relaxation Response":  That's an expression coined by Dr. Herbert Benson.  Internal exercise brings your breath, movement and mental attention together, calming you automatically and shifting your nervous system over to the restorative parasympathetic circuit.
    
   
9. Builds Those Bones:  Because they favor weight-bearing exercise, internal systems tend to build up bone density and stave off osteoporosis.  Moreover, some systems have special methods for keeping the bone marrow healthy and the bones resilient.
   
   
10. Improves Balance and Coordination: This is a function of mind-body integration and translates into fewer injuries and accidents as well as enhanced mobility. 
    
    
11. Circulates Your Blood Better: Vitality is partly dependent on efficient blood circulation.  Internal exercises wring the venous blood out of your nooks 'n crannies, reduce the workload on your heart and also thin your blood naturally, reducing the likelihood of clot-induced heart attacks or strokes.
    
    
12. Builds Mind-Body Awareness: As you practice, you become more and more sensitive to how you use your body - your balance, weight distribution, the places you habitually hold tension and the psychological resistances you've built to life that translate into physical manifestations of stress.  And once you're aware of these things, you can change them consciously!
    
    
13. Immunizes and Detoxes You:  Internal exercise postures move your lymph fluid quite efficiently, boosting your immune system, destroying pathogens (including cancer cells) and promoting a natural detoxification of internal organs in general and the lower digestive tract in particular.  This release of toxins and improved immune system functioning provides a solid basis for long-term health and longevity.
    
    
14. Deepens Your Sleep: By circulating blood, energy and oxygen more efficiently, reducing your stress and inducing a never-before experienced level of control over your own organism, how could you help but sleep better?
    
    
15. Instills Happiness "Software" in Your Mind: If your practice goes beyond just doing the routine to "get some exercise", you're in for a treat.  Internal exercise systems are holistic tools for cultivating mind-body harmony and happiness at levels you've probably not felt before.  And these systems often have or are connected with meditative systems that can revolutionize your life (in fact, that's what they've been designed to do).
    
    
16. Ramps Up Your Relationships: As you become calmer, more flexible and more connected with the core of your own being, other people will more often crave connection with you.  Internal exercise helps you become more compassionate, more approachable and more balanced - secrets you can share with your loved ones and anyone else who will listen.
    
    
17. Spiritualizes Your Romance: Internal systems are indeed holistic - they have or are connected with repositories of expertise on conjugal relations that can show you how to deepen your emotional connection with your spouse, master your sexuality and spiritualize sexual union. 

Needless to say, there's lots more!  Of course, none of these benefits come without regular and consistent practice.  The deeper benefits only come if you make the effort to build your lifestyle on these practices and the principles that underlie them.  

If you'd like to learn more about one form of internal exercise, Chinese Qi Gong, and its origins in the world's most successful tradition for cultivating health and longevity, just go here.

 ~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

This Colon Cleanse Gave Amazing Results!

NOTICE: Just a friendly warning to you that if you're really put off by explicit talk about human bowel functions, this post sure isn't for you!  On the other hand, if you're intensely interested in radically improving your overall health, immunity and longevity, read on...

It feels so strange... moving my jaw up and down in order to pulverize food for easier digestion.  The action stirs distant memories of a time long ago... five days ago, in fact, which was the last time I chewed anything!

The Past Week's Adventure in Resilience 

That's because I've spent the last week doing Blessed Herbs' Colon Cleanse, and what a super cleanse it is!  What basis do I have for making that claim?  Simple, by the visible results.


You see, with a colon cleanse, seeing is believing.  What you're out to eliminate from your system is the toxic mucoid plaque that's lining you colon / large intestine / bowel.  And it's easy to identify because it's totally different in color and texture from your usual bowel movement.  Here's what it looks like (no, this isn't mine ;-)

Mucoid plaque is long, rubbery, usually somewhere between very dark green and black.  This was the first time using an all-herbal colon cleanse that I've been able to eliminate this stuff. 

Previously, I was convinced that the only way to do this was by doing colonic hydrotherapy - that is, using water under pressure to flush out the colon.  The only problem with the latter is convenience, because it will probably cost you a few hundred dollars to have it done professionally, or you can probably get set up to do it at home for a couple hundred or so. 

So kudos to Blessed Herbs for a really effective colon cleanse that's so convenient to use and doesn't require colonic hydrotherapy!

Why Bother Cleansing Your Colon?

Of course, the begs the question of why you would want to cleanse your colon.  Well, if you're a reader of this blog, you probably already know, but briefly, here's why:

• As the plaque builds up over time, it leaches toxins directly into your blood stream, compromising the function of all you cells and significantly increasing the toxic load on your system
• The plaque inhibits your ability to absorb nutrients from your food, creating a kind of internal "malnutrition" no matter how good your diet is
• If you have spent any of your life on the "Standard American Diet" (SAD), you can be sure you're carrying around some unwanted pounds of this stuff (consider that even though my diet is heavily organic, mostly follows the rules of food combining and that I've done colonic hydrotherapy in the past, I still eliminated about eight feet of plaque this time around!)

So naturally, when you cleanse your colon of mucoid plaque build-up, you eliminate all these problems and return your metabolism to a higher level of functioning and overall resilience. 




Know What You're Getting Into...

