I write this letter to you from my home- bedroom- living room- makeshift office at a little around midnight with my cherished red lights on behind me and my standing desk in front of me, where sits two bibles, two of the latest study guides that accompany my church’s most recent sermon series, my blue light blocking glasses holder and several random scraps of papers, ideas, receipts, and some merchandise swag I received in the mail from my friends at Self Publishing.
I’m standing (bubbly bouncing) on top of my in-home rebounder by Newan. A lot of these items I’ve picked up over the years are part of my intentional personal growth and healthy lifestyle design I have chosen for myself. Many of these items used to be close friends, but now feel like forgotten relationships in recent times.
There are so many variables out of my control at this stage of my life. They often contrast the precise pursuit I was planning for during the last 8 years of my career. It’s come with blessings and brutal tug of wars with what I want, what I believe about myself, where I believed I was destined to be, and where I’m currently at and going. As I’ve mentioned in the past, patience is a key struggle for me throughout much of my work- life- career pursuits.
From a very young age I knew I wanted to be different, to be strikingly better than what I was exposed to and used to as a child. I knew I wanted more, was going to achieve more and provide more for others.
I still feel like I’m headed in that trajectory, though at a very different pace with wild and whimsical pivots along the way.
Today, mid-January, I’m coming off a rough week with some unexpected blessings dispersed throughout. These blessings come by way of taking a chance, being present and open to making connections with other people who share my same values, most notably around holistic health and wellness and faith.
In my current life, my entire focus is concentrated around these two things: holistic health and wellness and faith. In soon February, I’ll be leading an 8-week class at my church centered around holistic health and wellness. Suffice it to say, I take this with great respect and dedication to put forth the best class I possibly can, utilizing some of the best and brightest ideas I’ve learned around the fundamentals of health and healing throughout my 27-year career. Once this class finishes up at the start of Spring, I have plans to roll the curriculum into an online course anyone can take at any time. We will see.
Today, I’m going to touch on just a few of those subtopics I’ve chosen to include in the class, and even a few points I know people like you will be more ready to understand than the common layperson.
Here goes…
Presence as a path to healing.
Far too often in our modern day hustle bustle culture do we forget to find our deeper presence in the everyday mundane tasks and never-ending to-do lists. But, in fact, stepping into a deeper sense of presence is absolutely necessary for optimal health and healing. Without presence, we lose the chance at learning from experience, memory storage, or the magnificent self-healing abilities that come from the human body in a deep state of rest and relaxation.
Yoga is the first great breath of presence for many people, having never stayed alone with their thoughts, mind, and individual soulful breath ever before.
There are a lot of good things about yoga, but the whole purpose of mindfulness meditation moments that come from places like yoga, prayer, meditation and others is the hope that the deeper sense of presence and emotional stability can be taken into other realms of everyday life as well. The world is busy, but our brains and bodies don’t have to be bombarded with information and excitement every second of the day. In our era of Dopamine Nation, as I’ve mentioned before, it is difficult to find one's own sense of deep presence and inner sanctity.
There are many stories from the world of plant medicines where someone who battles addiction, alcoholism, or mental illnesses have a deep sense of reflection while using things like ketamine, psilocybin, or ayahuasca as example. Now, I’m not here to comment on the efficacy or potential applications for these things, but rather to simply highlight the profound adjustment in consciousness that occurs through their use for so many people.
This change of consciousness is similar to my points around the change towards a deeper sense of presence in the moment of life, granting us a better perspective with most of our roles and responsibilities as well as our inner thoughts and emotions about our lives. When we can find presence, we have a greater chance of understanding, conscious alignment in mind-body-spirit and robust decision making to not be overwhelmed by other people, places, or things and be diligently aware of our capabilities and limitations.
Presence allows us to make better decisions, evaluate our environments, empathize with others, and take greater appreciation in our everyday experiences. Presence offers us the chance at greater healing by calming down our anxious worries and inflammatory thoughts and emotions.
Presence allows our parasympathetic nervous system to take the lead while our fight-or-flight sympathetic nervous system can take a rest. This offers us the opportunity for greater nutrient utilization from the foods that we eat, reduced risks of nutrient depletion due to high levels of stress, and improved cellular health for regeneration and repair - allowing the body to do its own miraculous work for self-healing.
Pursuing a regular practice to improve our opportunities for a deeper sense of presence can provide powerful leverage to help support many other areas of our health conscious decisions, such as strength training, tissue repair, healthy eating, quality sleep, aerobic exercise, mental health and emotional stability. Presence helps squelch autoimmune reactivity, calming down an overactive immune system from causing self-harm. Presence allows us the chance at greater regulation to blood pressure and blood sugar, inhibiting spikes associated with chronically high cortisol or adrenaline due to an “always on overdrive” lifestyle.
