Do You Shine?

     You do realize that you are a sacred elephant trying to live in an anthill?

     Ms. Williamson put it best: Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. - Marianne Williamson

Go big, don’t go puny. Serve the world.

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Moxa

     What an intriguing topic this is, one I know so very little about. Moxa, artemesia vulgaris, along with needles and herbs is one of the three legs of the stool of acupuncture practice. Moxa is a fibrous herb which smolders when a lighted incense stick is applied. Ancient Chinese Chapstick might be used as a base to stick the little compressed pyramids on. It warms the acupuncture point and subsequently the patient. We should be mindful about using it with those with heart conditions or who already have lots of heat in the system. But if you’re cold in the core or hand and feet, 5 – 7 moxa will do the trick.

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Death is more universal than life; everybody dies but not everybody lives. – A. Sachs

How I Got Started in Acupuncture

     My fabulous wife had been getting regular acupuncture treatment for ten years and had said "you really should go, it’ll do something for your blood pressure." So I finally went, not without a little grumble.

     Anyhow, I had the very patient practitioner take my BP before the treatment and during the treatment, and sometimes when I was standing or lying on my side and practically in every permutation besides eating the green eggs and ham. And, after about eight weeks, it had come down about 20 points, keeping me drug free.

     Now the really interesting thing was how I would watch the looks on folks’ faces as they would come out of her office and I thought “I’d like to be able to provide that.”

     Circumstances eventually led to the universe saying “sure, come on down Route 29 to acupuncture school.”

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When you don't have any money, the problem is food. When you have money, it's sex. When you have both, it's health. If everything is simply jake, then you're frightened of death. - J.P. Donleavy

The Aucpuncture Points Artwork Site

     You can buy copies of acupuncture point artwork in some sort of format if you desire. These works are done by two artists, Brooks and Tu. Marlow Brooks honours traditional oriental calligraphy as a strong practice of being "on the spot" with her entire body, mind and spirit, and is delighted to blend this ancient art with her love of colour and painting. A devoted artist, Harrison Tu has created numerous works of calligraphy, many of which have been selected for exhibition in the United States, Japan, Korea and Singapore. Between the two of them, they have produced a stylized version of each of the points, all 365 of the grneral ones. Here's an example for the site,  www.worsleyinc.com/spirits/artwork.shtml, it's Lesser Palace, Heart 8.
     These are a bit hard to interpret in their form, as in there's a lot of flourish, but they're very nice looking. All artwork consists of original pieces, elegantly presented on rice paper in various sizes. The largest is 15" x 19" matted, and the smallest is 12" x 17" matted. Each is matted in acid-free mats of appropriate color, backed with acid-free foam core, and packed in clear cellophane. Matting protects the piece during shipping and gives a beautiful finish in the home or office.

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Treasure the love you receive above all. It will survive long after your gold and good health have vanished. - Og Mandino

My Name Badge

     Each student got a 1 x 3 blue name badge when we started to the Tai Sophia Institute acupuncture school. It was a pin-on plastic with white letters. I just threw mine away about a week ago, of course. Our acupuncture class started out with 40 students, a large class, maybe the largest class the school had seen in thirty plus years.
     And, it became quickly evident that not all were meant to finish the 4 year program, at least not at the same time. So as each student left the program, either dropping back a class or flunking out (which was rare) or leaving through other avenues, I wrote their name on the badge's back as a way for me, for all of us to remember them.
     I remember referring to the badge when in school, reminding myself of them.

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What is this about being real? About doing life in front of everyone all the time?

Chinese Language

     I'm starting my most recent Chinese language class this month at the local community college. I seem to be fascinated with how the characters are formed. It's like each character is a puzzle in a box and when you open it, it's never the same.

     There is the story about the development of the Chinese language, maybe between Huang-Di and his advisor, I could look it up I guess, who shows the Yellow Emperor the footprints made by different birds in the sand along the beach. In a similar vein, he offers that a written language could be created by constructing a graphic for each different word in the same way.
     Now, after you get past tree and river and house and leg, the language is a lot less precise on the face of it, but the ambiguity of the needed modifiers renders a great banquet of nuanced meanings, once you get to that point of course.

