All that we do rests on the foundation of our Health and Well-Being. Your ability to optimize your well-being affects your mood, relationships, sex drive, productivity, the ability to manage weight and especially your ability to access creativity and intuitive wisdom to solve problems.

In these two short videos I share with you some tips to optimize health and well-being as well as activating intuitive wisdom.

In addition, I want to remind you of some of the basics in the hope that you will be motivated to take action. Yes, discipline is important BUT it starts with making a conscious decision to choose health and well-being.

If you have been following my work, you may recall that between 1984 – 86 I developed a serious chemical imbalance due to neglect. I thought I could eat anything anytime and get minimum sleep.

My body became allergic to over 220 different foods. My body had a yeast imbalance and my body became border line diabetic. I went to several specialists to no avail.

The worse part of all this was that I felt like crap, no energy and had serious mood swings. It was awful and it nearly cost me my relationship with Barbara and the risk of alienating me from my children.

Yes, I did my Silva meditations everyday and attempted to program. It’s just that I couldn’t stay awake and focus. I attended seminars to help and kept zoning out and missed the value.

Finally, it kicked me in the butt and I said that’s it. I CHOOSE health and well-being. Once I made this commitment, I began to attract the people, situations and help I needed. I even had a dream that led me to the assistance that actually worked for me.

(Takeaway: trust the flow of ideas and act on them!)

The following is a partial list of easy to do activities that are part of my daily lifestyle. You know this. So allow this to be a friendly reminder.

The Immune system is our own personal army. It is capable of recognizing not only its sister cells, but also able to distinguish intrusive cells such as germs, bacteria, virus, etc. This defense mechanism attacks the invaders, without us giving any orders.

This is why it is so important to have a good immune system. But the system can be weakened by poor nutrition, stress, or negative attitudes or emotions that we do not control or know how to control. Therefore, the importance of learning to take care of our physical body through good nutrition, a routine of physical movement (exercising, yoga, walking), or by learning how to manage stress using meditation and mental relaxation.  

The Immune System can also be protected, by taking care of ourselves from the inside out. 

When we have an attitude where we know how to manage emotions, how to meditate, we are fortifying our immunology. 

When meditating, the brain produces chemicals that are sent to the rest of the body, and favor health. This is the reason why more and more doctors, hospitals medical clinics, are recommending the use of meditation, as a way not only to recover health, but also, what is more important, to maintain ourselves in good health.

The Silva Method offers personal development programs where, one of the main tools is to learn to take care of ourselves physically and mentally.  It includes practical Dynamic Meditation techniques applicable to different aspects of life that allow us to live with good health, happiness and achieve success.

Health Benefits of Meditation: Since the 1960’s scientific journals have published thousands of papers on the effects of meditation on health and wellbeing. 

These effects include: reduction of anxiety, a reduction in allergic skin reactions, less incidence of angina and cardiac arrhythmias, relief from bronchial asthmas and coughs, reduced problems with constipation, fewer problems with duodenal ulcers, less dizziness and fatigue, lower blood pressure in people suffering from hypertension, alleviation of pain, reduction of insomnia, improved fertility, and help in mild to moderate depression.

What Meditation Shows us about the mind: The practice of meditation does indeed change the physiology and activity of the brain and other parts of the body. It also leads to structural changes in the brain tissue. 

The crucial question is whether meditation enables our minds to connect with a mind or consciousness vastly greater than our own?  

This is what meditators have traditionally believed; and this has been one of the principal motives for meditation.  It can help us to transcend our own mind and our own being. The experience of bliss, nirvana or Samadhi is not just about wellbeing, but also about experiencing more deeply the nature of reality.

This is one of the key benefits of practicing guided meditations that keep you aware and focused to get the inner work done. It’s also why I developed my Dynamic Meditation programs to make it easier for you.

Music And Your Health

Music is a powerful ally of our health. When we listen to music, we are not only activating our emotional area with associated memories, but also activating certain regions of the brain involved with movement, planning, attention, learning and memory.

When we listen to music, the brain is producing Dopamine, a chemical that helps improve mood and reduces anxiety, in addition to making you feel pleasure, joy and motivation.

It is proven that music can help control physical pain. That’s why Jamaican composer and musician Bob Marley said: One good thing about music is that when it touches you, you do not feel pain. But that’s not all; music can help you with your physical and mental well – being:

It enhances sleep quality. When you listen to classical music or music with a low frequency – to a certain point monotonous – it is a sleep inducer. 

Controls blood pressure and can help people suffering from headaches or migraines because it reduces the intensity, frequency and duration of headache.

It leads to meditative states. When you listen to low frequency music, it makes the brain work more slowly creating waves of similar activity. The brain synchronizes with the music you listen to. 

Research shows that this stimulus produces therapeutic effects on health because your body is producing chemicals that are beneficial to health. 

In the Silva Method we use monotonous sounds such as the Alpha Sound (10 cycles per second) that helps the person to enter deep levels of relaxation/meditation more quickly, while staying focused. In the practice of relaxation at home, we recommend the Alpha Sound and soft and slow frequency music like baroque music, which produces the same effect. All this helps in the end, the person feels better, refreshed, renewed and calm.

