Crises

The best way to avoid constant crises in life is to avoid constant crises in life. By increasing your awareness and general state of mindfulness, many of life's so-called crises can be avoided entirely by proper planning and responsible action.

Yes, shit happens. To a certain degree, accidents are unavoidable. However, many accidents are the results of lack of care and attention in potentially dangerous situations. Improper home or car maintenance are common precursors to accidents, for example. There is no need to invite shit to happen.

It is important to know yourself and to take full, proactive responsibility for yourself and your personal environment, which includes all spaces you occupy in life. Practice, as I use the word frequently in my writing, includes vigilant and persistent maintenance of body and environment. The practice of meditation assists the brain in taking a relaxed and clear view of your life and your environment. Exercise, proper nutrition and adequate sleep maintain the brain and body in a state of efficiency and adequacy to the task of averting or dealing with disaster.

Multiple personal crises are symptomatic of disease and/or personal dysfunction in your environment. Where there is constant and dedicated practice, crises are minimal, because practice places you in a functional and efficient state wherever you find yourself in life. Instead of being a barreling, reactive train, headed for a wreck, the person with a well established practice of health and mindfulness is like a gyroscope, always maintaining balance and simply bouncing away when it hits obstacles.

Breathing

I have had to learn how to breathe. Breathing deeply and slowly has become a conscious practice for me. I spent the greater part of my life unconsciously focusing tension in my chest, gut and neck muscles. Tightened chest, tightened gut, poor posture, poor breathing. Poor breathing, poor oxygenation to brain and muscle, which leads to more tension and even worse breathing. The result is disease and dysfunction.

Learning to sense tension in your body is a very good health-promoting skill. Taking an inventory occasionally through the day is the key. While sitting in a task chair or walking to work or sitting on the subway, consider your own body's posture and attitude. Straighten the spine with chin up and shoulders back. Inhale deeply. Exhale deeply. Repeat. Feel the change in your body. It will relax. You may even feel a burst of alertness and increased energy, as your brain is oxygenated.

Whenever you can, follow this procedure throughout the day. Stretch your arms and legs. Remember to keep your chin elevated as you look at monitor screens, listen to lectures or carry on conversations. This helps to keep the posture erect with shoulders back.

This activity is a form of meditation. It brings you back within your consciousness of your own life, your own body, which is ultimately all you truly and temporarily possess in life. Mindfulness of your own state of well being or dysfunction is the first step to greater mindfulness. By staying well, you will have energy to practice compassion and generosity to others.

Control

Being balanced, being healthy, being mindful ... all entail control of behavior by applying awareness. Control is a sharp and double-edged sword. It also must be moderated by the mindful brain. Letting go of control is sometimes more beneficial than attempting it. Learning to use control or release it mindfully and intentionally is a first step to liberation, which is a step to enlightenment.

Vision

Maintaining a personal practice of truth, compassion and mindfulness is aided by a vision of life as it could be without suffering, greed and violence. Formulating this vision is helped by focusing on alleviating your own suffering, monitoring your own greed and purging violence from your own thoughts and actions.

My own life is my best laboratory. By showing myself that I can effect change in my own actions and perceptions in the moment, I can instill hope into my life for the eventual liberation of all life from suffering. This requires an ongoing commitment in moment after moment.

The mind slides to its animal or habitual nature all too easily. Being fully awake entails guiding the mnd along a path to wellness against the resistance of habit and history in each moment of awareness. This takes practice. This is practice.

Stress

So much of becoming well in our bodies is adaptation to unavoidable stress. Stress is actually a negatively nuanced word for our natural reaction to inevitable realities, such as time, gravity and physical limitations. Our brains have the ability to visualize goals that exceed our physical and psychological limitations. Stress is often the conflict between the goals or desires and the reality of performance or ability.

Modern medicine has turned to drugs to medicate stress reactions. Tranquilizers and antidepressants are often used to combat stress reactions by alleviating anxiety, depression and insomnia. Often this approach enables individuals to cope with existing stress and to actually increase their stress levels under the influence of the drugs. Then other, more serious, symptoms of stress reactions arise. Drugs become less effective. The quest for the perfect enabling drug becomes a new stressor. A vicious circular process.

