If You Want to Live: Overcome Negative Emotions

Anxiety, depression, and anger are directly correlated with heart disease.

That's a fact.  And it doesn't even matter which comes first. It's like a cycle that can go either direction.

There's more than one scientific study that shows this to be true.  In one study, of about 300 middle aged people with coronary heart disease the researchers found that the people with a more highly developed spiritual life had better outcomes.

Spirituality is one of those confusing words that make people think about religion and God and all that. And if you don't believe in God can you still be spiritual?

The answer is yes.  At least for medical purposes.

Spirituality, for the purposes of these studies, is more about how people relate to and interact with nature and other people than it is about believing in a supernatural being.



Researchers look at:

• Meaningfulness - knowing where you fit in;
• Trust - being able to maintain inner peace;
• Acceptance of what is happening - knowing that tragedy happens in life;
• Caring about others;
• Connectedness with nature;
• Transcendent experiences - moments in time when everything seemed clear; and
• Spiritual activities - meditation, prayer, finding ways to be quiet and centered.

This one study looked at depression, anxiety, and anger.

Depression correlated with trust, perceived social support, and spiritual activities.

Anger correlated with connecting with nature and spiritual activities.

Anxiety correlated with caring about others and spiritual activities.

Spiritual Activities was the one variable that seemed to have the most overall effect on depression, anxiety, and anger.  Since these negative emotions affect heart health it's really important to find a way to address them.  And since spiritual activities had the best effect, isn't it worth taking a few minutes every day to do some of them?  Or maybe just one of them.

The truth is, meditation can be boring. It's easier to sit in meditation when you're with a group of other people also sitting in meditation.  It's kind of like a form of positive peer pressure because you don't want to be the first one to get up.

But sitting for long periods of time in lotus, or any position, can make your hips hurt.  So that classic way of meditating may not be for you.  I did it that way for years, but now I confess that I don't sit for 45 minutes in meditation anymore.  My hips are happier. And so am I.

Here are some simple spiritual activities you can do:

1. Pray - you can pray to God, or the sun, or to the trees. It doesn't matter if you think of your dead ancestors when you pray.  It just means being thankful and finding a way to give someone else credit for things.

2.  Meditate - you can just observe your breath for a a few minutes.  Sit comfortably in a chair and watch as your breath comes in and goes out. Count how many times you inhale and exhale in a minute.  Start with one minute and then the next time two minutes.  If you get distracted don't worry - everyone does. Just notice oh, I'm distracted and go back to breathing and counting.

3.  Be grateful - last year on Facebook there were all these gratefulness challenges going around. Five days of five things every day I'm grateful for.  What if you did that every day?  It's hard. But it's powerful because if you can become really grateful for the awful and difficult challenges in your life then you can really be a happy person.

4.  Forgiveness - this is also hard. But it's one of the most powerful things you can practice.  It's related to the gratefulness challenge. Think about the people who have done things that hurt you. Then visualize yourself being grateful. Don't feel sorry for them, but cultivate compassion.

5.  Study - we all feel good when we study inspirational material.  Self-help stuff counts. Or the Bible, Tao Te Ching. Zen.  This might be where you start your spiritual activities. Five minutes of listening to something positive.

Some of those are more powerful because they train your mind to focus and concentrate, but start with the one thing that appeals to you that seems the easiest.

We really do have to change the way we think and these spiritual activities can help.

Are You Destined To Be Your Parents?

Your parents were obese. Do you have to be obese, too? Or had diabetes, or bad allergies, or lupus, or bad knees?  Or mental illness?

My sister and brother and I hid in a closet while my father swung an axe around.  He destroyed  the bar he had built himself.  It was the 70’s and I think everyone had a bar in their living room. 

I remember sitting there thinking, this is stupid. Everyone here is crazy, I have to get out of here. 

A few years later, when I was 15, I did leave.

Mom died about 13 years ago and I heard that my dad died a few months after that.  They both died of heart disease. Mom had high blood pressure, dad had diabetes.

For years after I left home I waited and watched for my own kind of crazy to show up.  Mom had been in a mental hospital for a little while. I would think…am I schizophrenic yet?  I even warned my husbands to watch for it.  

Looking back I don’t think she was exactly schizophrenic. She had PTSD.  I probably did too. Who doesn’t, these days?

Both of my parents died of heart problems, so I will, too, right?

Wrong.  Or, I guess, maybe not.

Just because you have the genes for certain conditions doesn’t mean you’ll get the disease.  I’m not judging that one beautiful and famous celebrity who had her healthy breasts removed. She has the breast cancer gene and I’m not judging her because that must be pretty scary.  

