Good health is the most valuable possession you could possibly have. This simple truth applies as much to a new born baby as to the elderly, a mother, a doctor, the common man on the street, or the president of a country. Whenever your body becomes sick or does not perform up to what you consider normal, you may experience a state of discomfort, fear or depression that can only be remedied by restoring your body’s former health and vitality. To truly feel comfortable within yourself and in your surroundings, you must be able to relinquish all forms of “dis-ease.”
You are indeed capable of healing yourself. Your state of health is but a reflection of how you perceive yourself and your world, which places the responsibility for your wellbeing where it belongs – in your own hands. Yet, once you have achieved good health, you have done much more than just feeling well.
You have become “whole,” perhaps, for the very first time in your life.
Timeless Secrets of Health and Rejuvenation can help unleash the tremendous power of healing that lies dormant within you and restore balance on all levels of the body, mind and spirit. This establishes a permanent comfort zone or continuous sense of satisfaction and, thereby, provides the basis for a creative, successful and rewarding life.
When ill health arises or when our body starts aging abnormally fast, we suddenly feel an inner urge to look for a solution that promises a quick relief. Today, there is a drug or treatment for almost every illness. It seems to be engraved in our belief system that if we suppress or eliminate the symptoms of a disease, we automatically eradicate the disease. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. Each time we remove a symptom without attending its cause we further distance ourselves from regaining the balance required for continuous health and vitality. Consequently, good health remains but a dream and we may resign to sayings such as, “Well, that’s life!” or, "We all have to die of one thing or another!"
Regaining one’s health is not about applying a magical quick fix, rather it is a reconstruction process that affects every part of one’s life, i.e., creativity, job, relationships, emotions, happiness, etc. It would be very simplistic to assume that a few vitamin pills, a new wonder drug, an operation, or alternative treatments could, in the spur of a moment, undo the effects of many years of neglect. The body may have had to endure much strain from not receiving proper nourishment or sufficient sleep and exercise for years on end. Timeless Secrets of Health and Rejuvenation is about setting the preconditions for the body to do best what it knows best – creating and maintaining balance – regardless of age and previous health problems. The key to creating balance in every aspect of your life can be found when you start taking responsibility for your own health.
This book deals with the most down-to-earth issues of health, such as lifestyle, diet, nutrition, exercise, daily routine, etc., some of which I derived from Ayurvedic Medicine. Ayurveda, which literally means Science of Life, is the most ancient and complete system of natural health care. Apart from Ayurveda’s time-tested insights into the secrets of healing and longevity you will also learn to how to apply a number of highly effective and profound cleansing procedures that can have no less than miraculous effects on your physical, emotional and spiritual well-being. The simplified scientific knowledge and common sense used in this book generate the motivation for “turning the key” of health and rejuvenation. The book also sheds light on the most common diseases and misunderstood medical practices today of which everyone should be aware.
Concerning the improvement of personal health and well-being, we require a major shift in both individual and collective consciousness. We must move away from the pre-programmed expectations of illness and aging toward the anticipation of continual youthfulness and vitality. The old saying that everyone has to age and die seems to be a repeatedly verified belief doctrine that most people in the world follow blindly without even questioning its validity. Could it be possible, instead, that illness and old age occur because we believe they are an inevitable curse we all are subjected to and doomed to live with? If so, in order to fulfill the curse or belief, as it happens with any other self-fulfilling prophecy we are setting the stage for its execution. Although quite unaware of this drama, we actually allow ourselves to adopt the various methods of self-destruction, through derogatory diets, lifestyle and behavior. Right from childhood our parents, teachers, and society have sentenced us to the “fact” that the body has no choice but to deteriorate and eventually die from old age or an illness. This generally accepted belief generates a distinct feeling of being out of control, of being dragged down the dark corridor of time by a mysterious power called the aging process.
The feeling of not being in charge or control is one of the most common causes of physical and mental illness; most people call it “stress.” The idea of being vulnerable and unsafe generates fear, which in turn triggers profound biochemical changes in the body. These changes become the physical “reality” of ill health and aging. Through the intimate psycho-physiological (mind/body) connection, every thought and feeling, to a lesser or greater degree, alters your experience of health and well-being. A bout of depression can paralyze your immune system, and falling in love can boost it.
