Health Lessons

Category: Law of Health

  • Law of Health. Law 3-Climb. Lesson 4-The Weekly Routine

    Law 3: Climb

    Lesson 4: The Weekly Routine

    This is one of a series of lessons in the Law of Health: 10 Essential Steps to Glorious Health & Miraculous Healing

    Most of what I know about medicine, I learned by watching the thousands of people who have come to me for help.

    Of course, having studied medicine and chemistry and philosophy in school helped me understand what my patients had to teach; still, the lessons came from the people who trusted me with their health. So while I was teaching them, they were teaching me.

    Recently, a woman asked me, “Who taught you this, who was your teacher?”

    I thought for a minute, and realized the answer was everyone whom I had ever met had something to teach me–and I learned from almost all of them. But, I did not know how to explain, so I gave her another answer that was just as true, “I learned it from the sky.”

    One of the lessons that I learned from the most healthy is the weekly routine: the weekly climb to better health and better focus.

    I see the extremely healthy practice daily routines, but the practice that distinguishes them even more from the rest of the world is the weekly routine. The activities included in the weekly routine, even more than those in the daily routine, include actions that are important and not urgent.

    So, because even these actions are less urgent than what you might do daily, and because they are not usually included in your day, it’s the weekly routine that usually goes undone.

    When I get off track and feel the edge becoming dull, it’s usually because I’m leaving off the weekly climb back to better health with the weekly routine.

    For example, you may be in the habit of walking most days as part of your daily routine, but if you fail to take time once a week to think about your mileage for the week, or even what that mileage should be, then you do not reach the conclusion that your mileage may not be adequate and that you are missing more days than you thought. Therefore, you do not make corrections in your schedule to get the mileage up to the 21 to 25-mile mark.

    As for schedules, it’s the weekly routine where you actually make the weekly schedule that keeps you on track with your exercise and work and rest. Without the weekly routine of looking at your schedule and planning to do what should be done to be healthy, then most of it goes undone.

    So, this is an important lesson, Climbing to better health with a weekly routine, because it’s here that you plan and grade yourself on all the rest of the Law of Health.

    The Weekly Routine should include at least the following:
    1. Rest
    2. Meet
    3. Grade
    4. Organize
    5. Metabolic Workout

    Rest

    You will see greater success if you practice most of the weekly routines on the same day of the week. This day will change, during your life, depending upon your work and family schedules. Most of my life, I’ve practiced the weekly routine on Sundays. But, Saturdays also work, and sometimes (during my ER years) Monday or Tuesday worked better.

    The first thing that’s helpful about the weekly routine is to try and avoid any work at your main job on that day. I’ve tried it both ways and you will find much wisdom in the ancient commandment to rest one day per week.

    Without this day of rest, several things happen. First, the work expands to fill 7 days, where if I plan to take a day off, then I will usually figure out a way to get the most important things done in 6 days.

    All of the work is never done anyway. There’s always something else to do. But, if I work every day, even at a labor of love, then I start to feel less creative and will see a drop in enthusiasm. Even if you love chocolate cake, if you eat it every day you will tire of it. So, taking a day off, even when you have something to do, even when you do not want to take a day off and you love what you do, will make you come back to that activity with renewed enthusiasm and vigor.

    This does not mean that you do nothing (though you can). Better is to have a creative leisure pursuit that compliments what you do the other 6 days. I prefer something very active physically (so I fell energized and strong) or something creative that expands the mind (so I come back with more creativity).

    Everything is related to everything, so if you let your recreations “be manful and not sinful” (as George Washington advised) you will find your day of rest makes the other 6 days more productive than if you had not taken the day off.

    This is also the day that you sleep a little longer, or take a nap that’s a little longer than usual. But, the most re-creating rest comes not from shutting down in sleep (and absolutely not from shutting down in a drunken stupor), it comes from swapping the attention of your mind to something fresh and worthy.

    Meet

    This is the time to meet with your “mastermind” group.

    This is the day for clubs, for worship, to go for the long run with the friend or spouse, to go for the long hike in the forest, to sit for extra time in meditation with a group, to have the family meeting and the family feast.

    This is the time to connect to those who have inside of them what you want and who want what you have inside of you.

    Life is for doing, not meeting. But, weekly meetings will empower the doing.

    Grade

    Whatever you do, you will do better if you keep a record. Find a way to keep numbers on anything important. Sometimes the numbers may not say it all. As Einstein said, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” But much of it can be.

    If nothing else, keep track of the 1, 3, 5 plan.

    I also find this worksheet helpful. It’s more complicated and takes more time than the 1,3, 5 Plan but I pull it out and use it regularly and find that it helps me stay focused on the important. You may skip a few days but looking at it once a week helps you refocus.

