Introduction

Do you want to improve any aspect of your life?  Do you want to be happier, be more energetic, look better, feel better, get more done, be more focused?  Keep reading.  This is a book to help people get better.  It may seem surprising that all these problems can be addressed in one short book.  It’s not.  I’m going to let you in on a secret: everything in your world – spirituality, happiness, love, productivity, creativity, everything, depends on your health.  Being healthy and looking good are the same things.  Want to be more attractive?  Get healthy.  What about depression, or trouble focusing?  I’ve got news for you; the brain is an organ.  It’s the one doing the driving, the decision-making.  It’s the emotion center and where your ideas originate, but it is still an organ.  When your body’s systems suffer from any ailment, your brain is suffering.  Your thoughts, your emotions are suffering.  So if you want to feel better, get healthy.

So this is a book on health and nutrition, but it’s unlike any that have been written before.  It draws largely from the readers’ own knowledge, experience and common sense.  It doesn’t reveal any discoveries or newly conducted studies.  Instead, it equips the reader with some basic information that enables them to come to logical conclusions about health on their own.  Brace yourself, though.  While what you are about to read is basic, it suggests practices drastically different from what is currently considered ‘normal.’

Think of the joggers and gyms and the pills and infomercials.  The overwhelming array of books and products dedicated to promoting health and fitness demonstrates the demand for information.  Most people want to be healthier.  Few are actually able to do anything about it.  The potential is there; people are trying.  It’s just hard to find good information, information that will really help.

This book is dedicated to teaching you to live and eat naturally.  There’s no need to buy any pills, count calories or order any exercise machines.  Living and eating naturally comes naturally.  As a living organism, everything it takes to be happy and healthy is incorporated into your design.  You don’t see any other organisms stumbling around looking for information on nutrition or dieting tips.  Like them, you have what you need to know.

If it’s so easy, if health comes naturally, why all the overweight, unsatisfied, depressed people?  If everyone has all the information, why the book?   All organisms can live in a range of conditions, but the conditions that are ideal for them are pretty well defined.  The conditions in which they thrive are specific.  A weed can grow up through a crack in the sidewalk, seagulls can live at the garbage dump, but those aren’t the ideal conditions.   They won’t thrive there.   Certain conditions are ideal for organisms and humans are no exception.  This is a book to help you realize the optimal conditions for you as an organism.  Once you realize them and adopt a healthy lifestyle, you will start to thrive.  You will begin to look better, feel better, treat others better.  Ultimately, you will be better.

The way I want to show you is the natural way.  A way that gets you closer to the way, biologically, you were intended to live, a way that enables you to reach optimum levels.

Not only does it blaze the trail to health; it motivates you to follow it. The reason it is a relatively short book is because all the answers are already there with the reader.

The reason what I propose will seem so drastically different from our current tendencies, is because we live in such drastic opposition to our natural way of life.  Consider what the average person does in a day.  Maybe they spend four hours in front of a computer, hunched over, eyes focused on a blue screen.  For lunch maybe a fast food and a soda.  Eating at red lights.  Four more hours in front of the blue screen and then home.  Maybe sitting in traffic first.  A large dinner, maybe a beer and bed.  Pretty typical.  Not very natural.  What I’m going to tell you is pretty atypical and extremely natural.

RAW food and yoga.  That’s it.  That’s the whole key to a healthier, happier life.  I practice Astanga yoga 6 times a week.  I eat 100% RAW food.  I have for 6 years.  I feel great.  I love life others around me.  I look foreword to everyday.  Nothing can stop me.  When you are living naturally, nothing is in you way.  The potential in humans is huge.  That’s a fact that doesn’t need much substantiating.  Man’s achievements are breathtaking.  When you are living, correctly, naturally, nothing can stop you.

Why have I come to these conclusions?  Why haven’t these ideas caught on already?  Remember the weed growing up through the crack in the sidewalk?  Or the seagulls living at the garbage dump?  Organisms are able to ‘get by’.  In the process of getting by, we take things for granted.  Pains, colds, flues, that we are getting sick and dying.  This is so common that it is considered normal.  Things like vitamin and minerial deficiencies don’t show up one day on your finger, like a cut.  You don’t really see them until the bone breaks.