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Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what sort of universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit. - William James

The Second Five Practices

     There are actually seven of them and it makes better reading if you keep it listed to five I think. I set them out here so that I don’t forget what I need to write:

     Have No Expectations
     Look to See, Listen to Hear, Be.
     Pointing to Myself
     Bow to How Life Is
     On Automatic
     Design Your Day
     Doing It for Whom?

     I plan to write more on each as we go along.

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If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow. - Chinese Proverb

Diagnosis

      How do we diagnose? That’s the big question because if can determine what’s wrong, then the big answer is how can we address it?

      Here’s a very simple example, which is a lie, because the people are never uncomplicated, but anyway, the patient has rheumatoid arthritis in a severe way wherein her hands are deeply affected enough where they are cramped up and turn outward. Notice I didn’t label them as “deformed”; it took me a long time to realize if I thought that way then that contributed to continuing to affect her hands. More later. RA is an auto immune condition, and in addition she also has muscle issues, as well as anger issues.

     So what? All of these begin to point me very directedly at treating the Wood element.

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Anger makes you smaller, while forgiveness forces you to grow beyond what you were. - Cherie Carter Scott

Acupuncture and the WSJ

     The Wall Street Journal ran an article in March 2010 about acupuncture. Please go online and look at it. I think I’m summarizing it correctly to say that the gist of the article was, and you may quote me here, “there may be something to that acupuncture stuff.”
     As fanciful as that seems, acupuncture does have real effects on the human body, which scientists are documenting using high-tech tools. Neuroimaging studies show that it seems to calm areas of the brain that register pain and activate those involved in rest and recuperation. Doppler ultrasound shows that acupuncture increases blood flow in treated areas. Thermal imaging shows that it can make inflammation subside.
     Scientists are also finding parallels between the ancient concepts and modern anatomy. Many of the 365 acupuncture points correspond to nerve bundles or muscle trigger points. Several meridians track major arteries and nerves. "If people have a heart attack, the pain will radiate up across the chest and down the left arm. That's where the heart meridian goes," says Peter Dorsher, a specialist in pain management and rehabilitation at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla. "Gallbladder pain will radiate to the right upper shoulder, just where the gallbladder meridian goes."
     Neuroimaging, Doppler ultrasound, thermal imaging - who knew!

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In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted. - Bertrand Russell

How Five Element Acupuncture Is in the World

     The very shorthand of the beginnng is that first and always there is the Dao, out of which comes the (second) Yin and Yang, and (third) they are the originators of heaven, earth, and man - the three, out of which comes the four directions, and they produce the Five Elements or the Five Phases. Boy, what a mess of incompleteness that is!
     I may have to come back to most of that.
     Five Element is a nature-based, phenomena medicine, at least the way I learned it which may not be exactly the way I was taught.
     There are the five (!) seasons or five elements (Wood can be thought of as that green cirlce at about 9 o'clock) and each one is associated with a whole host of ideas which we practitioners observe, like color, smell, odor and emotion. The season of spring is associated with the color green and the emotion anger. The Liver and the Gallbladder are the organs of the element of Wood, the season of Spring. The concept of the Liver (somewhat different that we appreciate it in Western medicine) is associated with vision (since the meridian of the Liver opens into the eyes) and muscles.
     When the elements are well in balance we incorporate all five aspects seamlessly. When one is uneven, it shows up more.
     The "so what?" aspect is answered when we perceive a patient with anger issues, the color green observed around the eyes or mouth, problems with vision or muscles. The wood pulses, the Liver and Gallbladder ones, may evidence some unusual characteristics or be very weak or very strong. Any combination, this little scenario may direct us to treat something to do with Wood.
     Now, it's not as simple as that. It may be that the supervising element of Metal may be over controlling or Wood may be undercontolling its responsible element of Earth, so we have to allow for those interactions.
     Again, we rely on the interplay of the pulses to provide us direction.

