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A Health Information Management professional, I survived a life-threatening emergency with information that only a person of my professional experience would know. And I’m sharing it!
B'SD 16 Elul, 5777 My heart and mind ache for people in danger's path as several hurricanes have formed in one limited area. I pray for public safety, physical and mental health. While tending to other concerns, I paused in wonder to read someone's "What is support?" question in an online forum for promoting health. Here's the full question:
The reason I began this group was I knew I needed support - and still do.
But even though this group has been around for 15 years, I still don't know how to create the support for others
or to ask it from others... I think one has to have close friends who understand where we are coming from, as well as to understand
what [whole food healing] is about. Just to "confess," I ate this or
that doesn't seem like it would be where I'd want to go. Or to justify it
is also not what I need. To say, well, we're human,
we're not perfect, etc doesn't help me get back on track.
So what does????
I don't know.
Do you?
Here's the response that I sent to the questioner:
"What is Support?" is a valid question in multifaceted ways. I keep begging the public to stop eating processed foods which have been proven to cause cancer and other health problems, and to avoid excess foods. So do other health advocates. That's a limited support system.
I explain how to build a bigger support system in my public presentations and in doctor-recommended EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge print and E- book.
Whowrote it? The woman who made medical history several times over after going organic, avoiding all synthetics and shocking the medical world when she went from blind to sighted, from close to death to thriving aerobics enthusiast.
The medical world had literally written me off as "6 months" when [I was diagnosed with] a fatal brain tumor. But I learned of the cause for my many medical complaints in an emergency room, 18 months after the diagnosis had been made. The "We choose to remain silent" doctors who'd failed to inform me of the problem were certainly not a support system for me. I had to create one, and it had to work on the first try.
Support comes from adequate information sources, sympathetic friends and acquaintances. It also comes from the alternative healing world. Over time, I've built modest support in the western medical world... I've had to educate doctors willing to listen to me as I explained how they tend to err to the detriment of patients, and how to open up to healing possibilities they'd never considered before.
I used what I'd learned in my career as a medical coder, and as a mental health advocate. I teach coping skills techniques to my readers and to my life coaching clients (I focus on ill people wondering what to do about their situations).
Sometimes you have to blaze your own trail, ---. Some days all you need do is make the most of what's already within your reach." I welcome your responses and reactions to the above, readers. You can leave comments below this blogpost.
Support yourself, or someone else who needs the assistance, with the E-book or print edition of EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge. Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity.
Face Your Future with Optimism.
Fill your blanks with efforts to find what you need.
I'm back from a morning speaking engagement. My remarks were titled Fostering Medical Miracles. The crowd was quite interactive! People asked questions, responded to my remarks and sighed or gasped with me at specific intervals. Then they bought copies of the book.
Yes, my harrowing story turned out to be a miracle in the making. It can momentarily take your breath away to learn to the details.
It's a privilege to share insights about healing techniques that work. A blessing to be asked to address the pubic in this manner.
Want me to speak to your local interest group? Message me with your contact information.
Read about my astonishing recovery and the life lessons in it for YOU!
Buy the E-book or print edition of EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge. Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity.
Face Your Future with Optimism.
Fill your time with upbeat actions and thoughts.
B'SD 13 Tevet, 5777 I recently read several books that impressed me with the descriptions of profound improvements in the lives of their authors. Each had described how he or she had chosen to commit to specific healing and/or inspirational lines of thought and how that has had appealing impacts on their lives. Today I want to begin sharing excerpts from Sheldon Rice's book, A Formula for Joy. Here's the first excerpt:
A Formula for Joy
How fortunate I am! What gratitude I feel or the gifts the universe has provided me – consistent joy, devoted wife, perfect home, financial security and deep spiritual knowing that all is well. My three daughters and
five grandchildren provide harmony, love and
affection to us and to each other; they are a strong anchor in our lives. We live without medicine or pain. What more can I ask in the 78th year of my life?
I am blessed.
Some people relate happiness and joy to material gains; others require spiritual connection to feel complete. For me joy is a sense of contentment that results in a deep
sense of well being. Happiness for me is freedom from fear. It is made conscious
when I
appreciate all that I have,
particularly when I can compare it to how my life used to be. This
appreciation requires focusing on the now—how I feel now,
not what I may feel in the
future or felt in the past. When I am in a state of balanced mental, emotional, or physical
health, my joy is peaked.
