7 Steps to Survival
Read how people have changed their
lives by applying these steps!
Ref: 'The Foundation Principles of Health' - Course HLC 1 -
C.H.E.K.
Institute
Our health is affected by so many different factors. We need
to get back to simplicity and understand that the absolute basic
needs of clean air, water and food are not being met by the
majority of people today. We also need to realise that the body
has a hierarchy of needs, and as each need is better met, a
trickle-over effect is created in the body. We need to realise
that headaches are not caused by a lack of Panadol in the body,
and the inability to obtain an erection is not due to a lack
of Viagra!
The following list is in order of importance:
1/ THOUGHTS
Change your mind, change your body. Your thoughts have the
biggest influence over your ability to change. Your brain has
control over every part of the body, so it is the most important.
- Positive vs. negative thinking
Negative thinking about your life, job, family and friends, can
have profound affects on your health when these thoughts are constant
over a long period of time. Even negative thoughts from earlier
parts of your life can manifest themselves as pain and problems
in your body. This also applies to the thoughts of other people
you associate with, from an energetic perspective (the way their
energy affects you), as well as the way their values and morals
affect the daily decisions you make which affect your health.
- Healthy vs. Unhealthy
Your current thoughts you have right now about what is good and
bad for you, are a reflection of what you have learnt over your
life. The media has a very powerful influence on us from the day
we are born. There are billions of dollars spent every year and
billions more made, by food and pharmaceutical companies, to trick
us into thinking that something is good for us when it most certainly
is not. You have to take your health into your own hands and educate
yourself with a variety of sources. This starts now. eg: in the
1940’s, American
Doctors promoted smoking Camel cigarettes. What other products
are being advertised to you today that are supposedly healthy
for you?
How do I improve the quality and quantity of my THOUGHTS?
• Change what you are learning and who you are learning
it from. Change requires change.
• Choose holistic health professionals. Make sure they
look healthy and practice what they preach!
• Think positive! Associate with positive people. Optimists
live longer!
• Buy ‘How to Eat Move and Be Healthy’ (Book)
and ‘You Are What You Eat’ (Audio) by Paul Chek.
2/ BREATHING
We require oxygen in the air to breathe. Without it, we would
survive only several minutes. It is also needed to metabolise
food and regenerate and repair our bodies, amongst a plethora
of other functions. Consider the below:
- Air Quality
Not only do we need it, but it is vital to our health that we
breathe clean air regularly. How clean is the air you’re
breathing each day? Do you live in the city? Do you exercise (run,
ride) in peak hour traffic? How often do you rest and relax within
nature and breathe fresh air? Do you and your friends smoke? Do
you work and breathe in chemicals every day eg: hairspray, paint?
Is your house new or always needing varnishing or being cleaned
with toxic cleaners?
- Poor Posture
Poor upper spinal posture will restrict the ability of your lungs
to open
up when you inhale. When you can’t obtain as much oxygen
through breathing, your heart then has to work harder, leading
to higher blood pressure and cardiovascular problems. Ever yawned
a lot when exercising? This is your body crying out for more oxygen.
Learn more about your posture from a CHEK Practitioner or health
professional familiar with postural assessments.
- Stomach fat and bloating
You breathe approximately 20,000 times per day. Makes sense to
do it correctly then, doesn't it? Most of us are self-conscious
of our stomachs and tend to suck it in due to extra fat or bloating.
Over time this changes the way your breathing mechanics work,
restricting the use of the diaphragm muscle and increasing the
use of the accessory breathing muscles in the neck and shoulders
to expand the ribcage to breathe properly. This is the equivalent
then of doing 20,000 shoulder shrugs a day leading to neck tension,
pain and migraines! Re-teach yourself to breathe like you did
when you were younger, using your diaphragm (i.e. allowing your
stomach to stick out when you breathe in), and incorporate breathing-focused
styles of exercise and relaxation into your life.
- Breathing for Relaxation
Passive based exercise such as meditation and lying on a foam
roller as well as active breathing such as Tai Chi, Qi Gong, Yoga
and Pilates, hold massive benefits for the body. Breathing through
the nose and taking full diaphragmatic ‘belly’ breaths,
activates the parasympathetic nervous system. Activating this
nervous system increases anabolic hormones to help us grow, repair
and digest and decreases the production of our major stress hormone
called cortisol. This in turn decreases your blood pressure, resting
heart rate and makes you feel good! A well rounded exercise program
contains not only work-out exercises, but also work-in exercises
as just mentioned.
How do I improve the quality and quantity of my BREATHING?