Now, before you run off to grab their kit, let me tell you up front that this does require some adjustments to your lifestyle for the duration of the cleanse.  You go through three stages:

1. Stage 1: The 3 day pre-cleanse, where you eat ever decreasing portions of raw, organic food.
   
2. Stage 2: The 5 day liquid-only cleanse.  That's right, NO solid food, for reasons I'll explain below.  And as my business advisor, Kathy, so kindly reminded me last week, "liquid only doesn't include having a beer on your patio!"  You'll be on water and organic fruit juice, with some vegetable broth if you want it.  Even my traditional fruit smoothie was out of bounds.
   
3. Stage 3: The 1 day break-the-fast, where you start slowly (since your digestive system has been largely in shut-down mode for several days), with a diet of fresh fruits and veggies, steamed veggies, brown rice or baked potato.
   

Just to clarify, the reason for no solid food is simple: their Toxin Absorber, that you'll be taking every three hours mixed into apple juice, binds to the mucoid plaque and escorts it out of your body.  If you still have solid food in your digestive system, the Toxin Absorber will bind to that instead and leave the toxic garbage inside you - not a great idea!

So there you have it - nine days invested total and well worth it!!


~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

 

Fasting Part Two: Fasting for Spiritual Purposes

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Ageless Beauty – Timeless Health:
Building a Lifestyle that Automatically Creates the
Health, Immunity and Longevity You Want

Toronto, Canada: June 4-5, 2011

http://www.harapower.com/AB/

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Over the course of human history, fasting for spiritual purposes has been at least as widespread and quite probably much more so, than fasting for better health.  We also need to remember that non-Western and pre-industrial cultures did not tend to divide life into categories of "physical" and "spiritual" as we do out of (bad) habit. 

Goals of Spiritual Fasting

There are many different ones.  As I write this, tens of millions of Eastern Christians are beginning their Holy Week fast leading up to Pascha (Easter).  For them the goal is to become more open to divine influence and to actually participate in the events they're celebrating.  Of course, there are many different spiritual reasons for fasting:

1. To become more open to divine influence
2. To receive divine guidance on a particular issue
3. To receive healing, whether physical, emotional or spiritual
4. To help someone else receive what they need, whether healing, guidance or protection
5. To prepare for a spiritually difficult task

In reality, of course, the majority of people who would say they practice spiritual fasting seem to do so on a semi-conscious level at best.  They often think they're fasting, when they're simply practicing a form of abstinence, or they're not clear on how fasting works or exactly what they wish to achieve.


Is fasting a form of sacrifice that God demands imperiously?  Is it a form of punishment for human sin?  Well, if you read the ancient Christian spiritual sources carefully, such as the various collections of "sayings of the desert fathers" from the fourth and fifth centuries, it's quite clear this isn't the case.


What emerges is a bit more complex.  Because fasting cleanses the body, it also makes the mind more lucid.  If you consider that the desert dwellers who pioneered Christian spiritual fasting were totally dedicated to remaining in an unbroken state of inner "prayer of the heart", this lucidity of mind was very important.  The bottom line from their experience is that abstinence from heavy foods and periodic fasting will enable you to maintain focused inner attention and will cut down on the inner dialogue, swirling emotions and physical symptoms that ensnare your attention.  That's obviously a vital consideration for any sustained program of prayer or meditation, and explains why spiritual fasting has been so widely used worldwide for millennia.  


So if we ask how spiritual fasting works, it's clear the explanation bridges the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual planes of our being, creating a cleansing and unifying effect.  It's not simply a matter of fulfilling an abstract divine commandment; it has to do with how your mind-body organism is intended to function.  This is something that Orthodox Christian ascetics, Kriya Yoga practitioners and many native American medicine people, to name just a few, will tell you.  


Here's a really interesting video on spiritual fasting that also ties in the health aspect in an admirable and well thought out way.  Be sure to pause it to give yourself time to read the text, in addition to listening to the excellent commentary:












A Spiritual Warrior's Explanation


Without contradicting any of the foregoing, the Coptic Orthodox Monk, Matthew the Poor, offered this explanation of fasting. When he uses the word "self", he is using it in the sense of the "ego" or "false self":


"[When we fast] we must reach a state of accepting not the partial, but the complete annihilation of the self, and this can only take place by an act of deliberate volition.  In other words, if we begin by any exercise, such as fasting, which brings us to the partial overcoming of the self, we need to supplement the feeling of satisfaction that comes from accepting this state with an acceptance of the total destruction of the self.  This is obtained by the mental acceptance of death itself, with no dismay or restraint.  'But we received the sentence of death in ourselves' (2 Corinthians 1:19).  


"When our father Abraham offered Isaac his son, he did so partially with his hands, but totally in purpose.  When Abraham proved his willingness to offer Isaac, his only son, God did not leave him to carry out the slaughter; when the offering had been only partially made on the physical level, God considered the sacrifice to have been actually carried out.  This, and only this, is why God redeemed Isaac with a ram - a symbol of Christ - who was to redeem the souls of those whose self was destroyed partially by their actions, but wholly in their intentions."1.


In terms of spiritual fasting, that's certainly "food for thought"!  Think about it.  Better still, try it.  Just remember, though, as with fasting for health, the same advice and warnings apply here, so go back and read the previous post before you start!


Blessings!