Does removing her breast guarantee that she won’t get some kind of cancer?  

No.  And having the gene doesn’t guarantee that she would get cancer either.

Just like having obesity and diabetes in your family doesn’t guarantee that you’ll stay fat forever.  Or that you'll become fat.

Think about what you want in your life every day.  Good health - what does that look like?  Wealth - how does it look to you?  Why do you want that?  What does it mean to you?  

And what DON’T you want?  It's important to know this, too.  But not to dwell on that part. It just needs to be clear so that you recognize it when you see it and you can say, oh I don't want that.

Think about what you do want every single day.  Make that reason “why” stronger every single day and do something about it.  There are thousands of diet and exercise books out there. And programs you can follow.  I have a program you can follow. I can help you figure one out for yourself.  That's what I do.

Most people don’t need a super specialized diet.  Most people eat too much.  I know I eat more than I need to. 

Here's all you need to do.  Have a little good-quality protein at every meal, drink half your weight in water, and eat a lot of vegetables everyday.  Exercise for an hour a day. Do a little yoga, walk, run, lift weights.  

Oh, and walk 10,000 steps.  Don't be alarmed. 

It starts with one..

Exercise keeps me sane. What will it do for you?

Why can't I...?

People don't usually ask "Why can't I?"  We only ask ourselves that question.

What people say is "I can't because ___" fill in the blank.

Like yesterday.  I was talking to Bruce while he was getting ready for work. We don't talk much in the mornings because it's too distracting and he'll forget his wallet or something.

But yesterday I was talking to him because he told me something really scary about his blood pressure.  The silent killer.

When I think of high blood pressure I think of people who are old, or fat, or inactive. Not Bruce. He's none of those things. He's a perfectionist.

And his blood pressure is too high.

He's building us a house with his bare hands.  He's an engineer so it's being made perfectly.

I was talking to him while he was getting ready for work. I knew it was a bad time to talk but I was worried. So I told him he had to stop being such a perfectionist. He laughed and said, I can't. I've always been this way. I said, but nobody is perfect. You have to relax a little so your blood pressure won't be high.

He said you can't really change the way you are. And I said, you can change the way you think about things. No you can't.

I said, you sound like all the clients I work with who say they can't lose weight. Like they're different than everyone else.  He said I wasn't really making it better.  So I laughed.  We'll talk about it more this weekend.


For now I'll try and hide the salt. We only use the sea salt, but still.

We all have to change the way we think.  For most of my life I thought I couldn't wear sandals with the toe thong. There were thousands of cute shoes I was missing out on.  Then my friend who owns the Texas Lady Boutique said, Ida your feet aren't made any different than anybody else's. You have to start with just a few minutes at a time and get used to it.

That summer I got used to wearing thong sandals.  

I changed the way I think.

I'll try that with Bruce.  Do you need to change the way you think?

Go Ahead and Jump

I like waking up happy, don't you?  

And I like feeling great all day.  But it wasn't always easy to be happy and feel great.

My husband was an officer in the air force and our family moved a lot over the past 20-something years. My resume looks like I can't keep a job...but we were busy moving around the world like gypsies.

I found creative ways to stay healthy and happy.  It's easier to stay healthy than it is to try to find it once it's lost.

The moves were stressful. Living a military lifestyle is stressful. Eventually my health suffered.  But I got it back and the great thing is that I saw parts of the world that I may never have seen.  

I'm stronger than ever. And happier.

I am lucky because my mother remembered some of the natural health approaches from her home country of Lithuania, a little country in Eastern Europe.  What I learned from Mom was way different than what I learned in school.

I studied and got all these: Master's of Science degree in Kinesiology and Health Promotion, Natural Health Counselor, Integral Yoga Teacher, Stress Management Teacher, Personal Trainer, Group Fitness Instructor, and a few others.  

I studied a little Buddhism in Korea - never speaking - always meditating or moving slowly and  playing a special drum. 

They yelled at me when I was playing the drum sometimes. I didn't know what they were saying.  I don't think they were mad. But one lady seemed offended by the way I held the drumstick. Maybe she was just trying to help.

I combine eastern thought and western science to try and make sense of health challenges. 

Do you want to feel great right now?  

Here's something I learned in Korea.  Go to a place where you have a lot of room, and freedom of movement.

Stand up, keep your knees soft, and then just swing your arms, until you're sort of slapping yourself lightly.  Then begin to jump up and down just a little bit.  Remember to bend your knees.  Jump around a little for about 20 seconds.  Then smile as big as you can.

See, don't you feel great?  See you tomorrow!