The Wizard of Was

01/21/2020

While Functional Medicine seeks to combat disease and promote health through lifestyle changes, Functional-Integrative Transformational Medicine (FITM) seeks to grow us beyond the mere absence of disease, addressing all aspects of human health and wellness to empower transformational growth.

What is transformational growth? In mainstream models of healthcare, health and disease are viewed as null and negative points on a number line. When we are in active dis-ease or dysfunction, we are seen by the medical community as being in a negative number value of health: -1 or lower, depending on the severity of the circumstances. The job of the clinician at this point is to get us back to a null point: Zero. The absence of disease.

It is vitally important to note that the mere absence of destructive influences is not the same thing as thriving in optimum health and transformational wellness -- the actual goal states of FITM. The positive numbers along the number line of wellness.

Transformational medicine is concerned with what we do once we are out of trouble. Becoming the person you were born to be requires progressing through phases of personal development, physically, emotionally, cognitively, and spiritually. We endeavor to break our chains by outgrowing them, placing a premium on exploring our matured identities, thriving on the other side of unfolding into our Authentic Self -- the person we are when living through our actualized thoughts, ideas, values, beliefs, energies and expectations.

While standard healthcare is about recovering a state of no-illness, transformational healthcare is about shooting so far into the plus territory that your old health concerns are left behind, like the shed cocoon of a matured butterfly. Metamorphosis into a you who is no longer susceptible to the concerns of your past.

This process of growing out of reach of your old issues is the process of moving matters of stalled health and development from the realm of "Is", to the realm of "Was", clearing the slate to make room for a new Is -- one in which we thrive in the richness of strong bodies, hale minds, and opened spirits.

Love On.

06/26/2018

Functional Medicine seeks to prevent disease and promote health, by improving the quality of the foods we eat, the thoughts we think, and the exercise we give our bodies.

Mark Sisson, writer and founder of Mark's Daily Apple, has a "Primal Blueprint" PDF on his website, in which he describes the historical influences on evolutionary biology that drive current-day optimal health. They include such items as being safe and avoiding injury; foods to eat and foods to avoid; and more. One of the items I like the best is his admonition that we "do a little a lot, and a lot a little" as exercise guidelines.

Our ancestors were constantly engaged in some degree of physical work on daily basis. They taxed their bodies at a constant low-grade level. Occasionally, they had to tax their bodies at a much higher level of intensity. These spanned-interval differences turn out to be good guidelines for physical training and exercise programs in the modern era.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the vital life energy of the body is called, "chi", or "qi". Exercising for longevity is tailored to moving the qi in a specific way, in contrast to exercise routines targeting building a summer body, or getting the perfect butt. This purpose if this exercise routine is to move the qi, while avoiding injury. It can benefit the overall health of athletes from 13 to 80, and has a peripheral aim of activating the epigenetic imprint of vascular health, musculoskeletal strength, and neurological tone stamped in our DNA by environmentally successful ancestors: There are a lot of cool training routines out there, with cool logic, but this one was created to mimic the workload patterns of our genetic predecessors, to awaken the dormant and hearty survival genes of our ancient ancestors.

For decades, exercise aficionados argued about the benefits of particular approaches. Some insisted that high repetitions of low weight were the best way to go, while others held that low reps on heavy weights were best.

As it turns out, they were both right. Each is appropriate in it's given context, and the training intervals that implement both are the most beneficial.

The following is a 4-day training split I recommend for clients interested in getting back in shape, or in developing strength and athleticism to benefit their health and combat aging, investing in their longevity. I've had the benefit of putting hundreds of clients on it over the years, and all of them have reported positive benefits as a result.

The first 3 days target specific areas if the body, and the fourth day is spent engaging in strength training exercises used by powerlifters to shock their muscles to growth. The exercises engaged during the first 3 days are trained at light-medium resistance levels: You should easily be able to perform 3 sets of 20 repetitions without straining yourself. We are endeavoring to simulate the effects of daily work as Hunter-Gatherers, who spent more of their days picking, digging, preparing, and repairing than they spent lugging large-game kills.

