Healthy Living

I wrote in my last post about simple meditation, based on paying attention to your breathing. It is amazing how beneficial also to your health deep breathing can be.

Should I be surprised? Humans have known for millennia the close connection of spiritual health or centeredness to physical health. Each influences the other. Each builds on the other's strengths and is debilitated by the other's weakness. In fact the word health in many languages comes from the root wholeness, just as does holiness. Spirituality is as much a part of wholeness as health is of spirituality.

I have recently been reading a book given me for Christmas by my youngest son and his wife, both health professionals. You, The Owner's Manual, by Drs. M.F. Roizen and M.C. Oz (HarperCollins, New York, 2005) is a wonderfully funny and informative look at what creates, and destroys, total health. It puts the facts there in a straightforward and accessible way, giving you the opportunity to take charge of your body and its health.

Dr. Roizen created the concept Real Age, a way of measuring one's true health-age rather than simple age in years. The book gives a multitude of suggestions of how we can lower our real age. This is not a frantic recipe for hanging onto youth, but rather for living whole, healthy lives.

To go back where I began: deep breathing is not just an indicator of marathon exhaustion or sexual arousal. Deep, consciously diaphragm-controlled breathing cleans impurities out of the lungs, cleans the blood and contribues to good health. The doctors suggest ten times on rising, ten times before going to bed and every chance you get during the day. And I know that adding a meditative purpose as well, being aware as you deep breathe of that calming/smiling/present moment/precious moment rhythm (see my last post), brings together what spiritual teachers call mindfulness with the benefits of good health.

Consider: Have you ever explored that deep connection between centeredness and physical health, between wholeness and holiness?