~ Dr. Symeon Rodger :-)

Liberation from the "Shame, Blame and Guilt Game"

Few psychological conditions in life are as debilitating as what I call the “shame, blame, guilt game”.  As you’ll see below and as you may have experienced in your own life, the emotion of guilt can lead to chronic anxiety, mental anguish, depression and worse.

Yet many cultures live on a steady diet of shame and guilt.  Sometimes these are religious cultures, sometimes just individual family cultures.  Whatever the case, though, if you’ve been a victim of this kind of psychological manipulation – and all chronic guilt-tripping is a manipulation designed to gain and maintain control over you – then you need to know how to free yourself from it.

On the other hand, guilt can also be the inability to forgive yourself for something you’ve done or failed to do.  That’s when you feel like one of the characters in this amazing video…

Religious Guilt Culture

The epitome of neurotic guilt culture in the West has certainly been the Roman Catholic Church.  Here are just a couple of abridged accounts from emotionally abused “recovering Catholics”:

1. From a young woman:

“I experienced this guilt most intensely during high school. Every morning I would wake up with the most painful guilt. In my mind, I would walk back through the day before trying to remember what I had done wrong, but I could never come up with anything. Then I would get in the shower and say the our fathers, hail mary's and glory be's until the pain had passed. At the time I had no idea why I felt so much pain and guilt.

“I've been trying to understand better how the Church operates psychologically. It most certainly makes claims to Truth where questioning Truth is coded as sin / evil.  And the weekly embodied ritual seems to embed Catholic doctrine into people's psyche in a way that people can't explain. The mass also provides an embodied ritual which is meant to both teach people that they are sinned while at the same time relieve people of this sin.  It is this aspect of the mass that creates a kind of addiction - I've heard some people state that they just have to be Catholic and receive the body of Christ each week - but they can't explain why. It seems that it is this imparting and relief of guilt and sin that people feel they have to get through the mass each week.”

2. From a young man:

“I consistently beat myself up, and put myself to shame, and live with debilitating bouts of depression and anxiety.  Not because of anything I've done, but because I have thoughts and feelings...  natural thoughts and feelings that the Catholic church of my upbringing would have called 'sinful'. 

“I was raised Catholic of course, and I went to 12 years of Catholic school, during the 70's and 80's.  I believe that much of what we were taught to believe can only be described as insane and medieval.

“Let me just say that the Catholic Church has done many wonderful things, in ways of charity and meeting the physical needs of people.  Things like creating hospitals, homeless shelters, food-shelf's, etc.  But when it comes to meeting the emotional and psychological needs of people, the church has done tremendous damage and abuse to the psyches of millions (billions?)of people.

“And I was taught that to even think lustful thoughts was the same as doing the act.  I was a teenage boy, coursing with hormones and natural impulses on a regular basis.  I've read that research shows that young males have sexual thoughts and impulses roughly every 30 seconds or so, and I was certainly no exception.   At 15, all it takes is for an attractive girl to walk by, the hormones jack up a bit and boom, mortal sin, eternal damnation, the fires of hell... it's all there.  To be able to feel that I was safe from the fires of hell would mean that I would need my own priest following me around so that I could make constant confessions.    Not having this accommodation, I concluded that I was doomed... that my soul was destined for hell.  Unless I could somehow shut off all of those impulses and feelings, and feel nothing!!!  So, I became a robot. 

“The only logical way to save myself from eternally being on Satan’s This is the definition of spiritual death and being un-human.   And an ironclad recipe for chronic depression, anxiety, self-loathing, self-abuse and self-punishment.  In short, not much less painful than Hell.

And to top it off, we were taught that to suffer here on earth, was a GOOD thing, something to be STRIVED for.  We were to be martyrs, living in self-induced pain and suffering.”

You’ll Be Shocked to Learn Where This Came From…

The origin of Catholicism’s rampant guilt culture is not Christianity itself and proof of that is the general absence of the neurotic guilt complex in the history of the Eastern Christian tradition (a lot of my own pastoral work as an Orthodox priest has been cleaning up the emotional messes left by the rampant guilt culture).

The guilt culture has theological roots that stem directly from Augustine’s teachings on “original sin” back in the fifth century.  Basically, he taught that all human beings have in some mystical way participated in the sin of Adam and Eve, and are therefore automatically “guilty” from birth on.  In other words, guilt is a condition you inherit!

Where did he get this absurd notion?  Amusingly enough, from an error in biblical translation!  You see, Augustine didn’t know Greek and had to depend on St. Jerome’s translation of the New Testament into Latin.  Just one problem…

Jerome made a minor error when he translated Romans 5, verse 12.  By translating a single conjunction as “in whom” instead of “because of which”, he accidentally provided Augustine with the basis of a wrong theology that has screwed up the lives of countless millions of people ever since. 

That’s why the original Christian tradition regards the whole notion of original sin / inherited guilt as lunacy.  You can’t be held responsible for something you didn’t do (seems pretty obvious, right?).  And, of course, Augustine’s theory requires a judgmental God who condemns your failures, as opposed to the God of direct mystical experience who, as the original tradition says, “only bestows blessings and never does harm”.

Remember, though, that an individual family culture can also be based on chronic guilt-tripping and other forms of dysfunctional manipulation that may or may not have a religious basis.  Whether religiously motivated or not, your task is to find your way out of that culture and undo the damage to yourself.  So how do you do that?  This way... 