    For more about how to use this worksheet, be sure and study and restudy this (one of my favorite books) by a man who coached business people and Olympic athletes about how to thrive with stress (this book helped me stay healthy and through 12 years as an emergency room physician in an inner-city ER):

    Organize

    Thirty-two years ago, a college professor came to the Shades Valley YMCA in Birmingham, Alabama, and taught a one day course on how to study in college. I sat in the back of a room of about 30 people and, at 17-years-old, learned lessons that continue to help me at 50.

    One of the most helpful tricks that he taught was the way to schedule and think about time. Even though I do my own web site, have an iPhone, and have no fear of electronics, I still like to see every hour of my week by filling out this form, which he recommended, once a week.

    Years after going to that lecture at the YMCA, I read a similar explanation of time management in Steven Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I’d recommend that you review this book once a year:

    Then I saw the same form again in this book, The Now Habit, written by a man who helped graduate students quit procrastinating and get on with the job of finishing their doctorate dissertation:

    Are you getting the idea that perhaps this form could be helpful to you?!

    So download it now, and follow these instructions:

    1. Write in the hours when you will work. These are the times when you must be at your job or at school and so are unchangeable (at least for this week).
    2. Put in when you will sleep.
    3. Write in an hour per day, up to 2 hours per day, that belong to you to exercise and listen to recordings of lectures or to music. To stay healthy and sane, you need an hour per day that belongs to you.
    4. Write in one hour per week when you will do the weekly review and repeat this scheduling event.
    5. Write in any special events that you would like to attend–especially the meeting with your mastermind person or group.
    6. Now look at your schedule and ask, “Do I have something to look forward to every day?” It can be simple and short, just the exercise, or perhaps the bath or sitting with a friend after the workout. But, you should have something that you look forward to every day.
    7. Ask yourself, “What is the most important thing that I want to accomplish this week?”

    The Metabolic Workout

    This is the time to do a fast or modified fast to exercise the metabolism and use the enzymes and hormones that renew and cleanse the body.

    Here’s a sample plan: The 3-Day Fat Burn, which is a modification of many strategies. If you don’t have it, then get it (including the grocery list which comes as a free separate download to help you do the plan).

    I’m also a fan of Paul Bragg and think this book belongs in every home:

     

    Important Question:

    Can you see why when people walk up to me in the grocery store line or at a coffee break at a conference and ask, “What do you do to stay so healthy and fit?” I look at them tongue-tied and sad.

    So many people want to make health more simple than how to change the oil in the car. Just take this supplement. Or just do this magic exercise.

    Real health, the real tuning and fine-tuning of the body involves much more art and knowledge than most suppose–but the rewards are stellar.

    Do not become discouraged if you must study and restudy.

    So must I. So must everyone.

    The continued and consistent doing of healthy practices

    brings better health

    even though your doings and mine

    will never be perfect.

    Learning and practicing the Law of Health is one such practice.

    This is one of a series of lessons in the Law of Health: 10 Essential Steps to Glorious Health & Miraculous Healing

  • Lesson 3: Daily Routines for Automatic Health

    Law 3: Climb

    Lesson 3: Daily Routines for Automatic Health

    I want to see you climb to better health rather than allow your body to slip into disease. Even though I know you’re trying to have your best health and are doing many things right—just as with your house there are things that should be done every day–so with your body you should do some things every day if you wish to see glorious health or miraculous healing.

    If you must every day reconsider what things should be done (redesign the whole plan), you will not practice a consistent routine that leads to health because by the time you figure out what to do every day, you’re tired of the whole process and ready to get on with something else other than your health.

    The people whom I have known who enjoy superior health spend time occasionally thinking in detail about what will be in their daily routine, then they simply go through the routine every day and trust it to take them to superior health.

    If you do the same things, you get the same results.

    If you do something different, you will get different results.

    So, if your body is not where you want it to be or as healthy as it can be, let’s consider carefully what to include in your daily routine so that the routines will take you where you want to go. Then you simply follow the routine most days without needing any energy to decide what to do—you just wake up and go.

    What you do daily will change when you want something different.

    For example, you may develop an interest in a new sport and want to change your physical routines to match the skills necessary for that sport. Or you may want extremely time-consuming career goals and need to decrease the time you spend in daily exercise. Conversely, you may want extreme physical goals and so greatly increase the time spent in physical exercise.

    When you find that you are not following a daily routine (and you often will), then you should not conclude that routines do not help. You should consider that perhaps your routine does not accomplish what you really want. Or, perhaps, the amount of time available does not allow for completion of the routines and so you need to either change the goals or find more time for the routine.

    When your routines match your available time with what you want and when you remind yourself regularly of this matching—then you will follow the routines and find the wanted results.

