This is something I’ve spent a LOT of time and energy in the past two years. I’ve been heavily focused on my own physical and mental wellness, and it has DEFINITELY paid off. Hopefully you guys can get some good take aways :slightly_smiling_face:
Let’s start with the most debated…
Diet
Last year I went vegan. This year I went carnivore. Gasp! Here’s the thing…with anything…is experimenting and trying new things. New means different. New means uncomfortable (most likely). If its not uncomfortable its probably not different enough to make a difference.
- I felt good being vegan. I felt less bloated, I felt like my stomach was slimmer. I felt I could eat more and not feel bad. I started it thinking it was a healthier diet, and why would I need to eat animals for nutrients if I can just eat what they ate? (cut out the middle man).
- I feel better on the carnivore diet. I think there are two main reasons for this: 1) carnivore is an extreme elimination diet…you’re literally only eating something that was living (zero processed foods, not veggies that may or may not be good for you, no grains no sugars etc), and was still alive not too long ago (obviously get quality grass fed etc etc), and 2) vitamin B12. How do I feel better? My gut is healing (very noticabley, MUCH more compared to vegan). My nervous system feels calmer. My mind feels sharper.
- Sure, I’m no Scientist, but I am a scientist in the fact that I experiment. You don’t have to eat what I ate, but if you’re searching for answers, I would recommend you do what I did and question just about everything you’re doing, even if it means making extreme changes.
Meditation & Stress
This changed my life. You could say it saved it. When COVID hit and everyone was losing their minds, I was spending possibly hours a day meditating…and my mindset got BETTER week after week after week during covid. We all store stress. Physically in our bodies. We’re like stress batteries. Stress gets stored in our nervous system, and if we don’t release that pent up energy, we fall into dis-ease.
- As I started meditating, I found I could literally release energy stored in my body just by “playing with it” using my mind. It sounds crazy, I know. But I was able to find the energy in my body (say in my chest, in my gut, my heart, my head, wherever), focus on it, and let it go. The more I did this, the more positive changes I started to feel. Physical negative emotions were fading away, my skin felt softer, my body felt calmer, my mind felt quieter.
- This can go down a deep deep “rabbit hole”…but I really think its quite simple. Its just not simple to explain. We’re all made of energy (if you don’t understand this, Google it). Stress is negative energy. We’re store stress and trauma physically in our bodies, in our nervous systems. The more negative energy (stress) we store, by not releasing it, the more “negative” we become (our bodies, our minds, etc, will degrade).
- So how do we release it? For things you can do on your own: there’s rhythmic movement like dancing, specific body-focused meditation (which I kind of stumbled upon), and perhaps the most extreme is TRE (watch this and this video, REALLY REALLY MINDBLOWING). For things you can do with others: chiropractic work, massage, acupuncture, breathwork, and rhythmic exercises like dancing.
The Nervous System
Its one of the least known about things in our bodies. It makes up a HUGE HUGE HUGE part of who we are, yet we know very little about it. Well guess what…its where stress is stored, its where anxiety comes from…its what makes our minds work. Our minds, our nerves, are all just electricity flowing around in these “nervous system” wires in our bodies. We need to take care of those wires.
- One drastic way I cleaned up some brain fog was with stretching. Specifically the neck. Chiropractors can really help here. There is SO MUCH going in and around our necks. Nerves, blood vessels, arteries, veins, muscles, vertebrae. One little change can have a big impact on your whole system and you won’t even know it.
- Look up the Thoracic Outlet. Then look up how much looking-down and desk-sitting and computer work we do all day can tighten up this area, the top of the front of our torsos. The tighter you get, the more your blood-flow and nerve-flow (energy-flow) is impeded. This is bad.
- So, sit in a chair, then put your arms up in a big Y and stretch backwards…stretching out the neck and top torso. Or do it laying on your back with a foamroller down your back and your arms just hanging. Doing this every day for a week literally changed the way I felt and see myself. Yes, our nervous system affects the way we look as well.
- Bonus Point…I still need to study this more, BUT, my brain fog also completely shifted when I had a mild impact to the head (diving head-first into water) and having some CSF (Cerebral Spinal Fluid) start draining from my skull (it comes down your nasal cavity). NO I am NOT recommending we all go start hitting our heads on things, but it definitely made a positive change and I’m now super super curious about my new found mental clarity.
The Physical Body
Let’s face it…if many people are having back pain or joint/knee pain or whatever pain, clearly something everyone is doing is very very very wrong. And/or, there is something we’re NOT doing which we should be doing. I have two things to saw about this…
- Build functional strength. Ditch the weights and start doing calisthenic exercises. Yoga is great too. If you think that stuff is too easy you clearly haven’t looked enough into it. If you want to get strong, with calisthenics you can push yourself all the way to doing one arm handstand pushups against a wall. Your body is a machine, and machines are meant to be used as machines aka as a system. When you grab a weight or use a weight-machine, you’re usually not using your body in this way. Change that.
- Your six-pack is NOT your core…your BACK is. (Side note, many people have gut problems…gut problems come from stored stress around the gut area (see Nervous System section above), with tight abs, a tight stomach, we’re not relaxing our stomach and thus not allowing the nervous energy there to flow, so we keep it in. Relax your stomach). The guys who discovered Foundation training can explain this much better than I can. Watch and do this video, and feel free to dive in more to their story.
- Ok, three things. Posture posture posture. This ties in heavily to what I was saying about the Nervous System. Your posture is probably worse than you feel. The way I felt really started changing when I started fixing my posture problems I didn’t know I had.
So…
After two years of intensely focusing on my “health and wellness”…I feel better than I have in nearly a decade. That’s no understatement.
And at the end of the day…what do people want in life? TO FEEL BETTER. So focus on that. Focus on feeling better.
And what makes you feel?
Your nerves. 😉
Onwards and upwards!