A more practical way to address stress is to diminish the stimulus of the stress. This entails mastering the mind (brain) and bringing it into a realistic accord with the rest of the body. This approach is simple and difficult. It is simple because it requires regular maintenance of the body which anyone can do. It is difficult because modern life distracts us from healthy choices.

The simplest way to begin is with your own body. A daily periods of exercise are essential. If you are overweight, that extra weight is a stressor which applies its pressure on your life 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It should be addressed as a top priority by adjusting your diet, increasing your activity and scheduling regular exercise. Yoga, walking, weight-training, bicycling, aerobics, tai chi....all forms of exercise are helpful when done regularly in moderation.

As the body becomes less stressed, the mind can be placed in better sync with the body through regular sleep, regular meditation and regular socialization. For some, this translates into less late-night TV, less self-centered obsessing and less isolation. For others, this entails sticking to a structured schedule, joining a mediation group/class and watching less TV. It's all about balancing your natural capabilities and tastes with healthy activities which are enjoyable for you.

Without the recognition of stress, we would not function well. Stress can often be a helpful motivator. It is our reaction to stress which causes us gain or loss in the quality of our lives. Mindful and intentional coping with stress can be a tremendous way to learn about yourself and life in general.

Generosity

Generosity of spirit is a great power for peace. Modern urban environments are sadly lacking in it. However, it can be replanted on barren ground with good results.

Materialism and hedonism have clouded the mass perception of what constitutes generosity. Grand gestures for tax breaks by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have been advertised by mainstream media of all kinds as examples of generosity. This is not generosity of spirit. This is a capitalist business plan for more gain and less taxation.

Generosity of spirit has its root in the person who intentionally acts to promote peace in his/her immediate environment. By surrendering competition and contest, by deferring to another person's comfort, by automatically offering respectful consideration to strangers, the truly generous person plants the seeds for peace in his/her own life.

It is as simple as opening a door for the person next or behind you. Stepping aside for people exiting a subway train. Picking up a dropped object and returning it to its owner. Shoveling the snow off a neighbor's doorstep. The opportunities are endless in a crowded urban environment. Yet, the crowded urban environment is sorely lacking in a culture of generosity.

The raging SUV bully rolls his electric window down in traffic and shoves a crumpled dollar bill at a begging derelict, who will most likely spend it on further dissipation. This is not generosity of spirit. This is enabling a symptom of a selfish, bullying culture. It is a statement of condescension and superiority by the bully. It is of no sustaining help to the beggar.

I like to approach each day with the consciousness that I will have many opportunities to be generous in spirit on the subway, at the gym, in the street. I look for those opportunities. I have been doing this long enough as a practice, that opportunities present themselves to me constantly. My automatic responses often surprise me. There is nothing glamorous or grand about it. It is a rhythm in my life's melody.

Try to practice generosity of spirit today. The beginning is simple. Make eye contact and smile. The rest will follow quite naturally.

Healing

The body is much more than the mind. The mind can interfere significantly with bodily wisdom. The body's mindless urges can also trouble the mind. These are challenges of the human condition.

Healing often entails telling the mind to yield to the dictates of the body. A common obstacle to healing, in my opinion, is the refusal of a tired and malnourished person to rest and eat properly. One result of this mind-dominated behavior is reliance upon drugs and alcohol for the facilitation of relaxation. Another result can be obesity, caused by reliance upon fast-food, sugar-caffeine drinks and carbohydrate snacks for energy.

The body's wisdom is simple. It will tell you when to breathe deeply, sit, sleep, eat or fast. However, to hear the body's wisdom, one must learn to shut off the mind's voice to hear the body's voice. This is where meditation can be helpful. By lying or sitting still for ten or fifteen minutes at some point during the day, you can tune into your body's voice and reap the benefits.

