June 2015 - Fusion Health and Wellness

A Day in the Life

For the sake of transparency and because I like to check out how others approach health, I thought I’d post a normal day in the life for me, focusing on food, supplements and health promoting activities.

Let me be very clear by saying that by no means should everyone be doing this much in their day to day lives in the name of health – and every so often I have days where I don’t do much. It’s also important to note that most health coaches or fitness enthusiasts don’t do quite this much – it just so happens I personally love to experiment and tinker around, and with this regimen I’ve found massive benefits from the supplements and procedures listed below. And while it may sound like a lot, it takes very little time out of my day.

Remember, this is on top of an already very nutritious diet. For the vast majority of us, simply eating right, getting plenty of physical movement, practicing stress reduction and using a supplement or two is plenty in order to improve your health.

A Day in the Life

Wake Up – Anywhere from 7:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. I like to wake up semi-early to get a head start on my day, but some days I’ll just let my body catch up on sleep and wake up naturally.

Upon waking –

Glass of room temp water, mainly because I’m thirsty and because it helps to get the digestive system going
Morning supplements – the standards of which are a half-capsule of highly-absorbable B-Vitamins, Boron and half a teaspoon of magnesium citrate
Morning caffeinated beverage, which is either a half-caff coffee with added L-theanine, or green tea with gynostemma. The caffeine has obvious mental benefits, while the L-theanine, either in supplement form or naturally found in green tea, helps improve focus and enhances the brain’s alpha waves, increasing creativity
Usually a nootropic, or cognitive enhancing substance – I’m currently using oxiracetam, a piracetam derivative that has a little more “kick”. This, combined with the caffeine and L-theanine, provides quite the boost in focus and mental energy

Total Time = 3 minutes

At this point I get to work on my business. In the winter I’ll use a Verilux “Bright Light” to help ward off the winter time blues, and also to help set my circadian rhythm – this is key for everything from energy levels to proper hormone release. The bright light is also quite energizing. I’ll use this light occasionally in the warmer months as well, especially when it’s too hot in the summer to sit outside in the sunlight.

After coffee or tea – A drink of adaptogens and Chinese herbs. These help improve hormone levels, delay aging, boost immune function, improve fertility, and prevent burnout and adrenal fatigue, as well as having a myriad of other benefits.

My current cocktail is centered around increasing Jing, and includes he shou wu, cistanche, ashwagandha, schizandra, shilajit, and cordyceps, as well as a formula called Restore the Jing. Most of these are mixed into one bag, so I just scoop some into warm water and mix.

Substances that increase Jing, a term from Traditional Chinese Medicine roughly translated as “Regenerative Essence”, have been found to improve hormone levels, delay aging, increase mental performance, enhance fertility, bolster the immune system and leave you feeling invincible. They’ve made a huge difference in my energy levels, confidence and ability to just get shit done.

Total Time = 2 minutes

~ 11 or 12 – Work out 5 or 6 days out of the week. Some days I work out fasted, with no food in the stomach, or some days I’ll have a small snack prior.

I make a home made pre-workout beverage that contains Betaine, BCAAs, Beta-Alanine, Creatine, and sometimes L-Glutamine. These all improve performance in the gym, enhancing muscle growth and improving energy levels. Betaine is also a superb liver detoxifier, beta-alanine increases the brain-growing, anti-depressive protein BDNF, and L-glutamine is great for digestive health
Some days I take adaptogenic herbs that specifically improve workouts. It may be rhodiola, cordyceps, a nice Asian ginseng extract, or some combination therein. These don’t have so much of muscle building effects as they do increasing drive and endurance within the gym
My workout may be lifting weights, going trail running, doing sprints in my neighborhood, etc.
Immediately after I workout I down a protein shake with either unsweetened almond milk or grass-fed dairy, whey protein powder, and sometimes some extra BCAAs and L-Glutamine, depending on workout intensity. This helps my muscles recover from the strain I just put on them

Within an hour of my workout – I have my first real meal of the day. It’s usually a big salad with plenty of greens, a protein source, some olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and some source of slow-digesting carbs, such as beans, squash, carrots, etc. Immediately post-workout is known as the “anabolic window”, so food consumed at this time is preferentially used to repair muscle tissue and won’t be stored as fat.