If you are convinced that aging is natural and cannot be avoided then this is the reality you are creating for yourself. Likewise, you can draw on the same force that causes destruction in the body and direct it toward healing and rejuvenation. You can prove to yourself that growing old and being affected by disease are merely the manifested projections of ignorance about the real nature of life. Disease and aging are not part of your body’s genetic design. Even the so-called “death-gene,” which is in charge of terminating the lives of cells in our body according to their various predetermined life spans, is the one that keeps us alive. Without this gene we would all die from cancer within weeks. In this sense, controlled destruction is the giver of life, and life that has gone out of control can be the harbinger of death. There is nothing in the normal original setup of our body that could indicate it is causing its own aging or diseases. But there is enough evidence to show that aging and illness originate in the combined effects of fearful, negative mental attitudes and emotions and excessive accumulation of toxic waste material in the body.
As a human race we are about to recognize the vanity of participating in the hypnosis of social conditioning that keeps our mind veiled in the cast shadows of illusion. Many of us have already begun to let go of the fears and doubts that keep us from realizing our tremendous powers that are patiently waiting on us to be put into action. To make a real difference in life we will need to employ our vast potential of energy, creativity, and intelligence for the truly essential issues in life and for generating a profound sense of happiness. One of the keys to unleash our endless potential is the body itself.
The body is constantly engaged in turning over its cells, which in itself is a miraculous and extremely complex process, unmatched by anything man has ever created (please note that whenever I use the terms “man” or “mankind,” I am referring to both genders). The numerous types of proteins that make up your genes and constitute the cells in your body are replaced within 2-10 days. Radioisotope studies show that 98 percent of the atoms that compose your body today won’t be there in a year’s time. The renewal process affects all parts of the body, including the blood, muscles, organs, fat, bones, nerves, and as recently confirmed, brain cells. With the continual replacement of your cells you should be able to have a new body and consequently a new lease on life, at least once every year. In this book you will learn about the body’s built-in mechanisms that can stop the clock of aging and make you younger and healthier the older you grow.
We are right in the middle of a tremendous global transformation that has already greatly influenced, if not shaken up, the very foundation of conventional medicine. The old division of body and mind into completely separate and independent entities is crumbling fast with the knowledge supplied by the more progressive wings of medical science such as Psycho-Neuro-Immunology or Mind/Body Medicine. Even though the artificial division of body and mind, which is based on the old and outdated paradigms of understanding human nature, has never really existed, it was nevertheless powerful enough, and still is to a certain extent, to make man believe he is essentially a physical being. Since the importance of the mind in the area of human health has been mostly ignored by those put in charge of taking care of it, this division of human life into physical and mental has also far removed any possibility for achieving a reasonably satisfying state of health. As it is will become apparent from reading this book, instead of eradicating disease from the surface of the earth, the purely symptom-oriented approach to health care has immensely limited the success of medicine in treating disease and to a substantial extent even contributed to the occurrence of chronic diseases world-wide.
Only now are we beginning to recognize the inseparability of the body and mind. The breakthrough discoveries in the field of Mind/Body Medicine have already helped thousands of people regain their health. They show that mind and body never exist as separate or independent entities. A hand can never write a letter unless the mind orders the hand to do so. You cannot even move your eyes to read these words unless your mind has given you the definite instruction to follow their sequence. Our life is controlled by what could aptly be called “super intelligent body/mind.” Without its supervising presence, the body’s 60-100 trillion cells, with their over one trillion biochemical reactions per second each, would proportionally generate as much chaos and confusion as could be created in the case of the dissolution of the universe.
You can experience the intimate relationship between mind and body when you get a stomachache from feeling upset, or when you faint from receiving sudden bad news. Some people have literally turned gray overnight due to a traumatic event and others blush when they feel embarrassed. Heart attacks can be triggered by a single bout of anger or intense anxiety, regardless whether one's arteries are congested or open. All thoughts and feelings are readily translated into biochemical compounds within the brain and within every other part of the body, thereby altering physical appearance and performance. In fact, every bit of mental activity leaves us with a specific physical sensation, known as emotion. Emotions are composites of both mental impulses and physical effects and they express the totality of your health at any given time.