The choice to live entirely in the mind is promoted by technologically driven capitalist society. i-Phones, iPads, netbooks...all these devices promote mind-centered living. The eye becomes a portal for overwhelming amounts of mind-centered information. A mental form of bulimia can result. Gorging and purging. Cramming information and then blowing things/people up in computer games.

For the young and healthy, this is all a great ride. However, the ride itself, over time, can erode the health and well being of youth as it advances inevitably to middle age. By then, entrenched habits of being mind-centered, fatigued and malnourished start taking their toll. Healing balance must be initiated to avoid disastrous consequences.

Beginning a daily practice of some form of quiet relaxation or meditation for fifteen minutes in the middle of your day will bring tremendous benefit for very little cost. This can be done in a cubicle or on a park bench. Pay attention to how your body feels after these periods. Thoughts that seem particularly hard to escape while trying to clear your mind are the clues to what requires your healing attention.

Use the information access of technology to read up on good nutrition, the benefits of sleep and meditation. Health entails the ongoing healing of the inevitable toll time and gravity take on our bodies. While the mind may tell you that you are immortal or invulnerable, the body, which includes your brain, knows the truth of being. Living fully and well entails paying attention to that truth.

Insurance

Insurance, as a product, has no ethical basis. It is a scheme, not a service. Its premise is simple. Money is collected from a broad range of individuals, persons or business entities, who statistically have a calculatable risk of adversity, accident, mortality or other misadventure. Based on the mathematically calculated risk, based on historic data, a premium/cost is set for the policy or share, which has a predetrmined monetary value, collectable by the holder when adversity strikes.

When most people were illiterate and innumerate, the era when insurance was really a great racket, the issuers of insurance, the insurance companies, were like great casinos, which knew the odds and profited accordingly from customers who were generally clueless about the math, loopholes and cleverly worded exemptions, which allowed the insurance companies to avoid paying out and thereby get richer.

As I often say to anyone who lauds insurance companies to me, "They didn't build all those high rise monuments to themselves by paying out claims liberally and evenly."

The insurance industry in industrialized nations is under duress. Public education, computers, savvy judges and savvier lawyers all pose great challenges to the bottom line. Premiums are rising to breathtaking heights. In the U.S., libertarian-minded, healthy people feel persecuted by a government demand that they insure themselves for health care. Unfortunately, they don't understand that government is not the problem. It is the potential solution.

Religiuous adherence to capitalism ideology when it comes to insurance companies is not in the public interest. For one thing, health is not a commodity. It is a predictably degradable process with age in every human being. We all get sick. We all die.

As insurance companies are required more and more to live up to their contracts and pay out, premiums for insurance will continue to rise and rise. Sadly, the public will end up paying much more in insurance premiums for less compensation and security. If comparatively less money could be paid in taxes to a well run nationalized health care system which would eliminate the need for private health insurance companies altogether, we would all be much better off.

Health

We all seem to be having a problem with communication on this health care issue. As a health care professional, I thought I would try to clarify some things for those of you who are adrift with the whole health-care-reform concept. Let's start with some definitions, as I see them:

Health: This is what you have when you are not sick at all.

Health Insurance: This is a financial instrument you purchase from a third party which pays for your doctor and hospital bills when you are sick. It's actually sickness insurance, but they didn't want to call it that for obvious reasons.

Health Care: This is what you get when you are sick to restore your health. It is so expensive in the United States that it is usually paid for by the government or by a health insurance (sickness insurance) company, which also gets help from the United States government.

Wellness: This does not have anything to do with rural water supplies. This is a vague term which refers to combined physical and mental state of good functional ability, whether you are healthy or coping with sickness.

Well being: This is another vague term which refers to your "I'm-OK factor". In other words, when you feel OK, if either healthy or coping with sickness, you might be considered to have a state of well being.

Reform: This basically means fixing or improving upon something that is no longer functional.

Now, let me explain a few basic facts about health care:

1. No human being goes through life with his/her health in tact. No matter how much yogurt you eat with active cultures or green tea you drink, you will get sick, if you aren't already. The absence of 120-year-old Christian Scientists attests to this fact.