If it’s a “Re-feed Day”, this will be a high carb, high protein meal. Re-feed days help reset my body’s sensitivity to key fat-burning and hunger-controlling hormones, including insulin, leptin and ghrelin, as well as helping to build muscle.

~ 3 times a week – Hyperthermic Conditioning and Cold Thermogenesis – After workouts I’ll sometimes hit the sauna for a good 20 minutes. It’s more than just a way to relax, as saunas

Increase the release of fat-burning, muscle-building Growth Hormone
Resensitize the brain to endorphins
Improve insulin sensitivity
Release Heat Shock Proteins, which have immune-boosting and longevity-enhancing effects,
Help to release stored toxins through sweating
Increase BDNF, a protein that promotes growth of new neurons and protects existing ones, and an increase in which is thought to be responsible for enhanced learning. It’s also a potent anti-depressant

All of this combines to allow my body to easily repair muscle damage from my workout, boost my immune system, improve my mood and cognitive performance from the BDNF, detoxify and possibly enhance longevity, all from just sitting in a warm room for 20 minutes.

I follow this up with an icy cold shower, the combination of which leaves me feeling giddy as a schoolgirl for the rest of the day. Exposure to cold has been shown to

increase the number and output of Brown Adipose Tissue within the body, which is a type of fat that actually burns regular fat for energy when the body gets cold. Yeah that’s right, just get cold and watch the pounds melt off (more on this in a future post)
increase adiponectin, a fat-burning, muscle-building hormone
increase glutathione, our body’s “master antioxidant”
boost the immune system and may extend lifespan
increase norepinephrine levels 5-fold, leading to enhanced energy and mental clarity (and schoolgirl giddiness)

Again, I’m reaping massive benefits by just sitting in a hot box for 20 minutes and following that up with 5-10 minutes of a chilly shower.

~ 12 p.m. on days I don’t work out – First meal of the day, usually a low-carb salad with plenty of greens and a protein source. I also consume high quality fish oils with lunch and dinner.

Additional supplements consumed around lunch time – Vitamins D and K2, as well as Vitamin A extracted from cod liver oil, 4-5 times a week. These are fat-soluble vitamins that have a plethora of effects, ranging from being precursors to hormones (Vitamin D), improving androgen levels and androgen receptor sensitivity (Vitamin A), neuro-protection and neurogenesis (all three) and ensuring that calcium gets deposited in bones and not in soft tissue (all of them, especially K2). You can buy well over a year’s supply of Vitamin D/K2 here.

~ Notice that I don’t have breakfast? I loosely practice Intermittent Fasting (IF), where you allow certain periods of the day to be food-free. Considering I usually have dinner around 7, and don’t eat my first meal till around 12, I’m giving myself 17 hours of fasting each day.

This gives you most of the benefits of real fasting, without the discomfort that sometimes accompanies real fasting (which I also do once every month or two). IF helps to reset your sensitivity to insulin and other hunger-controlling, fat-burning hormones, as well as enhancing autophagy, the process by the which your cells “take out the garbage”, and is another potent inducer of the brain-growing, mood-enhancing protein BDNF.

That said, if I wake up feeling particularly hungry for some reason, I’m not afraid to listen to my body and eat breakfast. It’s important to be regimented and disciplined with your diet, but at the same time you need to give yourself breaks and be balanced.

~ Throughout the day – Multiple cups of green tea and gynostemma. You can either carry some tea bags with you in your car, or brew a big thermos with a few bags of each in the morning.

the combo is a powerful antioxidant one-two punch
the green tea contains EGCG, which helps the body burn fat through multiple pathways
green tea contains small amounts of caffeine as well as L-theanine, which work in concert to improve mental functioning
gynostemma improves insulin sensitivity
gynostemma is adaptogenic, helping the body cope with all the stressors of modern life, and also significantly increases Superoxide Dismutase, or SOD, another of our body’s powerful endogenous anti-oxidants

~ Most days – A serving of greens powders. I’m a big fan of Vitamineral Green as well as Green Vibrance, although sometimes I’ll switch it out and do just spirulina or chlorella. These greens are insanely nutrient dense, helping to fill in the gaps in my diet and bolster my nutrition, which is important considering most food today is nutritionally inferior to what it once was, and because I spend five days a week working out hard and pushing my body. The mixed greens also contain probiotics.