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We should manage our fortunes as we do our health - enjoy it when good, be patient when it is bad, and never apply violent remedies except in an extreme necessity. - Francoise de La Roschefoucauld

It Might Be Personal

     I treat a patient like we were in the middle of an operating theater with hundreds of people watching and use the draping material accordingly. Maybe it’s because I’m male and lots of my patients are not, so I take care to maintain and respect their dignity, their space, with no surprises. Particulars? Yes, I have some. I treat points on the Conception Vessel meridian, it’s a line that runs down the front of our trunks, from chin through belly button to public bone.
     There are points on the CV which are located on the lower abdomen which border the public bone, or points on the Kidney meridian located on the upper chest, all of which need to be approached with reverence. The CV points have to do with digestive disorders, with fertility issues, with menopausal matters, and so much more. The Kidney points also have lots of uses in treatment, so these are just a few of the areas where having a body can be kind of personal.
     There are times where I’ll ask a patient to push down the waistband of their garb so I can access to the lower CV line and it’s a mark of a rookie practitioner to ask the patient “to pull their pants down”. It’s illustrative of the both the delicacy and power of language, something I feel about strongly.
     (I didn't get the picture I wanted!)

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How you choose to respond to each moment to the movie of life determines how you see the next frame, and the next, and eventually how you feel when the movie ends. - Doc Childre

Showing Up

     Which reminds me, what do other people count on you for? Is how you show up in the world as you see it, consistent and congruent with how others perceive you? It seems to be a better thing if I realize that not all will embrace my quirky humor.
     Do you seem welcoming and serene to others or are you liable to be sharp, flighty, late and grumpy? Either way is great, just as long as you are aware of it. In our schooling we had an exercise in our very experiential classes where we put written things in the basket of our personality, symbolic of how others perceived us. Not surprising, it was all very positive. We did not have the follow up exercise where we were critiqued for our obsessive punctuality, our OCD-related neatness, or our overly judgmental natures.
      And isn’t that one of the thing this format is good for?
     
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One kind word can warm three months of winter. - Japanese proverb

Commitments, Not Patients

     I went to visit a prospective patient the other day at the acute rehab center because she couldn't come to me. The main purpose of my visit was to ask if she was committed to making progress, whatever she deemed that to be. Was she willing to change diet, to change lifestyle, to change perspective and her comfort level in all things? She surprised me by asking what kinds of questions were those? Didn't I want her as a patient?
     I sort of surprised myself in answering her with the remark that I didn't want patients, I wanted people who were committed to improving their health.
     My reputation rests with each one of my patients, even more, my karmic destiny. I succeed as each patient succeeds. A common comment in practitioner circles is that we should never work harder than our patient is willing to work.

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How you spend your time is more important than how you spend your money. Money mistakes can be corrected, but time is gone forever. - David Norris

Pulse Diagnosis

     There was a day early on school where we were to begin checking pulses. One of the major diagnostic tools we have as Five Element acupuncturists is pulse diagnosis. We were taught that there were three deep and three superficial pulses on each wrist and to interpret that we had to check a lot of wrists; before my day folks went out to the airport for this - imagine!
     We were required to document I think it was fifty pulse picture a week for the first year and forty per week for the subsequent years and I remember at the time I thought I was getting nothing for the first year. I think my classmate Tiana made the comment that she got no information for the first thousand, all the info she needed during the second thousand, and too much info for the third thousand. In treatment today I probably check the patient’s pulses a dozen times or so. Pulse diagnosis, along with tongue diagnosis (the only internal organ we can visualize externally) provides real feedback tools to us.

