RESOURCES

The resources here provide a stepping stone to stronger health and for deepening our understanding of self-healing. The techniques and links here may not be appropriate in all circumstances, so please use your own discretion and feel free to contact me if you are in doubt.

The organisation of these resources begins by addressing the 3 essentials for health and healing: breathing well, eating well, and sleeping well. If we optimise these essentials we can even alleviate many health disorders. More generally, prioritising breathing well, eating well and sleeping well will dramatically improve all aspects of our health and make us feel radiantly alive!

Once we have addressed these 3 essentials, resources are given for some of the key practices I recommend for preventative healthcare, namely meditation and qigong. If we have a mind that is clear, thoughts that are steady and a peaceful heart, many problems in our life, health or otherwise, can be helped. Emotional wellbeing is directly linked to our physical health. This is why finding tools to navigate the heart and harmonise our emotions will greatly enhance our quality of life.

Lastly, I have given some resources for books of interest, which present useful ways of understanding life, healing, and finding balance and harmony.

BREATHING

Breath is the foundation of health and life. Breathing is intimately connected to all aspects of our physical and mental health. By improving the way we breath we can thus improve both physical and mental. Breathing also plays a crucial part in healing.

Learning how to retrain our breathing is a skill known as breathwork, which is a key part of practices like qigong, tai chi, yoga, and meditation. There are many books to be found about breathwork, and also many teaching videos online. I featured some of these here.

My recommendation is to begin with the simple practice known as ‘Coherent Breathing’. This involves pacing your breath evenly so the inhale is 5/6 seconds IN and the exhale is 5/6 seconds OUT. This has been dubbed ‘the perfect breath’, for it synchronises perfectly the electric rhythms of the brain, heart and lungs. When you breath at the pace everything that can be measured in a the lab becomes optimised— brain function, heart rate, blood flow, blood pressure, heart rate variability.

Begin by trying ‘Coherent Breathing’ for 10 breaths, which is just a few minutes. Try this everyday and slowly build up to 5 then 10 minutes.

The next step is to improve your breathing posture. The tension we carry in our shoulders, neck, and chest inhibits our breathing. This is a vicious cycle, where physical tension creates poor breathing, and then poor breathing leads to more tension and stagnation. By stretching out our the shoulders, armpits, ribs and neck our breath will feel much freer. Make stretching and releasing these muscles a regular part of your day, even just a few minutes will be noticeable.

Much of the tension around our breathing muscles comes from carrying the weight of our head. Ideally we want our head balanced through the centreline of our body. The simple qigong instruction is to align the spine and imagine a thread gently lifting from the crown of the head.

The best example of good breathing can readily be observed in a baby. A baby’s breath flows like a wave through the belly and trunk of the body. The tension inside our body, in our throat, diaphragm, and abdomen can restrict this ‘full wave flow’. By conscious expanding our breath into our belly we can help soften and release this tension. Using the voice by humming, singing or ‘toning’ can also help free up visceral tension.

One of my favourite techniques for anchoring the breath in the abdomen comes from the embodiment teach Philip Shepherd. It’s quite simple: slowly and gently contract the perineum at the end of the exhale, and when you inhale, fully relax the perineum. When we breath from the base of our body like this, we encourage a ‘full body breath’. Give it a try.

EATING

Food is medicine, it can either support our healing or poison us. The trick is to find the foods that match your constitution and that also help correct any imbalance you may be experiencing. In Chinese Medicine good digestion and nutrition are central to health and healing. The health of our digestion is likened to the weather of a landscape. Our internal landscape needs the right balance of rain and sunshine to thrive. If we have too much or too little, we experience a draught (excess dryness, constipation) or a flood (excess dampness, loose bowels). Therefore, there is no fixed diet that suits everyone, but rather we need to match the foods we eat to our particular internal landscape.
There are however some key recommendations that can be given across the board.

Key Recommendations:

Enjoy meals in a relaxed environment, with your meal at the centre of attention. Ideally take a little time to relax and digest after meals.
Moderation: enjoy your meal with leisure and do not eat to excess.
Regularity: Our body likes to keep in rhythm. Try to eat meals at the same time most days.
Hydration: Drink the best quality water you can find. Avoid iced drinks, our digestion fire likes warmth, so cooked foods and hot drinks support our health and vice versa. Upon rising drink 1 or 2 glasses of water. You could optionally add a very small pinch of quality salt and a squeeze of lemon, which will hydrate after sleep even better.
Fruit: avoid eating lot’s of fruit after meals. Enjoy fruit before meals or ideally outside of meal times.
Listen to what your body is yearning for. Learn to distinguish unhealthy cravings from your body’s innate wisdom. This is most easily learnt by cutting out all refined foods, sugars, caffeine for 7-10 days, and then carefully paying attention to how reintroducing certain foods affects your energy levels and mentality.

Gut by Giulia Enders

Tao of Nutrition by Maoshing Ni

SLEEPING

Sleeping is when our body restores itself and when the majority of healing happens. Without sleep we cannot heal. Good sleep is essential for healing and also for being our best self. Our cognitive function and general energy is drastically reduced if we have less than 5/6 hours of sleep. If we live consistently on less than 6 hours sleep we are affectively giving ourselves brain damage and increasing the risk of many degenerative diseases. Humans function optimally with 8-10 hours sleep.

Our circadian rhythm likes regularity. The primarily factor in this rhythm is the sun. To state the obvious, when the sun sets we sleep, when it rises we wake up. Any artificial light, especially ‘blue light’ from screens, LEDs, etc, will influence our circadian rhythm. This is especially so at night, because blue light blocks the release of melatonin, which governs our sleep cycle. It is highly recommended to avoid screens and dim lights for at least 2 hours before bed. Using the ‘Flux’ app, or phone settings like ‘night mode’ is useful if working into the evening. Likewise, upon waking it is important to get as much sunshine exposure as possible. If you can get outside for 5-10 minutes within the first hour this is ideal, as it initiates the circadian rhythm and makes it easier to fall asleep at night.

These steps are all part of ‘sleep hygiene’. If you want to improve your sleep consider creating a ‘winding down’ routine. Sleep is a shifting from the ‘Yang’ daytime to the ‘Yin’ nighttime. Anything that supports Yin is a good addition this routine. Things like reading, meditation, gentle stretching, slow breathwork, hot baths, foot massage all help switch our body towards rest.

In many ways the earlier we can get to sleep, the more power we our giving our bodies to heal and return to optimal balance. One famous TCM therapist in China requests all her clients to go to bed at 8pm. She is famous for successfully treating severe diseases.

Lastly, consider framing your daily rising and setting with intention, affirmation and mindfulness. When I wake, I enjoy using a quiet blessing from the poet John O’Donoghue :

I bless the night that nourished my heart,
And set the ghosts of longing free,
Into the flow and figure of dream,
That went to harvest from the dark,
Bread for all the hungers that go unseen.

Upon setting down to bed, a useful practice is to mentally backtrack through your day, and if anything catches in your memory or feels emotionally unresolved, consciously let this go, see how much you can release any charged events, using a softening of the exhale and a softening of all the muscles around your jaw, throat, and heart… setting it all to rest.

Keep a quiet heart, sit like a tortoise, walk sprightly like a bird and sleep like a dog."
Li Ching-Yuen

After the sun sets, avoid excessive light, especially the blue light emitted by TV's, phones, computers, as this band of light cues the pineal gland to keep your body awake. If you need to use screens in the evening download the f.lux app: https://justgetflux.com/

To help settle the mind down from the head and towards a restive mode, use self-massage before bedtime :