~ Hiking and Yoga – I hike about twice a week, more for personal enjoyment than anything else. But it’s a great way to catch up with friends and as I stated in my previous post on meditation, just being in the woods has been proven to lower stress levels. Yoga is possibly the most healing activity one can do, improving everything from stress levels, hormone levels, depression, fatigue, even boosting the immune system. I aim for 2-3 sessions of yoga a week, each session lasting only 20-30 minutes each.

~ Sometime in the afternoon/evening – a few more adaptogenic/Jing boosting herbs. Usually around this time of day it’s just the use of tinctures and possibly some ashwagandha to help keep cortisol low during my stressful job.

~ Meditation in the evening – Currently 20 minutes a day. The benefits are endless – Read about them in my first and second posts on meditation.

~ Dinner roughly 3 hours before bed – Dinner is almost always lower in carbs, not too big and consumed early, to keep insulin low by the time I go to bed. If you have too much insulin floating around the bloodstream when you put on your night cap, a whole cascade of fat-burning, muscle-building and tissue-repairing hormones won’t be released while you sleep.

Evening supplements 4-5 days a week – One capsule of kelp, mainly for the iodine, which improves thyroid function and detoxifies toxic halogens such as fluoride from the body. Zinc and selenium as well, as both are essential for proper androgen levels, and selenium also helps boost thyroid function, keeping my metabolism buzzing like a caffeinated humming bird. If it’s your first time taking kelp or an iodine supplement, I suggest taking it in the morning as it can provide quite the boost in energy levels.

~ A few hours before bed – Reduce the use of blue light coming from cell phones, computers and tvs. This wave length of light has been found to suppress melatonin release and shift circadian rhythms, pushing them back. You can download a free app called f.lux for your computer and smartphone that gradually tints your screen more and more red as the sun begins to set, blocking blue light.

~ Twice a week 30 minutes prior to bed – A few times a week I hit the hay early (9-10 pm) and use 1.5 – 3 mg of melatonin a half hour prior to bed. Melatonin is the main hormone your body produces to help you fall asleep; it also entrains your circadian rhythm, meaning that when melatonin is consistently produced (or consumed) at the same time, you will naturally and easily fall asleep at this hour.

According to the National Institute of General Medical Sciences,

Circadian rhythms can influence sleep-wake cycles, hormone release, body temperature and other important bodily functions. They have been linked to various sleep disorders, such as insomnia. Abnormal circadian rhythms have also been associated with obesity, diabetes, depression, bipolar disorder and seasonal affective disorder.

Further,

A Harvard study shed a little bit of light on the possible connection to diabetes and possibly obesity. The researchers put 10 people on a schedule that gradually shifted the timing of their circadian rhythms. Their blood sugar levels increased, throwing them into a prediabetic state, and levels of leptin, a hormone that leaves people feeling full after a meal, went down.

In other words, having a properly tuned circadian rhythm is pretty damn important. The use of occasional melatonin along with exposure to a bright light source in the morning, either to outdoor sunlight on a bright day or a Verilux lamp, helps to entrain a healthy circadian rhythm.

The majority of people shouldn’t use melatonin every night however – it is a hormone after all, and if you continuously consume exogenous hormones, your body will stop producing it’s own.

And that about does it. Remember, this is all in the name of experimentation and seeing how far I can take things. I want to see just how much energy and motivation I can have. I’ve tried hundreds of different supplements and protocols in the past, and this is the cream of that crop. I’m sure in the future I’ll be able to narrow this list down even more but in the mean time, this is giving me the best results.

I encourage you to try some of this out and see how it effects your day to day life, and feel free to contact me to get a highly effective, personalized plan.

The Mind and Why Meditation May be the Ultimate Hack, Pt. 2

In Part One of this post, we discussed the inherent problems involved in having this great little tool we call our mind – namely that it acts largely out of our control. You want to move on from a painful break up, but your mind won’t stop thinking about it. You want to sit down and study, but in a few minutes you find yourself lost in the endless scroll of Facebook. Someone says something and it offends you; instead of being able to move on, you’re left wondering if what they said was true for the rest of the week.

Meditation is a powerful way to bring your mind under your control. In the last post we discussed how there are two main types of meditation – “focused attention”, where you narrow your field of focus to one object or sensation, and “diffused attention”, where you remain passively aware of sensations as they arise.