• Learn what good posture is and how if affects your breathing.
Consult a CHEK Practitioner.
• Pay more attention to your posture when in certain positions
for long periods of time.
• Consider using Swiss balls for office work which promote
upright posture and activate your core.
• Spend long amounts of time reversing rounded shoulders
via stretching and using a foam roller.
• Consider buying Air Filters for your home or office. Improve
the quality of the air you breathe!
• Visit the BREATHING section of the KEY NEWS TOPICS area
of www.holistictrainer.net
3/ HYDRATION 
- You are made of water! Not tea, not coffee, not alcohol....
Liquid life. If our bodies are 60-70% water, then why would you
want
your body to be made up of anything less than the cleanest, purest
water you can find? Of course we are all going to drink other
liquids
other than water in our life, but the truth of the matter is,
all we are designed to drink is water! How much pure water are
you currently drinking each day? Tea and coffee not included ?
- Don’t drink tap water
I’m sure you wouldn’t drink chlorinated pool water
or put it in your fish tank, yet the tap water many of you drink
every day contains chlorine and many other toxins. Tap water has
been shown by the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) to contain
over approximately 700 toxins harmful to human health, a few of
these things being chlorine, fluoride and progesterone and estrogen
from the pill! Whilst chlorine is needed in tap water during the
treatment process before it flows through your tap, that’s
where its job finishes. Just as chlorine kills bacteria in pools,
it also kills the good bacteria in your digestive system required
for proper digestion of food. Fluoride is, believe it or not,
a toxic by-product of the phosphate fertiliser industry! It does
not belong in the body and is being linked to a huge range of
issues, Fluorosis and kidney failure being two of them. Check
out the work of Dr. Weston A Price, and see the dental photos
he has of healthy indigenous people around the world in the 1920’s-30.
Their teeth are beautiful, largely free from plaque and dental
caries and have never been exposed to fluoride, or even a toothbrush!
- Filter your water
Get the same water every time by always drinking filtered or high
quality bottled water with high levels of dissolved solids (optimal
>180) like Volvic, Fiji and San Pellegrino. Then make sure
you get plenty of it, 2-3 litres per day.
- Don’t confuse dehydration for hunger
Our body's dehydration signals are often confused with hunger
or fatigue, so don’t wait until you get to this stage. Drink
water with every meal that you eat, preferably around 15 min before
eating. This will ensure you don’t wash away digestive enzymes
that are produced during your meal to help digestion in the stomach.
How do I improve the quality and quantity of HYDRATION levels?
• Don’t mistake hunger for dehydration. Usually you
just need to drink more water. 2-3 L per day.
• Buy a water filter. Basic Brita filters can be bought
from the supermarket, or to enquire about better quality filters
like the Nikken Pi-Mag, contact HolisticTrainer.net.
• Store your water in glass or hard plastic bottles. Prevent
leaching of plastic molecules into water.
• Visit the HYDRATION section of the KEY NEWS TOPICS area
of www.holistictrainer.net
4/ NUTRITION
- You are what you eat
Did you realise we are made of around 100 trillion cells, and
that about 2 million blood cells are being replaced in our body
every second? You literally are what you eat. Whatever you put
in your mouth or on your skin becomes a part of you.
- One man's food is another man's poison
The majority of us are a mix of various genetics and racial descents
that make each of our metabolisms unique. This influences how
all food will affect us. Is your physiology more in tune with
ancestors from cold climate countries, like Eskimos? People who
thrive on
high protein and saturated fat diets full of fish and whale blubber?
Or is it more in tune with the indigenous Quechua Indians of Peru
who had magnificent bodies that lived on a low meat / low fat
diet? Discover Metabolic
Typing via this website and / or a knowledgeable health professional
like a CHEK Holistic Lifestyle Coach, then learn which individual
foods work specifically for your body.
- Eat food from the Earth and not from a packet!
It’s simple. The body works best with what nature has been
providing since the dawn of time. Not weight loss shakes and packaged
food heated in the microwave. In general, foods that are certified
organic, low-Glycaemic, high protein, and full of fibre and nutrients
will serve you best. The best way to properly absorb all these
nutrients is to chew! The average person chews their food 4 times
before swallowing. Chew until your food is liquefied: 40-50 chews.
Your jaw will be sore at first ? but you will increase your nutrient
absorption ability by doing this. This will also prevent food-
borne parasites like tapeworms and threadworms from entering your
body.
How do I improve the quality and quantity of my NUTRITION?
• Good rule of thumb: If it wasn’t around 10,000 years
ago, don’t eat it.
