Dr. Frank Lipman, The voice of sustainable wellness

You might have heard that sure, parabens and other chemicals are bad if ingested, but they can’t penetrate your skin so you don’t have anything to worry about. The fact is, that much of what we place on our skin is absorbed into our bloodstream. Just think about nicotene and birth control patches. While there may be some chemicals that are too large to enter your bloodstream most are small enough to penetrate. We have had studies done on everything from umbilical cords of unborn children to adult urine and have found alarming levels of cosmetic chemicals. So I say you’re better off doing your best to avoid all known harmful chemicals because chances are they’re entering your bloodstream.

The next thing you want to think about is the level of exposure you’re getting from the products you’re using. Different products mean different levels of exposure and concern. For instance, if you use a lotion all over your body and it soaks into your skin all day, you’re getting a lot more exposure to those chemicals than if you were to use the same ingredients in a face cleanser that is quickly washed off. So be strategic– try to get the best ingredients in products that you have a lot of exposure to (shampoo, lotion, sunscreen, etc…) and if you want relax your standards a bit for products like hand soap that gets washed off.

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As my friends and patients know, I am a world music freak and I have been making mixed world music cd’s of my favorite tracks for the last 15 or so years.  They are continually playing at home and in my office. Recently I have been asked a number of times to put together a mix of world beats with relaxing rhythms, so here it is. I call it my yoga mix because I often do yoga at home to a mix of many of these tracks.

Here are the tracks with iTunes links followed by Spotify links:

1) Om Numah Shivaya By Apache Indian

2) Elhem-1 Original by Diaspora featuring Amina Annabi

3) Maya By Susheela Raman

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Technically, no. You live in the information age, which means you could spend the next month just reading blogs about, let’s say, knitting, and still not get through them all, and your loved ones and business colleagues are able to reach you through seven different venues at once. So, you technically CANNOT get to everything you might like to get to or others might like you to get to.

But don’t despair. There is still hope for a satisfying life that makes an impact. Considering, however, that our brains have not caught up with the new reality of “truly too much to do,” we have to compensate by forcing ourselves to say more “profound yeses and nos.” Especially if you desire to become more of a leader in your life or in your family or career, you must admit that every “yes” does mean a “no” to something else. So, if you say “yes” to your boss to work late, you are saying “no” to reading to your kids at night. (Sorry, there is no time warp, though I have been praying for one.) The converse is also true, and that’s what we are focusing on today. When you say “no” to something, you also give more weight to whatever is a “yes.” So, if you say “no” to your boss about staying late, you are much more likely to really milk those moments with your kids for all they’re worth, because you’ve actually had to consciously sacrifice to win your right to them.

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Kristi Anderson, Corrective Exercise Specialist par excellence, demonstrates a new foam roller exercise she has come up with, which she has found incredibly helpful for women.

What does existing freely mean? What makes it so difficult to live unencumbered, without restriction and utterly at ease?

Freedom is our right. Living, in its most illumined sense, is the pure evocation of this right. Yet our day-to-day lives have become so mired, so overwhelmed by our messy, controlling, shamed, angry, muddled, and frantic small minds. What’s lost is our ability to live freely.

Last month, I spent the eve of my birthday writing and meditating on how I would spend my special day. The pervasive message was to let myself be profoundly free for those 24 hours, to permit myself to be totally released—without attachment to anxiety or concern, without holding onto trauma or drama—just to live. I could taste how it would feel, such bursting freedom, like the sensation of blissfully diving off a high cliff and soaring with abandon through the air, or floating, peaceful and unburdened, on the most benevolent wave. What I also realized was that needing an occasion to so wholly let go was ridiculous. But it also gave me focus, a mantra and deep intention. This week I’m planting the seed with you.

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Reprinted with permission from ExperienceLife.com

The prescriptions we take to regulate cholesterol, blood pressure and stomach acid are supposed to make us healthier. But could these medications be doing us more harm than good?

