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Seasons and ageing: the life-enhancing secret of Nature

November 10, 2018 by Andrew Marshall 2 Comments

Seasons are wonderful. They are like a gift that can teach us so much, not only about the world around us but ourselves, too. The optimist embraces the change of the seasons and our culture has always recognised the significance of the equinoxes and solstices in the annual cycle.

Seasons are Nature’s rhythm, so let’s dance

Often, we associate November with gloom and dampness but this year in the UK, Nature is particularly glorious. Thanks to the hot summer, the colours of the leaves on the trees are now spectacular. Is this a hint that if we live a full life, our own autumn will be colourful? Perhaps not necessarily for all, but it does indicate how deeply the past affects the present. Always living fully in the present enhances not just life today but our future, too. For the pessimist, spring is too wet, summer too hot, autumn miserable and winter just too cold to be mentioned – life is just shades of grey. But if we embrace all seasons, both Mother Nature’s and our own, life will be like a kaleidoscope – a continuous play of colour and rhythm.

Don’t resist – hang in there and enjoy the ride

As our individual life goes through its phases, it is easy to see the correspondence with the seasons outside. The spring of youth and the summer of adulthood are full of energy. Seeking to prolong them is perfectly understandable. Knowing that these periods won’t last, people have been looking for the secret of eternal youth since time immemorial. Who can blame them? But internally we create resistance and interfere with the flow of energy through us. Instead of being happy with life, there is a cloud of dissatisfaction lurking in our hearts. In tai chi, which should be an effortless flow, our teachers will always find the knots of resistance in us. Gradually we learn to let go and practice becomes easier. The same applies in life. Outside, enjoy the seasons; inside, welcome the present with an open heart.

Much more on living in tune with life cycles is in The Great Little Book of Happiness.

Digestion: does it hold the most important secret to vibrant health and wellbeing?

May 25, 2018 by Andrew Marshall Leave a Comment

Digestion is enormously important to our sense of wellbeing. It is not simply a way of processing food and liquid. The manner of that processing has a direct bearing on our vitality, which also affects the clarity of our mind. Our emotional strength and balance, too, depend to a great extent on our digestive power.

Digestion and fire

The power of the digestion is sometimes said to rely on “digestive fire”, a prosaic but very apt description of the ability of the body to metabolise food. If our food is fully digested, we could almost say that we have a “clean burn fire”; but if there is only partial digestion, residues are left behind and these residues form toxins that stay in the body.

Too much fuel and confused messages

The analogy of a fire is a very good one. If there is a strong fire, more fuel can be added and it will burn easily, so producing heat. That means greater energy and vitality. But if we put on a lot of fuel when the fire is low, it will just smoulder. Instead of heat, it will produce a deal of smoke, soot and tar, probably leaving unburnt fuel, too. Similarly, in eating the wrong food – or at the wrong times – when the digestion is at a low ebb, we choke up our system. Why would we do that? Habit is one possible cause, eating for comfort is another. For whatever reason, confused messages reach the brain giving false sensations of hunger or appetite. We can help change this by acknowledging the natural cycles that govern digestion.

Rhythm or blues?

The normal daily cycle of the body largely reflects the diurnal rhythm of our environment. Our digestive fire is naturally strongest around midday when the sun is at its highest. Midnight feasts are not a good idea, then. Heavy breakfasts and big evening meals can also play havoc. On the other hand, by following more natural rhythms, our digestion will grow stronger and we will produce less of the toxins that can result from poor digestion. The result is better health.

This is an excerpt from Tips for Daily Living from my first book, The Great Little Book of Happiness

Mind, Health & Vitality: Promoting Vibrant Health Through the Power of Meditation and Qigong is a workshop in Staffordshire on Monday 11th June 2018. More details and how to book.

Guts, bugs and zen: how and why they can change your life

July 22, 2017 by Andrew Marshall Leave a Comment

Guts are not a frequent topic of conversation but they have been very much on my mind this week. There is an enormous variety of bacteria that thrive in our guts which are a major factor in our quality of life. There is a very convincing argument that our modern way of life can have a serious impact on the bacteria – the biome. The health implications are extraordinary.

Your brain is in your guts

Practitioners of qigong may have heard the euphemism of the guts being our second brain. I first came across this years ago in Embryonic Breathing by Dr Yang Jwing Ming. In The Spark in the Machine Dr Daniel Keown clearly refers to it, too. According to Dr Michael Mosley in The Clever Guts Diet, there are indeed brain cells lining the whole length of the gut. If put together, they would be larger than the brain of a cat. Gosh. These are linked to the cerebral brain and there is constant communication between these two centres.