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Both tears and sweat are salty, but they render a different result. Tears will get you sympathy, sweat will get you change. - Jesse Jackson

Moving Day

     It’s moving day! Actually it’s office moving in day for me. My landlord of several years is moving to Oregon and taking her office furniture with her to open a new practive out there. I have new stuff to move into the same place. I’ll miss the flying crane mobile and the hanging frog, even the rickety plant stand holding the anatomical statue, but it’ll be nice to have my own desk and table in there.
     This fall I plan to perform some treatments out of doors in September and October, and then depending on how that goes maybe some in the cooler weather of November and December. I’d really like to treat oitside in the dark under the stars; it seems like it would be very freeing. I don’t have a better word than that. I have my eye on some space at the Shaw Farms here in Columbia or on the church grounds over in Owen Brown.

More . . .

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Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great. - Comte DeBussey-Rabuto

Designing a Treatment

     How do I design the treatment? For me, it begins with being on time. If I have an appointment at 11:30a, I make it a priority to design the previous treatment with enough time at the end so that I can take care of business with that patient (what happened this time on the table, the payment, scheduling the next treatment, the goodbye, changing the sheets and getting set up) and still be out in the waiting room between 11:29 and 11:31a.
     This being on time may be peculiar to me. I like to start church on time, for movies to start on time, classes at school to start on time. This way of life about punctuality is not better than other ways for those that are schedule-challenged, it’s just who I have come to be, it serves me. Those people and patients in my life can count on me to be just a little bit early.
     I greet the patient with “won’t you please step back this way.” I don’t greet them by name because there are usually other people in the waiting area and this avoids confidentiality issues. I don’t ask them how they are cause they’ll begin to tell me out in the hallway.
     These are small things and here’s a good place to stop and point out it either all matters or none of it matters. For me, it all matters, every bit of it. The greeting, the cleanliness and color of the sheets on the bed, the music in the treatment, how the needles are lined up on the tray, all of it. Does it matter to you?

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One kind word can warm three months of winter. - Japanese proverb

Is My Butt Too Big?

“Cleaning out things makes my butt smaller.” That’s what a patient told me the other day. Up until this spring, the patient had been holding on to too much stuff, it’s a lot, really. And now this season, it’s time to turn loose of it, to lose weight, to strip down to what really serves, to cleanse out life.

There’s a quote from Gail Reichstein, author of Wood Becomes Water, that reads "the quickest way to control an excess Earth element is to clean up clutter. Not dirt necessarily, which is the province of the Metal element, but the clutter and overabundance that accumulate around us during times of stress and inattention. Clean off tabletops and desktops, clean out drawers and cabinets, organize closets and basements, throwing out as much as you can, and organizing the rest into neat piles. This will begin the process of draining and simplifying an overburdened Earth element."

"Earth element"? More later on the elements. . .
It’s like it’s connected, the more stuff that goes, the less you weigh.

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How you spend your time is more important than how you spend your money. Money mistakes can be corrected, but time is gone forever. - David Norris

Covering the Basics

     Covering the Basics then. What is the mindset? What preparation have I made? Already that day I have 1) designed my mood, 2) decided not to be on automatic, 3) in all situations, to look and see, listen and hear, to be.

     What resides foremost in my active mind - how will I perceive the world? The answer – I’ll bow to how life is, I’ll realize that all the people I meet are one with me, I’ll recognize that I have a choice in all things, I’ll remember that I must allow people to come into my presence as perfect beings - not limiting them in my story about them and with no judgment, I’ll have no expectations about how they should be or act, life is continuous change, I am a beginner in so many areas, and that my words are very powerful. That’s how I’ll start each treatment. That’s how I’ll do life.

(That's my travel Gladstone bag.)

7,000 steps/161lbs

You can’t try to do things; you simply must do them. - Ray Bradbury

Stroked by God

There's a great film about Ram Dass after he had a stroke, which is where the title comes from. As I recall, it shows him making remarkable progress and recovery while receiving acupuncture treatment.

Well, this month is the one year anniversary of a similar event in my life. I suffered a circulation-based event, resulting in paralysis and difficulty speaking on a Wednesday morning in April. After five glorious days in the hospital, the medical staff was still unsure of what happened (it didn't have the phenomena associated with a stroke), but they said to be sure and come back if it happened again. After another three weeks, I started the walking program and weight loss regime. So far, I've lost about 35 lbs and walk several thousand steps each day. What a deal!