What is the source of my incredible joy, and how did it come about? Luck alone cannot
explain it. After extensively pondering the issue, I concluded that there exist universal
truths that are
easy to understand although they can be difficult to apply. Successfully
realizing them has brought life changing rewards for me.
The purpose of this book is to inspire through the examples of these
simple concepts. Personal experience is the only real tool there is. Anyone
can do what I did by applying
effort, strong desire and deep self reflection.
There is no need to accept everything I write immediately. It is meant as food for thought that sometimes makes sense long after
the first time you read about the concepts I present here. On the other hand, something you read might answer an immediate personal issue.
Balance According to Yin and Yang
Applying universal truths helped me turn my life around. The first of these is the principle of yin yang
balance. Intuitively the idea makes sense to me, but its application to
my lifestyle, particularly in my case my eating practices, proved to be quite challenging.
Achieving balance requires significant habit changes, an elusive and often difficult initiative for many people. Why do some people make changes in their lives so easily once they are consciously stimulated to do so, while others
find it so difficult?
The ease of making changes is one of many personality traits illuminated through the esoteric science of numerology. We are all born with a personality planned for us by our
soul, yet anything can be changed through our free will. At least half of the
world
population—the percentage varies
from country to country—has difficulty making changes. Given sufficient incentive, anyone can make changes if they want to badly enough. For
me, making changes
is relatively easy. In fact, I changed to a macrobiotic diet literally
overnight. I decided and did it.
“Balance” always had been merely a buzz word for me, only translated into my day to day
reality when I first undertook macrobiotic cooking 30 years ago. It was then that the terms
yin and yang entered my vocabulary. Before that, I had had no way to measure or understand balance.
Everything existent may be classified as either yin (expansive) or yang (contractive). Balance is possible when these two universal forces are synchronized. For example, when Page 1 of 29 A Formula for Joywe dress warmly in winter we are comfortable because we are balancing expansive
warmth (yin) with its natural complement, contractive cold (yang). On the other hand, when we eat ice cream in winter, the effect on the
body is discomfort, as the cold food (yin) and
cold weather (yin) together create an imbalance of excessive yin. As a result we feel tired,
lethargic,
unfocused. These simple examples are easy to understand.
Stress, on the other extreme, is a contracted (yang) state. A person who by nature is
already relatively contractive–
drugs. In my case, stress
relief was mainly through sugar. The problem with all these solutions is that they don’t
address the
underlying cause of the imbalance. Addressing and relieving the stress itself neutralizes the need for destructive habits
and restores personal control. Each person needs to balance his food intake with these natural considerations in mind.
There is no single, universal formula for achieving balance. I know when I am relatively
balanced in my daily life by
the way I feel. It can be a long time in coming and yet happen
in a moment. Even then it fades in and out.
When I feel content, I am balanced.
My mind is
clear to pursue my chosen activities.
Imbalance for me means remaining hungry after I eat. I feel agitated and dissatisfied, and
find it hard to relax. If I lose control, I find myself endlessly and restlessly
snacking. With
attention, I can examine the quality and quantities of what I ate to find balance. I don’t
believe that everyone
has to follow a macrobiotic lifestyle to feel balanced. There are many
healthy diets that leave people feeling good. The important thing is that balance requires good eating habits that leave us in a happy, good feeling place.
My eating imbalance originated with early childhood training. My parents came from a Belarus village in the Pale of
Settlement, perhaps similar to the one in Fiddler on the Roof without the sentiment. For them, low body weight meant that
when the next famine comes there won’t be enough physical reserves to fall back on. My mother’s neurotic food
obsession led her to insist that from an early age I eat more, regardless of my appetite.
In order to be sure that I ate enough, my mother spoon fed me until I was six years old.
Not sure how to stop this insidious force feeding, she revealed the details to my school
teacher in my presence. I have never forgotten that shame. Even in my adult years she
loved telling everyone how she had allowed me to break dishes while she fed me, just so
I
would keep eating.
These early obsessions around food inevitably led to patterns of overeating that continued
for a good part of my life.
I binged consistently with sweets and anything else in the house
that was eatable. Though I was never obese, certainly had periods of being full-figured. The imbalance of alternately binging and dieting became a way of life for me for decades.