Focused attention types of meditation have obvious benefits – by being able to strengthen the mind so that you remain aware of one thing to the exclusion of others, you’re able to redirect the mind from negative thoughts and emotions and towards positive ones.

But what about the benefits of diffused attention types of meditation?

Awareness and Phenomena

When it comes down to it, there are two things that make up the experience of your life – your awareness and everything else.

Your awareness is simply that part of you that is conscious, that is aware of what is going on. It has no emotions, has no will of it’s own, it is simply, passively aware. It’s sometimes called “The Knower”.

Everything else, everything that awareness can be aware of, falls into the category of “phenomena”. This is a key point – if you can be aware of it, you can create some “space” so to speak, and step back from it. You can step back from grief, from anger, from boredom, from pain or any other negative emotion or sensation, which greatly reduces it’s influence over you.

The more you are able to operate from that part of you that is pure awareness, the more you are able to find peace. Put another way, the more you practice meditation techniques, which train your awareness and allow you to see things as they really are, the less you’ll be at the mercy of negative emotions.

Watch just the first two minutes of this video for an explanation from none other than Jim Carrey.

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI1KKveHFGA

Very closely tied to your awareness is your ego – your will (that which decides what to do), your wants, your desires, your fears. These are so close to your awareness that they can be difficult to see clearly at first – where as something such as the sensation in your foot or even a thought crossing the mind can be easily “seen” by awareness, it’s a bit more difficult to “see” that part of your mind that identifies as “you”.

The next layer of the mind has all your memories, your visualizations, your thoughts, your emotions, your feelings, all these things that the mind registers and that is somewhat easy to see as distinct and separate from awareness.

Still further from awareness is the sensations of your body, the sensations coming from all 5 of your senses, and further still is the “exterior world”, which you only interact with through the 5 senses.

All of these come together to form the almost seamless experience of “you” and “your life”. But when it really comes down to it, there’s just awareness, and everything else.

When it comes to meditation, it’s good to be able to split these things up, and it offers a useful paradigm through which you can understand the mind and your experience in the world. Suddenly things aren’t so solid, things aren’t so stiff and inflexible. “You” aren’t angry, there’s just awareness of this certain set of sensations that’s called “anger”. “You” don’t want 3 bowls of ice cream, there’s just awareness of this set of sensations that we call “desire”.

The more you’re able to identify with pure awareness, the less power emotions, desires and fears have over you. This doesn’t mean you’ll become an emotionless robot, it just means that when negative emotions hit with full force, you’re able to take a step back, analyze them and tone the volume down quite a bit. You’re able to view a negative emotion as just one more temporary sensation. Once the emotion is defined, described, measured and observed, it loses almost all of its power over us.

Mindfulness Meditation

To be mindful of something is simply to be aware of it. When practicing mindfulness meditation, the mind remains actively aware of the phenomena in the present moment. You can choose to be aware of your entire field of sensations, including those coming from the 5 senses and those coming from within the body and mind, or you can limit your field of awareness, say to the sensations of walking or the sensations from eating food.

Yup, this can be your meditation practice

Basic Mindfulness Meditation – In it’s most basic form, mindfulness meditation involves simply bringing the mind into present moment awareness. Instead of allowing your mind to wander willy nilly, just gently bring it back to the sensations of the present moment. It can be summed up as “Be Here Now”. If the mind starts thinking about something that happened yesterday, you bring it back to the here and now. If you start wondering what you’ll do tomorrow, you bring the mind back to being aware of the present moment. The mind can switch between being aware of the sensations in the body and being aware of the external world, or even a combination of the two, as long as the mind isn’t daydreaming unchecked.

This has the dual effect of not only strengthening concentration as a “focused attention” type of meditation would, but also allows you to more clearly come to understand your mind and with it, your emotions, desires, fears, etc.

Play around with the following types of meditation and see which kinds you like best.

A nice mindfulness-based practice is called body-sweeping – you slowly sweep your attention from the bottoms of your feet to the top of your head, noticing all the sensations along the way. You may notice that your feet are sore from standing, that there’s tightness in your lower back, that you can actually feel some of what’s going on in the digestive system. You’ll notice your heart pumping, your lungs breathing and you may even feel your pulse in multiple parts of your body. Start from the feet, slowly work your way up to the top of the head, and then back down again, completing as many rounds as time allows.

