The Vitality Breakthrough

I am writing a book called Finding Zora, about the life and death of my love Zora. Zora was a beautiful spirit that I was super fortunate to share my time and heart with before she passed on at age 36 ... 

INTRODUCTION TO FINDING ZORA 

"On a shitty Tuesday morning, I sit at the side of the bed of the most amazing person I have ever met, knowing she will die today. 

And it hits me - you only get one time to see someone die. I don’t know if that makes it better or worse. Worse, I guess. 

We’ve been through the torture, the triumph, the ecstasy, although not in that order, and now here we are.

Two people learning to let go, to dissolve. It is sad and important. But I can’t take it. So I go for a walk. A long, anxious one.

When I return, it is finished. Zora is gone."

---

We act like death is the enemy. It is not. So far, here is what death has brought into my life:

• The realization that I am definitely going to die. And so are all the other people I really love.
• The realization that life and death are not separate - they are parts of the same thing.
• The realization that whether I live 100 more years, or 100 more minutes that my life matters. And that now is the time to live it.
• The pain of having my heart ripped into a million pieces, only to learn I am capable of loving again and living again.
• The gift of having had no unfinished business with Zora
• The importance of simple moments together, like eating dinner on the floor with a makeshift table created from two art supply briefcases, a wooden board, and a intricate tapestry. 
• The importance of friends that would sit and listen to me without trying to fix me.
• The importance of letting myself fall to pieces in the parking lot before going into work.
• The importance of taking care of myself even as I was trying to take care of someone who was dying.
• The helpfulness of a spiritual practice in good times and bad.
• The helpfulness of a community of caring friends in good times and bad.
• My family taking me in after this event means more than I could ever express to them in words.
• How most of the things I worry about are meaningless.
• How most of what I buy is meaningless.
• How my relationship with Spirit can be affected (in waves) by both death and life.
• There is no right way to grieve. 
• Grieving is not linear.
• How crying with my lover with no words spoken (or needed) was such a profound experience.
• How much joy matters.
• How much kindness matters.
• How approaching my life as an adventure matters.

There is more that death has brought into my life, but the main one is: Appreciation for Life. My life. Right now.

Thank you Zora. I am sending you strong sunshine beams of light and the biggest smiles and laughs you ever knew.

Luther

P.S. Here's a great quote I found from Bo Lozoff: "It's the most natural thing in the world to want to feel good and stay healthy and live a long life, and we should use any reasonable powers of mind and body to do so. That's where some of those teachings come in handy. But don't get drawn into the notion that illness implies failure on your part, or that death is a tragedy. Illness and death come to us all, at many different ages and in many different ways, and for many different purposes." (Just Another Spiritual Book)

[If you benefited from this post or know someone that would, please share!]

Imagine yourself looking through your own eyes right after you are born. Literally, at the moment right after you come out of your mother into the bright lights, big city for the first time. Through those eyes, what are you experiencing? What are you noticing?

Now fast forward to when you are seven or eight and playing outside. Again, notice the world through those eyes. 

Now think of the absolute happiest moment you have had so far in your life. Breathe. Notice.

And now think of the most tragic or challenging time you have encountered thus far. Breathe. Notice.

Now fast forward to today. Notice what you were thinking or experiencing when you first woke up this morning. Notice what the world looks like through your eyes today.

Undoubetedly, many things have changed about how you perceive the world from the moment you were born until now. We are all shaped by our life experiences, our triumphs, our tragedies. We evolve and grow. Or we become afraid and stagnate. 

But hold on a moment.

Think back on this mini-movie of your life that you just made and run it through in fast forward from birth until now. What didn't change?

Is there an awareness that is looking through each of those scenes that is the same now as it was then? Really sit with this. What is this unbroken awareness? Is that more you than what you normally think of as "you?"

Where are you right now? I don't mean 'Where is your body right now?' I don't mean 'What are you thinking about right now?' 

Where are you right now? 

Can you please point to this unbroken awareness for me? If you can, who is doing the pointing? Is that you also? Which one is the real you?

Why do I ask these questions and what do they have to do with vitality and living life on purpose?

First, another question for you.

How incredible is it that by changing the lens of your focus that you can tap into something that is eternal, untouched by circumstance and time?

And that you can do it right now. And now. That you can dance at the intersection of the timeless and time. Tha

t you can be in this world but not of it. That you can realize that you are greater than all the challenges and world circumstances thrown your way. That you are potential and kenetic energy rolled into one ball while rotating on another ball surrounded by 100 billion other rotating balls. And that you're doing this dance with 7 billion of your closest friends and enemies. How cool.