He had been a faculty member in three departments of a major university with an IQ north of 180. Over time, the professor lost the ability to recognize people he’d known closely for decades and to read more than a page of text at a time. He’d repeat the same thing over and over, not recalling he’d already said it. The diagnosis: rapidly progressive Alzheimer’s. When he went to his 50th college reunion, he wore a sign around his neck with his name and the statement, I have Alzheimer’s. Old friends needed an explanation for why he couldn’t recognize people he’d known for decades or repeated himself endlessly throughout the night.

His condition seemed hopeless when he applied to enter a clinical trial testing a new Alzheimer’s drug at Duke University.

Before he started the clinical trial, his wife took him off his cholesterol-lowering statin drug, simvastatin. By the time he got to Duke, he was no longer qualified to participate; he didn’t have Alzheimer’s, doctors said. Instead, he entered another study: The Statin Study Group, directed by University of California at San Diego (UCSD) physician and scientist Beatrice Golomb, MD, PhD. “There are people with extremely severe functional deficits caused by statin drugs,” Golomb says. Two years after he stopped taking simvastatin, the patient reported his recovery was complete. His mind was clear and he was back to reading three newspapers daily.

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Everyone wants their kids to eat healthy, right? We have all seen the new food plate instead of pyramid. We all want them to eat a ton of veggies, fruits and whole grains, and no sugar, artificial stuff or white foods. But how exactly do we achieve that?

When I first had my daughter Liv, I truly had no clue. I read SUPER BABY FOODS and was completely overwhelmed. But I was willing to do anything for my babe, so I joined a CSA, started cooking more, experimenting more and here is what I learned:

1. Kids Want to Eat Whatever You Eat

Kids have an insanely awesome truth radar. If you don’t really want to eat it, they won’t either. So the best way to get your kids to eat healthy is start to do it yourself. Start to love your veggies and they will, too. Chomp on celery and they will want to also.

With the heat this summer, I started not being hungry in the morning, but it’s so important to me that Liv sees me have breakfast with her every morning. I want her to see a mom that eats healthy, that walks the walk. So I started doing green protein shakes based on my fabulous doctor’s book REVIVE. (www.drfranklipman.com). Now of course she wants one every morning too!

Now I have to be honest, the first time I made a green one, it was a bit hard to believe it would be good, but I closed my eyes and YUM!  And now it’s something we share each day.  And I will then also give her some other good stuff, a bowl of oatmeal or gluten-free sprouted bread with almond butter or her favorite, a mushroom omelette.  A green smoothie is a great way to start the day with greens and lots of fluids, which is so key for kids.

Now I know this news of KIDS EAT WHAT YOU DO can be a big bummer if you want a cheeseburger with fries, but that is where awesome sites like www.thesneakychef.com comes in.

She teaches you how to sneak the goods into anything!

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My favorite cd of year thus far is SMOD  by SMOD (Nacional Records, 2011).  It is produced by one of my favorite artists, Manu Chao and it carries his signature psychedelic bounce with reggae bass lines, one-note melodies and dubby chants. Manu Chao also produced one of my favorite cd’s of all time, the groundbreaking album,  Dimanche a Bamako, by the accomplished duo, Amadou and Mariam.  One member of SMOD is Sam, son of Amadou and Mariam, who Manu Chao met in 2005 when he was producing Dimanche a Bamako in Mali. At that time Sam and his friends had formed a group to make “African Rap”. Manu Chao was staying at Amadou and Mariam’s house and heard these young guys rehearsing on the roof late at night. He liked what he heard and volunteered to produce their cd.  The SMOD trio observed the international success Amadou and Mariam achieved using Mali’s musical heritage with some catchy riffs, so they traced a similar path through pop, rock and the bluesy Malian tradition and added hip hop (which is what the Mali youth listen to) to the formula. The result is a great mix of Mali style guitar work with catchy Manu Chao riffs with political lyrics and some African rap in there. It is such happy music and sooooo catchy.

Here are 2 videos of 2 of the songs from the cd:

1)  Les Jeunes Filles du Maliba

2)  Les Dirigeants Africains

Earlier this year, I introduced our “Get It Done!” issue of Experience Life magazine (March 2011), with a letter warning against the dangers of doing too much. A bit counterintuitive, perhaps, but as a person prone to overdoing, I feel it was, um — the right thing to do.