But, intermittently, successful hunters DID succeed at downing large prey animals. They also occasionally had to drag large rocks or logs around to solidify their lodgings. So...

At least once a week, train for strength using the large muscle groups of your body, to push around significant resistance. Each exetcise should be approached in 4 sets: a warm-up set, to increase blood flow to muscles before heavy loading, and to prime synovial fluid in associated joints for injury prevention. The resistance for this warm-up set should be light enough that you can complete a set of ten repetitions, but heavy enough that you are struggling to complete the 9th and 10th repetitions.

The next two sets should be heavy enough to make you have to stop at or around the 5th repetition. We typically write this as "4-6", meaning you should reach momentary muscle failure somewhere around the fourth, fifth, or sixth repetition. If you can do more than that, it's too light, and you should add more weight.

The final set should be heavy enough to limit you to 2 or 3 repetitions before you just can't go on. If you are training without a partner who can spot you, be sure to stick with machines that allow you to crap-out without dropping the weights on yourself.

The 4 exercises for the power day are Bench Press, Squats, Cable Rows, and Deadlifts: You can find tips for proper form by googling the exercises and following the links, which you can do for all of the following exercises.

Beginners and busy people can allow a day between each workout, following something like a Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday training schedule. More avid athletes can do four days in a row, taking the fifth day to rest, before starting the training split over again.

So, the Split:

Day One: Chest and Triceps
Day Two: Back and Biceps
Day Three: Legs, Shoulders, and Abs
Day Four: Power Training.

Each workout should start with 20 minutes of cardio to elevate the pulse rate and raise the core tempurature of the body to prevent injury.

Sets and repetitions are written as X/Y, Sets/Repetitions. So, if we are targeting 4 sets of 10 repetitions, that would be written as "4/10."

Remember: This isn't a progressive-resistance bodybuilding routine. It's a health and longevity program, designed to mimic the challenge patterns and conditions our Hunter-Gatherer ancestors lived, daily. So, on days 1-3, the weight is a light resistance.

Day One: Chest and Triceps
- Warm-Up, 20 minutes on treadmill or bike.
- Chest Press (machine or barbell), 3/20
- Incline Chest Press (machine or barbell), 3/20
- Triceps Push-Down, 2/20
- Skull-Crusher Triceps Extension, barbell, 2/20
Go home and eat protein, and het a dose of healthy fats. For example a chicken breast cooked in olive oil and spices, with a green salad and an avocado.

Day Two: Back and Biceps:
- Warm-Up, 20 minutes on treadmill or bike
- Seated Cable Row, 3/20
- Lat Pull-Down, 3/20
- Bentover Low Row (barbell), 3/20
- Seated Dumbell Curls, 2/20
- Standing Brachialis Dumbell Curls (palm doesn't fully supinate), 2/20
Go home and eat some protein, and get a dose of healthy fats. Another example might include a large serving of a wild-caught fatty fish.

Day Three: Legs, Shoulders & Abs
- Warm-Up, 20 minutes on treadmill or bike
- Seated Dumbell Shoulder Press, 3/15
- Standing Barbell Upright Row, 3/15
- Thigh Extensions (machine), 3/20
- Hamstring Curl Machine, 3/20
- Ab Crunch Machine, 3/20
Go home and eat some protein, and a good dose of healthy fats. Perhaps a protein shake, mixed in a blender with some flax seed oil.

Day 4: Power Training
- Warm-Up, 20 minutes on treadmill or bike.
- Bench Press, 1/10, 2/4-6, 1/2-3
- Squats, 1/10, 2/4-6, 1/2-3
- Deadlifts, 1/10, 2/4-6, 1/2-3
- Cable Rows, 1/10, 2/4-6, 1/2-3.
Go home and eat some protein, and a good dose of healthy fats.

Try it for 2 months, and see how your body changes. You should notice improvements in brain function; easier movement while addressing common life tasks; improved longevity markers in blood and urine tests; and high-quality, evenly distributed muscle development. You should notice an improved immune system, though some people report getting a "cold" during the first two weeks, as their bodies mobilize and expel toxins stored in the perivascular lymph system.