The power of presence gives us only a glimpse of the body’s natural design, pointing to one of the magnificent ways in which our creator calls us to calm the crap down and allow our body, brain, and spirit to heal. When we neglect these needs for our overall health and healing, our systems suffer. Organ systems begin to be more sluggish and backed up, along with the bowels and liver detoxification. Our circulatory and lymphatic systems are inhibited from promoting their optimal function, flow, and excretion of toxins. Presence fights stress, and chronic stress leads to disease.
Without presence we never have a chance to notice the actual real-life triggers disrupting our health. Without presence we never get a glimpse of joy or appreciation. Without presence we live life on autopilot and overdrive, never to stop in our everyday motions, perpetually stuck in the sad cycle of a status quo that promotes premature death and disease. We never get a chance to acknowledge how this food or that fragrance affects our eczema. We never get a chance to breathe or believe in something better, let alone take the chance to reimagine our realities into a life designed for more beauty and vitality.
Life without presence presents us with a major obstacle to the psycho-social-emotional healing that can come from a deeply relational bond between two humans, the keen eye for someone suffering and the provoked heart to reach out to help someone in need. Without presence, we are prone to look through and look over someone’s sorrow face instead of noticing their heart on the inside crying out for help with a silent sadness written all over their face but left unspoken in the deafening silence that is severe depression.
Without presence we suffer.
Did you know? You might think this is fragile and frivolous thinking, but it’s actually quite foundational. Have you heard anything about “grounding” by going outdoors and walking barefoot? Again, you might think is some silly joke, but it is not a joke at all, but rather an impressive step in the right direction of holistic health and healing that is overlooked in all of standard medicine.
Presence then helps us fight many of the leading causes of death and disease in the world.
All because this is what we were made for, as compared to what the world would attempt to demand from us or have us believe we must achieve in order to be “enough.” Presence is a free resource to us if we choose to accept it and bring it into our lives more - or perhaps bring ourselves more into presence.
Medicine ReImagined
Most people think medicine comes from the drug store after being prescribed by a doctor, but this is only a fraction of the real-life medicines we have access to. But, we can only use these medicines once we know what they are and how fundamental they really are. Medicine doesn’t have to be expensive. Medicine doesn’t have to be applied by needles or pills packaged in bright orange plastic child-proof bottles with microscopic instructions and even smaller lists for the relative side effects they think you should know about.
Medicine can look like the makings of our everyday lives.
Meaningful Movement is Medicine.
Building Lean Muscle Mass is Medicine.
Nourishing Food is Medicine.
Hot Temperatures can be Medicine.
Cold Temperatures can be Medicine.
Fasting can be Medicine.
Alone time can be Medicine.
Social Time can be Medicine.
Eating less can be Medicine.
Eating more can be medicine.
Listening to Music can be Medicine.
Playing or Making Music can be Medicine
Art can be Medicine.
Natural Lighting exchanged for artificial lighting can be Medicine.
Checking off your to-do list can be Medicine.
Removing Mold from your environment (or yourself from the Moldy environment) can be medicine.
Play-based Learning can be Medicine.
Abstinence can be Medicine.
Daily Prayer can be Medicine.
Strong Friendships can be Medicine.
Removing Yourself from Toxic Relationships is Medicine.
Routine Journaling can be Medicine.
Morning Affirmations can be Medicine.
Taking a Nature Walk in the Woods or the Park with your pet pal can be Medicine.
Quitting Smoking can be Medicine.
Spending an hour less per day attached to a Device can be Medicine.
Spending 20 minutes with the Morning Sunrise can be Medicine.
Cathartic Conversations with close Confidants can be Medicine.
Fasting can be Medicine.
Writing poetry through a breakup to express hurts instead of turning to alcohol to numb the feelings can be Medicine.
Reading a Book before bed instead of doom scrolling Netflix, Youtube, TikTok, or Instagram can be Medicine.
Finding a greater Sense of Purpose and Fulfillment at work is Medicine.
Living Life in Alignment with your Circadian Biology is Medicine.
A Warm Embrace with a Heartfelt Hug can be Medicine.
Laughter is Medicine.
The list goes on and on and on and on and on and on…. add your own personal medicines below in the comments to share with and encourage others.
This week I encourage you to consider ways in which you can be more present in your everyday life and strive to take advantage of more models of medicine that are right in front of you.
Our perspective of medicine in America especially is pretty broken. It has a lot of room for improvement. Most people would never know that there is a better way to see the world if they aren’t given a chance to see with a different set of lenses. I’m not here trying to change everyone’s life, but maybe only kind of.
It is my sincere hope that with today’s message and my newsletter as a whole that I can point us towards greater opportunities for health and healing, empowering ourselves to take advantage of real health for real life. When we give these fundamentals the attention they deserve then we give ourselves the greatest chance at the greatest life possible.
And that’s why we’re all here in the first place isn’t it?
in good health 💙