Your endocrine system, which produces hormones in response to your mental experiences, is indeed your personal drug store, and it comes free. Your inner pharmacy can make any drug you need and you are the pharmacist who writes the appropriate prescriptions. Depending on your emotional response or reaction to a particular event or problem, the drugs and their doses vary accordingly. They may be the stress hormones adrenaline, cortisol or cholesterol. When released into your blood stream in response to anger, fear or rejection, for example, the hormone secretions can save your life, but in the long term they may damage the blood vessels and impair the immune system. Your happy emotions, on the other hand, manifest as endorphins, serotonin, interleukin or other drugs that are related to the experience of pleasure and joy. If you produce enough of them you may even be able to arrest the aging process.
Carefully controlled studies have shown that you can reduce your biological age by 10-15 years within ten days, provided your interpretation of your life experience goes through sudden, positive changes. But you also can put on 20 extra years within a single day if you enter a state of hopelessness and depression. Hormones can have extremely powerful effects, both in a positive and negative sense. Yet even more powerful than hormones are the thought intentions that trigger them.
For many years now, hospitals have been recording cases of what is generally known as “spontaneous remission.” A remission of cancer or other serious illnesses may occur when a person has experienced a state of sudden and unprecedented happiness. Others “fall” into the spontaneous emotion of laughter, which consequently may stop a terminal illness. Our physical makeup is capable of providing formerly unknown and extremely powerful chemicals in response to a newly adopted perception of reality. This intrinsic ability of the human mind/body system will evolve our endocrine system to a much higher level of efficiency and bestow abilities to our body beyond our current level understanding or imagination. The mind/body connection will be discussed at great length in this book because it forms an essential part of our endeavor to improve physical and mental health.
The journey of developing a permanent state of health and vitality is not so much about treating disease, which is the main concern of conventional medicine. True healing is more about reestablishing the flawless connection that exists between body and mind. The darkness in a room disappears when we switch on the light, and so does disease disappear by the act of generating healthy, life-supporting effects in our body and mind. Good health remains an unrealistic dream when the focus is on disease.
A basic natural law states that energy follows thought. If disease is your point of attention, or remains a point of reference and truth in your life, you are going to be stuck with it because disease thrives on negative energy. Over 90% of all diseases in our Western civilization are chronic by nature; for these there are no successful treatments available, at least not in the field of traditional medicine. The inadequacy of our modern medical system in successfully dealing with chronic disease is rooted in the collective conviction that we need to get rid of the symptoms of disease in order to get our health back. If we focused our attention on setting the preconditions responsible for creating and maintaining good health, health would return naturally. It is not disease that needs attention; it is the patient who requires love, care, nourishment, and the feeling of being complete again. The single most important experience that the unbalanced body/mind needs for healing is the experience of happiness, which results when a person begins to take his health in his hands and removes whatever congestion may exist in the body. This is a highly self-empowering process, which is pleasing to the heart, body and soul.
A fascinating study showed that happy people are the least likely to catch colds, regardless how often you expose them to a cold virus. Also people who are in love show a higher resistance to disease. To create a positive state of health can be a powerful happiness-generating event. Happiness returns spontaneously in a person who, suffering from a cold or a disease, starts to feel better again. Only happiness and health are attractive to us; disease isn’t. Unhappy people can never be truly healthy, just as unhealthy people can never be truly happy. A person who suffers from cancer and learns to apply the methods of regaining his happiness described in this book may suddenly cure himself, but if he continues hating his mother, father or ex-spouse, then even these or similar therapies are bound to be unsuccessful in the long-term. By focusing on disease or negativity in life one remains trapped in unresolved cycles of anger and conflicts. This, in turn, will have a powerful immune-suppressive effect and prevent true healing from taking place. The focus on the destructive characteristics of a disease – widely known as symptoms of disease – cannot serve as a source of inspiration to procure a true healing response and bring about an ever-evolving state of health. There is, in fact, nothing to be gained from a fascination with disease. In contrast, there is everything to be gained from a fascination with health.
The human body has no built-in programs for sickness, but it has many programs to maintain a state of perfect equilibrium or balance. It is the nature of the human being to be healthy but it is up to us to set the preconditions for these programs to work efficiently. Healing is absent when happiness is absent. Bereaved persons, whose sense of joy has virtually become non-existent, demonstrate this most clearly. Widows rank among the highest in the risk groups for cancer. Sadness, due to the loss of a beloved one, blocks a person’s normal immune response to fight cancer cells, even though his or her T-cell count may be in the normal range. The latest studies on heart disease show that lack of happiness and job satisfaction are heading the list of risk factors for heart attacks; they are far more endangering to our health than animal fats, alcohol and even cigarettes.