    Ingredients of a Daily Routine

    Daily routines should consider your mental, physical, and spiritual health. If you do not move forward in all three areas, then you are building your health on an unstable foundation.

    When you design a weight-training routine, you consider all of the muscle groups. If you have an area that is not developing then you find another exercise, or you spend more time working that area. So, as you develop your daily routines you consider all areas of your health. You occasionally reevaluate results and modify the routines to make sure that you’re getting what you want.

    But, and this is the important part, you make the routines separate and calm so that when it’s time to act, you need make no decision except to do the routine. This helps you move forward every day in the right direction and without the inertia of indecision or even thought—you simply wake and go.

    Just as if you were analyzing a diver from a diving board into the swimming pool, you might spend time thinking about each movement and developing where you pace your hands or how you tuck your chin as you go into the flip-in the same way, you think about every part or the routine that brings you to superior health.

    But, then, when it’s time to actually do the flip you execute quickly the flip and it goes smoothly. In the same way, when it’s time to do your daily routine, it should go smoothly with not much thought about the next step and with loss of concept of time.

    Do not be discouraged that routines will consume too much of your time or energy. Routines will require time and energy, but, if the routine is worthwhile, you will gain more time and energy than they require.

    If you want to read more about routines, I highly suggest Stress for Success: Jim Loehr’s Program for Transforming Stress into Energy at Work . Here he describes how he used routines to coach professional and Olympic athletes to their best performance.

    He also makes the case that the man or woman working at a career or as a parent needs for routines even more than does the professional athlete (Example: If you’re a pro athlete pitching in the world series and you have a bad day, then tomorrow you open a car dealership with your millions; if you’re an ER nurse and have a bad day–then someone is dead and you’re looking for a job).

    I used the idea of routines to stay as healthy and focused as possible while working as an ER physician in a busy inner-city ER (where life and death situations and sleep deprivation were common).

    Was not Daniel’s routine of prayer 3 times a day a sort of routine (that landed him in a cage full of lions)? Routines are not a new idea but there’s been some progress about what should go into a daily routine.

    Now let’s consider how to put the routine idea into your life.

    Example Routines

    Here are possible routines that will take you through the day in an energized and health-giving way (all of these routines have been used by Loer to train elite athletes): 1) Go-to-bed routine, 2) Wake –up routine, 3) Go-to-work routine, and the 4) After-work routine.

    Just as the baseball player goes through a routine that prepares him to hit the ball before stepping to the plate. So, your routines will prepare you to do your work.

    Consider some these possible routines and modify them to suit your purposes:

    Go-To-Bed Routine (GBR)

    Most people consider the morning as the start of the day. But the day starts when you go to bed. What time you wake to feel refreshed depends upon the time you go to bed and how well you rest.

    Ingredients of the routine include what you thought and ate or drank the few hours before bed.

    Part of resting properly depends upon going to bed at the same time and getting up at the same time daily. Even on the weekends, you will fell better and do more if you keep a regular bedtime and wake time.

    I have seen times when my schedule became almost completely incompatible with some of these ideas. As an emergency room physician, my job required that I work night shift and day shift within the same week. So, I could not have a regular bedtime. But, I still followed a routine at whatever time I did go to bed.

    Go-to-be might have been 9 am on Tuesday and not again until 8 pm on Thursday, but by following a wakeup routine and a go-to bed routine at whatever time hose events occurred, I found much better health than if I would have seen had I ignored the routines simply because I did not sleep every day and I did not sleep at the same time.

    There are times when vacation, or travel, or work dictates that I must break a routine. That’s OK. The routines are there as a way to keep you in your best health. They are part of the keeping the tool ready but sometimes the use of the tool necessitates that you break a routine. When that happens, simply be grateful for the time you spent preparing and then get back to your routines as soon as possible.

    Sample Go-to bed routine:

    1. Snack and supplements.

    I know that some think you should not eat at bedtime. I think you sleep better if you do enjoy a light snack at bedtime. My habit for years has been to drink a protein shake with fruit as a bedtime snack. At times, if I am fasting, the snack may be water. At times it may be fruit or yogurt or both. It is never junk food or alcohol. I just do not allow junk food to remain in my house. If you do allow junk in your house, then you will likely eat it at bedtime—so simply throw all the junk away and don’t bring it back.

    Snack time is also when you should take whatever supplements you have determined to be most useful to you. What these supplements are will vary based upon what’s happening with you (your physical and mental goals and how old you are) and with advancing research. But, that you should enjoy a bedtime snack and take supplements/super foods will not change with time.

    When I am fasting, my snack may be mineral water and the supplement may be something as simple as a natural source of fiber.