• Determine if you are a carb, protein or mixed type, then
eat right for your metabolic type.
• Listen to your body after eating. Bloated, farting, burping,
energy levels?
• More food from the Earth, less from the package!
• Eat organic food and use organic products. Less chemicals
in your body = less body fat!
• Visit the NUTRITION section of the KEY NEWS TOPICS area
of www.holistictrainer.net
5/ MOVEMENT / EXERCISE 
- Working-out vs. Working-in
Intense exercise can be productive or counter-productive. If your
body is already dealing with a stressful lifestyle (negative thoughts,
poor posture, unresolved injuries, poor water, processed food
etc), the addition of high intensity training can hinder your
progress. Due to your body’s existing high stress level,
your body will consider the stress of intense exercise to also
be a negative stress. Consequently, this will activate your fight-or-flight
system (sympathetic nervous system) resulting in production of
stress hormones called glucocorticoids. Long term, this will make
your immune system weaker and your body sicker and fatter! Therefore,
every session at the gym does not have to be 'go hard or go home!’.
It could be making you fatter!
Tai Chi, Meditation, Qi Gong, Pilates, Yoga, Zone Exercises
and 
lying on a foam roller are examples of work-in exercises. These
exercises stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system which
secretes anabolic hormones that help your body rest, repair
and digest. Your ability to live your life according to the
other six steps of survival will influence what sort of exercise
approach you should take.
How do I improve the quality and quantity of my MOVEMENT/EXERCISE?
• Employ a CHEK Practitioner to help assess your overall
physiological load so you can develop a movement program that
is right for you.
• Any movement is better than nothing but choose wisely
and listen to your body.
• The best exercise program you can do is the one you WILL
do!
• Visit the MOVEMENT section of the KEY NEWS TOPICS area
of www.holistictrainer.net
6/ SLEEP / REST
- Our circadian rhythm is in tune with sunrise and sunset
Our physiology is the same as our ancestors that lived for thousands
of years by the rise and fall of the sun. Now that we have lights,
TV, computers, alcohol and caffeine to keep us awake, our circadian
rhythm, or 24 hour sleep / wake cycle, is severely disrupted.
Think of
a time you have gone camping without electricity or minimal light.
Chances are that you have gone to bed a lot earlier than usual
and woken a lot earlier!
- 7-8 hours / get to bed before 10:30pm
Seven to eight hours of sleep is most optimal and getting to bed
no later than 10:30 - 11pm will do wonders for your body. If you
have been a shift worker late at night for many years and your
health is suffering, seriously consider changing your hours or
your job altogether.
How do I improve the quality and quantity of my SLEEP?
• Go to bed around 10:30pm – 11pm. Listen to your
body’s energy levels.
• Consider better quality pillows and bedding that mould
to the shape of your body. Consider eye patches and earplugs to
increase the quality of your sleep.
• Reduce time around televisions, computers and bright lights
prior to sleep time.
• Visit the SLEEP / REST section of the KEY NEWS TOPICS
area of www.holistictrainer.net
7/ STRESS
- Stress can be both positive and negative
The body can be stressed both positively and negatively. Exercise
is a great example. Exercise of the right intensity that doesn’t
aggravate existing or
pre-existing pain or injuries creates a positive stress on the
body. However, overtraining or doing exercise that aggravates
existing or pre-existing
problems creates negative stress on the body.
- Six main stressors that can affect the body
There are six main types of stress that can affect us: Thermal,
Psychic, Nutritional, Physical, Chemical and Electro-magnetic.
Determine which stressors are affecting you negatively and reduce
them. You can learn more about reducing these stressors by reading
'How
to Eat, Move and Be Healthy’ or by visiting your Holistic
Health Professional. Your ability to increase your muscle size,
decrease your fat levels, and reduce your pain from chronic injury
and disease depends on it.
For a long time, we have focused on treating the symptoms
of our bodily ailments rather than the cause of them. If you
are overweight or underweight, you are bound to have a lot of
other nagging ailments that go along with it. They may not be
as noticeable, but they are every bit as important. By addressing
all aspects of your body's needs, you will treat the cause and
not just mask the symptoms. Stop taking the band-aid approach
and get to the root of the cause!
References
- 'How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy' (Chek, Paul. 2004)
- Holistic Lifestyle Coach, Level 1 Course (Chek, Paul. 2003)
- Exercise Coach, course manual (Chek, Paul. 2003)
- O.N.E. Group website, certified organic products: website
link
- Dr. Joseph Mercola's total health site: website
link Brad Rasmus, 2008.
|
