Just Breathe! is the ezine of The International Breath Institute (IBI) sent to you from Dr. Tom Goode. IBI shows you how to enjoy optimal health through lifestyle management -- learning to live in alignment with your holistic nature. We provide shortcuts from science, tips for your health, and reminders about your breathing.

Content
IBI's web site focuses on Full Wave Breathing because it is the single most important exercise for your health. Use it to get well, be well and do well.

Healthcare
Either you take care of your health or you don’t. If you don’t you become a participant in what is known as “Healthcare.” Healthcare is a system predicated upon the study of sick people and focusing on how to “fix” them. It addresses symptoms rather than causes and treats disease as an enemy to be eradicated.

Self-Responsible Self Care
If illness were a message concerning stressors in your mind and body, as opposed to thinking of illness as an opponent, how would you treat it? Likely you would cooperate with the body using principles based upon natural health. The first place you might start is at the beginning—with the most basic foundation of life, your breath. Your mind and body work pretty well until you start storing stressors in your breathing muscles. Then you become a shallow breather, creating chronic tension that wears down your immune system. Your blood becomes toxic. Lacking oxygen and energy, your body is unable to defend itself against environmental stressors. The result is disease.

Holistic Practices
The most basic holistic health practice is breathing. Because breathing is basic it affects everything. If it is harmonious the entire system moves toward greater harmony. Master your breathing and you master the ability to stimulate your healing resources.

Use your breathing to promote the unimpeded flow of consciousness through every cell in your body. Healing takes place on all levels. Your breathing determines your physical vitality, your emotional calmness, your mental focus and your spiritual awareness.

Today's Challenges
These are times of great stress. They are called holidays. They are times meant for celebration with family and friends, thanksgiving and gratitude. However for many they are times of intense stress and loneliness. Be patient with yourself and protect yourself against anxiety and irritation by controlling your biochemistry. How? Simply, you know how to breathe. Take 3 or 4 Full Wave Breaths when you feel impatience rising in response to shopping, travel or dealing with relatives. You’ll be glad you did.

Stuffing the Bird
Here I speak not of the turkey, but of our tendency to stuff ourselves with holiday feasting. Before you start feeling guilty, however, let me share a few ideas that might help—including starting with half-sized portions of food. Indulging our appetites is a national past time every holiday. We wind up inflaming arteries, overloading digestion and elimination and worrying about adding weight in uncomfortable places. We may also depress our immune system and invite invasion by colds and flu. Goode News

Here’s how to have your cake and pie both. Take supplements! We often hear of the baaahhd things that happen when we eat fast food, too much sugar, and insulin boosting carbohydrates. We also do not usually hear what, as an alternative to purging, we can do about it. First, if you must indulge or yield to the gratification of your taste buds, prepare yourself. If it were me, before chowing down, I’d take two capsules of Tonolin (conjugated linoleic acid). Even better, I’d have been taking up to four of them a day already. This fat soothes resultant irritation and assists with carbohydrate metabolism so you don’t just convert what you eat to fat. After eating, I’d take one gram of Vitamin C. The antioxidant help the body dispose of toxins hidden in the so-called goodies.

Of course you will also be exposed to many more people in your activities, so I’d want to keep your immune system at optimum levels with a daily high potency multi-vitamin. If you don’t know what that is, ask the manager at the health food store to help you select one. As always, I’d drink lots of pure water to help the body remain hydrated, feeling full instead of hungry and to help carry the toxins away. If you must drink alcoholic beverages, just remember you are killing brain cells that one day you may need. Keep the water intake up too because drinking alcohol dehydrates the body.  As far a daily drink being good for your heart goes, you get the same benefit from grape juice without any of the detriments.

Pure water before and with a meal will help you keep from overloading on the food as well. Don’t worry about diluting your digestive juices. Most of us have plenty of stomach acid available to do the job. If you do get indigestion, avoid the popular remedies and instead have some diluted apple cider vinegar or sauerkraut juice. Most indigestion is from lack of digestive juices and things like antacids only decrease them further. You can learn a lot more about what is best for your mind and body by ordering a copy of The Holistic Guide to Weight Management, Anti-Aging and Fat Prevention.

Headaches usually result from a restriction in blood flow. The remedy is simple; perform 5 minutes of Full Wave Breathing. In fact you can use Full Wave Breathing to prevent headaches as well. A daily practice is best to increase circulation and enhance wellness.