    When I am gaining strength, the snack may be 6 raw eggs mixed with cream, whole mile, and fresh fruit in a blender.

    This is also the time to take any evening medications.

    2. Shower, Skin, Teeth

    Next in the routine is a hot bath or shower. If you have time, I prefer a hot bath at 104 to 106 degrees Fahrenheit followed by a cooler shower. The hot water of the bath helps with relaxation and development of peaceful thoughts and leads to deeper sleep.

    After the shower, then have a regular routine for caring for skin and teeth.

    My preferred products for these routines will change as new products develop but the daily care of body, teeth, and skin will not change because these are areas that by the Law of Health need daily focused attention.

    The health of your mouth and teeth causes a profound effect on your whole body. You may escape attending to your mouth and teeth during the day with not as much harm (though attention after every meal is best). But, the most important time to attend to the teeth is just before sleep. During sleep, you produce less saliva. The decreased saliva production allows for more bacterial overgrowth and tooth decay. Making sure the mouth has less bacteria and less food particle to feed the bacteria will protect the teeth during sleep.

    The natural tooth-protecting ingredients included in saliva are sodium bicarbonate and hydrogen peroxide. The best way that I currently know to use these to keep your teeth white and clean will be found here on TempleRepair.com.

    3. Meditation and Prayer

    After you shower, you will be more relaxed and clean. At this point, most will go to bed and rest peacefully. But with about 20 minutes of additional effort, you can enter a deeper meditative sate and both rest more peacefully and renew your spirit.

    Hatha yoga; followed by meditation and prayer works miracles in your life. Here are instructions for both.

    4. Scripture

    Reading the Bible (or your scripture) for 10 to 15 minutes following your shower puts you in contact with the ancients. Here’s a suggested Bible reading plan. This and other scriptures are around for thousands of years because they work. Some would say discard the old and dusty scriptures and write your own scripture.

    If you feel inclined to write your own scripture, then who am I to argue with you and GOD? But, even if you feel inclined to write your own scripture (which you do with your life even if you never write a sentence), the scripture you write will spring from a deep and pure well if you connect with the thoughts of those who walked the desert when wealth was measured by the number of sheep that followed you.

    Without connection to the ancients, your scripture will likely be polluted by the electronic and mechanical machine guns that pellet your brain with peace killing noise.

    5. Grade

    After reading the scriptures, this is a good time to briefly connect to the virtues to which you aspire and to grade yourself. I prefer a modified version of the 13 virtues as outlined by Benjamin Franklin (see this website).

    You will review the day, whether you make a concerted effort or not. What you grade and measure will improve—automatically—just from the grading. If your mind drifts without direction as you fall to sleep, you will review and grade the more reptilian efforts of the day. But, if you focus and grade yourself upon the virtues, then you will improve those efforts and this will lead to better health.

    6. Goals

    Think of what you want to accomplish the next day—no more than 6 things. Chose the things if you did them not, your family or business would be seriously affected. Write them down where you will see them and carry them with you the next day. One or two is better if you are getting none of your list done. You can work up to six. If you start getting nothing on the list done—then change back to 1 or 2 again.

    7. Sex

    As part of GBR, as part of connecting with GOD and LOVE, you may want to connect with your lover and your family.

    When my children were young, one of the last parts of my GBR was to read to them. We read most of the Harry Potter books, Treasure Island, Tom Sawyer, and others.

    When they grew older, then we simply connected by saying “goodnight” (since sometimes they went to sleep after me). But, always, I tried to touch their head or shoulder—just to put a hand on them.

    I never lay in bed with them. If they were sick or disturbed, then I would sometimes lay on the floor beside them. Sometimes I would rub their shoulders or back.

    Everyone needs to be touched. It’s odd that, when our children are very small, you find it easy to touch them or to hug them. When they grow older and connect with a lover, then they may no longer need the touch of a parent. But, in the early teen years, they have no lover and sexual boundaries in the developing child make it uncomfortable for parents to touch their children—it feels inappropriate. These early7 teens will fight with each other—just to be touched. The girls will often experiment with pretend sex with their girlfriends—just to be touched.

    So, if you have children, just a hand on their shoulder or a short upper back and shoulder rub works miracles and fits into a GBR.

    Next, this is a wonderful time to connect to your spouse or lover. Take the love and energy and connection to GOD that you found in our meditation seat and use that to connect to your lover. Then sex becomes worship through the connection to your love you find in your lover.

    Sex is not penis in vagina. Sex is expressions of the deepest love through emotional and physical touching. You can learn more about how to use sex for health and spirituality in my 15-Day course for men, Anytime…for as Long as You Want: Strength, Genius, Libido & Erection by Integrative Sex Transmutation. The deepest sex and most enjoyable sex is an extension of prayer.