Conversely, you can sit and just watch as thoughts pop up in your head. Simply remain passively aware of your thoughts and pay special attention to how they show up unannounced, stay briefly and then disappear. Watch as this process happens again and again and again, but don’t interfere with your thoughts. Don’t try to block them, suppress them or encourage them – simply remain aloof and aware. The thought “I wonder what’s for dinner tonight?” pops into your head. Simply watch this process begin, last briefly and end, without continuing to think about dinner.

Mindfulness of Emotions –

By being mindful of things as they are happening, we’re able to notice negative emotions brewing and nip them in the bud, as well as to be aware of our behavior and adjust accordingly.

Further, if we can take a step back and begin to catalogue our emotions, this can lead to some powerful insights. The best way to do this is to describe emotions in as much detail as possible when they arise.

By being mindful, you’re able to notice when any sort of emotion arises. When it does, take a second to really get to know it and map it out.
Let’s say you feel anger. What exactly does anger feel like? Where do you feel it in your body? Is there a sudden tightness in your chest? Are your hands clenching? Has your stomach tightened? Take a minute to notice where anger seems to reside in the body.
How does anger feel mentally? Is your mind suddenly reeling? Has your mind become a bit heavy, or has it become more active? Does the mind feel “hot”?
How has it changed the content of your thoughts, the words and pictures in your mind?
What does the actual emotion of anger feel like? You’ve felt it physically, you’ve noticed it mentally, now try to describe it emotionally. This might be hard to describe verbally, but it’s important to recognize the feeling of anger.
Finally, try to zoom in and dive deep into this emotion. Just become as aware of it in it’s entirety as you possibly can. Recognize it as a certain type of energy within the body and become as aware of it as possible.
Once you’ve looked at it from all these points of view, you’ll realize it doesn’t have as much power over you anymore, and the more you do this, the less power negative emotions will have. It’s suddenly just a well-defined, limited collection of sensations, and further, you’re able to see that it isn’t you, and that it doesn’t last. You’re the calm awareness at the center of the storm, which remains unchanged as different emotions come and go. Remember that.

BONUS TIP – Go do some Shinrin-Yoku, the Japanese word for “forest-bathing”, while practicing mindfulness of just sights, sounds and smells.

“Every study so far conducted has demonstrated reductions in stress, anger, anxiety, depression and sleeplessness amongst the subjects who have participated. In Japan there are now 44 accredited Shinrin Yoku forests.”

Simply go take a walk in a forested area, while being mindful of the sights, sounds and smells of the forest. When the mind wanders, bring it back to present moment awareness of the experience of being in the forest, out in nature.

There are plenty more types of meditations out there, the benefits of which I’ve just barely begun to dive into. Interested in how to use meditation to overcome specific problems in your life? Contact me.

The Mind and Why Meditation May be the Ultimate Hack

The mind is a fickle, ephemeral beast – one minute you sit down to plan out your day, and the next you’re wondering what the hell is wrong with Lady Gaga.

See? That was the first thing my mind thought of.

While we could go down an endlessly fascinating (to me at least) discussion about what the mind is, and whether the mind is “you” or just a part of “you”, we won’t. Rather, let’s look at practical ways to utilize the mind as the powerful tool that it is.

The Problem

Many people are under the false illusion that they are in control of their minds, and by extent, are in control of “themselves”. We are in control of ourselves, but only to an extent. Sure, you can plan in advance what you’re going to wear to a party on Friday night, but how in control are you of your reactions to your angry boss? How in control are you of your fears? When you lose a loved one, how in control of your emotions are you?

All one has to do is sit down to meditate for the first time to become painfully aware of our utter lack of control over our mind. You sit down and say to yourself, “I will focus my attention on the breath.” You do and succeed for the first four seconds, at which the point your mind starts thinking about that party on Friday night, which leads to the conversation you had with your best friend about the party, at which point you start wondering why your friend has seemed a little distant lately. 4 minutes later you realize you’re not focusing on the breath and try once more to focus on it, only to again get whisked away into pointless thought.

At this point, that old adage about a “monkey mind” starts to make a little more sense, only it’s more like a monkey drunk on Jägerbombs in a toy store.

Don't try to play cute, I'm on to you — Don’t try to play cute, I’m on to you mister

Try it! Right now, set a timer for five minutes and see how long you can sustain full attention on just your breath. See how many full in breaths and full out breaths you can last until your mind distracts you with anything but the breath.

