Adam Up

Have you been watching all those healthy people competing at the Olympic games?

I have been discussing the pressures they are under on my blog this week… What I am interested in today is what you consider to be healthy, as part of this month's theme of rejuvenating and boosting our health.

As a therapist, I find it incredibly useful with any client that wants to be healthier, to get a clear and defined idea what it means to them to be healthy; because people have very different perspectives on this.

In order for you to understand what healthy means to you, take a moment to consider these questions:

What does good health mean to you?

• Does it just mean you are rarely ill?
• Does it mean you can run for a taxi without puffing?
• Does it mean you work out at the gym three times a week?
• Does it mean you never get a cold? Or that, if you do, it only lasts you a couple of days instead of a week?
• How do you know when you are healthy? What does your behaviour or feelings tell you? Does your skin look clear and fresh? Is your tongue pink instead of furred and white? Is your digestion regular and trouble-free? Do you feel lively and active? What is your evidence procedure?
• What tells you when you are not? Do you feel sluggish, or depressed? Do you find even small tasks an effort? Is this the second — or third — time you have had flu this season? Are you joints stiff? O you forget the simplest of things?
• Do you know if your current behaviour is making you healthy?

How to Be More Healthy

Over recent weeks, we looked at caring for yourself and dismantling stress and so we have already looked at enhancing health.

Today's Adam Up is all about how to really improve and advance your health on a variety of levels. The first step in improving your health is to know what it is you are improving.

When you think of health, does it relate to fitness? What tells you that you have it, or don't have it?

Are you wanting to reclaim your eighteen-year-old fitness and energy, or to achieve reasonable fitness for a seventy-year-old? You'll find it really useful to ask yourself three things:

• What is my norm of health?
• What is the norm for my age, gender and body type?
• Does the norm satisfy me or do I want to be even healthier, even fitter?

I do not really like the term 'norm' — I mean, who knows what the norm is, right? However, with regards to health, you can make assessments about what is usual and regular for you and use that as an indicator for what I am referring to when I say 'the norm'.

What Is Your Norm of Health?

You probably remember times when you have woken in the morning feeling a little 'off-colour'. You may have wondered whether what you're feeling is tiredness, stress or the onset of a cold or flu.

But you knew in the very first seconds of waking that something had changed. How did you do that? You know how much I love that question… One of the basics of human programming seems to be a predisposition to notice change — and that means, of course, to have stored some notion of a baseline against which to compare.

The better you get at noticing differences, the faster you'll be at spotting signs that your health is not quite at its peak. The important thing today though, is to remember that developing your awareness of yourself in this way also allows you to notice what improves your health! Yay!

In one of my favourite episodes of the sci-fi comedy TV series Red Dwarf, they encounter a scientist who has created positive viruses like luck and well-being… One of the main characters, Lister, says it is like when he just wakes up and feels really good for no reason, even though life has not been going great for him… We all know what he is referring to, don't we?

What about those days when you've felt outstanding? To notice is to give yourself the opportunity to consider why anything you're doing — or not doing — points to how you could enjoy even better health more of the time. So the key today… Notice!

Be aware of yourself, so that when you feel good, you can assess what you did in order to know how to improve your feelings of healthiness!

So that then leads to the idea I touched upon last week… Using your symptoms as information and as a guide.

So, with the golden rule being: pay attention to your symptoms. You ideally want to discover what it means to you before you attempt to intervene. By that I mean that whether it is a headache or a sudden feeling of well-being, pay attention and start being curious about it.

People often go to doctors, therapists and consultants to ask for help in 'getting rid of their unwanted symptoms'… In my experience the true value of a health symptom — be it welcome or unwelcome — is as information.

• What makes it better?
• What makes it worse?
• When does it occur (days/months/seasons and in what circumstances)?
• With whom does it occur?

Build up a health profile of yourself. You may find it helpful to complete the following sentences:

• I am at my most healthy when…
• The time in my life when I felt at my best was…
• I have not felt the same since…
• I usually feel well when…
• I can expect to feel off-colour when…
• I know when I am at my most healthy because I feel…
• I know when I am at my most healthy because I can…
• I know I am at my most healthy because I think…

You may well have been surprised by how much information came to you when you filled in these blanks… You did fill them in, didn't you? Or are you just running through this without actually applying it? Pah!

These answers probably have already told you about things you could do, or stop doing, or need to modify, in order to conserve your health more effectively. In my experience as a therapist and consultant, most people have all the information they need about themselves and their lives — provided they take the time to ask themselves and to listen to the answers.

What is the norm for your age, gender and body type?

Becoming familiar with general norms like these can give you useful information about what you are working with. But it can also be double-edged, if you allow the norm to set your limits. By modelling excellence, modern personal development shows us that much more is involved in health and fitness, as in every other aspect of life, than mere averages.