Freeing Yourself from the Shame, Blame, Guilt Game

If you’ve been a victim of this form of crass psychological manipulation and realize you need to break free, there’s a simple 3-step process to follow.  It may still take some time and effort, but the steps will certainly help you get there:

1)    Recognize it!  Take stock of the full extent to which it has impacted your life.

2)    Treat it!  The Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) is certainly one excellent tool you should always have with you.  There are also support groups available, and you may derive some value from talking to a therapist or counselor.  Be sure to find the help you need!

3)    Resolve Not to Play!  Identify those people in your life that use this guilt against you and take steps to terminate or minimize contact.  If you can't avoid them entirely, learn to recognize their behavior and call them on it.

We are all “guilty” of many things, for sure - that's part of the human condition.  However, we’ll never get anywhere unless we free ourselves from the chains of guilt that bind us emotionally.

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Your Most Critical Emotional Skill

Here's an astonishing fact you may never have considered:

Your level of personal happiness throughout your life will depend upon your ability to completely forgive those who have hurt or offended you.

In point of fact, the emotional-spiritual skill of forgiveness is critical to becoming a resilient person, to acting effectively and to your physical and emotional health.  And it is indeed a skill that can be learned by anyone, though it may seem terribly difficult to do at times.

Here's a short video to help you get started:

Forgiveness and Your Personal Resilience

What exactly happens to us when we refuse to forgive others, when we hang on to old hurts and nurse them, thinking about the false sweetness of revenge?  Well, it looks like this:

• Dwelling on these negative emotions compromises your immune system in numerous ways and may eventually lead you to manifest serious physical symptoms
• You'll become increasingly vulnerable to negative emotions of all kinds and lose any possibility of inner, emotional freedom
• This will blunt your capacity to experience genuine love, since loving requires vulnerability and openness to the possibility of hurt - it's a risk
• You won't understand other people and see them as they really are, nor will you see reality as it really is.  Your perspectives will become increasingly egocentric and deluded. 

Bottom line?  If you want to pursue a life of joy, love, openness, freedom and retain your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health, you must learn to completely and unreservedly forgive everyone who has ever offended you.

... and yes, I realize that can be a pretty long list of people!

Overcoming the Obstacles to Forgiving

Of course, there may be some obstacles along the way...  You may feel you're unable to let go of your anger, your desire for revenge or justice.  All of that's to be expected.  So how do you get around it?  Here are several tools to help you get started...

1. First and foremost is that you'll never learn this critical skill unless you decide to.  Until you make the decision to forgive, absolutely nothing will change, so you need to start by convincing yourself that you need to do this.
   
   
2. One way to help get past the anger is to realize that people who have hurt you either did so unintentionally or intentionally.  If it was unintentional, as most hurts are, you can begin by imagining how the way they've been conditioned all their life led them to act in a way that was accidentally hurtful to you.  If they hurt you intentionally, again consider their prior conditioning, the strength of the delusion(s) controlling their behavior and realize they were not acting as truly free agents.  As Christ himself said as he was being crucified, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."  Likewise, consider that those who've hurt you intentionally are afflicted by the same insanity.
    
   
3. Then go on to think about how your real mission is not to hurt them back and perpetuate the cycle, but to act from a higher viewpoint and help them come to their senses.  Remember, all human beings act in ways they believe will bring them happiness.  It's just that they're often quite wrong!
   
   
4. Cultivating love and affection throughout your day will gradually teach you that the benefits of forgiveness vastly outweigh those of holding a grudge.
   
   
5. You can easily use the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) to manage the more acute feelings of anger that come up during the forgiveness process

A Common Misunderstanding on Forgiveness

In our conflict-averse culture, many people are so afraid of interpersonal tensions that they make forgiveness and reconciliation into a kind of panacea, if not a "false god".  


The fact is that in many conflicts there are real issues that must be dealt with.  Yes, you need to forgive the other party from the outset, but this does not mean the issues don't need to be dealt with openly and honestly.  Quite the opposite, if the real issues are papered over with pseudo-forgiveness and a group hug, then that unresolved conflict will come back to haunt all of you.

So in the forgiveness process, everyone has to face reality.
 

Still think you're have trouble forgiving your enemies?  Then start by remembering the old adage - "Forgive your enemies... it messes with their minds!"


NEXT TIME, I'll share with you perhaps the greatest example in the 20th century of how a simple act of loving forgiveness messed with the mind of an implacable enemy... and turned him into a friend.


~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

DEEEEP SLEEEEP... and How to Get it

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The Power of Qi: Using EFT and Qi Gong to Clear Your Energy Patterns

February 24-26 in Jersey City, NJ

Early Bird Special expires on Friday January 21

http://www.attractingabundance.com/eft/The-Power-of-Qi/

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Getting a good night's sleep, i.e., a long, deep and satisfying sleep from which you wake up refreshed, is vital to your health, immunity and overall resilience.

And women are about twice as likely as men to have trouble doing this.  Often it seems to be psychological - women have more trouble tuning out the noise, worries and frustrations of the day than men do.  But there's more to it than that...


Your sleep disturbances may come from any number of sources and most of them are under your control.  Some of those involve falling into other bad lifestyle habits that are sabotaging your nightly slumber.  Or sometimes it's as simple as flipping your mattress!

Here's a very well done video that goes over the basics for you:

The Importance of Darkness

The hours of darkness were highly prized by the authentic spiritual traditions of the ancient world, including the original Christian tradition, because they all knew from experience that your brain functions at a much different level during those hours, whether you're asleep or awake.


