Health Lessons

Tag: awaken

  • The Relation of Negative Influences to Energy

    To be awake requires energy.

    One of the common complaints that people bring to their physician is “fatigue.” Sometimes, when people complained to me about fatigue, I found serious diseases like cancer or heart failure. In that case, curing the disease would help the fatigue.  But, there are three categories on the fatigue-awake scale that are not often discussed that do not necessarily involve a “disease.”

    Point A

    On the diagram below, look at point A.  If you look at the scale, you will see that as negative influences go up (emotional drama, guilt, poor diet, even physical disease, poor health practices) the person dwindles in energy.  But, here’s the surprise: because the scale is not linear, as the person decreases negative influences, he/she will not experience much increase in energy.  So, there will be little motivation to continue efforts to remove negative influences.

    Point A is where most people live.

    All the way to the right on the scale, you find death.  But before death, the negative influences are so great that the person experiences little change in state even with something very negative.  Often, as a physician, I have seen people in the emergency room who were under so many negative influences (drugs/alcohol) that they were not even aware that they had been shot or stabbed.

    Finding Creativity Through the Removal of Negative Influences

    Someone living at A will need strong, even unnatural influences, to experience improved energy and pleasure (hence a leaning toward drug abuse).  We all crave any emotion other than boredom and fatigue. It’s why we go to the movies. Most would prefer fear (scary movies), sorrow (tear-jerking dramas), or fear (action movies), or desire (sex movies) over boredom. It’s what art does for us…wake me up, scare me, make me laugh, make me cry–anything but boredom. 

    But, don’t really hurt me. That’s a movie or a good book or just good art.

    So, when someone lives at A, it takes a great stimulant to bring them back to energy.

    Not that movies or art are not helpful.  Artists and poets create for us both heaven and hell and hold up for us both love and hate. But, on a physical level, living at A is miserable and making it back to B, where one may feel an upsurge in energy will require removing multiple negative factors.

    The main point about point A is that patience will eventually bring them back, but getting from A to B will require patience because immediate and dramatic effects may not be felt when adopting good habits.

    Point B

    At point B, one starts to experience increased energy due to the removal of sufficient negative factors. This would also represent most young people for whom the negative influences of poor diet, exercise, or mental and spiritual abuse of themselves have not yet affected them.

    Most healthy adults practicing good diet and exercise will routinely make it here.  Because of the sensation of the fall back to fatigue when practicing wrong habits, this person will usually get back on the right path pretty quickly because they will miss the energy lost.

    But, most seldom remove enough negative influences to make it to point C.

    Point C

    At point C, the person has removed so many negative factors that he/she operates from a place of creativity, natural flow of energy, love, and even can reach spiritual enlightenment.  Achieving this will often require the practice of fasting, prayer, meditation, reading of scriptures/philosophy, and a more diligent removal of negative influences and habits–and the practices of other positive habits–than most are willing to do.

    Notice that at this level, even a slight movement to the right on the negative influences line will drop energy precipitously.

    The person at C will notice a drop in focus and creativity with even the slightest change. Not that this person is fragile, but their focused mental and spiritual state is sensitive.

    The Muse will run, the angels will fly, the vision will fade when offended.

    Making it to C, once felt, will cause a person to thirst for GOD, to hunger for health, to beat the walls in anguish, go without food, leave their friends and family–anything to climb back up the hill.

    Richard Bucke, who experienced an enlightenment episode while traveling in his carriage, wrote about this experience and the conditions that may lead to it (in Cosmic Consciousness) and how it changes one forever.

    The purpose of the Law of Health is to move one to the left on the Negative Influences scale as far as one may dare to go.

  • Expect to be Hated

    Law 4 Awaken Lesson 6-Expect to be Hated

    After spending years developing what became the O-Shot® procedure, I offered the treatment to Susan. She had suffered permanent scarring of her vagina and anus from the physical abuse dealt her by her former husband.

    On her lunch hour, Susan walked to my office from the bank where she; and we did the procedure.

    One month later, Susan called me.
    “The pain I suffered during sex is gone completely,” she exclaimed. “And, I’m not leaking urine when I run or needing to get out of bed to use the restroom—I’m able to hold my urine. Because I’m now able to sleep and exercise, I feel much better overall and I’ve lost weight.”

    Six months later, Susan married her high school sweetheart.

    Soon, I started teaching and researching and talking to the press about the O-Shot® procedure.

    Then came the surprise.

    Sex therapists and other physicians started attacking me online. Even though the materials and methods we use to do the O-Shot® procedure (PRP) had been researched for over a decade (with positive results and a very safe side effect profile), extreme, hate-filled posts and writings appeared regarding me and the other 1,000 plus providers of the O-Shot® procedure (including gynecologists and urologists).

    Reading the criticisms of those who poured the hate, it was easy to see that those who hated us understood neither PRP nor how we did the procedure; they made assumptions based on a less-than-awake and less-than-informed state.

    Still, I initially felt surprised and hurt. Those feelings of mine were very immature.