I mean come on… You regular readers of Adam Up are not content with learning about averages are you?

"Heck no Adam!"

Remember that the norm is an average. That gives you a lot of scope! There are plenty of men and women in their seventies, eighties and nineties who are active and independent, thinking productively and being creative in various aspects of their lives, just as, increasingly, there are teenagers who are overweight and unfit.

So the key question here is, "What do you want?" Knowing the norms — both your own personal ones and those of your age, gender and body type — is just a way of factoring in some information you may need to take into account in planning to achieve the kind of health and fitness you want. For example, do you want to be mobile and active in your old age? What do you need to do now to ensure your current physical fitness continues — or to begin to build it before it becomes harder to do so? What do you need to do to conserve, or enhance, your mental fitness?

Is the norm be enough to satisfy you?

Good question, eh?

Modern personal development tells us a lot about how people achieve — and also about what is involved in non-achievement. Self-limiting happens in the mind; and one of the main ways people do it is by making assumptions about what isn't possible. For example, many people assume that getting older means becoming less active, less alert. This assumption can then mean that they adjust their behaviour to their expectation — and by so doing confirm their assumption: truly a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The four-minute mile is a really good example of how self-limiting can work. For many years people had believed that it simply wasn't possible for a human being to run the mile in under four minutes. And no one did, so that proved it…

Or did it?

Perhaps all it proved was that if you believe firmly enough that something isn't possible you will be limiting yourself very effectively so that there truly is no possibility — for you.

Apparently Roger Bannister asked himself some interesting questions. Did he know the difference between running a distance in a particular time and running the same distance in one-hundredth of a second shorter time? No, he didn't.

So if he knew he could run the mile in just over four minutes, would he know if he was running it one-hundredth of a second faster? No, he wouldn't. And if he could run it in four minutes, would he know the difference when he ran it in one-hundredth of a second under four minutes? Again the answer was no. Once he had deconstructed the assumption that had limited him — and everyone else — for so long, he became the first to break the four-minute record for the mile.

Another example is that of the New Zealand middle-distance runner, John Walker. By the 1980s he had run over forty under-four-minute­miles, and was still running them in his late thirties. What had once been impossible had become almost routine for Walker. He had proved that 'sub-fours' could become a norm, not a rarity, and he was still achieving the same high standards at an age which most people, including athletes, would have previously considered 'too old'.

Modern psychology has shown that if you ask yourself, "Why not?" instead of assuming that you can't, or that something is impossible, you open up possibilities, invite new discoveries and push your boundaries further than you've previously thought possible.

Stock take of health needs — take one today!

So today, I invite you to consider a health goal of yours. It may be just to get well or be well more often. Or it might be to get fit in some way. You choose. I am using the idea of getting fitter as an illustration — you may want to use something else and make it more pertinent to you and your requirements.

• What do you believe is possible for you to achieve in terms of your health and fitness? Could you walk a long-distance path? Could you learn a new physical activity? Could you take up yoga?
• What would you like to achieve that seems at the moment to be beyond what you think is possible? Try taking a current goal and expanding it just a bit further. Could you jog, or walk, for half an hour every day?
• How do you know it is not possible? What evidence, and what beliefs, are involved? Maybe you're thinking: "I'm too old," "I'm too fat," "I haven't got the time," "I'd look stupid at my age."
• What might be the first step you could take towards achieving this goal? What would tell you that you were progressing? You might need to remind yourself that age itself doesn't stop you.
• What would be the next step? Find some comfortable trainers, and some loose shorts or trousers. Walk round the block today, and again tomorrow. Jog a few steps when no one is around — and then when they are.
• What would be a realistic time-frame to explore just how far you could go towards achieving this goal? For this week, it might be enough to walk around the block every other day. And perhaps for next week too. Let your own sense of increasing comfort and ease tell you when you can do a bit more.
• What help and support would you need? Do you want others to know, and to encourage you? If so, how might they do that?

So there you go… A set of questions and processes for you to work through to understand what health is to you, what health targets you can start working towards and use to be healthier and get some rejuvenation into your life this month. Next week, we are going to look at how you go about enhancing your immune system!