So naturally, the medical traditions that grew up in these cultures emphasize the need for real darkness as a facilitator of deep sleep.  On the basis of modern scientific research, we now know they were absolutely correct.  

Consider the following:

• Darkness changes your body chemistry and affects the pineal, pituitary, thalamus and hypothalamus glands - four vital glands at the center of your brain
  
• Darkness converts the neurotransmitter serotonin into the regulatory hormone melatonin, which begins to slow down organ function in preparation for sleep
  
• The pineal gland generates certain inhibatory reactions, allowing you to enter into the various stages of sleep
  
• The hypothalamus monitors your metabolism to maintain all autonomic functions in the normal range
  
• Your reticular activation system (RAS) monitors your optic nerve and auditory functions to wake you should anything out of the ordinary occur.  The good news is this protects you from danger.  The bad news is that if your sleep environment lets in lots of light, your RAS may get a bit confused ;-)

The bottom line here is that making sure your bedroom is quite dark at night is a prerequisite to a consistently good, sound sleep for most of us.  And if you live in the city, that's harder than you may think, given all the ambient light from street lights, neighbors' lights, the city lights reflection in the atmosphere and, of course, the moon.  


When it comes to your own sleep disturbances, you have to be a bit of a detective to figure them out.  But with the help of today's video, you'll be back on track in no time ;-)


~ Dr. Symeon Rodger


**The contents of this blog post are not to be considered as medical advice.  Always consult a physician before beginning / modifying a fitness program or before undertaking lifestyle modifications that could impact your health.**

The Power of Qi: Using EFT and Qi Gong to Clear Your Energy Patterns

I'm delighted to announce an upcoming live event where you will be able to learn tested and proven tools for mastering your energy, your emotions and your overall health and wellness.  

My dear friend and colleague, Dr. Carol Look, and myself are putting on a joint live event to teach you how to use the 5 top Qi Gong systems ever devised and how to apply the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT - a technique I personally consider to be priceless) to all aspects of your life.  

This event will take place in Jersey City, NJ at the end of February.  You can get all the details and reserve your place here:

http://www.attractingabundance.com/eft/The-Power-of-Qi/

Near the bottom of the page there's an audio link where you can listen as Carol and I take you through the event's schedule to help you get a clear idea of what you'll get.  Just in case you miss it, you can also listen to the audio or download it from here:

http://media.attractingabundance.com.s3.amazonaws.com/workshops/power-of-qi.mp3


If you've ever wanted to:

• Develop imperturbable inner peace
• Learn to eliminate stress and reach deep relaxation on demand
• Get relief from or entirely eliminate past traumas that are holding you back or making your life miserable
• Master your emotional responses and finally get free of emotional patterns that run (and ruin) your life
• Learn the same health Qi Gong methods that the Taoist longevity tradition has used for centuries to get people past their 100th birthdays in great health
• Transform your daily grind into an extended meditation session producing great health and inner peace
• Become stronger and more flexible on minutes a day
• Replace negative emotions harmful to your health with positive emotional content

...then this event could be exactly what you've been waiting for.


Carol and I will spend 3 full days with you, teaching you, guiding you and helping you become a happier, healthier and more resilient person.  


To check out all the details and reserve your spot, just go to this page:


http://www.attractingabundance.com/eft/The-Power-of-Qi/

Energy Medicine and You

As science advances and we learn more about the various energy fields, channels and structures in and around the human body, the one thing that becomes obvious is that working with energy is the most effective means of creating vibrant, long-term health.  


At this workshop, you'll learn a great deal about the structure of your energy body - the meridians, the extraordinary vessels, the chakras and more.  And you'll learn about them not just in an academic sense, but how to work with them, and with all the other structures of your body - your muscles, fasciae, connective tissues, bones and marrow, joints, nervous system, blood, major and minor organs, and more.  


Carol and I hope you'll be able to join us in Jersey City for this fabulous, fun and educational event!


~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Using Resilience to Transform Your New Years Resolutions

It's that time of year again and we're all getting bombarded with messages telling us to set our goals, start eating right, and get our butts down to the local gym.  You know, the same stuff we've all tried before - the seemingly futile annual exercise of making our New Years resolutions...

Presumably you'd like to have a stupendous year in 2011.  After all, who wouldn't?  In the rush to decide on our New Years resolutions, though, one critical element is usually overlooked, and that element is embodied in the wise words, "Before doing, one must be."

Indeed, of all those who make resolutions at New Years, few are left by early March.  The reason, though, has little to do with what you're attempting, whether that's to lose weight, eat right or get in shape.  Instead it has everything to do with who is attempting it, with what's going on in your head.  And that's where resilience comes to your rescue.

You see, resilience isn't simply a result, it's also a way of life, an organizing principle, a different life paradigm.  It's easy to say to yourself, "I've got a weight problem; better do something about it..." or "My back is giving me grief.  Time to see the chiropractor."   It's a totally different thing to say to yourself, "From this day, from this hour, from this moment, I will choose only that which makes me a stronger person on every level."  

Every decision you make on a daily basis will make you stronger or weaker.  And that strength could be physical, mental, emotional, spiritual or some combination thereof.  Resilience is about consistently choosing what empowers you, builds you up, develops all of your human capacities.  