And here in lies the problem – our mind, which is our direct interface with ourselves, our emotions, our thoughts and the exterior environment, is largely out of our control.

This leads to three main issues :

You can’t stay focused – you can’t give full attention and energy to tasks, problems, and activities that you find important, because your mind is always bringing up other issues, often pointless and painful issues. This leads to a decrease in performance and general lack of ability to get things done.
The mind ruminates on useless/painful subjects – If you were in complete control of your mind, you wouldn’t be stuck in a mire of painful emotions and thoughts about why you got dumped, or about your dog dying, or why you got fired. Feeling these painful emotions is a necessary part of life, sure, but endless ruminating on them day in and day out is pitiful.
The mind won’t do what you want it to – Be it focusing, ending painful ruminations, solving problems or just trying to stay positive, the mind almost seems to have a mind of its own.

The Fix

Luckily, we have an easy answer to the problems of our Jägerbomb-fueled monkey mind – meditation. Meditation is one of those topics that used to be considered New Agey, “woo-woo” or, at best, fit into the category of pseudo-science.

Not anymore. Meditation has been thoroughly proven to be beneficial, not just for the mind and mental issues, but for everything from boosting the immune system, lengthening life, lowering the perception of pain, boosting brain density and cortical matter, to lowering stress and promoting neuroprotection.

Further there are an enormous variety of meditational styles and techniques to choose from, so finding one to your liking shouldn’t be too hard.

Two Types of Meditation, and How They Improve Your Life

Generally speaking, there are two basic types of meditation. One where your mind focuses on one specific stimuli to the exclusion of all others, and one where your mind remains open and passive yet alert, being aware of sensations just as they are and as they occur. To avoid dogma and any religious connotations, we’ll call these two types “focused attention” and “diffused attention”, respectively.

Most all types of meditation fit loosely into these two categories, though there are also meditations that are more like “thought experiments”, where you pick one topic and analyze certain aspects of it. A good example of this third type would be meditation on death – you’d analyze how everything born eventually dies, how there’s no stopping death, and how you should use this knowledge to motivate yourself to get as much done in this short time you have as possible.

Focused Attention Meditation

This is a pretty straight-forward concept. You pick a sensation, object or mental image, and try to focus your attention on it to the exclusion of all others. It could be a candle flame, a cross, the sensation of the breath, energy points or chakras, a short prayer, a mantra, a deity or image of a holy person, or even an abstract concept.

This has a few main benefits as it relates to your mind.

First, because you’re focusing your attention on just one thing to the exclusion of all others, you’re training your mind to do what you want it to do, to ignore distraction. This has a multitude of benefits – less distraction in your life, more control over your mind, the ability to move your attention away from the unpleasant (whether its negative emotions, negative thought loops or painful physical sensations) and onto the task at hand.

This means that as you gain proficiency in focused attention types of meditation, you gain the ability to consciously choose to remove awareness from negative or distracting stimuli, and instead place it where you want it to be – this has massive implications for students, people in high-pressure jobs, athletes, those with depression or anxiety, those in pain, and the population in general.

Further, this type of meditation is extremely calming. In fact, in Buddhism this type of meditation is called shamatha, which directly translates as “calm abiding”.

The process of Shamatha within Buddhism - note the gradual taming of the monkey and the elephant — The process of Shamatha within Buddhism – note the gradual taming of the monkey and the elephant – at first the black monkey and elephant run away, unruly and untamed. At the end the purified elephant, once the source of much frustration, becomes the vehicle on a flaming rainbow highway to the heavens…

As this study states –

The results of Study 1 show that both focused (Shamatha) and distributed (Vipassana) attention meditations of the Theravada tradition produced enhanced parasympathetic activation indicative of a relaxation response.

The study Self-reported Mindfulness and Cortisol During a Shamatha Meditation Retreat (Jacobs, 2013) reports that

Larger increases in mindfulness were associated with decreases in p.m. cortisol

Remember, cortisol is our primary stress hormone, too much of which leads to irritability, feelings of stress and weight gain. Don’t forget that these benefits are in addition to those listed above – increased grey matter, improved immunity and a lengthening of life due to increased health at the genetic level.