Helps eliminate symptoms of depression. If at any time you feel low spirits or sad for no apparent reason, music can help you recover. Classical music and meditative sounds help to raise spirits.

Helps the patient before and after surgery. Nowadays hospitals are using soft music played on the harp or another instrument, to prepare their patients. Studies have shown that this helps to make surgeries easier, use less anesthesia, and that the patient has a good and rapid recovery.

Practicing Silva relaxation/meditation, using the Alpha Sound and Silva Techniques before and after surgery, leads to the same result: a faster recovery.

Helps cancer patients manage anxiety. It has been proven that music helps patients to communicate their feelings better, manage stress and make it easier to manage pain and discomfort. It also reduces anxiety and improves the patient’s quality of life.

Helps the recovery of patients who have had a stroke. A study conducted in Finland concluded that patients who have had strokes and have listened to music for two hours a day, improve their verbal memory and attention, in addition to having a better mood, compared with patients who did not listen to music.

Eating Slowly

If you’ve been a long – time student of mine, you may remember this strategy that I’ve been teaching for better than 20 years. And now neuroscience reports that eating slowly and savoring each bite for 20 seconds satiates the reward centers in your brain and it also stimulates a circuit involving the prefrontal lobes, thalamus, and caudate. 

This gives you more conscious control over what you choose to eat!  

And because super-slow savoring of tiny bites of food stimulates the satiation and fullness centers in both your gut and brain, you end up eating less and enjoying it more. 

Dr. Andrew Newberg also found evidence to suggest that slow eating may help regulate glucose metabolism in the brain, so you won’t crave sweets as much. But to get the full benefits, you literally have to hold a morsel of food in your mouth for 20 seconds – that’s how long it takes your brain to register the nutrients you are taking in. 
 
Studies show that it can reduce anxiety, worry, depression, and irritability- the exact same feelings that cause many people to mindlessly overeat. 

How does the brain respond to a single bout of exercise?

The existing research shows that physical activity (even acute exercise – a single session) may protect against neurodegeneration and other aging-related forms of cognitive impairment.

Firstly, across all of the studies reviewed, acute exercise consistently resulted in three main effects: better executive function (the mental processes that help us to plan, focus, and multitask); better mood; and lower stress levels. 

Additionally, the studies revealed that acute exercise activates several extended brain areas. “One of the most dramatic effects,” the researchers write, “is the change in neurochemical levels.”

This includes neurotransmitters; exercise was shown to increase levels of dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, andserotonin. Dopamine helps the brain to learn and is involved in the rewarding circuits. 

A certain level of physical activity seems to be able to increase serotonin, which relieves anxiety and depression, in both humans and rodents. 

Furthermore, a single exercise session seemed to increase levels “feel good” chemical substances that are naturally produced by the brain when we exercise. These account for the runner’s high effect and exercise-induced states of euphoria.

SOME RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

I’ve been working hard on your behalf and continue to research and study to improve the quality of my Silva classes, workshops and offerings.

Remember as a Silva graduate, you can, and I highly recommend you come back to the Immersion of Life & Intuition System. If you’re new to Silva, there’s no better time than now to get started.

  Click here to explore and discover.

Using a guided dynamic meditation takes all the guess work out of your practice. It assures you to do, hear and experience the full value of meditation. If you would like some guidance, I highly recommend getting one of my Dynamic Meditations. 

Click here to explore options

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The End Of Year Reflection Exercise To Stay Motivated And Confident

I recorded this video for you. I believe that you’ll find the exercises very helpful to clear and release the old worn out patterns. And create a life vision of hope and optimism for the New Year.

A BRIEF SUMMARY

The end of the year marks a threshold and invites a pause for reflection. It’s a great time to take stock of the year behind and look ahead at the year to come.

As we approach 2019, I invite you to invest some present moment time to reflect and project.

If you’re a Silva Method Practitioner, I recommend you also do this at level and use Mirror of the Mind.

If you are not a Silva practitioner, I recommend you do this exercise in a quiet place. A meditative state is ideal with some creative visualization.

Reflect back on 2018

· What were the lessons learned? Seek their value; free of judgment. BE SELF-COMPASSIONATE. Give yourself permission not to be perfect.

· What talents and strengths did you develop and put to good use?
· What gifts did you give and what gifts did you receive?

Project to a vision of 2019

· How will you utilize the lessons learned in 2018? 
· How will your growth experiences season your choices in this new year?
· What gifts would you like to give and what gifts would you like to receive?

Go beyond Goal Setting!

What does your IDEAL – BEST SELF look like for 2019? And how does it make you feel?

RECOMMENDATION:

My guided meditation and mini-course FUTURE SELF is a powerful and fun exercise to help you create a vision of the future with hope and optimism. You’ll also access intuitive insights to know how to allow your best self to emerge. You can get yours here.

Another mini-course and guided meditation is Power Programming. It’s the ideal complement to enhance Mirror of the Mind. You can get yours here.

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