HLife | Healthy Living Redefined

We’re told that all of the answers we need are within us, and to look “inside” for them – but what does that really mean? Many times we’re left with an image of an elevated figure and a feeling that we should be meditating on top a mountain in order to find these internal answers, and since we’re busy people with 9-5s, we feel even worse because we can’t get there. Don’t despair. Looking within may be a lot more simple – and closer – than you think. Read More…

Color matters. From scientists and psychologists to marketers and advertisers and even holistic practitioners and ancient philosophers, color has been known to have a particular effect on human beings. We see a color we like, and it puts us in a good mood and may even affect our decision making. But how does this happen? And, why? My recent obsession with the purple range of colors – violet, indigo, fuchsia, magenta, mulberry – prompted me to explore color and its relationship to humans and health, and here’s what I found out. Read More…

Re-decorating is one of my favorite creative activities and mind-cleansing techniques. It is also one of my personal forms of meditation, so, while in the process, I channeled some thoughts to share.  As I grabbed a blade to clean out gunk from a tile slab  that I couldn’t stand every time I looked at, I thought, “wait a minute – why did it take me so long to change this if it feels so good to do something about it?” As I brought it back to its original pristine state, I realized: There are so many little things that bother us, things that are under our control to modify – like remove an object we dislike or paint a table with a color that we like better – and we complain but  don’t do anything about it. WHY? Read More…

We often talk about dreams as goals but today we wanted to share some thoughts on the kind of dreams that take place when you sleep. If sleeping serves the purpose of cellular regeneration, dreaming serves the purpose of thought reorganization. On average, we sleep eight hours a night – spend a third of our lives sleeping – and of those eight hours, it is said that we only need three to six in order to restore our physical health. So, why eight? Eight hours is what we’re told we need for our minds to do their job of “filing” all the information that was received throughout the day, past thoughts that were reactivated, future ideas that were generated. Eight hours is what it takes to maintain mental health through the process of dreaming, and depriving us of our daily dose of this necessary process has resulted in hallucinations, nervous disorders, neurosis, and even death. Read More…

A new friend and I had a bet going on how to pronounce famed psychologist Abraham Maslow’s surname, and this prompted me to do a little research and revisit some of this visionary’s landmark concepts. Maslow is the father of humanistic psychology (I say it’s “maslov”, that’s how my college psych teacher pronounced it – Maslow’s parents were Russian immigrants after all, and we’ve all heard what happens to ‘w’s in Russian accents; my friend says it’s “maslow” as in “low price guarantee” – he was born in Brooklyn, which makes him American and likely to have adopted that pronunciation). Unlike Freud,  who focused on studying mental illness, Maslow researched and developed theories about the healthy aspect of the mind and human potential, which of course is so very HLife of him (our focus is optimal-centered, not on a sick or barely functional concept of health), so I had to share some of his less-talked-about work with you, which I found fascinating: The humanistic concept of values. Read More…

What is a gentleman? Driven by something I read and considered to be a weak definition of this term, I thought I’d offer my own two cents here. After all, I am a lady, and I think that’s enough to qualify me to at least give this a try. Read More…

In one of my favorite movies, “Alice in Wonderland”, the caterpillar asks Alice several times, “whoooo are youuu”? Alice is so overwhelmed and confused, trying to understand the environment she is in and her place in it, that she hardly knows what to say and doesn’t have an answer. How many of us have felt – and possibly still feel – this way? How many times have we encountered “caterpillars” asking us that same question? And, more importantly, how many times have we asked our own selves that question – “who am I?” Do you know the answer? 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…

When we saw Professor Thomas J. Scheff teaching about emotions on UCTV, we knew we had to talk to him. A prolific author whose books include Microsociology, Emotions and Violence, Bloody Revenge, Emotions and the Social Bond, and Easy Rider, among others, Scheff is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara and an expert on emotions and social psychology. He is also a wonderful human being whose sense of humor permeates his teachings and resonates throughout this interview, where we discuss love, anger, and what he considers the master emotion: shame. Read More…

National Nutrition Month (March) is almost over, and as we welcome the sunshine and heat everyone must be thinking two things: Spring cleaning (home, closets, garage) and Spring cleanse (body detox…beach body!) But here is something you may not know about that goes hand-in-hand with body detox: Mental Toxicity. In this Spring cleaning state-of-mind (no pun intended), let us give you a heads up on this very important part of detox that people generally do not seem to acknowledge, in spite of it being so crucial for real cleansing and optimal health.

Mental toxins are all the negative thoughts, emotions, associations, and memories that hunt us, archives of “programs” (as I like to call them) that exist in the back of your mind or subconsciousness. Many of these programs, mental discomforts/distortions that you have ignored and not dealt with, negative feelings and thoughts that have not been analyzed, broken down, worked out and understood, are still inside of you in the form of mental toxic waste. This mental toxicity hanging around in your your mind, literally “weighs” you down because it is energetically heavy and dense, and if it is not cleansed it will resurface at some point and attack you when you least expect it, and quite probably turn into the physical imbalance we call illness. Read More…