    When you awaken to Truth about your occupation, your health practices, your love relations, you will (because you are awake) see things that others cannot see.

    The man who discovered heart catheterization was kicked out of his hospital. The man who first suggested that physicians wash their hands after delivering babies—also, kicked out of the hospital and died in the insane asylum.

    Socrates was forced to drink poison. Boethius, Mandela, Bunyan were all imprisoned. Please make note: they were imprisoned not for harming another person but for their ideas about how to bring peace and harmony.

    Dr. George Sheehan, the cardiologist—who wrote a regular article in Runners World about the health benefits of running—was considered to be a quack by his colleagues. It’s difficult to comprehend now, but in the 1970’s cardiologists largely thought that because the left ventricle of the heart enlarged in runners, that running was not beneficial to longevity. Now we know that aerobic exercise does more to prevent heart disease than any blood pressure or diabetes medication.

    But, George Sheehan was largely hated by many cardiologists of the 1970s.

    When you wake up and then live the truth that you see when awake, you will be disliked. You will not only be debated and opposed, (listen carefully) when you wake up and live the truth you see—by some, you will be HATED.

    HATED.

    I promise.

    It’s not “maybe” someone will not like you.
    I’m guaranteeing—HATED.

    You may even be harmed in reputation, financially, or even bodily.

    When the hate happens, you note it so you can think strategically; but, if you pay too much attention to the hate, you will modify your life to live the truth of the haters. Then, you die in spirit and become despondent, or dull, or even spiritually or physically dead. The muse hides. The angels cry. And you join the timid who run with the mob rather than the brave who fight with their GOD.

    Read.
    Observe.
    Listen.
    Then, go inside. That is where you find your awake Self and Your principles of health.

    Then, as you live your truth, expect to be hated.

    Previous lessons in the Law of Health discuss the need for Love and Fight to find health; but, when it comes to becoming Awake, since arrows are deflected more easily when expect, you would do well to remember to expect to be hated.

    Important

    C.S. Lewis noted that there are three reasons for pain and suffering: (1) pain as a consequence doing wrong (2) pain for doing good, and (3) pain for reasons we don’t understand.

    Ted Bundy and Mahatma Gandhi were both loved and hated during their life. Bundy was swooned over; Gandhi was demonized and assassinated. Since both doing good and doing wrong can lead to pain, then pain and the hatred or love of others cannot be a reliable gauge. No worries though because the test is simple: Is that I’m doing helping others or hurting them?

    Go inside and ask and answer that question. That is your guide. For strategy, you can note the hate and the love from outside, but for your purpose and your health practices, use that simple test.

    Do Today

    In a quiet place, ask yourself just two questions:

    1. Does everyone like me?
      (If the answer is “yes”) Am I not doing something that would lead to better health of me and those around me so that I can be liked by all?
    2. Does anyone dislike or hate me?
      (If the answer is “yes”) Is the thing for which I am hated bringing better or lesser health and happiness to others?

    Further Reading…
    The Courage to be Disliked<–

  • Law of Health: 4 Awaken. 5-Beginner’s Mind

    September 1966, Birmingham, Alabama, 6 years old, I woke early and my mother cooked scrambled eggs in an iron skillet. There were real butter and real grits. I ate them with my father. He drank coffee and ate more of the eggs than I. My younger sisters still slept.

    Then, I walked 1/2 block to the corner to catch bus #98.

    An older boy at the bus stop, Bobby Campbell, sat with me during the ride. The older boys at the back of the bus “cussed” and seemed big and menacing.

    That was my first day at school.

    I also remember my first day of swimming lessons. I felt cold and the deep end of the pool was the bluest water I’d seen. The teacher seemed beautiful, and graceful in her one-pieced, blue, swimsuit, and black hair which reflected the summer sun, and her shoulders strong when she climbed from the water.

    Six years later, age 13, night time, a cold Tennessee creek full of snakes, stars poking through a mountain sky in July, and me sitting on a rock with a pretty dark-haired girl from Muscle Shoals–Paula.

    She gave me my first kiss.

    Remembering those three teachers (of bus rides and swimming and kissing) and the attention I gave to those teachers shows me my best beginner’s mind.

    Imagine the focus and eagerness to learn, the beginner’s mind, with the first bus ride, the first time to jump into deep water, the first kiss.

    If I use that same mind, even now, when I travel, plunge into water, or touch my lover–then I learn.

    Just a book? Then it stays closed.

    Only water? I sit on the side of the pool while the children swim.

    Just my lover’s mouth? Then I miss the depths of a different spiritual pool.

    Traps that kill the beginner’s mind…

    Trap 1: Letting a name become an explanation.

    Naming it “gravity” does not explain why two objects are attracted with a force proportional to mass and inversely proportional to separating distance. Names do not explain.

    Trap 2: Thinking the first answer is a real answer.

    Ask “why?” five times in a row, and you’re always left with an unanswered question.

    Trap 3: Not living with the question.

    Most can’t tolerate the unknown. So they let a name or the answer to the first “why” become the answer. Get to the real questions. Then live with the question and your life becomes the answer.