What might you find at this intersection of time and timelessness, of finite and infinite? I don't want to say. Maybe it will be different for you than me. But I will say, from my experience, it is worth the effort to look. I will say there is a part of methat is untouched, unchanged. And I will say that all energy and life flows from that place and back to it. It's like breathing out and breathing in, and also being aware that there is a part that neither breathes nor doesn't breathe. 

Dive in. Enjoy.

[If you benefited from this post, please share. Thanks :)]

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I was on top of the world. Twenty-six. Head of marketing for a great company that I had just helped take public. A great staff of Ph.D.'s, M.B.A.'s, and even an M.D. that worked for me. Sweet girlfriend. Two houses. A dog. And yes, even a picket fence (although, I had to look up what "picket" actually meant for this article to make sure I had one).

Except. Except that I was waking up with shooting pains down my arms. Except that I had already been to the doctor twice earlier in the year. Once for shingles. Once for anxiety. And I hated getting up every single morning to go to work.

Something was broken, but I didn't know what. Well, I knew that I was broken. But I didn't know how.

I knew that if I went to a doctor that they would give me a pill to cover up my symptoms. But I felt deeply that the challenges I was facing were at a level at the core of my entire existence on the planet.

I honestly didn't know what to do. Did I need therapy? Would that help? And how long would that take? Did I need acupuncture? Did that even treat what I was dealing with? I didn't know anything about these so-called alternative treatments. Growing up, my dad was a D.M.D., Ph.D., and I started my studies at Vanderbilt University to be an M.D.  So this was all new territory. But I was a good researcher. And I like to read and learn. So I did.

I read all kinds of books and talked to all kinds of people. All kinds of modes of healing. Physical manipulation. Emotional therapy. Correcting your thinking. Energy healing. Group therapy. The list went on.

In one of the books, I came across a healing method called Ro-Hun Therapy that claimed to work at all levels at the same time - physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. A pretty bold claim, but I resonated with the approach and the testimonials of those that had done it. 

So I committed to it. With little more than a gut feeling, I booked an appointment for three Ro-Hun sessions and headed to the north Georgia mountains where they offered this service at a place called Delphi University (because they train others there also). My mindset was, "If it works as well as the testimonials claim, then this will be nothing short of a miracle for me. If it's all hocus-pocus, then all I have to lose is my money" (note: there weren't blogs back then, or I could have added, "at least I'll get a good blog post out of it!")

For my Ro-Hun sessions, I laid face up on a massage table fully clothed, covered with a blanket. The therapy is called a spiritual psychotherapy. I think that's an accurate description. The therapist started by getting me in a very relaxed place and in touch with higher feelings of love, wisdom, and harmony. I felt very good. And then we dove down into the muck. A dive into my inner world. 

She kept asking me what I was experiencing and I would describe to her the scene that was presenting itself to me. At one point, I saw myself standing in the Southwestern desert. It was very dry. It was a Native American scene. In fact, the word that kept coming up was "pueblo." All in all it was a very vivid scene with many details. 

She asked me to tell her what I was seeing, sensing, or feeling.

I didn't say anything, because I was stuck in my head trying to figure out how to describe it all to her. I wanted to say the word pueblo, but assumed she would not really know what I meant, or at least not get all the nuances of what I meant by that word. So I said nothing. I just sort of was trapped in my head and  said nothing. 

Finally, she broke the silence, with this one word: "Pueblo?" The hair stood up my arms. How did she know that? I had been thinking that, but I hadn't said it. And it wasn't like she guessed a spiritual-sounding word like "love" or 'rainbows." She had pulled my specific word - pueblo - right out the air. What the hell was going on here?

Me (in a freaked out voice): "How did you know that?" 

Her (in a it's-no-big-deal voice): "Because I am in your energy and your energy contains information and because I'm psychic."

Well, it may have not been a big deal to her. She had been doing this kind of work for 30 years. But it was a big damn deal to me. Many years later, this same phenomenon would happen to me when I would work with people in a healing capacity. It's hard to describe, but I think her description that day was still one of the best - it's all energy and it contains information.

But at the time, that idea freaked me out! 

The next day was even more surprising. Imagine if the windshield of your car was covered in mud from being in the mud derby races.  Now image taking a high-powered hose and in one swift motion, removing all the mud from the windshield, leaving nothing but a steady flow of water against the windshield. Well, that's exactly what happened to me on the second day. Except in my heart.

