Showing posts with label Acid/Alkaline. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Acid/Alkaline. Show all posts
Thursday, 21 March 2013
March 21st 2013
I am a very sporadic blogger. I am what I am. Today I'm posting because I thought of my blog the other day and I haven't thought of it for some time. This year has been a year of new beginings for me. My daughter left home for University and I'm an empty nester now. My husband goes into semi-retirement next week and I'm just waiting to see what that brings. My scan is due and I'm on tenterhooks waiting for the hospital to contact me to arrange it. And today, for a change, the sun is shining and it looks like spring and the start of a new gardening year.
To prepare my body for the continued changes in my life I am going on a cleanse. I have prepared. I have bought the produce. I have got my recipes and my schedule in order. Today I begin with a green juice. Pretty basic. Spinach, celery, and cucumber. A squeeze of lemon. Green. Dark Kelly Green. It's OK. As green juices go its very mild. I've a glass in front of me and a small bottle in the fridge for this afternoon. I'll be trying a green smoothie at mid morning and mid afternoon (kale, spinach, broccoli. tomato, lettuce, garlic, cucumber and avocado, and any extras i can think of ), and I'll have soup ( vegetable ) for lunch and supper. I've signed up for Ross's alkaline cleanse on the " Energise For Life " website, and I'm trying his recipes. My own are far from great tasting, so I'm hoping to pick up some tips for making them more delicious. I've tried a green smoothie before and I'm a little trepidatious as I didn't like it. However, I'm going to give it another go. Raw foodists call them smoothies, but having had fruit smoothies I can say that mine was a long way from being anything like what I expected. They are more chilled soups in my mind. The plan is to do this for 7 days. Hopefully that will put me on the right path to juicing again as I haven't used my juicer in some time. And for motivation I have access to some videos Ross has made for the programme. I am also going to be watching " Hungry For Change " which is having a free viewing on the internet for the next 10 days at www.hungryforchange.tv/ Strange - when I've typed web addresses in before it's shown as a link. Google it if you want to watch. I highly recommend it. Another motivational movie I stumbled upon earlier this week is " fat, sick, and nearly dead " It can be watched on youtube and is very motivational. These guys juice for 60 days and undergo a huge transformation. The movie follows them and you get the feeling that if they can do it so can you. So I'm good to go for the next 7 days. I'd say I'll blog my progress, but that's not my pattern of the past. What I will say is that I will post my scan results when they come up. Fingers crossed !!!
Thursday, 29 January 2009
BREATHING IN AND OUT
I have found over time a number of breathing and visualisation exercises to calm the mind and body. Some time ago I read Betty Shine's Mind Workbook. In it she gives a number of visualisations. In one she gives instructions for constructing a pharmacy in your mind. This pharmacy is clearly described to make visualising easier and it is stocked with whatever medication you need. Whilst undergoing chemotherapy I would often journey to this pharmacy and treat myself. Over time the area developed. I built rooms off it to rest. Magically, I found I could fall back asleep quickly when I woke in the night if I visited this place. I visualised medicines - magic bullets (one for each ovary )that I would take from a box ( think Peter Cushing and vampires !!), the elixir of life ( in a chalice - think Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail or the sequel ), sleeping pills, and the hormone melatonin which your body makes in your sleep and is crucial for your immune system. As my sleep is interupted I now visualise and taste ( sometimes) the hormone in drug form boosting my own broken production. ( It comes in a glass ampule I break and it tastes like cats wee. Why, I don't know. I should have made it taste good. I don't even really know what cat's wee tastes like, but you get my drift.) Whilst having chemotherapy I would visit this place every night and it would give me comfort. These days I don't visit it quite so regularly. I have found other exercises which take my time.
The exercise I do each night now involves breathing and monitoring the breath. This one I found in the book "Living Proof : A Medical Mutiny" by Michael Gearin-Tosh, and he quotes from Jan De Vrie's and his book 'Cancer and Leukaemia : An Alternative Approach' . What you do is you feel your breath moving throughout your body. You start at your feet. Begin with your left foot and breathe up from the soles of your feet to the hip, and then exhale down to your foot again.. Do this seven times. The number 7 is an auspicious number in China and that is where I believe this exercise originated.. So I say lets believe in its magic! Move your attention over to the right foot and do the same again - 7 times. Follow this with breathing again from the left foot up to the hip, but now breathe across your hips and down the right leg to the right foot.. Swap sides and do it again another 7 times. Move on to the left arm starting in the hand and breathe up to the shoulder and back down again - 7 times. Do the same on the right side. Follow this by breathing up the left arm and across the shoulders, breathing up through the hand, across the shoulders and down the other arm. and repeat starting on the right and finishing on the left.Now move to your spine. breathe up and down your back bone 7 times. The penultimate part, and the one I find hardest is breathing through the skull. This takes concentration and is the hardest for me. Finally breathe through the whole body, starting at your feet and working up your arms and spine and skull, and breathe out going in the opposite direction, ending at your toes and fingertips. This exercise takes me about half an hour. And it does get easier to visualise and feel, though my experience is that some days are easier and more fluid than others.