How to perform a “focused attention” type of meditation

Pick any object that resonates with you, either internal or external – it could be an external image of a cross, the word “love” or “God”, any mantra from yoga, anything that has appeal to you. The more appealing, the better. A candle flame in a dim or dark room is a good choice as most people hold a natural fascination with flames. I’ll be using the sensation of the breath at the tip of the nose as an example, as we’re always breathing and thus can do this meditation anywhere.
Set a timer for 10 minutes (as time goes on, gradually increase to at least 20 minutes a day)
Sit in a comfortable position and gently instruct your mind to remain aware of the sensations of the breath at the tip of the nostrils, and tell the mind that it can go about it’s normal ruminations after the session is over.
Then shift your attention to the sensation and feeling of the breath flowing past the nostrils.
Because this is a relatively “light” sensation, it will help in the beginning to either count or pair a word with the in and out breath. Breathe in, noticing the sensation of the breath, breathe out, noticing how that feels slightly different, and mentally say “One”. Repeat up to Four, and then start the cycle over again. Conversely, you can say “In” while you’re breathing in, and “Out” as you breathe out. You can use the mantra “Buddho” (pronounced boo-doh), breathing in with a “Bud” and out with a “Dho”, or, if you’re Christian, you could use Yahweh, in with “Yah” and out with “Weh”.
Your mind WILL become distracted. This is absolutely normal and should not be a source of frustration. Try to notice when the mind slips from it’s object, then gently and non-judgementally return the awareness back to the object of meditation. This will happen again and again and again, and at this beginning stage of meditation the entire name of the game is noticing this happening and returning the awareness back to the object of meditation.
When the timer goes off, sit for a minute or so and relax your mind. Allow it to naturally do whatever it wants. After a minute, get up and reward yourself with a piece of dark chocolate or something similar, and then go about your business.

Cliff notes – 1. Sit. 2. Instruct the mind to gently remain with the object of meditation. 3. Focus on the object of meditation, gently returning the awareness to the object when the mind wanders. 4. Sit for a moment after meditation, relaxing the mind, and then reward yourself with a small treat.

If you get a headache, feel tense or feel frustrated during or after meditation, you’re trying too hard. If, when the timer goes off, you realize you just spent the whole session lost in thought, you’re not trying hard enough. The classic analogy for this sort of problem is how you would string a guitar or other stringed instrument – too tightly and the strings will break. Too loose, and the instrument will be out of tune. You’ve got to find the right balance between sustained effort and relaxed, calm awareness.

Think of returning the mind to the object of meditation as completing reps in a workout. As you continue to bring the mind back to the object, your mind will get “stronger”. As you increase the amount of time you’re able to stay with the object of meditation, it’s like you’re increasing the weight that you’re lifting. In this way, your mind gets stronger and stronger, until you’re able to focus on what needs to be focused on and riding white elephants on rainbows just like in the image above.

Stay tuned for the second part of this post, where I detail how to use “diffused attention” meditations and how they can help you overcome the main sources of frustration and pain in your life.

Quick and Dirty Tips

My latest blog post is taking a while, so here are four quick tips to read in the meantime. Enjoy!

1. Coconut oil for weight loss, improved cognition, and boosted immunity – While coconut oil has definitely started to verge on becoming a fad, there are quite a few reasons to add it to your diet.

In place of other fats, coconut oil may aid weight-loss – 60% of the fat found in coconut oil are medium chain triglycerides, or MCTs. These shorter fatty acids bypass normal digestion and are absorbed straight into the bloodstream through the liver, where the body preferentially burns them as energy instead of storing them away as body fat.

The MCTs in coconut oil are readily converted to ketones, small molecules that the body can use for energy, just like it would for sugar. This provides an immediate supply of energy not only for muscles, but for the brain as well. While normal folk may enjoy a nice boost of clear headed energy from coconut oil, it’s especially important for those with Alzheimer’s disease, during which brain cells can become resistant to burning glucose, leading researchers to believe that some forms of Alzheimer’s disease to be a type of diabetes. However, these glucose-resistant brain cells have no problem utilizing ketones as a fuel source.

Finally, coconut oil is nature’s richest source of lauric acid, comprising nearly 50% of it by weight. Inside the body, lauric acid is converted to monolaurin, a powerful little compound with antiviral, antimicrobial, antiprotozoal and anti fungal properties, with many infections being unable to develop a resistance to it. Coconut oil also contains capric and caprylic acids, two more anti-fungal compounds.

