Coming to a place where you can sigh that sigh of relief is very important for the body, mind, heart and spirit.  We live in an age where everything is at microwave speed which leaves us little, if any time at all, to get organized and clear out the clutter that so easily entangles us and weighs us down.   Clutter (of all sorts) has the ability to act as a dead weight that prevents us from getting what we want out of love and life.  We find ourselves being rigidly preoccupied by things as they swarm around and around in our heads keeping us from engaging in and enjoying the moment at hand.

Clutter, as we all know, comes in many different forms: stuff around the house, bills, not enough savings, relationship issues, appointments, kids’ schedules, etc.  Basically anything that weighs our mind and heart down is clutter and is our greatest obstacle to moving forward in love and life.  Therefore we must start taking steps now in getting rid of the dead weight of clutter; even if they are only baby step.  To continue procrastinating will only add more ‘emotional’ clutter to our already massive ‘to do’ list.

The main problem with procrastination is the power it has over our mind and emotions.  As time goes by, our “insurmountable” list appears more and more impossible.  To even start whittling our way through it seems insurmountable in itself.  And so the story goes for many of us: we pile more and more guilt onto our already cluttered mind and emotions causing us to downward spiral into an ineffective mess.  So for those of us that fit in this category, we need to interrupt the pattern of our downward spiral by taking in a deep breath and exhaling slowly, gaining perspective on the reality of the here and now and trying to embrace the moment that is in front of us.  “Moments” exist around us all of the time, such as the innocence and preciousness of our children, the sunny bright sky, the ‘moody’ colored clouds, or even a beautiful garden outside a winery.

I recently watched my husband play tennis and as he was winning point after point over his opponent, the tournament’s No 2 Seed,  his opponent kept getting more and more agitated.  The more agitated he got, the more mistakes he would make, which in turn fed his ‘downward spiraling’ mindset all the more.  Had he just stopped, taken a deep breath, gained some perspective and engaged in the moment he was in, he could have turned the game around in his favor long before he lost 6-2, 6-0 in the semi-final!  It was sad yet entertaining to watch this downward spiral happen to a normally fine-tuned tennis player; yet many of us are ALL to familiar of our own ability to ‘downward spiral’ when pressure hits, even if that pressure is only perceived.   We create lists upon lists with good intentions and then as time goes by and clutter begins compounding, we add fuel to the fire by taking on emotional clutter in the form of guilt – which then makes us ineffective.

With minds and emotions relaxed, simply taking one baby step at at time towards clearing out clutter, is a big step toward breathing that sigh of relief and turning our game of life around to our favor!  Scott Smith with Motivation to Move, did a podcast about clearing the clutter.  Here are some of his tips that really stuck out to me:

• Organize the areas in your life that you work in right now: office, kitchen, etc., and keep it so it is workable – it doesn’t have to be perfect – just functional.
• If it is not something you need right now, then close the door as sometimes it could take a while.  Such as people (relationship) clutter or clearing out the spare room.  You may not see that friend that you need to resolve a conflict with in the next couple of weeks.  Or the spare room that needs to be organized is not necessarily something you need done right now.
• As you clear out the areas in your life that you need right now, it will then free you up to get to the other areas that are weighing you down in the back of your mind.
• Use Dave Ramsey‘s Snowball Method to reduce debt.  His method is based on paying the minimum amount on larger debts while paying off the smallest debt first.  Once the smallest debt is paid off, then move on to the second smallest debt.  Continue until all debts are paid off.

Keeping perspective is key in clearing out clutter from our lives.  Remember the interspersed Cedars in the beautiful landscaping?  Had those “pattern interruptions” not been there, it would have been a rigid, dull, organized and structured garden; offering no sense of balance.  It was the ‘interruptions in the pattern’ that the interspersed Cedars provided that made it captivating and beautiful.  Therefore, stopping to take a breath, gaining perspective on the reality of the here and now and engaging in the current moment is what makes clearing out life’s clutter more effective and more enjoyable.  Yes, we need not to procrastinate in untangling ourselves from life’s clutter, but we also must interrupt the rigid pattern of keeping our nose to the grind and take in life itself.  After all, isn’t that in itself moving forward in love and life?

I have been reading The Great Physician’s Rx for Health and Wellness by Jordan Rubin. I loved what he had to say about consuming meat, all other animal products as well as any other plant based food,

You’ve heard it said that you are what you eat. Well, I’ll take that a step further to say you are what they eat or ate—they meaning the plant or animal sources in your diet.

This concept of us eating what they eat (or ate) was vividly described in an article called Down On The Factory Farm by Tracy Sorensen; published in Alive Australia, a health and wellness magazine.  Below is a partial re-post of the original article.  If you are not from Australia, don’t get fooled that your meat or animal product is any better.  I am originally from the US, and I know their standards are the same, if not worse.  Unfortunately, the standards listed in this article are running rampart all over the western world.