There are benefits to doing this, though it does take discipline and I wouldn't do it if I didn't feel it did me good. It firstly calms the body. Deep breathing affects your nervous system. It is a physical fact. Just take three slow deep breaths and you will feel different. This exercise gives you 77 deep breaths. It oxygenates your body, and very importantly deep breathing makes your body more alkaline. Cancer thrives in an acidic environment, and creates it's own little pond of acidity from its waste products. Anything that moves your body towards an alkaline state is very important and should be actively pursued. Breathing is free. There are substances, which I'll mention another time, that will make your body more alkaline, but breathing is free !! This breathing through your feet or through the bones as it is known also stimulates the immune system, or that is my theory. Blood cells are made in the bone marrow. When breathing through the bones I visualise the oxygen moving the bone marrow up and down and stimulating new cells to grow. I do feel a change (A tightening of the muscles perhaps - I don't know exactly, and it doesn't matter to me because it is said that where the mind goes the body follows. ) The brain doesn't differentiate between imaginings and reality. If you imagine a really scary scenario you live it for the time you are thinking about it. Your body pumps out hormones and feels the stress you would feel if it were something happening right now, right this second. I take the view that if I'm having positive thoughts that my immune system is being massaged, then it can only have positive results. It will certainly do no harm. So I have these positive thoughts at least once a day. The last benefit is that it does relax me. I do it religiously each night when I get into bed and have no trouble falling asleep. When I first started doing it I would fall asleep during the process, and when I awoke would be able to carry on from where I left off !! It gives the mind something concrete to concentrate on and stops the incessant chunterings , fears and irritations of the day.
A very simple technique is to simply watch your breath going in and out as you would watch the sea waves. Count up to four breaths and then start again at one. Counting isn't necessary, but gives the mind something to focus on. It is also nice to listen to calm music as you do this. Classical music is perfect where there are no distracting words. My spiritual healer made a cd for her patients that has music carefully chosen to enhance this healing effect. She has also suggested to me visualising a golden healing and protecting light that arises at the crown of the head and encircles the body.
One other suggestion that my healer made and which I have found useful is to pack your thoughts , worries and doubts into a balloon, breathe it into a balloon and then let it go and off away it floats , or leave these pesky thoughts (for that is all they are ) in a rubbish bag outside the door.
This reminds me of one other process that I find very useful for relaxing when other things fail. I don't know the source or where I got it from. Imagine sitting in a chair or lying on a couch. Imagine that you are wearing a suit of armour. Now imagine the armour being removed piece by piece. I start at the toes' taking off toe guards, shoes, shin coverings, etc. Once I've come to the top I look down and often find there are additional protections which must also be removed. Obviously these coincide with where I hold tension. For me it is my abdomen ( isn't that where my ovaries are !!) It may be additional or alternative places for you. We evidently also hold a lot of tension in our jaws, so pay some attention to removing armour and masks from this area. This has an immediate de-stressing effect on me, but it's not something I would practice out in public ! We all need our armour on out in the real world.
One last technique which is widely practised is to create tension in muscles and then release it to gain greater relaxation in the muscles. For example, you tense your hand and forearm, hold it for a count, and then release it. In this way you feel the difference between tension and relaxation. You once again work your way along the body. You can start in the head or the feet, or wherever you want I suppose. I have used this technique in the past and found it very effective, but I use the other techniques more often. I don't feel a need to create more tension these days.