    Finally, there comes a time when all activity stops and you give up the day to sleep. Remember the GBR is really the beginning of the next day. So, as you fall asleep, spend the last waking moments in prayer or mediation on goodness, on GOD, or on what you wish to materialize in your life.

    Napoleon Hill, in his The Law of Success – Complete, speaks of visualizing a council room where he met with men that he admired from the ages and had a meeting about his life.

    As a teenager and in my twenties, to avoid continuous sexual thoughts and masturbation, I often fell asleep listening to recordings of lectures on philosophy or the scriptures. Who has not struggled to stay awake during a lecture in a place of worship? It is good that people fall asleep in church. It means that they are filled with peace from the words and thought of the place. So, use this to your advantage and think on such things when you are ready to give up the day.

    Other Routines

    You can see by the GBR that many details are considered. Then no thought is given to the routine, the list is simply followed, at first by a checklist if you want, eventually, by habit without thought.

    When you develop by practice routines that lead you to health simply by following a list, and when the list has be consciously considered by you in such a way to take you to your best health, then you have created a healthy lifestyle that brings health and healing almost automatically without much thought by you.

    Even more exciting, it will feel near effortless to stay healthy when you are simply following what is your natural habit because you took the time and effort to consciously practice health-giving routines until they became unconscious habit.

    To Do Next

    Consider and write out the following routines (and reconsider every 3 to 6 months):

    1. Go to bed routine

    2. Wake up routine

    3. Go to work routine

    4. Come home from work routine

    ©2009, 2020 Charles Runels, MD

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    This is one of a series of lessons in the Law of Health: 10 Essential Steps to Glorious Health & Miraculous Healing

    Other Routines…

  • Law of Health: 3 Climb. 2-10 Steps to Climb from Fatigue to High Energy

    Law of Health
    Law 3: Climb
    Lesson 2: 10 Steps to Climb from Fatigue to High Energy

    You often think you are tired when you are simply bored or depressed. 

    You will look with boredom and fatigue at the books that hold the knowledge that will better your life or at the work that will express your love; then wake up to watch the hypnotic poison of mindless T.V. or listen to numbing music. That’s when you know you were not tired, simply bored.

    But, sometimes, you know real fatigue and fear (not boredom that feels like fatigue).

    If you wish to awaken, then you must conserve the energy that powers the engine of your mind and spirit, for each awakens the other.

    Here are Ten Commandments that have worked for me for replenishing nerve energy. 

    Disregard even one of the ten and you may find yourself supine as if covered with a heavy fog that pins you to the bed and chokes the air from your chest–I know from breaking every law on the list.

    But, I also know the energy of following them.

    Law 1

    Rest.

    If you fight a long battle or enjoy extra pleasure (and I will be disappointed if you do not do both), then spend extra hours in bed. 

    Have a day per week of rest. GOD rested one day per week. 

    The honeybees do not rest; they work every day. But the honeybees gather nectar mechanically and store methodically. 

    The GOD in you wants to create the nectar of Love that human bees gather to their hive. For that, you need rest.

    Law 2

    Play.

    All animals play. 

    Watch the dolphin that jumps from the sea. Does he arrive sooner for going vertical, skyward, rather than horizontal?

    Watch the dog that circles chasing his tail. Do you see the smile on his face?

    Only people seem to think that their role becomes so important that they cannot play. 

    Work without play becomes drudgery and uninspired. Play without work becomes a denervating vacation from nothingness and brings no pleasure.

    If work becomes drudgery, play. If play becomes boredom, work.

    Every day, work. Every day, play.  

    Today you may work 20 hours and play for 10 minutes. Tomorrow you may play for 8 hours and work for 30 minutes; but, everyday work and play.

    Every day work before you play, or your play laughter will be muffled by thought of work undone.

    Law 3

    Enjoy.

    Enjoy everything. 

    Enjoy your work (which is Love made Concrete) or find new work.

    Enjoy and find gratefulness for the water that washes across your hands and face when you wake, for the taste of the first liquid to pass your lips and cross your dry throat when you start your day, for your lover’s kiss, for your morning prayer, for the air that passes down the pipe to your lungs to give you the ability to think about the morning sky.

    Enjoy sorrow for sorrow is the vision that allows you to see joy and the possible sorrow of tomorrow is the timekeeper that encourages you to grab joy today.

    Law 4

    Look.

    If you direct all your thoughts to your career, your family, your self, then you develop a tunnel vision that leads to numbness and boredom. Everything relates to everything. Stop directing all your thoughts toward yourself and look away from your private concerns to the universe outside the people and concerns in your mental world.

    By looking outside yourself, you gain awaken to new worlds and new possibilities and new energy that you then import back to your world to make it larger. You also take what’s in your world and find new ways to contribute to the universe around you.