So in my book, without wasting words, I demonstrate quite decisively the grave importance of a healthy diet.  “Oh, I already know a healthy diet is important?’  You may, but on what level?  Do you think of poisoning your blood when you eat low quality foods?  Do you think of your body using dyes and chemicals to build the tissues of your eyes, lungs and brain?  I encourage you to think of every item you put into your mouth as medicine or poison.  Each mouthful is either helping or hurting you.  Once I establish the importance of a healthy diet, I help you understand the essentials of that optimum diet.  The basic fundamental rules of it.

To convince you, I don’t rely on logic alone, I encourage you to try it.  RAW food and yoga?  Where are the studies to support this?  Conduct the studies yourself.  Collaborate with your body and realize the truth as you experiment and experience for yourself.

After we reach an understanding with diet, we tackle yoga.  First we consider our body and make some projections about what types of things would benefit it the most.  Then we take a look at an exercise that emulates the characteristics we put forth.  I show you poses, explain their benefit and then, just like with our diet discussion, I encourage you to feel the benefit in your own bodies.

This is book is fun to read.  Not only is it an experience in itself, it introduces a whole new life, a rewarding and fulfilling one that you can start the same day you start the book.  Those 70% that aren’t taking the steps to improve their lives and bodies just don’t have the information.  You can’t blame them.  Consider the barrage of gimmicks and theories and studies aimed at creating and maintaining health.  It’s overwhelming to wade through them and decide on something that you can be sure is true.

So while this is a book about getting better, improving all aspects of your life it is more specifically, a book about health, Read it before?  No you haven’t.  Not this one.

According to the New York Times, 60 million Americans are obese.  An article in USA TODAY (give the date) reported that the United States was planning to wage a war on obessity similar to the war on drugs.

Chapter 1: Nothing is more Important than the Food You Eat. (there are no coincidences – make the connection

It is impossible to over-emphasize the importance of a proper diet.  You are your diet.  The cliché ‘you are what you eat’ has, for the most part, lost its edge.  Let me try to sharpen it again.  YOU ARE MADE OUT OF WHAT YOU EAT.  The food that you put into your mouth becomes you.   The cells that make up the tissues in your eyes and lungs and blood are made from the food that you eat.  Your body is making over a million cells a second and the material it uses is the food you eat.  Think about that.  Right now your body is using the food you ate this morning to create and maintain you.  What did you eat for breakfast?  Think of your body using something like a Pepsi or a sugary cereal to make up your blood.  Think of making a weak cell.

To some degree, I’m sure you are already aware of the impact food has on your body and subsequently your life, but to what degree?

You aren’t being naughty, or breaking the rules when you eat low quality food.  You are poisoning yourself.  From now on, think of everything you eat as either medicine or poison.  You are either giving your body materials it needs to thrive, or materials that damage it.

Namaste,

Fred Busch

http://www.tuscanyyoga.com
http://www.yogatransformations.com

How to Detoxify Your Body

What are the benefits of a Total Body Detox?

When I say that this book contains everything you need to know to build a happier, healthier you, I mean it.  In essence, it is like an owner’s manual for your body.  Armed with an understanding of how your body works and what it needs, you can get control of it.  You can create the type of environment in which it can thrive and you really can improve every aspect of your life.

Distinguishing between foods that promote vigor and vitality from those that poison is a tremendous leap, but it will only get you half way there.  The next step involves properly exercising the body and fortunately roughly half the book remains.   Almost everything we use on a day to day basis deteriorates with use.  Edges dull; paint chips; motors fail.  Our bodies are the opposite.  With use, they improve.  With exercise, they perform longer.

Moving moves things.  Like all organisms, our bodies are made up of free flowing systems.  Life is literally flowing through us.  Movement is an underlying principle of our digestive system, our reproductive system, cardiovascular and respiratory systems.  Keeping all of your systems flowing freely is essential to health.  Constipation and acne are a few examples of what happens when there are blockages in these systems.  Heart attacks is another.  

Stagnation in any of the body’s systems has grave effects.  We touched on the dangers of constipation when we discussed cooked food and flesh eating, but it is worth a second mention here.  Moving food through our bodies quickly and easily is a must.  Bowl movements should occur easily and often and one way to help make this happen is to eat the proper foods.  The other way is to move the body.  The stomach and intestines are aggressive, hard working organs and they are determined to keep the show rolling, but the proper exercise makes them a heck of a lot more effective.     