Indeed, while I follow most of our magazine’s excellent advice most of the time, the piece that poses the biggest challenge for me personally is not the healthy eating, nor the regular exercise. It’s that pesky life-balance bit: setting boundaries around work, making time for play and relaxation, and recognizing that I can’t possibly get absolutely everything done all the time — certainly not to my own satisfaction.

Hello. My name is Pilar, and I am a chronic over-doer. I’m in recovery now, but I often open a talk I give on “How to Stay Healthy Through Stressful Times” with the story of how, before I got a little smarter about all of this, I suffered from rashes, hormonal imbalances and even a broken foot (long story — you can read it in “The High Cost of Being Hurried”).

This was all the result of chronic overdoing. And when I relate my story, I always see a lot of heads in the audience nodding, like, “Wow, yeah, we can relate.”

I think this particular area of challenge helps keep me, and the magazine, honest. Because I know how hard it can be to get it all done — the wholesome cooking, the conscious eating, the regular activity, the time with family and friends, the yoga and meditation, the daily supplements — and to do so in a healthy, non-frantic way while balancing a super-intense workload.

I also know how tempting it can be to just pour on the adrenaline and start rushing around like a lunatic whenever our schedules seem to demand more than our bodies and minds can possibly deliver. But that approach is neither sustainable, nor particularly satisfying.

That’s why I appreciate point No. 6 in our article, “As Good as Done”: Accept Your Limitations. To me, that acceptance is an essential first step in developing the serenity and skills to accomplish the things that really matter, the faith and courage to let go of the things that don’t, and, perhaps above all, the wisdom to know the difference.

With that in mind, here are the top three lessons I’ve learned from personal experience over the past 10 years:

1. Take breaks. Interrupting a relentless workload with breaks — whether for daydreaming, naps, activity, deep breathing, social interaction or even trips to the bathroom — allows your brain and body to recharge and come back focused and reenergized. Scientific research definitively shows that we get more done, and experience far fewer negative effects, if we take a 10- to 20-minute break every hour and a half to two hours. So take breaks, even if you don’t feel like it.

2. Train for intense times. Healthy eating, exercise and adequate sleep are always important. But they’re even more important when you are putting major demands on your body, as stress always does. The more stress you’re under, the better you need to treat yourself. The more stress you can thrive under, the more you can accomplish with grace.

3. Ask for help. This has never been my strong suit, but I’ve noticed that the better I get at inviting others to do the things I’m not great at, or don’t have enough time to do well myself, the better my work and my life go, and the more gratitude, ease and abundance I experience.

Here’s to all of us doing more of what lights us up — and less of what doesn’t!

Aware, Awake, Alive: A Contemporary Guide to the Ancient Science of Integral Health and Human Flourishing

By Elliott Dacher, M.D.

In Aware Awake Alive - A Contemporary Guide to the Ancient Science of Integral Health and Human Flourishing, Dr. Elliott Dacher, an old friend, draws on a lifetime of dedication to human healing techniques.  For over twenty years he practiced internal medicine and, increasingly through the years, began to incorporate the principles and practices of consciousness and integral health. Throughout his medical career, Dr. Dacher built a growing reputation for his commitment to bringing together biological science and an understanding of mind and spirit. The titles of his previous books are sufficient to convey this commitment: Integral Health: The Path to Human Flourishing (Basic Books, 2006), Whole Healing (Dutton/Plume, 1996) and Intentional Healing (Marlowe, 1996).

Aware, Awake, and Alive initially evolved as the course manual for a 10-week program presented at a local hospital. The focus of these sessions was the process of inner development which leads to the optimal state of well-being, integral health and human flourishing. Although the book is rich in additional material, the training program, which is highly experiential and rich in intellectual content, is contained in 10 sequential chapters which leads the reader, with the accompanying practice CD, in a self-education program directed at the full development of mind and spirit.

Underlying this work are Dr. Dacher’s “two medical educations” – the first a traditional education in the outer aspects of healing and the second in the inner aspects of health and healing gained through 12 years of study amongst the wisdom traditions of Asia. Both these educations converge in the wisdom and practices of this book.

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