HLife | Healthy Living Redefined

My first brush with Feng Shui taught me something very interesting: It’s not about what you put in the “gua” it’s about the intention you put it with and the meaning behind the symbol you use. A great book that exemplifies these principles for applying the Chinese art of conscious environment decor is Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life, written by Karen Rauch Carter. The author not only explains the role of intention in purposeful positioning of furnishings and symbols, she also does so with wit, simplicity and a whole lot of hilarity. Read More…

As we get closer to the cosmic alignment taking place in 2014, one thing is becoming very clear: all alignments – even the small ones – are becoming increasingly intense, more important, and more evident in their effects.

While there are rarely grand scale alignments like the one in 2014 that involves much more than our own solar system, there are more frequent ones, “smaller” alignments that involve our own planet and its cycles. The Winter and Summer Solstice as well as the Spring and Fall Equinox are some of these. These dates mark the beginning and end of a season, as well as either the darkest or lightest day of the year, or a day in which we have the same amount of light (daytime) as dark (nighttime). The psychological effects of light cycles are well documented, and it is no coincidence that ancient cultures as well as religions aligned their celebrations with these specific portals of energy. Read More…

Everything is energy. Life is built on different degrees of condensed energy forms, and our bodies have, emit, and receive energy, constantly.  The types of places we go to, the people we interact with, and even the amount of events you say ‘yes’ to and attend all have a direct impact on your overall energy level. Oftentimes, we exceed ourselves and make too many commitments for the day or week, even though our mind and body are telling us, “I don’t want to anymore.” We need to listen to this internal dialogue, respect and honor it. If we don’t, two things will likely happen. First, your body will ask you for rest time by being “off”. Examples: You will feel tired, low energy, slow, you may find yourself asking someone to repeat what they just said three times because your mind was somewhere else – and you’ll still not get what that person is saying – you’ll make silly mistakes, like putting your keys in the fridge or arriving at a meeting at the right time but the wrong location. These are just a few signs that your mind/body/spirit connection is off, and that you need to regroup, relate, and recharge. Second: If you ignore the signs that your body and mind are sending (via feelings, thoughts, images, and actions),  and keep going as if you were the energizer bunny…a physical imbalance will manifest. Read More…

Your physical body is your most direct home (hotel, really) because it hosts your true self. As you take care of it (or not), synergistically and by the Principle of Cause & Effect, it takes care of you right back. By consciously and knowledgeably giving it what it needs, this attention and care will yield the result or effect of providing you with energy, a magnificent glow, vibrancy…in other words, physical health. If we apply the Principle of Correspondence, which states,”As is above, so is below. As is below, so is above,” to this same body/home concept, we will see that taking care of our house or apartment will also have a result or effect on our internal being, this time giving us inspiration, motivation, and support. Of course, this is all there for all of us, if we choose it. Read More…

When we were children, we spent loads of time playing. Our parents organized play dates for us and, if we weren’t eating or sleeping, we were, well, playing. During most of our day, we used our creativity, imagination, sense of humor and innate resourcefulness. Then, as we got older, playtime got shorter and shorter, and for some, it now nonexistent. Usually, this happens because we think we have no time for silly things like play. Some blame it on their demanding jobs. Others say (as if this line automatically excuses them from it): “I have kids”.

Depriving yourself of your daily dose of playtime generally seems to be a societal habit that was never questioned or thought about, so it was passed down through generations as an assumed requisite to being an adult. What we are forgetting is this: Playtime was healthy for us as children, and it is healthy for us as adults. It’s our birthright as creative beings and it is our responsibility as conscious adults to engage in it. Whether we are tired (probably due to malnourishment) or way too busy (remember, you designed your life), playtime is a must-have ingredient for a  holistically healthy lifestyle. Read More…

Who you are cannot fit on a sheet of paper. But maybe you have grown accustomed to thinking that the skills represented by the jobs outlined in your curriculum vitae are all you have to offer an employer – or any other potential partner in any sphere of your life, for that matter. Today, I’m asking you to rethink that idea.

Let’s explore what you could be beyond that. Let’s call these other atypical, non-resume items…added value. Read More…

Throughout our lives, we have been conditioned to believe that we are our body, our job, our name, etc…to believe that only the tangible is what is “real”. General concepts like health have been distorted and an incomplete picture has been painted, with a controlled, reductionist and limited point of view. We have noticed that when the majority of people think or talk about health, they associate and refer to it only with regards to food and the physical body. The confusion, and the reason that many people cannot achieve true health, real healing addressing the root of the situation, lies in the ignorant mentality that health is a term only applied to our physical body and only what we physically put in it can affect it. Read More…

This is the concluding Part Two of HLife’s interview with Will Tuttle, author of The World Peace Diet, continued from last week’s Part One.

MC: You mention that being vegan is a starting point. What do you mean by that?
WT: People think that that’s the end – you are vegan, that’s it, you made it. The only thing you can do higher than that is to go raw. I think that is not true. When someone goes vegan, that’s actually the very beginning of transformation. For example, I’ve been a vegan already for more than 20 years, and I would get into certain conflicts with Madeleine, my wife. I would not be that cold, but she wanted to turn on the heater, and I’d say, ‘Come on, it’s not that cold, we don’t need the heater.’ Then, I realized that when she would say, ‘but I’m cold,’ even though I’ve been a vegan for 20 years, the mentality of discounting the suffering of others was still there, sort of like what we do to pigs, chicken and cows. They’re in horrible conditions but we just discount their suffering, we minimize it in our own minds, ‘oh its not that bad, they are just cows.’ And we have to able to see these patterns that have been injected into us along with eating animal foods, and we have to do the difficult inner work of pulling them out of our consciousness and really treating everyone with respect. You are respecting them as a being with their own unique qualities, and I think that’s when we begin to see veganism as a path to nonviolence, and as a spiritual journey that never ends. Veganism is basically an ongoing spiritual journey that just goes to higher and higher levels, to ultimate enlightenment, eventually to ultimate wisdom, love, compassion and awakening. That’s really what it is, the actual outer behavior of not eating animal foods anymore is a wonderful leap, but its just a tiny step. We have a long way to go after that. Read More…

As an academic and former Zen monk, Dr. Will Tuttle was convinced that someone, some day, would write a book that connected a vegan diet to the internal health of human beings and the planet, a concept that was so evident to him after years of experience and research. But nobody ever did. So, he wrote it himself.

The award-winning book The World Peace Diet: Eating for Spiritual Health and Social Harmony hit number one in Amazon.com shortly after being published, and it continues to spread the message of compassion, kindness and awareness that a plant-based diet implies. HLife sat down with Will for a conversation on this groundbreaking book, one that we believe has the power to transform the way you look at food and to open your eyes to the many ways – social, economic, spiritual, relational, and personal – that eating animals harms the planet and society as a whole.

Part One of the interview is being published today in honor of Earth Day, and we will publish Part Two on Monday. Read More…

You probably already know that your eating habits (methane from the meat you eat) and your car (carbon dioxide from exhaust) as well as other habits (like throwing away recyclable goods) affect the planet. You also know that  conserving water (taking shorter showers) and electricity (turning off those lights) help too. But did you know that, above all of those, there is one action that can pollute the atmosphere and drain the planet of resources in a worse way?

Negative thoughts are the worst toxic pollutant on the face of the planet. Read More…