Elements essential for wellness as a state of balance

Four Basic Goals

Nutrition: Plan a personalized diet that is both healthy for your level of activity and supports your unique microbiome.

Adequate sleep: Dreaming is how we update “files” (stay current with change) and science recommends 7 hours of restful sleep per night.

Exercise: Movement: is essential to life but you need a realistic program that you will do consistently.

Social life:  Life would be meaningless without other people and balance emanates from interaction with a very wide range of different personalities.

There are a plethora of books, classes, videos and trainers that will offer you solutions to all of the four above designated goals.  They will traditionally work for a time.  Not because any of them are difficult but because you are human.  We are masters by design to habituation.  Recall how many years you went to school to learn your language, how to read and speak it properly, along with all the math and science concepts.  Learning is converting a novel idea into a redundant habit of being in compliance to the logical structure of life.  We are also bucking the human law of conservation which compares unconsciously new tasks to old protocol and sways in favor of the model that is most economical in use of energy.  Can you imagine the change in human energy consumption in working out regularly at home or a gym in comparison to say twenty years sitting in front of a TV eating chips or popcorn?  And this judgement is invoked unconsciously.    

We labeled these four processes goals and not tasks or jobs.  A goal is the result or achievement toward which effort is directed.  Effort is the expenditure of energy.  This process is going to cost you time, energy, maybe finances and a huge commitment of at least two years of your life.  Of course, in two years, it will be just as difficult to habituate back.  Maybe good news but keep in mind that exercise is not a cure.  To cure means to focus on a particular problem and use appropriate techniques to repair.  To heal means to provide an environment for a person to grow and change so that they will be able to better handle future challenges to their state of wellness.  Take a deep breath—we are suggesting a commitment.  When an individual finds a raison d’etre that involves them in a goal, the immune system begins to function more strongly.  A start and a bonus.

“Our bodies are our gardens – our wills are our gardeners.” – William Shakespeare

In the ninety’s I created and directed an educational center in southern California working with adult students learning and adapting to change as they embraced new life potentials, and of course the ever-persistent evolutionary adjustments. 

A student and a very dear friend who was a health insurance broker at that time requested assistance in assembling an educational program presenting concepts in personal health management.  The intent was for her clients to present the program to their employees and gain positive results to reduce health care costs.  I gathered some of my center’s teaching staff and we created the “Wellness Code” material, trained a group of facilitators and implemented some classes.  This web site was created as a blog site to accommodate reports from the teachers but that goal never materialized. 

The instructional program was a success both during and for a few weeks after presentation of the material.  The various employers added incentive programs to foster continuation of the numerous learned directives but it appears that only the healthy and physically active associates reaped the rewards.  I did a review of this material in a series on my YouTube channel (Wizardscache channel) and offered it free to anyone that participated at our formerly offered classes.  A couple of students acknowledged my efforts but the majority never responded to my offer.  I interviewed a large sample of the former class participants and arrived at the conclusion that most of the data presented they were familiar with.  It is clear that the majority chose to operate in error.  Perhaps wise to look at why people choose to operate in this fashion.  I have an educational background in psychology but not a clinical license.  My expressed thoughts are at best an educated opinion with no scientific claims. 

As a teacher I’m familiar with the fact that most people react to an event and think of that as a “decision.”  These two are not the same process.  Let us take a look at the key points for health that we presented in this Wellness Code curriculum and identify when the human automatic system may have misdirected our efforts for wellness.

Nutrition:

Most cultures employ emotional language to describe their personal relationship with food and not nutritional evaluations.  You hear people say; “I love this dish”; “I could eat this every day”; “I know I should not eat any more but this is amazing”.  Can you hear how we override evaluations and jump to action?  My second observation is how we mark sugar items like candy and pastries as rewards. What are we doing with this concept presented to our children?

Drop the judgement concept of right/wrong out of your process and divert your thinking to balance.  Our success as an “animal” on this planet may have derived from diversity.  We all prefer different food, of course, with a cultural bias and rarely an associated nutritional view.  It is never too late to execute change.

I was not a healthy child but I will present my steps to find some semblance for balance as a young adult:

• Post college I fasted at least once a year for anywhere from one day to fifty days for over five years (although a long fast is no longer considered safe today).  In any case, I would end the fast by eating a target food for three days straight and observe my body reaction.  Do you see how I was building a database to override emotional preference?
• I started adding a new food to my diet each year.  It helped compensate for the foods I was deleting from my diet and it built diversity.  Some foods were only available seasonally but this intentional action generated a larger range of “foods to consume.”  The goal was to alleviate the feeling of loss.
• Every month I found a new recipe to try and adjusted the formulation by the data I received on foods that supported my healthy state.  I continued this process for the last 50 years and have over 400 recipes adjusted for “me.”  My preference would be to never serve the same dish more than once a year but I’m married and have friends which in whom I respect their requests.  Social relationships are paramount for us humans and essential for health.  