It takes about a month, to a month-and-a-half for your body to adapt to new exercise regimens, so you should expect some soreness. Remembering to drink plenty of water and eat more servings of protein can help to minimize the amount of DOMS you experience (delayed-onset muscle soreness).

So give it a shot if you like, and see which of the benefits of an epigenetic-activation exercise routine stand out for you the most. As with any change in exertion levels, check with your personal physician to ensure you are healthy enough for the challenges of these exercises. Let us know about your results in the comments section, below.

02/23/2018

To See more, Feel more, Do more, and Be more... to Live and Laugh; Love and Learn. It's why we're put here on this Earth.

If you're not living life through the filters of Self-Actualization and Authentic being, make a concerted effort to discover why, and change it.

When we get stuck, we tend to think that change is impossible. In fact, the energy of change is the only constant in life. Life is always changing. It takes effort not to change with it. Redirecting that effort to step back into the flow of change, will allow us to participate in life at a richer level of experiential Joy, then when we insist on staying the same.

Learning to Live in Love and Light, or L4, should be the call words we all use to face each day.

02/17/2018

We are always in a State of Trance. If trance is defined as internally directed attention, then we must realize that we never really grasped with the outside world. Filtering Our Lives Through the Windows of perception, even our consensus reality is just an agreed-upon pool of subjective experiences. There is no out there, out there. Some trance states are more internally directed than others, peering into the subjective World rather than endeavoring to connect with what we think is an outside world.

Our trance States can be subdued and internally focused, or excited an extremely focused. However, they are all trance.

02/09/2018

This video covers a lot of how and why NLP and hypnosis work so well for transformational change. We do not perceive, truly. We form guesses based on experiences, perceive what we think ought to be true based on those suspicions, and then project the world out through our windows of perception and Consciousness, combined. Truly, we don't see the world as it is, but rather as we are. As we have surmised it should be, based on a number of previous input experiences to our mind and brain.

It is as if we become experts in living in 10 square feet of a 40-acre field. Change work simply consists of enabling the mind to explore the rest of the acreage, find Alternatives, and move in to a different 10-feet for a spell. Then, rinse and repeat.

You are not who you are because of some biological imperative. You are who you are because of the repetitive embracing of a specific set of internal representations, perceptions, and projections. Explore new territory, and become a new you.

Right now, billions of neurons in your brain are working together to generate a conscious experience -- and not just any conscious experience, your experienc...

11/30/2017

How do we Wizard our Way, to Was?

If every fear hides a wish, what do your fears say about the truest desires if your heart?

Part 2 of this equation can be painful. What is the desire of your heart, and how does not pursuing it destroy you?

We often have this idea that, if we knew what lay ahead, we would take action to avoid it if it were bad, or engage it if it were good. Some people say we are unable to make the best decisions to change our lives, being trapped in our pathology by our own beliefs and limitations. Could you steer out if you wanted to? If we consider how failing to pursue our dreams destroys us in a predictable way, can we pull out of the nose dive and chase after Who We Are? If so, what will you do about it next?

Some of us fear failure, some of us fear greatness, and the sum of us fear mediocrity. What fears hide which wishes, and what is to be done to change the path of destruction caused by failing to pursue once trust desire? It's a bit of a tangled not, indeed. However, those willing to entangle it can literally change their lives and change their fate.

And doing this sort of changing Destiny work with clients, I have noticed a common theme. We tend not to confide to ourselves, in real words, what it is we fear, what it is we wish for, and the impact that not pursuing our desires has, or what we might do differently if we were to stop investing our energy and denying ourselves the right to pursue the desires of our hearts. Speak to yourself the words that are true.

I fear___ Because I want___.

Not going after it is causing the following negative results in my life: ____ .

If I were to unbind the shackles on my spirit, and pursue the deepest desires if my heart, I would start doing _____ .