A friend of mine who grew up in China suffered chronic headaches as a child.  They could have given him all kinds of drugs - our medical system would have - or focused narrowly on finding the cause of his headaches.  Instead, his physician sent him off to learn Tai Chi and to practice for at least an hour a day.  Not surprisingly, his headaches soon disappeared and this sickly child became strong, tough and vibrantly healthy because and only because his physician knew resilience was the answer - strengthen the patient's overall health and immunity so that his health challenge will disappear on its own.  


If you really want a remarkable 2011, then I invite you to do one thing only - decide right here and right now that from this moment, you're going to choose only what strengthens you, that you're going to dedicate yourself to building up all of your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual capacities and, to borrow the US Army's super successful advertising slogan, "be all you can be." 


People who embrace resilience as the organizing principle of their lives - as all the top ancient cultures taught their children to do - are truly a breed apart.  We think and act differently from the majority.  While others are scurrying around in often misplaced attempts to change their circumstances while desperately hanging on to the very lifestyle that created those circumstances, we're busy working on ourselves, knowing that as we change, so will our circumstances in life.  Before doing, one must be....

So if you'd like to have an incredible year, stick around, become a practitioner of personal  resilience and remake yourself and your life in the process.  Together we'll have a great adventure and there are lots of great learning opportunities coming your way in 2011.


Once you begin to think like a practitioner of personal resilience, your New Years resolutions will take on a whole new life...

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Saying NO to GMO...

As you know, one of the biggest factors in attaining personal resilience, in optimizing your health and immunity, is the chemical and energetic quality of what you put into your system.  Unfortunately that's infinitely a more complex question for us than it was for our grandparents and in some ways the situation is deteriorating.

For example, for those of us living in North America, it's becoming increasingly difficult to figure out if the food your eating is truly natural or whether it has been genetically altered.  


To help you sort this out, we're reprinting with permission an article by my colleague Michael Morningstar.  For those of you who don't know Michael, he's an internationally known health coach and speaker living in Texas.  Here's his article on GMO:

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Just Say No to GMO (by Michael Morningstar)


What can you do to protect your health from the consequences and dangers of Genetically Engineered (GE) foods? This newsletter provides a simple message for you to share with your family, friends and the federal government, which is to “Just say no to GMO”. 


Unlike in the European Union (EU) and other areas of the world many people in the US and abroad are somewhat shocked when they learn that there is no required disclosure on ingredient labels for Genetically Engineered (GE) or Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) components in foods packaged in the US. This is a frightening situation because without full disclosure on the label it is very difiicult for consumers to make an educated choice about foods and whether any ingredients come from a GE or GMO source. Right now there are thousands of food items in restaurants and stores that contain GE canola, corn and soy. Biotechnology compaines have also been heavily promoting GE alfalfa, papaya, potatoes, sugar beets, squash and trees.



Recently a request was made to the USDA and FDA to approve Genetically Engineered (GE) salmon in the US. While the FDA still needs to do an Environmental Assessment before approving the GE salmon there are serious concerns regarding this attempt to deliver another “Frankenfood” which has not been thoroughly analyzed, researched and tested in order to protect human health as well as our delicate ecosystem and environment. Unfortunately the FDA Environmental Assessment will only allow a 30 day public comment period which is not nearly sufficient time to educate the population on the hidden consequences and potential dangers.



Fortunately the Organic Consumers Association is one of many opponents that have spoken out against this push to contaminate our food supply with more GE foods. Please do your homework and research the risks and then invest a few minutes in your long term health and wellbeing to voice your concerns and reservations regarding this serious health issue.



Most people are not aware this is going on since it does not usually appear in the main media or news networks. Without strong opposition this GE product like others before it could end up in the food system in the near future. It is essential for you to do your own research and read the recent articles or watch video news to understand the harmful long term consequesnces from allowing these companies and scientists to manipulate Mother Nature and unleashing “Pandora’s Box” of unknown consequesnces. Once the GE fish or any GE food is in production there is no way to control what will happen or recall those genes Only time will reveal the harmful consequences and health issues caused by the affects and chain reactions they will cause to other organisms.




The best recent article and resource for learning the inside story about GMO risks is by Dr Mercola which sites Jeffrey M Smith one of the top experts concerning GE and GMO in our food system. He feels by educating people quickly we will reach enough consumers to reach the tipping point and reverse the trends away from fake foods and back towards natural nutrition and whole foods. When consumers vote for healthy foods with their money and shfit their buying patterns the market will respond to reduce and eventually elimnate those unhealthy choices seen as a financial liability. You can learn more about the 65 serious health risks assocaited with GE and GMO in the books by Jeffrey Smith. It will be a great education and investment in your happiness and health to read Genetic Roulette and Seeds of Deception and also to check out his website www.responsibletechnology.org .



Mastery Action Plan: Watch the video with Jeffrey Smith talking to concerned citizens regarding the risks of GMO and how to create a better global future:


Everything You HAVE TO KNOW about Dangerous Genetically Modified Foods from Jeffrey Smith on Vimeo.






Next week the Great NEWS Letter will share: More Magic Moments with Meditation 





Please share the www.greatnewsperfecthealth.com site with your friends and families to spread the message of great nutrition, emotions, wellness and success 

My Wish for You is Health, Love, Abundance and Time to Enjoy Them. 