Guts and zen

The subject of the biome and its influence is very complex. It is the subject of an enormous amount of research by some very great minds. But it strikes my quite simple mind that if microbial secretions in our guts can strongly influence our moods and desires, then our view of life – how we see ourselves and everyone/everything else – might also be significantly affected by little lives we cannot see. Another gosh – are bugs playing with our zen? And maybe not only bugs?

What we need to do

The popular media is full of alarmist headlines. Their sole motive is to make us take a look at the latest story. But as you read this, you are still breathing, as am I as I write it. We’re okay, then, in spite of all. What we really need to do is stop chasing information and clear the head. Allow ourselves to become a little still. Then we can gradually become more aware.

Zen and the art of not doing

If we feel the body as it is, it will often deliver up the information we need to put things right. The intuition is brilliant if we let it percolate through.

Sometimes we will know that a certain food is not good for us, for example. We may intuit that we need more, less or a different type of exercise. If we really listen, we will know when we need fresh air, a change of environment or no change at all.

None of this is a replacement for professional medical help, of course. Nevertheless, we can learn a great deal if we allow our awareness to settle and expand before reaching for a remedy or phoning a therapist.

This is part of the art of not doing. Discomfort and bugs need not interfere with a zen approach to life. Indeed, they, and our guts, can teach us a great deal.

A zen approach to life is explored in The Art of Not Doing

Detox the mind instead of the body – with love

April 9, 2016 by Andrew Marshall Leave a Comment

Detox is big business. For years, there has been well-marketed enthusiasm about detoxifying the body. “So-and-so’s (insert name of famous person) marvellous 7, 14 or 28 day detox plan will make you feel so much younger, vital, radiant etc. etc.” Bookshops abound with titles on the subject and, inevitably, celebrity-endorsed products are available in shops and pharmacies for us all to spend our cash on.

Perhaps we have moved on a little from one-food fasts and the fashion of colonic irrigation. Instead, now we can buy gadgets that liquidise vegetable matter that no-one would normally eat so that we can pour various green or brown concoctions down our throats without having to chew or taste anything. Who knew paradise would be like this? Call me old-fashioned, but what some people swallow as super-food looks too much to me like the slurry farmers spread on the fields around here.

No doubt some of these plans, diets and so forth work well. Whether it is due to laziness or denial I’m not sure, but this form of self-torture doesn’t appeal to me. I still have my own teeth and I’d like to keep on using them for as long as possible. And if I choose to eat kale now and again, it will be cooked and chewed before I swallow it.

For some folk this strange way of ingesting food as liquid is the bees knees. In the meantime, the makers of the various high-speed blenders, bullets and whatever else are no doubt very grateful. .And in all fairness, it has been proved beyond any doubt that filling the body with toxins and junk food can make us feel pretty awful, so there must be benefits. Please don’t get me wrong – a detox may well do a lot of good.

Detox the mind as well as the body

But life isn’t ruled by the body and we are not just a body, so if we are going to detoxify ourselves, wouldn’t it be good to find something that detoxifies the mind and emotions as well? After all, it is the mind and emotions that govern our thinking, our speech and our behaviour – which includes the act of putting food into our bodies.

If we can look after the mind and emotions, the body will follow suit. It never ceases to amaze me that we humans are quite happy to spend time in the bathroom in the morning so that we look presentable and our bodies don’t get whiffy but very few people are prepared to spend a few minutes preparing the mind for the day ahead.

Some spiritual teachers with considerable insight have said that if we could see the polluting effects of our minds and emotions on the world, we would be shocked to see how devastating they are – far worse than what we normally term pollution.

Love is the greatest detox

Love purifies because it uplifts our mind. The “rate of vibration” of the mind is raised when we express or feel love. In old spiritual parlance, the mind is quickened.

As the mind becomes lighter, so do the emotions and our vitality – we are happier and have more energy. We know this from our own experience. As these aspects of our being become lighter, dross or impurities are thrown off.

Imagine a plate or a turntable that is spinning slowly. Objects on it stay where they are purely from their inertia; their own weight keeps them where they are. Now imagine the spinning action speeding up. The objects start to move towards the edge through centrifugal force. The faster the rate of spin, the closer to the edge they go and eventually they are thrown off.

Something similar happens to our system. Negative thinking and negative emotions start to get thrown off by the lighter, positive energy that starts to flow through us as we love more and become happier. This effect on mental, emotional and vital levels of our being also carries through to the physical level. Those who have a deep love for all around them build up fewer toxins from the environment because the body throws them off far more readily.

So love is a great purifier. No, it’s the greatest purifier we can have. We don’t go around trying to love in order to have a “grand detox”, of course, but it is helpful to understand that love is hugely transforming and has only positive benefits. And it’s free.

Based on an extract from The Great Little Book of Happiness available here.

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Seasons and ageing: the life-enhancing secret of Nature

Seasons are Nature’s rhythm, so let’s dance

Don’t resist – hang in there and enjoy the ride

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