The crud being removed was all the hurt and pain and shielding that had accumulated in my heart and the release was this incredible flow of energy that kept circulating in my heart. Wow! It was like receiving a download from the universe. This is what I had been missing. And I hadn't been broken after all, just blocked. Just confused. Just in non-alignment. I knew in the one moment of that download that I was going to learn how to use this energy to help people. 

How could I go in two days from having never heard of something to knowing that it was going to a major part of my life's work? It's insane!

But I wasn't done yet. In fact, I was at the very beginning of a very exciting journey. One that would take me to three continents, studying and working with talented healers and shamans, as well as shoving some magic green liquid up my arse, but that is a story for the next installment of My Journey to Vitality. 

Tune in next week for Part II of My Journey to Vitality. 

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A Take Away For You

What is holding you back from living your best possible life right now? What signals is the universe sending your way that you may need to let go of something that no longer suits you and embrace something new and unknown that is part of your next step? What is your next step? What will you commit to doing this week to move just one step forward?

I get asked by people all the time what the #1 thing is they should do for their health.

My answer ... make a super smoothie every morning!

What's a super smoothie? Three components: 1) It's made in a super-blender, preferably a three horsepower blender like a Blendtec or Vitamix 2) It's made with only high-nutrient ingredients and no artificial sweeteners 3) It's made to taste delicious, so that you keep coming back for more every day.

Here's my favorite recipe smoothie - It's called the Strawberry Surprise Smoothie and comes from Smoothie Formulas (highly recommended smoothie recipe book):

2 cups distilled water

1 carrot

1/2 small red beet

1/2 fresh corn cut from the cob (note: I only include this ingredient if I can find non-GMO corn)

1/2 fuji apple with seeds and core

1 pint organic strawberries

1/2 orange (peeled) with pith and seeds (pith is the white part)

1/2 lime (peeled) with pith and seeds

1/2 avocado with seed (please, don't use the seed if you don't have a 3 horsepower blender!)

1 fist parsley with stems

1/2" slice of ginger root

Throw it all in the super-blender and blend on the highest cycle twice for 50 seconds each time.

This recipe makes a lot of smoothie - enough for two people, so adjust accordingly. If the only change you make is to have this smoothie or one like it first thing in the morning over the next 30 days, you will see your energy skyrocket!y

(download)

Click here to download:

four-doors-to-walk-through-for-greater-health-kGkroBfCBkjarktCcetc.zip (302 KB)

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

Michael Pollen, New York Times

"Getting 20% of the population to take a few steps in the right direction will have an infinitely greater positive impact on the world than having 2% of the population following a 100% plant-based diet."

Tim Ferriss, The Four-Hour Body

The time to take control of your own health is today!

I consider each of the four books referenced in this post to be a golden door that you can walk through to greater health. They have different and sometimes incompatible approaches to optimizing health, but you know what? The approach outlined in each of them would improve the vitality and health of 99% of people, especially people eating mostly the Standard American Diet (SAD). All of the approaches can halt or prevent a number of degenerative diseases, as well as assist with fat loss.

My advice is to pick one of these four books that you resonate with the most with and buy the book and treat it is as your guide for the next 3 months. Really go deeply into it. Experiment with changes. Get a friend or a reading group together, so you can do it with others. But whatever you do, TAKE ACTION. Don't just read and become a walking encyclopedia of knowledge. That's not what we're after here. The goal here is for you to radically increase your energy and health levels.

Here are the four books (each one links to my book review):

• The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet - Eat clean sources of lean protein + seasonal fruits & veggies + healthy fats such as nuts, seeds, avocado, olive oil, and coconut oil.  
• The China Study - Eat 90-100% plant-based diet of whole foods. Based on the largest studies ever done on human nutrition. 
• Living Foods for Optimum Health - Eat plants with a high life force in an uncooked state. Sprouts, green juices, super salads, wheatgrass juice, sea vegetables, and nuts and seeds.
• Conquering Any Disease - Unlock the healing phytochemicals of everyday foods using a 3 horsepower blender. Daily tonic + morning smoothie + simple whole food meals from clean sources. 

Don't know where to start? I'll help you. Start with Clean: The Revolutionary Program to Restore the Body's Natural Ability to Heal Itself and do that program for three weeks. This will reset your body and you will know where to go from there. 