The exercise I do each night now involves breathing and monitoring the breath. This one I found in the book "Living Proof : A Medical Mutiny" by Michael Gearin-Tosh, and he quotes from Jan De Vrie's and his book 'Cancer and Leukaemia : An Alternative Approach' . What you do is you feel your breath moving throughout your body. You start at your feet. Begin with your left foot and breathe up from the soles of your feet to the hip, and then exhale down to your foot again.. Do this seven times. The number 7 is an auspicious number in China and that is where I believe this exercise originated.. So I say lets believe in its magic! Move your attention over to the right foot and do the same again - 7 times. Follow this with breathing again from the left foot up to the hip, but now breathe across your hips and down the right leg to the right foot.. Swap sides and do it again another 7 times. Move on to the left arm starting in the hand and breathe up to the shoulder and back down again - 7 times. Do the same on the right side. Follow this by breathing up the left arm and across the shoulders, breathing up through the hand, across the shoulders and down the other arm. and repeat starting on the right and finishing on the left.Now move to your spine. breathe up and down your back bone 7 times. The penultimate part, and the one I find hardest is breathing through the skull. This takes concentration and is the hardest for me. Finally breathe through the whole body, starting at your feet and working up your arms and spine and skull, and breathe out going in the opposite direction, ending at your toes and fingertips. This exercise takes me about half an hour. And it does get easier to visualise and feel, though my experience is that some days are easier and more fluid than others.
There are benefits to doing this, though it does take discipline and I wouldn't do it if I didn't feel it did me good. It firstly calms the body. Deep breathing affects your nervous system. It is a physical fact. Just take three slow deep breaths and you will feel different. This exercise gives you 77 deep breaths. It oxygenates your body, and very importantly deep breathing makes your body more alkaline. Cancer thrives in an acidic environment, and creates it's own little pond of acidity from its waste products. Anything that moves your body towards an alkaline state is very important and should be actively pursued. Breathing is free. There are substances, which I'll mention another time, that will make your body more alkaline, but breathing is free !! This breathing through your feet or through the bones as it is known also stimulates the immune system, or that is my theory. Blood cells are made in the bone marrow. When breathing through the bones I visualise the oxygen moving the bone marrow up and down and stimulating new cells to grow. I do feel a change (A tightening of the muscles perhaps - I don't know exactly, and it doesn't matter to me because it is said that where the mind goes the body follows. ) The brain doesn't differentiate between imaginings and reality. If you imagine a really scary scenario you live it for the time you are thinking about it. Your body pumps out hormones and feels the stress you would feel if it were something happening right now, right this second. I take the view that if I'm having positive thoughts that my immune system is being massaged, then it can only have positive results. It will certainly do no harm. So I have these positive thoughts at least once a day. The last benefit is that it does relax me. I do it religiously each night when I get into bed and have no trouble falling asleep. When I first started doing it I would fall asleep during the process, and when I awoke would be able to carry on from where I left off !! It gives the mind something concrete to concentrate on and stops the incessant chunterings , fears and irritations of the day.
A very simple technique is to simply watch your breath going in and out as you would watch the sea waves. Count up to four breaths and then start again at one. Counting isn't necessary, but gives the mind something to focus on. It is also nice to listen to calm music as you do this. Classical music is perfect where there are no distracting words. My spiritual healer made a cd for her patients that has music carefully chosen to enhance this healing effect. She has also suggested to me visualising a golden healing and protecting light that arises at the crown of the head and encircles the body.
One other suggestion that my healer made and which I have found useful is to pack your thoughts , worries and doubts into a balloon, breathe it into a balloon and then let it go and off away it floats , or leave these pesky thoughts (for that is all they are ) in a rubbish bag outside the door.
This reminds me of one other process that I find very useful for relaxing when other things fail. I don't know the source or where I got it from. Imagine sitting in a chair or lying on a couch. Imagine that you are wearing a suit of armour. Now imagine the armour being removed piece by piece. I start at the toes' taking off toe guards, shoes, shin coverings, etc. Once I've come to the top I look down and often find there are additional protections which must also be removed. Obviously these coincide with where I hold tension. For me it is my abdomen ( isn't that where my ovaries are !!) It may be additional or alternative places for you. We evidently also hold a lot of tension in our jaws, so pay some attention to removing armour and masks from this area. This has an immediate de-stressing effect on me, but it's not something I would practice out in public ! We all need our armour on out in the real world.
One last technique which is widely practised is to create tension in muscles and then release it to gain greater relaxation in the muscles. For example, you tense your hand and forearm, hold it for a count, and then release it. In this way you feel the difference between tension and relaxation. You once again work your way along the body. You can start in the head or the feet, or wherever you want I suppose. I have used this technique in the past and found it very effective, but I use the other techniques more often. I don't feel a need to create more tension these days.
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