Caution: I advise you to consult your doctor or nutritionist before starting on this or any other eating plan, to make sure that it is suitable for your personal dietary requirements.
Let your food be your medicine; let your medicine be your food.
HIPPOCRATES
Remember, the body you will wear tomorrow will be made of the food you eat today!
Rules
8 glasses water per day or more if desired. Tea and coffee limit to 5 cups per day and try to restrict to decaffeinated, with milk from allowance. Unlimited herbal tea. 1 glass wine per day if desired. Half-pint semi-skimmed milk or soya milk. Salad dressing – make fresh from olive oil or walnut oil, lemon juice or vinegar, a little garlic and/or fresh herbs.
6. The Secret of Deep Relaxation and Meditation
One of the main reasons for our survival as a species is our incredible ‘fight or flight’ response to sudden danger.
Putting it simply, in ancient times if a wild animal suddenly started to chase our Stone Age ancestor (let’s call him Fred), his body would react in the following way to the danger: His mind would fill with fear, adrenaline would be secreted, his blood sugar would go up, the blood supply to his muscles would increase, his muscles would tense, the blood-clotting mechanism would kick in, enabling his body to heal faster in case of injury, his breathing would become rapid and shallow, his brain would become hyper-alert, his digestion would be suppressed (his body knowing this is no time for a sandwich), his sexual desire would be suppressed (not the time to make love), his blood vessels would tighten to enable blood to flow through them faster and his blood pressure would increase, his immune system would be suppressed (this is no time to worry about a virus), more oxygen would be consumed and more carbon dioxide would be expelled. Fred is then programmed to look and be alert for more danger. In normal times, a huge percentage of cellular energy goes into building new cells, but during the fight-or-flight response energy is poured into the muscles, with the result that eventually tissue breakdown can occur.
This reaction is brilliant if Fred has to run or fight. Fred – and all of us – need this reaction to sudden danger as it gives us the incredible extra power and energy we need to react in an emergency, e.g. saving someone from drowning.
Nowadays, thank goodness, sudden danger is relatively rare, but the body’s reaction to a stressful event continues. And whereas we all have to be grateful to it for our survival as a species, now this reaction can be the cause of major health problems due to the modernday overload of mental stress.
Doctors now realize that very many diseases are caused by stress. The problem is the body still reacts in this same way to the normal stresses of everyday life. For example, if you are late for a big meeting, you burn the dinner at an important dinner party, the dry cleaners ruin your best suit, you car won’t start or your son fails his final exams (the list is endless and is quite simply called ‘life’), you react with the physical changes listed above. This stress reaction, if not balanced by periods of relaxation, can now start to weaken the body and may give rise to such things as menstrual problems, high blood pressure, chronic fatigue, gastric ulcer, lower disease resistance, frequent headaches, cancer and heart attack, and makes us look and feel much older than our years.
Unless we make a conscious effort to control our stress levels, it is easy to let the stress response take hold. This is why yoga does us so much good and helps us live comfortably and easily in today’s high-pressure world.
Yoga’s wonderful stretches release the chronic tension that is held within your body. By deep breathing in every posture you stimulate life-giving oxygen to every cell. The act of slow, deep breathing also calms your mind and aids deep relaxation. By concentrating on the balancing movements you take your mind off its troubles, allowing it to calm and feel peaceful. Relaxing at the end of yoga practice allows the stresses of the day to gently float away, and frequent practice of meditation brings inner peace. As a result, the mind becomes clearer and calmer, muscular tension decreases, the secretion of adrenaline is lowered and breathing slows down. The heart rate slows, blood pressure normalizes and the blood-clotting mechanism is gently reduced, sweating gently ceases and the body becomes cooled and calmed, and digestion and the immune system are relaxed and restored to normal.
This relaxation has a most wonderful effect on your looks, as the tension around the arteries relaxes; the blood flow to the skin is restored, giving the skin back its beautiful healthy glow. Blood flow to the hair follicles is increased due to tension release, so improving the condition of the hair, frown lines are smoothed and you both look and feel wonderful, radiant and much younger.
Our greatest experiences are our quietest moments.
NIETZSCHE (1844–1900)
7. The Secret of Radiant Health
These days everything comes with a manual – 60 pages just on the use of a mobile phone, 100 pages with a recipe book for your food mixer, a large manual for your washing machine and a huge manual for your car. The most complex and brilliant system in your house, however, is your own body – and sadly we are born without a manual!
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we did have a manual to instruct us on how to keep the body in perfect condition? We would then know how to care for all of the body’s complex systems and keep them in perfect health. We would know how to oil our joints to keep them flexible, how to move our spine in all six directions to prevent it becoming stiff and aching, we would practise weight-bearing movements to strengthen our bones and we would learn beautiful stretches to keep our muscles in perfect shape.
EATING CORRECTLY
We would learn to eat correctly and never too much so that we never overloaded our stomach, heart, lungs, joints and internal organs. We would then eat foods with health and vitality in mind rather than filling our bodies with junk and toxins that our bodies have no use for and find it difficult to remove.
FRESH AIR
We would learn the necessity of beautiful fresh air and correct breathing to make full use of our lungs and absorb more oxygen into our system. We would learn movements to get rid of tightness in our chest and calm our mind with slow, calm, relaxing breathing.
GOOD DIGESTION
We would learn how to keep our digestive system in good shape, never overloading it, and we would appreciate the importance of movements to massage the digestive system such as the abdominal lift and contractions and the spinal twists and upwards stretch and forwards and backwards bend. We would learn the effect of stress on the digestive system and realize the importance of relaxation to release the adverse effects of tension on our digestive organs.
CIRCULATORY HEALTH
We would learn to care for our heart and blood vessels. Under stress, the body tries to make an enormous amount of energy available to enable us to flee or fight. This accelerates the heart rate and also squeezes the arteries and veins to try to raise the rate at which the blood flows through, and as a result the blood pressure is raised. The clotting mechanism of the blood is also raised, as the