Originally Published 9/20/10
It’s very important to understand that not all healthy habits are created equal. I see people very often get really focused, even really educated, on one or two aspects of a healthy lifestyle. They go deeper and deeper into detail in this area. They believe that when they have a health problem, the root of it is in this area where they know the most.
As wonderful as it is to learn and gain expertise in an area of health, it does not serve us to get too involved in just one area, seeing everything through that lens.
For instance, there are people who are very religious or spiritual. Every problem is, in their eyes, due to a lack of spiritual practice or commitment. Other people are extremely focused on nutrition and every health ailment is a result of a missing piece of nutrition.
There are three critical aspects of a healthy lifestyle which each and every person should practice. Leaving one out, no matter how perfected you are at another one or the other two, will inevitably leave you with holes and less-than-ideal health.
For anyone suffering from ANY health problem, whether physical, mental/emotional, or spiritual, I would ask them: Do you include all three critical components in your lifestyle? It is far more efficient and effective to add daily meditation, for instance, than to change a minor aspect of your diet.
Start with the basics! They are the massive leverage points in your health. You can then refine from there. Before perfecting each one, practice all three every day or almost every day. You will doubtless see your health improve rapidly, maybe almost overnight.
1. Exercise
You simply cannot leave this out. You can be as spiritual or nutritionally-perfect as you like, but you are selling yourself short if you leave out exercise. 5 days a week is great, but 3 very intense sessions is probably sufficient for many of us. It is a minimum and required for vibrant health. We are all aware of the physical benefits, and I won’t get into them here. There are at least as many energetic benefits, and your energy body cannot be ignored if you want to live a healthy, vibrant life. Exercise flushes out dirty, congested prana from the chakras and aura, giving you a powerful energetic cleanse. Dirty, congested energy causes any physical or mental health problem you can think of and is extremely debilitating. The body can expel it on its own, but when it gets so overwhelming, it can clog and congest you and will harm your health. Exercise rapidly and powerfully expels this congestion, on top of the whole host of physical benefits.
2. Meditate
Believe it or not, meditation is not just for spiritual people. Sound strange? While meditation powerfully strengthens your Divine connection, plugging you into the endless source of energy, not to mention wisdom, peace, joy, and much more, it also has powerful positive consequences for your health. There are many different meditations. I focus on the Meditation on Twin Hearts, developed by Master Choa Kok Sui because it is so powerful. This guided meditation flushes out dirty and congested energy (yours and others’ which can easily “stick” to you) from the aura, including stress, anger, resentment, and negative thoughts. This helps to create space in you for peace and calmness as well as a better functioning mind (dirty energy really clouds our thinking, it creates that “mental fog”). By flushing out this congested, dirty energy, you are literally getting rid of the cause of many diseases, lack of energy, bad moods, sleep troubles, and everything else you can think of. You are then filled to the brim with clean, highly-vibrating prana instead. This is the energy that your body runs on and which charges your entire system. Over time, the effect is compounded and you will notice significant changes in all aspects of your life–physical, spiritual, and everything in between.
3. Eat Healthfully
Proper nutrition is starting to get the attention it deserves. Without proper fuel, how do you expect your body to run its trillions of necessary processes? How do you expect your immune system to do its job and keep you well? Lack of simple proper nutrition, mainly vitamins and minerals, is literally killing many people. With our affluence and general belief that we have it all, we have forgotten the simplest rules of health, nutrition being perhaps the biggest one. Without going into massive detail, eating well is really just about the simple concepts of eating whole, fresh, organic foods and removing any “foods” which contain chemicals, additives, and anything that was not at some point living. Guess what other essential component is contained in food which we need? You guessed it: prana. Dead foods have no prana, or have such distorted energy due to cooking, processing, or just age that they offer no vital energy to us at all. Fresh whole foods must be the basis of any diet.
These are the three requisite practices for good and balanced health. If you have anything lacking in your physical or mental health, look to see which of these is missing. It is not necessary to get a Ph.D in any one of them. Just practice the simple steps in utilizing each of these as often as possible, and don’t think you can make up for one area by over-compensating in another. (For example, I can’t make up for lack of protein by consuming more carbohydrates!)
Blessings of good health!
Meghan