6,500 steps/ 160 lbs

When you blame others, you give up your power to change. - Dr. Robert Anthony

Sciatica and Beginnings

     In acupuncture school at the Tai Sophia Institue, we had a clinical phase there at the end where we had to do 90 treatments and at least ten different individuals as a requirement to graduate. My first patients (as well as my wife) had back and sciatica issues, enough so that I was the unofficial go-to guy in clinic at the time to consult on those matters. I didn’t plan it that way, I would have chosen smoking cessation or weight loss or something that it seems everyone was interested in.

     The upshot was that I became very comfortable with things associated with sciatica treatment, things like where’s Jumping Round, GB-30 located (close to the hip joint), is cupping indicated (induce a vacuum into a glass ball with a lighted alcohol-soaked cotton ball - very dramatic!), how to introduce heat into the area (on a big needle with burning moxa), what are the related points, how do you situate the patient for treatment (on their side), how do you maintain the site with draping and obtain access to what you need to while maintaining their dignity?

6,500 steps/160 lbs

He who lives in the present lives in eternity. - Ludwig Wittgenstein

Do Without the Judgment

     Can you do this, even for an hour - not to compute all the incoming data, the physical aspects, the emotional content, the facial expression? Can you be at peace in someone's presence without having to assign a bottom line calculated to be where they are?

     Take the snowstorm from February, 2010. I found myself having a judgement about it before it even arrived, something as funamental and elemental as a weather event. It was going to be terrible and inconvenient and disruptive!  I think I could have moved through the event much more easily if I had allowed the storm to just be, it didn't need me to comment on it. I think I would have been better served if I had let myself just register that there was a storm, recognize it for just what it was. My being in the world would have been much lighter if I hadn't had to append "terrible", "obstacle", and "mess" to the event.

      Next time.

6,000 steps, 162 lbs

When you're through changing. . . you're through. - Bruce Barton

My Story, Your Story

Do you have a story about how things are? How all things are?

I had a story about Mr. McWilliams who owned the used clothing store in my home town when I was a kid. He always seemed grumpy and upset whenever we were in there and I made up this whole monologue about his disliking children, poor children, his being upset whenever we were in there. I found out later in life that he was very fearful that we wouldn't like the quality of his goods, that he was actually very good with kids.

What's our story about our patients, our relatives, people we meet? Do we construct how people are based on their clothing or facial expression? What's the phenomenon that's actually present? Can we actually be in the presence of another without drawing down some experiences from the past and make a construction of them without benefit of the present facts? Can we listen and hear them, look and see them, as they actually are right here, right now?

5,500 steps, 161 lbs

It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere. - Agnes Repplier

Upset Is Optional

I love the commercials about how life comes at you fast. People say to take it one day at a time, but then several days may gang up on me at once! How do you handle it, the way life comes at you? Do you get caught up in it, like becoming entangled in the overhanging vine tendrils in a jungle? Does every problem (the broken dishwasher, the irate driver in back of you, the relative's phone call, the temper tantrum) seem to demand a big response from you?

Do you realize there's an alternative? It's very true that problems are mandatory in this life and it's equally true that the upset is optional. You don't have to have a (big) reaction. There is some gap in time between the phenomenon and the reaction. My challenge is to widen that gap sufficiently so that the reaction doesn't follow automatically, that I have a space there to design a response, that I can choose to blow up or, in the alternative, just shrug it off. I can choose what my response will be!

7,500 steps/162 lbs

Everything has been figured out except how to live. - Jean Paul Sartre

Perfect Just As You Are

What else is in the toolbox? There's the concept of perfection, as in you are perfect, just as you are, complete with all the things that make you human.

Boy, this illustrates how hard some of this stuff is. I have a patient with what most folks would call a diminished lifestyle; he's in a coma of a sort, on a breathing/feeding tube, completely dependent on those around him, and yet, he is most perfect, just as he is. He doesn't need fixing in any way.