To Your Perfect Health
Michael Morningstar
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 ~ Dr. Symeon Rodger  

A Revolution in Exercise Science

Here's something I feel absolutely compelled to share with you about your exercise program.  It's the very latest in exercise research and comes from highly reputable sources.  Moreover, it coincides with what many of us have felt to be the case for a very long time - distance running is NOT the answer to your exercise needs, and here's what IS the answer...

Courtesy of Dr. Joseph Mercola, that tireless researcher of sane solutions for your health, here is a series of videos (4 in all) he recorded with exercise coach Phil Campbell regarding an entirely "new" approach to exercise AND the science behind it:








Campbell's basic thesis, based on extensive studies, can be reduced to this:

• Ordinary cardio, typified by long-distance running, does not in fact work all the muscles and energy systems of your heart.  It gives you aerobic exercise but not the vital anaerobic component.
• This type of exercise (which also includes much of standard weight training) also fails to work your fast and super-fast muscle fibers, leaving them underdeveloped and atrophying
• When you work the fast and super-fast muscle fibers and the aerobic and anaerobic components together, your body produces large amounts of Human Growth Hormone (HGH), which improves cellular regeneration, improves your physical performance and retards the aging process. 

In these videos, you'll learn a whole new way of exercising that can unleash these benefits for you.  Even better, this type of exercise takes very little time.

I mentioned above that many of us had intuitively felt for years that distance running and similar endurance training methods were unnatural, unnecessary and responsible for a depressingly high body count (it seems every time I hear about a marathon somewhere, it's because one of the competitors dropped dead).  


As Dr. Mercola mentions in his own article on this, kids and animals in the wild do short, intense exercise, not long distance.  I'd add that from my studies of ancient Warrior cultures, they focused largely on short, intense exercise.  

And as a side note, to all of you who are using Matt Furey's famous Combat Conditioning system - don't stop!  The reason I began recommending Furey's program a few years ago was because he was promoting short, intense exercise and not a 2- hour jog.  His system is superb for building core strength and endurance using high intensity in a minimum time frame.  

So, if you're concerned about your fitness and your health, do take the time to digest this information from Phil Campbell.  Even though I've been doing short, intensive training for years, I'll be making some adjustments in the coming week based on this new information and I'll let you know what I discover.  Please feel free to share your results too!

Just remember - you should not begin any new program of physical exercise without first consulting your medical doctor.  

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger :-) 

Your Optimal Health Cheat Sheet

Turn up your speakers or read the text version below:

Over the last month I think I've given the "7 Deadly Spirals of Disease" teleclass about five times to various audiences totaling thousands of people.  It's one of the most in-demand health presentations out there today. 

And while there's a place for presentations that go into that much depth, there's also a place for the high-level check list of things you can do to ensure fantastic health for years to come.  So here's just such a list for you:

1. Detox your body - There are lots of great detox systems out there.  One of my personal favorites is from a company called Blessed Herbs.  Detoxifying your system two to four times per year is highly advisable, since your body is being forced to deal with a toxic load that's well in excess of its design specifications!
   
   
2. Stop loading your body with new toxins - yes it's time to start thinking about eating more organic fruits and veggies, meat that's hormone and antibiotic-free, free range eggs, and the like.  And, for that matter, to beware of any non-organic personal care products you use, such as toothpastes, shampoos, cosmetics and the rest.  If it goes on your skin, it goes into your bloodstream.
    
   
3. Get everything circulating - one of the greatest keys to excellent health is to take your entire body through its total range of motion on a regular basis, pack your organs, bones and fasciae with Qi (vital energy) and ensure that your blood, spinal fluid, lymph fluid and Qi are all circulating unobstructed throughout your body.  This alone will short-circuit the disease process. To find out more, go to http://www.rocksolidvitality.com/dvd. 
   
   
4. Optimize your diet - learn what your body really needs nutritionally.  Take Dr. Mercola's free nutritional typing test to figure out what you should be eating.  Learn from internationally famous nutritional expert Michael Morningstar by taking the course he and I put together at http://www.mindsetbootcamp.com/symeon/healthmastery.html.
   
   
5. Avoid the electromagnetic storm - learn about the dangers of information-bearing radio waves.  Avoid wireless internet, be careful about how and how often you use your cell phone, your cordless phone and your laptop.  And be especially careful to educate your kids about this too!
   
   
6. Cultivate gratitude - this the nature's most natural stress-killer.  Whereas stress sends your body's pH level into the disease-prone acidic range, the frequent practice of gratitude will have the opposite effect.  Remember, an alkaline body is a very poor host for illness.
    
   
7. Smile habitually and never complain - this has the same effect.  Yes, you're surrounded by the frustrating (and sometimes mind-bendingly stupid) actions of other people.  But the more you can learn to disregard it all, the more you'll stress-proof yourself.  When your friends or coworkers complain, propose a solution instead!
   
   
8. Give affection, get affection - people who give and receive affection frequently live longer and happier lives.  Become one of them!
   
   
9. Deal with your emotions - this is one of the greatest keys to dealing with stress.  Learn simple and powerful tools like the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) or Be Set Free Fast (BSFF).  Then you'll never again have to wallow helplessly in a puddle of negative emotion and put your health at risk. 
   
   
10. Meditate - it's one of the key elements of the ancient Taoist longevity system.  Moreover, it gives you mastery of your mind and emotions, and makes you totally stress-proof.  That's in addition to all its spiritual benefits, of course.
     