The main purpose of life is to increase happiness. Any action that does not support this most basic principle of life is destined to fail or generate problems. This is as true for the field of health as it is for every other area in life. Most of the advice given in this book has an uplifting or a clarifying effect, thus providing a solid foundation for creating and maintaining good health. The liver cleanse described in chapter seven, which can remove hundreds of gallstones from the liver and gallbladder within a few hours, can by itself trigger waves of utter wellness and eliminate deep-seated anger and frustration. The clearing of severely blocked ducts and channels of circulation in the body can have truly blissful effects and most certainly change one’s priorities in life. With the continued improvement of your health you may find yourself entering a state of completeness where the pieces of the puzzle of life will naturally show up in their designated places.
As you read about the various ways of improving your physical health, try to remember that this is closely tied to your mental and emotional well-being. Should you be suffering from a particular illness like cancer, heart disease or AIDS, apart from dealing with the physical aspect of the imbalance, you will also need to attend to its mental and emotional counterparts. Disease is not something that you just “catch.” Instead, it is something you create by repeatedly setting up the same limitations and difficulties that prevent your body and mind from regaining their natural state of balance or health.
We don’t need to have the permission from anyone to improve our health because this is our natural birthright. The advice given in this book is not meant for curing diseases because it is not disease that needs curing; it is the suffering person who needs to become whole, happy and vital again. You can never really cure a disease because disease only occurs when health is no longer being created, when you are no longer in tune with your inner purpose, your natural sense of joyful existence, and the outer world. But once you have allowed balance to return to your body and mind, disease will disappear by itself just as the darkness of the night disappears with the light of the day.
Most of the data and research that is mentioned in this book is based on what are generally considered “reliable” sources, such as published papers and scientific journals. But although I have cited scientific research studies throughout the book to clarify and illuminate basic insights, it is my opinion that research in itself cannot serve as a reliable source of truth and reality. The reason for this assumption is the fact that there can never be any kind of research that will remain unaltered by the changing factors of time and space, the unaccountable subjectivity of the researchers and those being researched, as well as the intended objectives of the research.
In my view, scientific research should not be used in an exclusive manner to formulate a particular truth in life since it is very easy to employ research studies as a means of manipulating opinions and beliefs. In the United States, the FDA withdraws about 150 pharmaceutical drugs from the market each year because of the harmful, dangerous side effects they generate in numerous consumers. These are the same drugs that the FDA had approved several years earlier, on the basis of the rigorous “scientific” testing procedures that are being employed in all clinical studies today. Take the example of the arthritis drug VIOXX, or other painkillers, including CLELEBREX, ALEVE, and BEXTRA. Isn’t it simply astonishing that these poisonous, expensive drugs could have passed all the supposedly rigorous, scientific safety tests and be sold to millions of unsuspecting arthritis sufferers, just to find out years later that it sharply increased the risk of heart attack and stroke? Could there be double standards for “rigorous testing” in the field of medical research, one for before and one for after introducing these drugs to the market? How many people needed to die (death dramatically raises the stakes for expensive law suits) before the drug producer Merck “volunteered” to withdraw the drug from the market? Likewise, how could powerful antidepressants be given to unhappy children, when it has been proved that these drugs increase the risk of suicide? These are questions that reflect the uncertainty principle that turns the use of medical drugs into a gamble with one’s life.
I am often asked to supply the exact references for those studies I sometimes refer to, but doing so would place too much credence and reliance on something that is so heavily flawed and unreliable. I suggest that you take any statement or argument you are not sure about into your heart and ask your body how it feels (there is a body-testing procedure in chapter one). You will receive a definite answer from your body, which will signal either weakness or strength, or any other form of discomfort or comfort; depending on the input. This book is about enhancing your intuitive and cognitive abilities rather than presenting mere book knowledge to satisfy intellectual needs. The Key to Health and Rejuvenation is not a foreign body of knowledge we need to introduce from outside. You are that key and this book is here to show you how to use it for your own benefit as well as that of mankind.