2. Many of you are already sick and don't know it. No, that's not a wise crack. Disease is often slow and progressive as you age and things happen to your body. In the U.S., you will get very little warning about this until something goes badly wrong, because the health care here is reactive or remedial, not proactive or preventive.

3. Remedial health care, based in emergency and intensive-care medicine, is much more expensive than preventive health care. In other words, if you put off getting treatment for sickness, it costs more, whether you have health insurance or not.

4. Ultimately, taxpayers already pay for the health care of the uninsured and many of the insured, whether they themselves are taxpayers or not. Since hospitals cannot refuse treatment to the seriously sick, they treat everyone and bill the government for any deficits caused by treating people without health insurance or with deficient health insurance. This is called "free care", which is a misnomer, because we are all paying for it already.

5. Health insurance companies are able to pay for all those cheery TV commercials, build those nice buildings and hire all those paper-pushers by NOT paying for health care whenever possible. In other words, they are in the business of collecting money (monthly premiums) and then working hard to avoid spending it on the people who pay the premiums. (Question: Would you pay a monthly fee to someone to pay your utility bills and then expect to have to ask them if you can turn on a light bulb when it's dark?)

6. Every full-time Federal employee gets affordable access to a superior health insurance policy to any that you as an individual could ever afford to buy. That includes Republican members of Congress!

Now, I hope that clears up some misconceptions about how all this works, or doesn't. You will get sick, or already are in some way without knowing it. The only way for us to get good health care is for everyone to participate in the health care system, even when they are well. Insurance companies are needless middlemen, who profit from not helping people who pay them.

So, a fair public insurance plan would have been the solution to your health care needs now and in the future. If you supported the people who have eliminated that option, you really blew it for yourself and everyone else. Maybe you should drop a line to Scott Brown.

Money

Recent fears about Recession in the world's economies point to the near-sighted materialist nature of human civilization. The stupidity if this fixation on money and paper stocks is staggering. The planet is sick. The environment is polluted beyond safety for our species and many others. Yet, men in suits lead us into the mad world of salaries, stocks and new appliances.

If the focus of the world were shifted to health and a balanced existence in nature above all things, there would be ample wealth and resources to support a healthy life for all human beings. There would be ample work to build sustainable communities. There would be ample work to design technologies for a healthy future for all mankind.

If those who hold the wealth of the planet, that self-absorbed 10% of the human population, would open their eyes and abandon the conformity of greed and competition in favor of generosity and cooperation, the concept of Recession would be relegated to history as folly.

Bodies

Bodies are working 24-7 on their own. The animal brain controls most of your body's survival activities. Breathing, circulation, digestion, elimination. All this is happening without your constant monitoring and control. The mind chooses to tune in to this activity. This is the basic disconnect of being human. Another species' behaviors are determined by its body without interference from the frontal lobe. With the gift of intelligence comes the burden of responsibility. If a human is irresponsible to his/her body, disease follows. Obesity, addiction and self-harm are products of the individual's lack of responsibility to his/her body. All responsibility begins with responsibility for and to one's own body. The daily practice of personal responsibility includes cleanliness, proper diet, exercise and adequate sleep. Evolution of the mind is dependent on the proper development and maintenance of the body.

Epicureans

This is a time of obesity in the consumer world and hunger in the laborer world. Is it any wonder that American cable television boasts hour after hour about expensive food consumption and preparation? The elite, who have captured and dominate the international television industry, are obsessed with material pleasure and excess. This is not new, of course, but the elite of today number in the millions. They are served by billions who labor harder and harder as their overall compensation dwindles as a proportion of planetary resources and production. Greed is in. The Epicureans flaunt their devotion to pleasure, while always talking on TV about how they have paid their dues or worked their way up. This is myth in most cases. The masses are lulled into submission with false promises of open access to the upper levels of society drilled into their hypnotized TV-medicated brains. They stuff down their anger with starch and fat. There is no happiness in obesity or hunger. There is ultimately no happiness in attachment to pleasure and excess. There is happiness in the practice of moderation and living to promote economic equality and justice for everyone.