What do you have to gain? EVERYTHING. Your life for starters. Here are the top ten killers in the U.S.:

1. Heart Disease - 616,000
2. Cancer - 563,00
3. Stroke - 136,000
4. Chronic Lower Respiratory Disease - 128,000
5. Accidents - 124,000
6. Alzhiemer's -  75,000
7. Diabetes - 71,000
8. Influenza and Pneumonia - 53,000
9. Kidney Disease - 46,000
10. Bacteria in the Blood - 35,000

And that's to say nothing of the MILLIONS more that suffer horrible losses in quality of life from these same diseases. These killers are massively linked to diet and lifestyle. A lot of the research and more importantly, a lot of the solutions are presented in the four books I recommend.  

Take INSPIRED ACTION. Do this for yourself. Click through to my mini-reviews for each of these books and buy at least one of them today. Make it your food bible for the next three months and begin implementing changes right away, even if they are very small changes. Just pick something you can do and do it. 

The realization: We are all Cyborgs!

My realization was not, "If we're not careful, then one day soon, we're going to become Cyborgs." Instead, it was "We've already become Cyborgs." Everyone was walking around glued to a screen of some sort, usually in the form of a smartphone. Was the Mayor calling all of them simultaneously? 

It is conventional wisdom that these devices make us more productive and keep us more connected. I intend to test that hypothesis over the next 30 days and will report back with my findings.

The conventional widsom seems reasonable - we can get an email that needs handling quickly and pop back a response and bam! it's done. We can quickly check out our to-do list and calendar and know what to do next. I will admit these conveniences are nice. But it's only part of the story.

Because we don't just check the one email or the one to-do item. We check again. And again. There's a reason that "Crackberry" became an instant (and accurate) part of our lexicon. I recently attended a dinner with eight friends, and everyone was checking their damn phones instead of conversing and connecting with each other! How sad. At one point, it got so ridiculous that we made a fun game out of it - we collected all the smartphones and stacked them like bricks in one corner of the table. The first person that cracked had to buy a round for the whole table! Or as my friend Gloria puts it,

"I am smartphone-less, and I tend to be the person looking at the six other peope wh are making love to their iPhones at dinner."

Forget the smartphone for a moment. They are just a surface symptom of a highly agitated mind. I see so many people walking around swirling in business. Mayor on Line One. Start-up on Line Two. Board Meeting in One Hour. Investor Call in Twenty Minutes. Wife is Holding on Line Two. Kids have Three Events this Week. But are they doing things that matter? Are they doing things that bring fullfillment? Peace? Happiness? Is what they are doing going to matter in one generation? Seven generations? What else could they be doing with their time and talent that would be the absolute best use of their time and energy here on planet earth? Have they even taken the time to think through this question? If not, why not? I suspect it's because they are too Busy. (And probably Important). 

For a fascinating read on technology and it's role in our lives, see What Technology Wants, and be sure to read the chapter called Lessons of Amish Hackers. 

Anyway, I am ditching my smartphone because I am tired of checking it like some nervous tick. I am ditching it because the payoff back to my life is negligble, possibly negative. I like the feeling of walking around free and not tethered. I tend to notice things around me more. I tend to interact with people more. I tend to think of more ideas. I tend to be more open to new opportunities, most of which lead to things I never could have planned. I definitely am more present. And I like all of those things. 

So, for 30 days, I am going to walk arond with a dumbphone, not a smart phone. All it does is make and receive calls. Nothing else. Literally. It even has as it's address book a paper booklet in in enclosed drawer! How cool is that. And because I like aesthetically pleasing things and things that make me smile, I will choose a John's Phone as my dumbphone of choice, although there are certainly cheaper alternatives for this experiments.

The irony of my experiment is that I am undertaking it at the same time that I am beginning an engagement with a cool company's who whole bread and butter is a mobile app. I still feel congruent with my choice because the purpose of the app is to get people together in person. You can check it out here: Goba. 

I am hoping this phone experiment helps me achieve the kind of focus that will let me makre progress on the important things and drop the trvial things. I prefer the idea of doing one really important thing a day. If I did one important thing per day, after three years, I would have done nearly 1,000 really important things! Not bad. Anything else beyond those One Things is gravy.

For a provocative post on having fewer goals, and possibly even no goals, see Toss Productivity Out by Leo Babauta.

What do you think? Am I nuts? Is this an experiment you would be willing to undertake in your own life to see what happens?

P.S. My real reason to throw out the cell phone, alas, should be the 10-year, 13-nation research study linking it to increased chances of brain cancer!