    Develop and study new interests. Study literature, dance, marital arts, music, gardening, or flowers-you decide. But, pick something new and study and you will find yourself looking outside yourself and your circle.

    When you look outside your circle, you awaken to what’s outside your circle.

    Law 5

    Sweep.

    Sweep your mind of the poisons that will dull you to an anesthesia of despair and fatigue.

    Take time to list every worry, every anger, every resentment, prejudice, and jealousy. 

    Then, find an action for each. Do something toward a solution for every worry, even if it does not completely solve the problem. Do an act of kindness toward those for whom you feel the poison.

    Law 6

    Eat.

    Eat least 5 servings of fresh fruit or vegetables every day. When you bite the apple with seeds still able to grow a new tree, you bite into life and swallow vitality. No need to fear food that is not still living, but make sure you swallow life daily and adequate amounts of life.

    Except for days of fasting, eat a minimum of 5 servings per day (a serving is one cup).

    Law 7

    Walk.

    As much as possible, dress for the weather and walk 3 to 5 miles daily in the fresh air (for a total of 21 miles per week). If safety or other problems dictate that you walk inside, then use and elliptical trainer and still go the distance. But, at least go for a short block or two in the fresh air daily.

    You will find more magic and health than is widely known in the meditation and movement of walking. Add other activities if you wish. But, if you ignore walking, you will see more valleys and miss more mountains.

    Law 8

    Release.

    Release responsibility for the results; take responsibility for doing your best at the most important thing you can find to do. 

    Work with your head and hands and not with your emotions.

    Do not worry that the most important thing does not seem important enough to you. More important things will come to you if you do what is in front of you with excellence.

    Do not worry that you may not see the result you intended. If you learn from that result to adjust to something more important or more constructive, then you did not waste your efforts.

    Do not release effort and focus. Use your strongest effort and your most narrow focus to do your work. Survey the promises made to you and to others, decide the best action, then focus and work.

    Do not dash from one activity to the next. Decide the most important thing to do and stay with it until you reach your predetermined stopping point. 

    Then go to the next thing.

    Law 9

    Ignore.

    The only opinion that matters is your opinion while connected to GOD. Worrying about the opinions of others is a huge drain of your energy. 

    You will make enemies and endear lovers with the same action, no matter your action-good or evil, constructive or destructive.

    Connect to GOD, then enjoy the rest, peace, and energy that comes from doing what you perceive to be right and best and ignore the inner voice that whispers the intrusion, “What will people think?”

    Law 10

    Stop.

    Whatever you are frantically doing (thinking that the world will end if you stop), stop doing it.

    At least for the time it takes to do the first 9 laws-stop and know that the world will keep going without you. Though you may think that you are the superhero that must save your family, your business, and the world, if you do not care for yourself, you cannot help. 

    And, when you are gone, the world will keep going without you.

    Peace & health,

    Charles Runels, MD

    1-888-920-5311

     P.S.: These 10 Laws are a modification and expansion of ideas found in a book published in 1954 by Edward Spencer Cowles, Conquest of Fatigue and Fear. I have used these ideas with great benefit since picking up a used copy of the book at a library sale 38 years ago.

    These laws were further modified into the following pocket book…

    © 2009, 2020 Charles Runels, MD

  • Law of Health: 3 Climb. 1-Maintain the Tool

    Law of Health

    Law 3: Climb

    Lesson 1: Maintain the Tool

    I drove a 1972 Ford Pinto to high school. I kept it clean and waxed, but I thought I was too busy to check the oil.

    I let it run low, and caused some severe damage to the engine and found myself with a car that would not run at all. I bought a repair book, went to the junkyard and took the head from a wrecked Pinto, and then rebuilt the engine in my car.  

    During the three days and most of a night that it took for me to repair that engine, I could not drive it at all.

    After I rebuilt that engine and understood more about how it worked, then I used an old-fashioned timing light and other tools to keep it running at optimum speed. I set up a maintenance schedule and stuck with it most of the time. I checked the oil with almost every fill-up, checked the air in the tires weekly, washed it weekly, and waxed it once a month. The car gave me excellent service and looked sharp until I finally traded it for another car.

    Odd that with the body-temple (which people cannot trade for another on this planet), people will not usually set up a maintenance schedule that will keep the body well-and then stick with that schedule.

    There is a time for use and a time to maintain. 

    The body-temple is a tool that you animate. You are not your body, but you are so closely dependent on your body, and its health can so much control what you are able to do physically and mentally that some think of themselves as the body.