Image That
Many of us think of growing older as the old calendar year ends and a new one begins. Here’s a better model for you:
The AARP Journal tells of an 84 year old woman about to star in a film about a 75 year old who overcomes depression preparing for the Boston Marathon. She comments that she is now so busy she only plans to race walk 100 races in the next year.

New Book
Ed McCabe updates and expands his original book, Oxygen Therapies in his new Flood Your Body with Oxygen. Reading through almost 600 hundred pages, you’ll find the latest in oxygen treatments, products, studies and references along with the names and contact information for practitioners. The essential message is simple and one that IBI has been telling you about for many years now. Here are a couple of quotes for you:…
The ultimate cause of ALL disease is a LACK OF ENOUGH OXYGEN to clean our inner fluid environments.  
The cause of free radicals is a lack of oxygen.

The remedy to all of this absence of oxygen is revealed in an overview of therapies, nostrums, pills, potions, oxygenated waters, and interventions. Now, imagine this, the most effective way to increase oxygen in the blood—according to his studies?—deep breathing. So keep up with your Full Wave Breathing practices and if you would like to be up-to-date on the world of oxygen, you can purchase Flood Your Body with Oxygen from Amazon.com by clicking on this link.

Ah, That New Car Odor

The Big 3 Automakers as well as the major importers are offering special deals now to boost year end and new-year car sales. If you are contemplating a purchase, consider this. That “new car” smell is really outgassing of paint, plastics, upholstery and adhesives. The technical term for the source of this sensory assault is “volatile organic compounds” or VOC’s. Over time they can be carcinogenic and are usually associated with the “sick building syndrome.” The VOC level in the cramped space of your car far exceeds the safe levels for an office or home.

So, if you are a new car buyer, keep the windows cracked when parked-even in the winter—for at least six months. Also flush out the air after your vehicle has been sitting in the sun. The resulting heat increases the outgassing. Please avoid the scented sprays or car fragrance hangers as well. They all produce toxins that you don’t need.

The Duh Factor
Agence France-Presse: 12-05-05 Australian researchers said Monday they had scientifically proven a long-suspected link between emotional stress and illnesses ranging from the common cold to cancer.

Holistic Heart Health
In the last edition of Just Breathe!, I referred to Nitric Oxide as the naturally-produced miracle factor in heart health. Of course as we age, the body produces less of it, so I told you of the availability of a supplement that takes care of the problem. Heart disease includes stroke and is the number one killer of both men and women in the US. If you know anyone with a family history of heart disease, or who has poor circulation, high cholesterol, high blood pressure or high stress, send them to www.arginineinfo.com. Then if they need further info, they can call me at the number listed at the end of the newsletter.

As we enter the year 2006, it really is possible to put things like heart bypass surgery and angioplasty away and solve the problems they intend to correct with natural, non-invasive, drugless methods. I am currently writing a book to tell you how it is done.

MORE PROMISES
I told you I would tell you about a new Cosmic Waltz program to be available soon. It is called Inner Harmony and it provides 8 different versions of the Cosmic Waltz, changed to attune each Chakra, and combines them in an album for health and joy. You use your mind by focusing on a suggested color and bodily area, your body by breathing in rhythm with the music, and spirit through your applied intention to renew, recharge, regenerate, reinvigorate and relax your entire energetic system. I’ll tell you more next month. We’ll also take a look at your resolutions, see which ones you want to keep and how to do it.

POLITICALLY APPROPRIATE SEASONAL SENTIMENT
In the meantime, Caron and I wish you and your loved ones the happiest of holiday seasons and blessings of prosperity and health in the New Year!

EXERCISE CORNER:

The easiest way to avoid overindulging this holiday season is with the application of your “won’t” power. Seldom spoken about—in contrast to “will power”—won’t power enables you to eat consciously. So before you rush off for the second or third helping, empower your won’t power with ten slow Full Wave Breaths. Next slowly drink a full glass of pure water. Continue this process, alternating FW breathing with water intake, until you don’t care for more food…and keep having fun by feeding your mind and body the things that are loving for you!

Keep breathing!

Tom

All material in this ezine is presented as information only and should not be constructed as medical advice or instruction. Readers should consult with appropriate licensed health care providers on any matter relating to their health. The information provided is believed to be accurate and based on the best judgment of the author. None of the statements in this ezine have been approved by the FDA.

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