Can you at least think about someone being perfect, just as they are. This is how we are exhorted to think of our patients, that they are perfect as they come to us, not that we should perceive them as too much or too little of anything (too fat, too old, too flighty, too negative, etc.). When someone arrives to you as perfect, there's very little that needs doing.

(And that's Hudson, a 5 year old French Bulldog.)
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Remember that fear always lurks behind perfectonism. Confronting your fears and allowinng yourself to be human can, paradoxically, make you a far happier and more productive person. - Dr. David M. Burns

"And" for "But"

So try this practice: substitute the word and for the word but in all things for a week. I know it often doesn't make grammatical sense, and it allows us to be more inclusive about things. The use of and for but prevents us from excluding things, permits us to have a wider filter on things coming our way.

Don't we have an impulse to categorize things and people? Putting people in a classification is one of the first things I used to do. You are a Republican, you are a liberal, you are an elitist, you are a bigot, you are another label that probably doesn't really accurately describe who you are. When we categorize people like that we limit them, we cut their story short, we don't let them have access to all the other humanity they may be.

3,000 steps/160 lbs

Your current safe boundaries were once unknown frontiers. - Unknown

We Are Connected

The Basics then. Can we start with everything? We are, quite correctly, stardust. It just turns out that way that the planet and all that is therein comes from the cosmos, not to put too fine a point on it. The same atoms are used over and over again, have been for the past several years just slightly rearranged; Lily Tomlin says we are time-sharing atoms. Is there a connection between all things because of this?

The First Five Practices

"And for "But"
Perfect Just As You Are
Upset is Optional
No Judgment
My Own Story

4,000 steps/159lbs

Everything is connected. . .no one thing can change (or be changed) by itself. - Paul Hawken

The Basics: A Toolbox for Life

If you are interested, if you are curious how we do this life business, then we must start somewhere near the beginning I guess. What are the assumptions? What are the basics? How do I get you to accompany me on this journey?

It's been my observation that it is the proclivity of acupuncture to shake things up. You wouldn't be here if you didn't want something different, if you didn't want to perturb the status quo; maybe it's to have that hurting in your shoulder go away, or be less angry at life, or see things generally in a different way. Whatever it is, be very clear in yourself: acupuncture will take all your stuff and put it on a tray and then shake the dickens out of it like nobody's business so that it all floats to the top and then sinks at varying rates.

We made these precious trays of foodstuffs for my daughter's wedding, each section having berries or nuts or flower petals and it was going great right up to the part where I managed to flip one of the trays over during transport from the car to the hall. The plastic wrap covering the tray kept everything from spilling but it was all mixed together. Same with acupuncture - all your anxieties, aches and pains, emotional upsets together.

If you think acupuncture treatment is limited to treating your sore shoulder, you're very much mistaken. It will include everything: body, mind a spirit. If you don't plan to extend change into these areas, then don't read any further.

4,000 steps. 159 lbs

Destiny is no matter of chance, it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved. - William Jennings Bryant

The 10,000 Steps Program

That 10,000 steps program is a reference to the book of the same name: 10,000 Steps a Day by Greg Isaacs.

Sleeping Our Way to Health

Many of my patients have trouble with their sleeping. The simplest solution is the one that has been around the longest. Get up early and do stuff. I have a patient in his mid 50s who hasn't slept well in years. The patient has recently embarked on a program of walking. Perhaps I'll include more detail on this simple statement later. As it turns out, the walking has led to all the other things: weight loss of about forty pounds, lowered blood pressure and cholesterol, elimination of taking a whole host of medication, better quality of life and outlook, and surprise, the patient sleeps very well.

I'm on the 10,000 steps per day program myself. As you can see, I'm not quite there yet. More to follow. . .

Sleep is the golden chain that ties our bodies and health together. - Thomas Dekker

Now it's wine and acupuncture on the ads, hmmm?

2,500 steps/158.5 lbs