    Ironically, you may be more exacting with your body and take better care of it if you think of it as something separate from who you are. You will not pay as much attention to hunger, or fatigue, or the discomforts of exercise if you think of your body as something you are caring for so that you can enjoy and produce more here on the planet.  

    Keeping your body functional will become keeping your main tool operational. Keeping your body beautiful will become the gift that you give to your lover. Keeping your body pure becomes the sacrifice that you offer to the heaven you find on earth.

    If you think of yourself as your body, you will find it more difficult to judge what your body needs and does not need. You consider more personal and threatening the discomforts that lead to better health and will avoid the pains of the maintenance of health and fall into the pains of disease. For example, temporary hunger will feel like a threat to YOU rather than something your body must tolerate because you think it best. You become almost like the supervising guardian of your body.

    The physical and the spiritual and mental giants of all time have taken time to see to the maintenance of the body-temple on some sort of schedule. Since the spiritual leaders have often found refuge and inspiration in the mountains, I call this maintenance time “Climbing.” This contrasts with the “Falling” into disease and despair that comes with ignoring health maintenance.

    Climbing could literally mean climbing a mountain to seek a place to pray. More commonly, it will mean figuratively climbing to better health by going for a walk.

    Areas to Consider

    In considering the methods for climbing, it’s useful to first consider what needs to be maintained. Consider a body without a healthy mind-not good. Consider a healthy body and mind with a troubled spirit-again, not good. 

    For the best health, the Law is that you must have all three: body, mind, spirit. Here is an example of how cliché originates from truth.

    So, whatever method the Law of Health dictates, must care for those three areas of health.

    Schedules

    There must be a balance between using a tool and caring for it–between walking for travel and climbing for fresh air.

    There are those who so much enjoy tuning a car that they make their living tuning cars. But, if they tuned their own car every day with the full maintenance schedule of rotating tires, changing the spark plugs and head gaskets, then they would never be able to drive the car–it would be continually disabled by the maintenance.

    And here lies an uncomfortable law: when you are climbing, you can’t be doing. When you are replacing spark plugs, you can’t simultaneously drive your car down the interstate. When Christ was on the mountaintop in prayer, He could not speak words of peace to the crowd. 

    When I was a teenager, I worked two to three part-time jobs and went to school and ran track. I had places to go. I did not have time (I thought) to maintain my car. 

    You have places to go and things to do and will think that you do not have time to climb to a place of better health. But, the Law of Health is that you must take time to climb or you will fall.

    Because you do have things to do, however, you will want to find the most effective way to keep your health with the least amount of time possible so that you can go about doing.

    There are those who’s main thing to do is to take the body to an almost super-human place. These may be professional athletes or professional models. And there are those who so much enjoy the activities of maintaining the body that they never get around to the doing. There is nothing wrong with looking to find a place in mind, body, and spirit that few find. Find the place of super-health and mind and spirit if you wish. But, you must do this in a way that leaves time for using your body-temple as the tool it was meant to be.

    The Magic Ingredient of Breath

    The Law of Health recognizes that there is a magic ingredient. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. When I saw someone die in the ER, I could often see what was wrong with the heart or lungs to cause their death. But, between life and death, there is an invisible line which when crossed means the loss of breath. 

    The breath that goes into clay to animate it and make it become life is something greater than the mechanics and chemistry of the body. The more you study biology, the more it becomes chemistry; the more you study chemistry the more it becomes math (I was a chemistry/math major in college and worked as a chemist before medical school).   

    Most importantly, the more you study math, the more it becomes prayer. Math and chemistry describe and predict, but they do not explain. 

    There is a law, gravity, that says two objects are attracted to each other with a force proportional to their mass and inversely proportional to the distance between them. This law predicts and describes but it does not explain why two objects should be attracted in such a way. 

    For more understanding about the difference between explaining and describing, you should watch this conversation with Richard Feynman(who won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1965 and helped develop the atomic bomb).

    Einstein died searching for the “why.” In describing his search, he said, “GOD does not play dice with the universe.” 

    So, there is not just an order but also a breath, not just a “what” but an unexplained and invisible “why” that animates and brings life to clay and brings more life when inhaled. 

    Whatever schedule you use to climb to better health, must account for this breath and allow you to inhale more life into your body-temple. Finding this breath may mean being alone, being around certain people, or being in certain places. But to ignore the inhalation of this breath is to miss one of the benefits of the Law of Health.

    Cosmetic is Good

    On the other hand, in considering the mechanics of health and the magic of breath, you may think that you have the complete picture and to simply try to look more attractive is waste. But, imagine an amazing racing car with a 16-cylinder engine. Now imagine not taking time to wash and wax of even paint the body of the car. Sure, the shine of the paint has no direct effect on how the engine runs (or so we think). But, if you wash your car and wax it, then you will find that the engine seems to run better.