Even more important than moving food through the body is keeping the blood moving.  The more freely blood is able to circulate through the body, the more frequently it passes through filter organs.  In other words, it stays cleaner.  Minimizing the toxins in your blood means minimizing the toxins in all your tissues, including your brain. That’s one benefit.  In addition to being clean, it is also crucial that it moves easily to all parts of the body.  Blood feeds your body’s tissues.  Nothing happens anywhere in the body unless blood is there.  No movement, thought or any process can occur unless the tissues are adequately supplied with blood.  Most people are familiar with a ‘falling asleep’ sensation in a particular body part after sitting in an awkward position for a long time.  When blood is obstructed from a particular body part, it hurts. Eventually it will turn black and rot off.  Most people move their body parts enough to keep them from rotting off, but many people complain about a stiff neck, achy feet or just ‘poor circulation’ in general. 

It amazes me how often blockages in our flowing systems are overlooked or their effects are blamed on some other ‘problem.’ Other times they are just given a name and regarded as an ailment in their own right.  In our society, many of us are more vigilant when it comes to maintaining the free flowing system in our cars than the ones in our bodies.  Think about all the oil changing and fluid monitoring people do to care for their cars. Most of us are more prone to heart attack than to a clogged fuel line or broken head gasket.  A blockage in any of your bodily systems is an outright emergency.  If you are wondering about wondering about the causes of any ‘mysterious’ aches, or feelings of nausea or lethargy, stop wondering and start moving your body.  Keeping our systems flowing freely is basic bodily maintenance and it can be achieved through regular, vigorous exercise. 

When you exercise, you also build strength.  At the gym tend to become preoccupied with a particular muscle group, such as the ‘abs’ or chest when we exercise but a comprehensive exercise practice strengthens the entire body.  A comprehensive exercise encourages the cooperation of various muscle groups. This ‘cooperation’ leads to coordination.  Rarely do we depend on just one muscle group for anything.  Strength is more appropriately determined by how well our muscle groups work together.  

Though many of us are preoccupied with the superficial effects of exercise, the benefits that have nothing to do with how we look in a tank top can be more important.  Like other muscles, the heart can be strengthened or weakened depending on the degree to which it is used.  The more blood your heart pumps to the aorta, the stronger and more efficient it gets.  Your bones are the same way.  Halloween imagery and archeology digs makes many of us perceive our bones as inactive and lifeless.  Our skeletal system is as alive as any other part of your body.  Exercising it builds bone strength and density.  Even the nerves are strengthened with exercise, becoming steadier and eventually creating an environment where you are less likely to feel edginess or nervousness. 

Most commonly associated with exercise, are the calorie-burning aspects.  In a society where we are predominantly overweight, this element is extremely relevant.  The nutrients our bodies need are not available in isolated sources.   No matter what we are eating, our nutrients come with some excess calories.  This is a good thing.  These are the calories that work as fuel for the things we do above and beyond repairing tissues and making blood.  The problem is, if you don’t do anything beyond repairing tissues and making blood, you get fat.  Unless you are engaging in some calorie burning activity other than repairing tissues and firing neurons, you’re probably getting fat.

Virtually any type of physical activity is good for your body, but certain exercise practices are infinitely more beneficial than others.  One of the first distinctions of a good  exercise practice from another is whether it is complete or incomplete.  Is it benefiting the entire body, or is it focussing on an isolated area?  For example, compare an exercise like biceps curls to swimming.   One focuses on a particular muscle group, the other involves the entire body.  The next is whether or not it cardiovascular.  Most sustained, vigorous exercises like swimming or jogging are cardiovascular and strengthen and maintain circulatory system. 

I am a supporter of any safe, vigorous exercise practice that is performed on a regular basis.  However, the benefits of some pale in comparison to others.  I am about to introduce you to a practice that is more valuable than anything you else you can do with your body.  It is a practice that is complete and cardiovascular.  It promotes the free flow of the various systems in your body, builds strength, burns calories and can lead to spiritual enlightenment.  Swimming is wonderful for your body.  So is bicycling.  This is better.          

Fred Busch Yoga Retreat in Tuscany