Of course, to get really healthy, your mind needs to be healthy too… Each week, I like to include a self-hypnosis technique for you to use your mind to enhance what Adam Up has been about…. This week, use this self-hypnosis technique…

Detox with your mind using self-hypnosis

by Adam Eason

This is part of an Adam Up from last year, it is simply a technique that I think is very useful when boosting health… It is about detoxing with your mind:

What I want to share with you today though is a way to detox your mind and body using your thoughts. Imagine if you could cleanse your body and your mind by just using your thoughts… Let me show you how in some simple steps:

Step One:

Take several nice deep breaths, and as you let it out, imagine relaxing your body and softening your muscles. Engage in the moment, focus on your breathing, get really comfortable and let your body kind of begin to melt and float down and relax. Be an observer of your own experience and just feel everything letting go, absolutely nothing for you to do, just relax. Enjoy the stillness and allow your eyes to be comfortably closed. Go inside your mind and just observe what is happening inside you while you are relaxing.

Step Two:

Using your imagination, in the area just above your head, imagine that floating up there is an energy of just light, pure light, floating just above your head. Let the light be the size, colour, shape and dimensions that suit you the most or that you find most appealing or healthy.

You know that your body knows how to do a great deal more than you consciously know. If you fell over and cut your knee, you would trust it to heal itself without you actually knowing what exactly your body is doing to heal, wouldn't you? Now imagine that the light has that wisdom, an energy, that 'know-how' to it. Imagine that it has the ability to heal, to help to access the wisdom of your mind and body to cleanse, to create a very balanced and healthy condition in your body.

Shortly, you are going to allow this light to slowly move down through the top of your head and to permeate and penetrate each and every cell in your body. That cleansing, healing light, guided by your thoughts, is going to travel slowly through, purifying, updating, healing and letting go of what it no longer needs.

When that light begins to move through your body, it then removes and collects anything unwanted and releases substances or toxins that your body is better off without. Imagine that the light neutralises it.

The light is going to move through and restore a condition of optimum health in every cell, leaving behind a condition that is for optimum health in the cells, the blood, the organs, removing and releasing anything that you are better off without.

Step Three:

So now give that light some movement — guide the light with your intention and focus, let that light begin to slowly move down through your body.

Tune in to the light and feel the energy of it slowly touching the top of your head, moving into every aspect of it. Some people say they feel a vibration or a warmth, just tune in to it and experience whatever you experience. Let it move down slowly through your head; anything unwanted at all is collected by the light and held onto.

Really use your imagination at this stage, notice that as that light slowly moves down through different areas, you can imagine that more and more particles collect within the light, let it continue moving slowly down through your body. You can allow your mind to know what the particles represent and what you are freeing yourself of.

Step Four:

As well as concentrating on the light itself, really notice the condition that the disk leaves behind. Make a difference between the colour of where the light has been contrasted with where it is going. Maybe you prefer to notice the sensation or the sound of the area that is cleansed, choose how to recognise the difference for yourself. How do you notice that it has been cleansed and healed.

Make sure that the light moves down around and into your heart, down into each of your organs, your abdomen, including your spine, creating the most optimum condition of health all the way down now, through your entire life systems, letting that light share the highest wisdom that it has. Let the light have all the power and turn everything over to the light and let it do what it knows how to do, just trust that it knows how to cleanse and heal and purify your body in all the wonderful ways.

Allow that light to create the most optimum condition of health in every cell in your body, notice how much it collects, how much you can let go of.

By the way, at no stage do you have to shout out: I see the light! HAHAHAHA… Excuse me… ahem…

Step Five:

Once the light has reached the tips of your toes, let it float away from your body. Just imagine it floating further and further away until it gets so far away that it becomes just so tiny and then you notice that it disintegrates into little sparkles and twinkles that float far, far away into the universe and beyond. Just let go and imagine them gone.

Step Six:

Take a minute or two (or however long you feel is right) to notice that you are grateful to your body, that you love your body, that you bring the highest possible gratitude to your body, for what it is capable of, for you have everything that you need right now, enjoy the sensation of feeling cleansed and in control of your own well-being, it is a fabulous feeling.

Your brain has all the information that it needs to create the most optimum state of health in your body, already, it's all there. You have shown yourself that you have all you need to have a deeply healthy detox using your own thoughts and guidance alone.

Trust your body, turn this over to your body and allow it to have that wisdom to heal. Accept your body and allow it to heal, to be healthy and strong.

Tell yourself that during the night tonight as you sleep your body will become healthier, stronger in every cell, down to every atom, healthier and stronger, and that this process continues to rejuvenate you even when you are not thinking about it consciously.

Once you have expressed some gratitude, then you can open your eyes and relax for a moment before you go about your business and enjoy feeling good about yourself.

You may want to repeat the process a couple more times to ensure that you get everything that may have been left behind. Really make an effort to do this every day for a week and notice the difference it makes to your well-being. I guarantee you'll notice some amazing results!

Role reversal of the extreme kind…

Hahahahaha. Very funny. Again, thank you to all those of you who send me the jokes, I love getting them. And thanks to all our members in the forum that continue to add so many hilarious ones!