    
11. Learn to breathe - learn Normal Abdominal Breathing, the way the human being was meant to breathe.  This has enormous physical, psychological and spiritual benefits.  It's even more powerful when you join your breath, your movement and your mental attention into one.  You can learn more at: http://www.harapower.com/
    
    
12. Aim at harmony - we live in an anti-harmony culture.  Just walk down a busy street in any of our cities and you'll realize we've constructed a way of life hostile to our physical and emotional health.  When you aim at physical and emotional harmony in your own life, you counteract the persistently destructive influence of the man-made outside world.  Again, http://www.harapower.com/ will teach you more about this.
    

Please note you shouldn't try to do all of this or too much of it at once.  If you can implement just one of these this week or this month, you'll be making great progress!  

Remember that there's no one, single silver bullet for your health.  There are several and you need to take them all into account when you're building your new, healthier and more resilient lifestyle.  

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Resilient Romance Teleseminar Q&A

"Someday, after mastering the winds, tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of sexual love. Then, for the second time in history, we shall have discovered fire!"


~Teilhard de Chardin

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To find out how resilient your romantic relationship is, take the
Resilient Romance Quiz here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/XD2JWV5
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Our guests on Thursday night, Al and Pala Copeland, are internationally famous experts and teachers on the subject of "sacred sex", an ancient paradigm that looks at romance and
sexuality in a holistic way and teaches you how to use your sexual energy to improve your health and immunity, heal your partner, calm your emotions, deepen you affection and even develop yourself spiritually.


Most often this is referred to as "Tantric Sex" and is associated with India in the popular mind, although there is a Chinese Taoist version of it that's just as highly developed and that I myself was taught years over a decade ago as part of my Qi Gong training. And similar practices can be found among aboriginal cultures in the Americas.


Since there are a lot of misconceptions about this approach, I'll address some of those misconceptions right now:


MISCONCEPTIONS (ideas from people who are "unencumbered by facts and information")

1. "Tantric Sex contains deviant sexual practices"


NONSENSE.
While we can't take responsibility for what everyone who claims to practice "Tantric sex" may do, this idea is completely FALSE. To learn Tantric sex and greatly improve your intimacy and emotional connection, there is no need to do anything that could remotely be considered "deviant".




2. "To practice Tantric sex you need to practice Hinduism."


NONSENSE. That's like saying you have to become a Taoist to do Tai Chi. All you really need is a desire to discover the full potential of your God-given human sexuality and how this can

help you and your partner fall far more deeply in love than you ever have before, with all the benefits that will bring to you, your children and everyone around you.


3. "Tantric sex requires you to master difficult postures."


No. Although the science of Tantra has devised many different sexual positions for various purposes, you don't have to stretch beyond your capabilities to reap the benefits. Class is not
limited to Olympic gymnasts ;-)


4. "Tantric sex is the hedonistic search for the ultimate
orgasm."


No. Tantric sex will indeed introduce you to far greater levels of pleasure than you're used to and redefine the whole notion of orgasm, but the PURPOSE of this is ultimately to deepen your
relationship with your partner and develop you spiritually.


5. "Tantric sex is incompatible with our Western way of life."


Well, if you mean that it's incompatible with chronic emotional and sexual repression, with the violence, deviance and self-loathing all that repression causes, with widespread neurosis,
sexual frustration, sexual dysfunction, failed marriages, broken homes and the rest of our social mess, then the answer is yes.


6. "There's no point in learning this because my partner will
never get into it anyway."


Lots of people have entirely transformed their relationships without getting their partner to attend a single class or read a single book. Once you learn this material, you will become the catalyst for transforming your relationship and, chances are, your partner will be delighted.


7. "Tantric sex is 'new age'."


Hmmm.... difficult to say. Maybe I should ask my university students what they think. "New Age" is simply a label and a very broad one. The question is, what are you afraid of? Tantric sex is an invitation to explore your total physical, emotional and spiritual potential using a very ancient
science that's been used across many cultures with various worldviews.


8. "Only New Age people are interested in this stuff."


NO. Tantric sex is rapidly becoming the sex education method of choice for committed couples of all kinds in North America. Tantra.com, a portal site for Tantric sex resources, is now getting over fifty thousand hits every day.


9. "There's no point in learning this stuff since I'm not in a relationship right now."


If you're looking for a new relationship, what better preparation could you have than to master your own sexual energy? Many of the exercises are in fact ones that you have to do alone anyway, so you can still benefit enormously. And you'll have a much clearer idea of the kind of person you want as a life partner in the future.


10. "I seem to have a sexual dysfunction, so there's no point in trying to learn this."


Actually, Tantric sex is a healing method designed to overcome common sexual dysfunctions (such as inability to reach orgasm easily in women or erectile difficulties and premature ejaculation in men) as well as previous sexual traumas.




Hopefully that's put to rest some of the misconceptions you may have heard about Tantric sex. Remember to join us on Thursday night - here are the call-in details again:


========================================================

Thursday night, August 26, 2010 at 9pm EST / 6pm PST

Keep Love Thriving and Passion Hot for a Lifetime Together!

with

Al and Pala Copeland

Call-in Number: (218) 862-1300
Guest PIN: 550604
========================================================

Dr. Symeon Rodger