Social Life:

Nutrition is important, especially clean air and water, if we are to stay alive and healthy.  Without a social life we do not mature.  Human interactions are key to learning and supporting mental state development as well as intellectual growth.  If you can imagine, or at least dream of a potential of greater value for yourself you are having an experience perhaps unique to humans.  Your greatest limitation is your concept of self that you hold secure.  Improvement is based on right/wrong evaluation and not necessarily reflective of evolving into a potential for being.  The best at anything is relative to the sustained utility for the activity—time is the only relative marker for evolution.  “I was once the best” is not a gauge for potential.  What you contributed is a bonding in the human network.  Potential is in fact the sum total for all humanity as steps to as yet unknown future which is now being created.  Again, my contribution is based on my training and skill and not intended as a template for anyone else.

• I opened a training center and became a teacher in my spare time.
• I wrote curriculum and encouraged teachers to develop and promulgate their own concepts.
• I produced social events, workshops and travel tours along with websites to support and promote.

Exercise:

There were complaints posted in the early 1600’s that rich people, because of the use of carriages, had become too heavy to ride a horse and their health was now a concern.  Over the years we have done little to resolve at least the overweight issue.  I believe our unconscious and subconscious relationships with this issue are at the heart of the dilemma.  I propose that because we have all heard and seen reports that exercise for health is not the same as those for “body builders.”  Can we make that adjustment?  Jack Lalanne was a “healthy model” for years and clear-headed until he died at 96.  Post high school I was a trainer at a former Jack Lalanne gym for a couple years.  I had three Olympians and one Mr. America as clients but no personal potential clue for me.  I quit the job! 

My step-father struggled with weight all of his life and diet was his solution.  He had some memory issues late in life, as I do at 81, and I did not agree with his food choices but he survived until 97.  Where the hell is the science?  I suggest that we humans are a potential concept in form secured in movement and time and that life, not necessarily our life, is the unfoldment of that potential over time.

All you need is movement!  A wise and realistic diet designed from your research with your body will alleviate the overweight condition or the under-nourished one over time.  Move your body!  Everyday get up and walk, bend, reach and perform a movement that does not tax or harm your body.  Lose the story, vision or advertisement and attend to your body.  Dying is much easier than getting in shape and that is a decision.  Do you get how your attention alters those otherwise unconscious patterns?  A decision is a planned action, whereas a reaction is a response to stimulus.  Keep it simple.  I personally change my exercise routine each fall. 

• I look at what worked from the prior year, what failed and what requires my attention moving forward.  I implement a new protocol each fall and alter as needed as the seasons change.

Sleep:

We barely touched on sleep in the Wellness Code Format.  Way too much research was ongoing at the time.  Research today indicates, for example, that Alzheimer’s disease, number one killer in the world according to WHO, affects the dreaming part of your brain and not the memory storage.  Sleep may prove to be the number one key element in health and wellness.  I recommend the book Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, PhD (ISBN 978-1-5011-4431-8).  I’m not attempting to cop out with a book as to how important sleep is to wellness.  The fact is that Dr. Walker does a superior job of making the case with all the latest research and links.

A few other misdirects common to us humans:        

The most quoted paper in psychology is by George A. Miller.  He points out that we humans have 7 +/- 2 bits that we can hold conscious.  A bit is just a package that might hold one important point or several less important.  In our highly distracted world, it takes a lot of conscious discipline to maintain a determined relationship to any task.  The bits are ranges and when they max out, we generate new ranges and label with associated titles for quick access.  Of course, we do all this updating while we sleep.  Have you ever noticed that while working on a project you pause when you discover your approach was not effective?  At this point you are searching for a new range of associated data to try.  Amazing system and quick if all the elements are in balance.

Two other misdirected stimulus’s not addressed in the Wellness Code are unconscious patterns and subconscious patterns.  Most of the time these appear defensive and frequently are not logical or justified.  We store information and process in codes somewhat like a computer and not in language, pictures or even stories.  I refer you to wizardscache.com for more information about these stimulus’s, or see a psychologist. 

With discipline, a lot of attention and time, the elements presented in the Wellness Code will direct you back on track for wellness in your body and a promise of a healthy future.

Chriss Lemmon and staff