    That is the “beginner’s mind.”

    Only with the beginner’s mind can you find your best health.
    This is one of the lessons teaching the Law of Health (which never changes).

    Peace & health,

    Charles Runels, MD

    Law of Health<–
    3-Day Fat Burn<–

  • Law of Health: 4 Awaken: 1-Don’t be a Dog on the Porch

    Law of Health: 4 Awaken: 1-Don’t be a Dog on the Porch

    When I was a child, my Father and I would often sit on the porch swing.

    That porch was in a unique place: I could climb onto my bicycle and be at the steel mills in Birmingham, Alabama, within a few minutes; I could also go the other direction and travel through the forest all day and never cross a paved road.

    The steel companies owned miles of property that they would later strip mine for coal, and that is where I would go to be alone and away from the city. Later, after the strip-mining, this land would be flat pine forest (with the pines planted to reclaim the ground). But, when I was a child, there were steep hills, and streams, and massive oaks, and muscadine vines, and rabbits, and snakes, and quail.

    My Father and I each had an English setter. His was solid white and he called her Sue. Mine was speckled with black and I called her Pat. Both dogs had a sweet disposition and a quiet way but would go hyperactive when headed for the forest because they loved to hunt for the quail that was plentiful then.

    I would come home from school and leave home with Pat, usually without my gun and head for the forest and walk until I found what most people find on the inside when they walk for hours without crossing a paved road.

    In the evenings when my Father and I sat in the porch swing, sometimes Sue and Pat would lie close to the swing to be close to us and listen.

    They were aware of each other, of being home, and of being near my Father and I. But, the details of our conversation were unknown to them.

    The philosopher and psychologist, William James, said in his book Pragmatism that we are like dogs on the front porch. There is conflict, and love and war that wages all around us of which we are unaware. We are to those other realms as Pat and Sue were to the conversation of my Father and me.

    When it comes to health for mind and body and spirit, it helps to wake up and become less like a dog on the front porch.

    Einstein asked his students,  “Of all there is to know, what percentage is known by the accumulation of all human knowledge?”

    One of his students replied, “4%.”

    Einstein answered, “What is the chance that GOD exists in the other 96%?”

    I do not think that the human mind and physical reach are capable of knowing a large percent of what is known about the universe. But, the mind is capable of reaching much further than most people reach.

    The mind and the spirit and body are so intertwined that when one suffers, all three are affected. The reverse is also true; developing a more awakened state can lead to better health.

    All 10 Laws of Health lead to a more awakened state. But, it helps to consider this idea separately.

    Here’s a simple example: Arnold Schwarzenegger (in his book, Education of a Bodybuilder) says that when he lifted weights, he would focus so intensely on the muscle that he was training that he would imagine being inside the muscle–imagine it growing to the size of a mountain.

    The Olympic and professional athlete will tell you that focus and concentration are necessary for excellent health and performance of the body.

    Though I’m not trying to become an Olympic star, I do want to be the best animal that I can be as well as the best mind and spirit. Awakening the mind and spirit as much as possible facilitates becoming a better animal.

    This idea of awakening can be and should be thought about on several levels. Before considering how to become fully awake, consider what it looks like to be asleep. In the classic book, A Brave New World, Alex Huxley talks about a society sedated by drugs and realistic movies that keep people from thinking. There become a relative morality and a general decline and fall.

    Being asleep in America can mean being hypnotized by television, where no image lasts longer than about 4 seconds.

    Count the next time you watch. 1000, 2000, 3000, 4000, and before you say 5000, the image will switch. There’s a continuous flickering of pictures to keep one mesmerized and glued to the television–asleep. Then add food that makes one feel lethargic. Now, add beverages that turn down the volume on the mind and senses.

    And while this goes on family and work and the sky and the laws of physics and mechanics of business turn unstudied and untouched by the person made near comatose by such influence.

    Compare that with the person fully awake–aware of as many planes and areas as possible and plugged into that mechanism including the development of good physical health.

    Sometimes, it helps to sleep. There is a time and place for it. But, most people spend most of their day mostly asleep and then wonder why sleep does not come easily at night. So, I’m not saying that there is never a time to turn down the mind. But, there should be an effort to awaken the mind and body and spirit as much as possible to be animal, body, and spirit on the highest level possible.

    Awakening can happen on several levels:

    1. Simply waking up in the morning.

    2. Listening to those more intuitive or knowledgeable about what it is you want to know

    3. Thoughtfully awake to new information.

    4. Being awake to what’s going on with your own body.

    5. Being awake to things of the spirit.

    It isn’t easy to be healthy and vibrant if your practices put you to sleep. There are ways other than television that people use to hypnotize themselves into letting an hour, or a day, or a year pass without caring for the body.

    Next, we’ll discuss why people go to sleep and how you can awaken and become more alive with better health.

    Today, simply watch (without trying to change) and see how you might be dulling your mind or body or spirit.

    Peace & Health,

    Charles Runels, MD

    Runels.com

    Books<–