It's a hell of a nut to crack because it implies that we are responsible for our contributing to them daily through the choices we make and the actions we take) requires us to embrace them, and invites us to grieve years of loss...the loss of what truly would have brought us genuine joy, comfort, meaningful fulfillment, had we but gone after it. However, it also frees us. By naming the beast, it helps us start forming an action plan that brings us closer to being our Authentic Self in daily living.

Don't bare your soul here. Merely consider the answers to the questions, in the context of identifying what we must give up, to get what we want. Including who we may have made ourselves believe we were, to get by with decisions we may have made, once upon a time.

We break our chains, by outgrowing them.

Wanna play along? Take out a sheet of paper and a pen, and answer the above questions for your 3 deepest fears.

09/18/2016

Help me be changed, so I can change the world.

If not an instrument, then why?

09/10/2016

Ok. Poll. As a many - decades practitioner of NLP and hypnosis, I look sideways at these products rolling through my feed that have converted the rich territory of the Milton Model (hypnotic language patterns of Dr. Milton H Erickson, MD) into cheap parlor trick hypnosis for scamming people as you sell used cars, or pick up women, or whatever.

I am considering putting an instructional video together that explores hypnotic relanguaging in the context of therapeutic change, and personal transformation. If I build it, will they come?

Or have we been reduced to a glob of hedonistic manipulators incapable of exploring the potential depths of relationship with others, and within ourselves?

01/15/2014

"Bio-Hacking" is a term used to describe the processes through which we hack into the unexpressed genetic potential hiding in the human genome, suppressed there as a result of negative environmental stimuli on the epigenetic soup -- lousy foods, environmental toxins, insufficient movement or exercise, a flat noetic connection to life, and so on. "Neuro-Hacking" specifies a bio-hacker approach to awakening the immense potential within the human brain and nervous system, so one might better approach life from the totality of a vibrant, awake, alive and alert mind, rather than with neurons dulled by mindless, unintentive living.

I would propose this: Mind is not truly resident in the body, and yet infuses and operates throughout the whole of it: our nervous system, and likely every cell in our body, participates in holographic, quantum cognition, akin to the wi-fi device and hard-drive components in modern computers. Our awarenesses are focused on a "nowstream", which DOES NOT represent the totality of our existence. Quantum Philosophers posit that we each exist in a number of dimensions... concurrently existing times and places, in which entire universes are quite thin; reside next to each other like stacked panes of glass; and which communicate with each other through the sharing of quantum particles and strings. Time, as a dimension of measure, is not fixed as we perceive it to be. Rather, one OUTSIDE these panes would be able to look in, and see that past, present and future are, in fact, all happening at the same time, and each functions as a variable in influencing the other. In other words, they are always re-writing themselves, based on the perspective and expectations of the Viewer.

We, as the in-time DO-er, can access this removed position of the Observer, and modify our experience of the current Nowstream by accessing information located elsewhere in the complexity of the Hologram... the quantum-connected latticework holding us all together, in a Universe of forces that should be flying apart.

Let's say I'm wrong, and that the act of procedurally "Holo-Hacking" is merely a trick to convince the mind to view circumstances differently, approach life more resourcefully & thoughtfully, engage in more healthful and productive actions, and create better results. OK. So... fool me!

01/07/2014

There is a mental connection to the tension patterns in the body. Identifying those tensions, and learning to release them has proven to improve both the quality of life, and the length of it.

Functional Medicine looks at the health effects of the Foods You Eat, the Thoughts You Think, the Motion You Give Your Body, and the Connections You Have to Life and Relationship. This speaks to the mechanical aspects of health.

The entire Integral Anatomy Series is available for viewing on YouTube. V1, pt. 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K68kC9R7THc Here, Gil Hedley, Ph.D., of htt...

12/27/2013

Mind and its processes are not bound by the same constructs as our physical bodies. We can recall the past (and feel physiological responses to it); note the present & process it; and concieve of multiple possible futures at the same time, drawing insight from experiences we haven't even had yet. Harnessing this ability -- to mentally occupy, experience, draw from and capitalize on multiple, co-existing frames of Mind -- empowers us to drive our performance and results to newer and higher levels of excellence and productivity.