    More practically, I have seen some who will become motivated to take better care of the engine after a good wax job. They take a deeper breath when the body temple just appears healthier. Many women will go on diets and eat healthier after the liposuction. When they see all the fat that I suction out of their abdomen, they go home determined to eat more fruits and vegetables.

    Of course, there are those who would only wash and wax the car and never put oil in the engine. This does not work either. The healthiest become the most beautiful by virtue of their health. The best schedules are those that first take into account the mental and spiritual health. From this power, the person takes care of the physical health. 

    Then cosmetic efforts become the wax job on the finely tuned racing car. 

    Some of the catholic priests of the dark ages thought it vanity, waste, and a detriment to spiritual climbing to even take time to bathe. The Law of Health says, “If the temple where you kneel to pray can have thousands of dollars worth of stained glass and carved wood, then the physical temple that houses your spirit is worthy of cosmetic care.”

    There are those who say, “I would rather age gracefully.” But, who says such about their car: “I’m not going to wash or wax or repair that big dent from bumping into a pole because I’m just going to let my car age gracefully.” 

    Who says, “I’m not going to paint my house and sweep the floors because I’m just going to let it age gracefully and crumble and rot.”

    Yet, many will say with pride, “I’m just going to let my body age gracefully.”

    Conclusion

    The body-temple is worthy of scheduled maintenance that involves effort to climb to a better place of health of mind, body, and spirit. In considering schedules, the mechanics, the breath, and the cosmetics are important.

    Peace & health,
    signature
    Charles Runels, MD

    P.S. I hope you’re finding some hope in these lessons about the Law of Health. Feel free to forward this email to those whom you think might be helped.

    P.P.S. If you received this email from a friend, you can go here to subscribe to the course: Law of Health: 10 Essential Steps to Glorious Health & Miraculous Healing.

  • 3 Fight Speeches to Help You Win the War for Health

    My healthiest patients are willing to fight for their health

    (it’s one of the Laws of Health).

    Gladiator looks his son’s murderer in the eye and speaks his reason for being alive–which is tied to his Love for his son.

    Do you say you're willing to "die" for the person you love? Then, are you willing to go through the pain of living in a different way for that same someone you love?
If you would die for the person you love, then will you go through the pain of doing without the thing that makes life not as good for that same person because it affects your health?
Will you go through the pain of exercise or of eating the healthier food?

    The healthy enjoy better health because they need their Body-Temple in its best condition to show their Love and are willing to fight…

    The Law of Health, Buddism, the Tao, Christianity, and Al Pachino–all say Life (and Health) begin with the willingness to die…

    Rocky tells his son it’s not how hard you hit, it’s if you’re willing to get back up. Some have the misconception that healthy people never get off track with their health–they do. But,

    The healthy get back on track the DAY they get off track (they get back up), where often the unhealthy give up for weeks or months at a time…

    I said 3 Fight Speeches, but here’s an extra for good measure.

    “Lying in your beds” who would not want to go back and fight for freedom from disease?

    Savage Factors™

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    EVERY WOMAN & MAN IS SCULPTOR AND PAINTER OF THE BODY-TEMPLE

  • Law of Health. Love. Lesson 1

    If you want to find the laws of driving, you go to the courthouse or read a sign.

    If you want to know the spiritual laws, you read the scriptures.

    But, if you want to find the unchangeable laws of health, if you want to know what rules of health have always been and will always be, where do you go?

    The First Law is Love.
    Here’s Lesson 1 (click)<–

     

  • Law of Health…10 Essential Steps to Glorious Health & Miraculous Healing

    If you want to find the laws of driving, you go to the courthouse or read a sign.

    If you want to know the spiritual laws, you read the scriptures.

    But, if you want to find the unchangeable Law of Health, if you want to know what rules of health have always been and will always be, where do you go?

    Eleven years ago (after 20 years of studying those who suffer from disease and those who enjoy superior health) I wrote my best understanding of the unchanging Law of Health. Considering the current worries and needs of the current coronavirus pandemic, I thought the laws might be helpful to reconsider.

    To examine the Law of Health, enter your info in the form below; you will receive the first lesson on the first law as an email. The lessons are completely free and of course, you can unsubscribe at any time and your email is never sold or shared.

    Study the law (will come as an email most days for the next 10 weeks). If it makes sense to you, then do some of the actions suggested (to have a better life requires doing-not just knowing).

    DO NOT GIVE UP THE ADVICE OF YOUR PHYSICIAN. Simply consider these specific laws of health with your physician and other health advisors.

    Live the truth you know today (in an imperfect human way) and tomorrow you will find more truth. Look for the next email lesson within 24 hours. If you do not receive, please let me know at DrRunels@Runels.com