My suggestion? Spend 20 bucks on a few months supply of coconut oil and use it in place of other fat sources. Concentrated MCT oil is also available.

2. Avoid Carbs in the Morning – Cortisol, a catabolic, fat-storing hormone, is highest in the morning.

This is actually a good thing, as it acts as a natural caffeine, waking you up and preparing you for the day. But because cortisol increases fat storage, it’s best to make your breakfast low in carbs, instead having a healthy mix of protein, low-carb, high-fiber veggies/fruits, with a small to moderate amount of fat.

Think an omelet with onions, mushrooms and peppers, a smoothie with blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, chia seeds, protein powder and unsweetened almond milk, or even a breakfast salad.

3. Keep cortisol low to reduce stress, lower body fat and have more energy – Let’s get some things straight about cortisol – it is an absolutely essential hormone, responsible for proper energy levels, feelings of alertness, and even helps regulate blood sugar. The problem, as with all things health related, is the balance of cortisol. Too little and you’ll be plagued with fatigue; too much, and you’ll be constantly stressed, unable to put on muscle and unable to prevent fat gain, the dreaded skinny-fat.

Fortunately, as long as you haven’t dug yourself into adrenal fatigue, there are easy ways to lower cortisol to keep it right in that optimum range.

According to this study, yoga is an easy and effective intervention to reduce cortisol to a normal range –

The findings support that yoga may act at the level of the hypothalamus by its ‘anti-stress’ effects (reducing the cortisol), to bring about relief in depression.

Further, considering the fact yoga results in an almost 30% increase in GABA, our main calming neurotransmitter, you’re getting a one-two punch in reducing stress levels.

One of my most favorite herbs, ashwagandha, has a strong cortisol-lowering effect as well. According to a 2008 study, ashwagandha “significantly improved scores on a standardized measurement of stress intensity… Moreover, at the end of the study period subjects that received 500 mg of ashwagandha daily had cortisol levels nearly 30% lower than subjects who took a placebo, and their DHEA-s levels were significantly higher as well.”

DHEA is a mood-boosting, muscle-building, fat-reducing hormone that starts to decline each year starting in the early 30s, at roughly 2% a year. Any increase you can get in DHEA is a good thing.

You can also use phosphotidylserine, a phospholipid naturally present in milk and soybeans. This study states –

Pretreatment with both 50 and 75 mg BC-PS (phosphatidylserine) significantly blunted the ACTH and cortisol responses to physical stress.

You can buy 120 capsules at 100 mg each here.

4. Meditation lengthens life, improves cognitive processing speed, improves neuroplasticity, and delays the aging of the brain.

It’s incredible how certain single activities have such a multitude of benefits – exercise, yoga, looking before you cross the road. You can now officially add meditation to that list.

Meditation protects telomeres, which are the end caps on your DNA. Longer telomeres are positively associated with prolonged life, meaning anything that protects telomeres will likely lengthen your life. Meditation prevents the shortening of telomeres, thus likely lengthening your life.

Recent research at UCLA shows that meditation helps not only strengthen connections between existing neurons, but increases something called gyrification. This is the amount and thickness of folds in the pre-frontal cortex – more folds, more surface area, and an increase in memory and information processing speed.

As the study states, “there seems to be a positive correlation between cortical gyrification and intelligence (Luders et al., 2008)”, meaning an increase in gyrification (through meditation or other means) should increase intelligence as well.

A 2009 study concludes that,

meditation may reduce stress-induced cortisol secretion and this could have neuroprotective effects potentially via elevating levels of brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)… In one cross-sectional study, meditation practitioners were found to have a lower age-related decline in thickness of specific cortical regions.

This means two things. First, because of a decrease in cortisol and an increase in BDNF, meditation is neuroprotective, protecting the brain against damage and stress, while at the same time increasing neuroplasticity, the ability of the brain to form new connections between existing neurons.

Second, meditation prevents the age-related decline in grey matter, literally preventing the aging of the brain.

Not to mention meditation lowers stress, boosts the immune system, lowers blood pressure, reduces pain and leads to a general increase in happiness and quality of living. Stay tuned for future articles on meditation and yoga, I’ll be getting pretty in depth with these topics.

Interested in how to utilize these concepts to get the most out of life? Contact me for a free initial consultation.