In my early 50s I adopted a macrobiotic lifestyle, seeking discipline in that structured framework. At first I continued
to overeat without control, until after a year and a half I was
diagnosed with a tumor somewhere between my
bladder and spine. Only when I realized that healing was contingent upon taking control of my eating habits did I learn to
release
my binging. The secret for me was in learning to chew, taking an hour to eat each meal.Chewing for such a long time left me balanced, satisfied with a relatively small quantity of
food.
This rigorous chewing regimen lasted over two years. For the first time I began to experience balance on a daily basis.
It was an incredible relief as I could now focus my
mind on activities other than food once I left the table.
After my tumor finally healed, my overeating habits resurfaced. I lost control once again,
this time with nourishing food. Overeating was so deeply ingrained that I couldn’t sustain
healthy eating patterns despite feeling so much better with them. Once again, the patterns
of binging and dieting returned.
About 18 years ago I had the good fortune of meeting with a superb hypnotherapist. My
desire for change was so strong that one session was enough for me to kick the habit of
overeating and this
time stick with it. What incredible good fortune! It has made such a big difference in my life, as my balance and good feeling have been restored. After a lifetime, binging is a problem I have put behind me.
Watch for a few more excerpts from A Formula for Joy when you visit this blog.
Buy the E-book or print edition of EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge. Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity.
Face Your Future with Optimism.
Fill your reading list with helpful materials.
I haven't updated the blog lately due to the limitations of my broken arm (accident last Sunday).
Here's the interesting idea I want to share you today:
Yesterday's medical exam revealed that my healing is 1.5 weeks ahead of medical expectations! And at my age!
I am confident that GOD's blessings and THE excellent nutrition that I advocate are responsible for the phenom.
Go organic. Rid your body of toxins that harm it. Fill your cells with the support they need.
Study with a competent naturopath.
Learn how and why a wholesome diet helped me to see, let alone to be healthy, again. Find out what that can do for YOU. Buy the E-book or print edition of EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge. Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity.
Face Your Future with Optimism.
Fill your mouth with good-for-you-food.
B'SD 29 Av, 5776 I've prepared for company during tomorrow's lunch, and cooked to my heart's delight. The thing is, when I cook for people they express surprise at learning they'd eaten macrobiotic food. It's not weird stuff: it is cooked from scratch, a balance of male-female strengths in whole grains, fresh produce, herbs, spices, sea leaves, and not a hint of preservatives, colorants or smell enhancers. Real food is a treat for the tongue. And WOW is it good for health! Here's some stir-fried kale with corn, carrots, cauliflower and sweet potato. I serve it topped with home grown mung bean sprouts. And there's never a bit left. Everybody enjoys this dense-nutrition dish. Look at this cauliflower tabouli with lime dressing! Not one grain in it, but the flavor is pleasing.
Couscous with currants, anyone?
Here's a salad of black-eyed peas with fresh basil.
My kitchen smells wonderful.
Have fun cooking up YOUR fun!
Happiness is good for improved health.
Build your inner and outer strength. Find creative ideas for improving your life. Buy the E-book or print edition of EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge. Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity.
Face Your Future with Optimism.
Fill your plate with fresh food and your health with happiness!
B'SD 16 Sivan, 5776 I posted a recipe for home made pesto a while back, and I've enjoyed tinkering with it over time. I also have a hobby of helping patients in a local hospital when they simply cannot stomach hospital food. I bring them home-made fare loaded with nutrition, flavor and pleasure-providing texture. The medical staff notices that they tend to do better soon after eating my home-cooked meals. This month I helped a friend, and he's been doing a review series on Facebook about everything I made for him (a LOT!). I doubt that any professional chefs have enjoyed such fun at having their hard efforts praised in public. My friend is making more medical progress, thank GOD. Here's a peek at his humor-filled food review series in progress:
Continuing with my reviews of Yocheved Golani's meals for me:
This is a home made pesto on rice cracker. Most pestos are purees, heavy on oil. This is a rather dry pesto with stems and leaves relatively intact. It's hard to describe the texture, almost like a dry rub. Delightfully different.
Want to develop a flair for fun with your medical mission? Buy the E-book or print edition of EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge. Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity.
Face Your Future with Optimism.
Fill your meals with wholesome food. That can improve your health!