Let me tell you how powerful this book is.

For seven years, I had talked to my Dad about the benefits of switching to a primarily plant-based diet. More energy. Better health. Reduced risk of heart disease. He always listened to what I had to say, but never really acted on any of it. Fast forward to The China Study. Two days after sending him this book, he texted me "I am a vegan now." And two years later, he still is (and has directly experienced the benefits versus debating them as a theory). So, what's in this book that after sixty-eight years on the Standard American Diet, would cause someone to switch overnight to a healthier way of living?

Data. Lots of it. But not in a boring, can I please sleep through these data charts kind of way. Rather, in a holy moly, can this possibly be true kind of way.

To quote the author Dr. Colin Campbell:

"The science is clear. The results are unmistakeable. Change your diet and dramatically reduce the risk of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and obesity.

People who ate the most animal-based foods got the most chronic disease ... People who ate the most plant-based foods were the healthiest and tended to avoid chronic disease."

Dr. Campbell draws heavily from a 20-year partnership of Cornell University, Oxford University, an the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine, to survey diseases and lifestyle factors in rural China and Taiwan. More commonly known as the China Study, "this project eventually produced more the 8,000 statistically significant associations between various dietary factors and disease."

Want the skinny on the link between diet and heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and obesity? Dr. Campbell discusses them all in the China Study.

I recommend this book for two types of people:

• Those who feel pulled towards a vegetarian way of living but feel like they need a little more motivation to take the plunge. Short of going to visit a factory farm and slaughterhouse, I don't know anything that can provide more motivation than the information disclosed in this book.
• Those who are skeptical that humans can live on a mostly vegetarian diet and want more information.

As with any specialty information, people divide into camps, so you will see some lively debates back and forth between supporters of the Paleo diet, as outlined in The Paleo Solution, and the more vegetarian path that Campbell recommends. Here's my take: 99% of Americans would dramatically and immediately improve their health and lower dieases risk factors in under 30 days if they fully embraced either of the approaches outlined in the The China Study or The Paleo Solution (for more information read The Four Doors You Can Walk Through for Greater Health).

So, if you're not experience vibrant health, go with one of these approaches that you resonate with and do it fully. Really experiment and see what works for you. And pay attention. You may change over time. Your body may change over time. I believe The China Study to be essential reading for all people searching for a true vitality breakthrough in their lives.

This dietary approach is big in the fitness community, particular those doing CrossFit types of training, and also further popularized in Tim Ferriss' book 4-Hour Body. Here's what I have to say ... If you know absolutely, 100% that you can not and will not give up meat, then apply the suggestions in this book to still dramatically boost your energy, enhance your fitness, and decrease risks from degenerative diseases.

I still would recommend you read The China Study to add another layer of understanding around meat and dairy consumption.

Here's what I like about the Paleo Solution:

• Eliminates foods that cause problems in energy and ultimately lead to diseases, particularly sugar and things that turn into sugar in your blood (cough, bread, wine, pasta, yeah I know you don't want to know the rest - but read the science)
• Focuses on obtaining clean sources of foods
• Encourages you to eat animals that are fed their natural foods (cow = grass) versus the factory-farmed monstrosities we are growing (cow = grains, antibiotics, hormones)
• Incorporates a wide variety of helpful veggies
• Recognizes movement and fitness as critical to the health equation
• His understanding of the human body and how it functions is comprehensive and intriguing
• He encourages you not to make an irrevocable lifetime change, but just to commit fully for 30 days

Sometime Robb's style may be a little too crass for some people (this is not your grandmother's nutrition book), but I was able to overlook most of that and focus on the great information he was presenting.

This program is fairly restrictive versus what most people are used to eating (all of the ones I recommend are in fact radically different from the Standard American Diet), but I have noticed people transition to this one quite easily and quickly, mainly because they feel so much better, so much faster.

The formula for incredible health is simple: Feed your body, mind, and spirit the best nutrients on earth and cut out all the crap. The Paleo Solution may be just the tool to help you do that!

"In South Africa, they dig for diamonds. Tons of earth are moved to find a little pebble not as large as a little fingernail. The miners are looking for the diamonds, not the dirt. They are willing to lift all the dirt in order to find the jewels. In daily life, people forget this principle and become pessimists because there is more dirt than diamonds. When trouble comes, don't be frightened by the negatives. Look for the positives and dig them out. They are so valuable it doesn't matter if you have to handle tons of dirt."

- David Seabury