DOWN ON THE FACTORY FARM

Depending on your mood, a trip to the shopping center may or may not be the moment you reflect on the sum total of suffering on the planet. Most of us traipse the aisles on autopilot as we load up on essentials for the week ahead.  We may not give it much thought, but every item has a story: where it came from, how it got there.  In the case of meat and eggs, the stories can be uncomfortable indeed.  Factory farming has made high quality protein cheap and widely available – but it has a come at a cost.

A TALE OF SUFFERING

Pigs

Take pork, for example.  There lie the pork chops on an absorbent pad under a film of plastic.  The journey to that spot under fluorescent lights most likely began in a sow stall.  The nations estimated 300,000 breeding sows are typically kept in rows of metal stalls 2 meters (6.5 feet) long and just 60 cm (1.5 feet) wide.

There is no room to turn around in theses stalls and no opportunity for exercise.  Leg muscles begin to atrophy, so the animal has trouble standing up, but it is also difficult or uncomfortable to lie down.

Once a pregnant sow gives birth, her piglets are kept in the stall next door.  They can reach through the metal bars to suckle, but no other interaction with their mother is possible.  The mother’s nesting and nursing instincts are frustrated.

According to Lyn White, Animals Australia’s Communication Director, “If you kept a dog like this, you’d be prosecuted for cruelty”.

Chickens

Moving along the aisle to the frozen chickens, it’s a similar story.  Before the 1960′s, chicken meat was relatively expensive, a little bit special.  My father tells of how each child in the family was given a chicken once a year.  The chooks lived in the backyard, dodging the kids at play, until it was their turn for the kitchen table.  Until that moment of truth, they lived happy chicken lives, scratching, foraging, running, socializing.

In Australia today over 400 million meat chickens are typically raised in large sheds in which there is barely room to move.  They stand in dim light to discourage activity, fattening up to slaughter in as little as 35 days.  They large breast muscles – they are specially bred this way – can cause their legs to buckle under them from the weight.  Their droppings are allowed to accumulate on the floor, creating air that stinks of ammonia.

The chickens are caught and transported in a process that maximizes economic efficiency but leaves birds with broken bones or dead of dehydration, exhaustion or extremes of temperature by the time they arrive at the processing factory.

Slaughter is a mechanized process in which the birds’ heads are passed through an electric water bath to stun them before their throats are cut.  If they lift their heads, they miss the stunning process and face the mechanized knife fully conscious.  If they miss both the stunning and the throat cutting, they plunge into boiling water while still alive.

Eggs

Its time to move on to the egg section of the supermarket.  Here, the story of suffering continues.  The nation’s 10.5 million batter hens are kept in wire cages, stationary as plants, laying their 193 million eggs into chutes below them.  (Unwanted male chicks are tossed into great piles, ready to be gassed or ground up while still alive).  There are no perches in these cages, and the confinement leads to skeletal and muscular weakness.

Milk

Need Milk?  Dairy cows are kept in a state of almost continuous pregnancy.  Within a day of giving birth, cows are separated from their calves which are then slaughtered as a “byproduct”.   One million dairy calves, less than a week old, are slaughtered each year as byproducts of the dairy industry (this is in addition to those slaughtered for veal).

THE RISK TO HUMAN HEALTH

The animals aren’t the only victims of factory farming.  Crowding animals together indoors without access to fresh air and sunlight, often exposed to urine and feces, is a recipe for disease transmission.

Antibiotics

To cope with this, factory farming relies heavily on the routine use of antibiotics, often administered in feed or drinking water.  While many have been banned, there are still 12 antibiotics that can be used as growth promoters in Australia.

The widespread (albeit regulated) use of antibiotics in meat production has lead to concern about the development of disease-resistant strains of bacteria.  While Food Standards Austral New Zealand (FSANZ) describes this risk as “highly unlikely”, the European Union (EU) has a different view.  In 2006 it banned the routine feeding of antibiotics to livestock.

Hormones

The use of growth hormones is another issue of concern.  When animals’ bodies are production units, enhancing rates of growth means maximizing profits.  While Australian chickens have not been treated with growth hormones since the 1960′s, their use is widespread in both feedlot and paddock-raised cattle.  Female hormones such as oestradiol and progesterone, and male hormones including testosterone and trenbolone acetate, or a combination, are administered to cattle through implants under the skin.

In Australia the use of growth-promoting hormones is approved and regulated by the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, which has found no scientific evidence for health concerns.  Still consumers are showing a preference for hormone-free meat.  Coles, a major supermarket has banned hormone-fed beef and will not sell it, however, they have not banned the use of antibiotics in beef production.

I don’t know about you, but the idea of eating meat that lived in its own waste or drinking milk that was from a cow that was full of antibiotics and hormones does not sound good.  I remember while breast feeding my children that whatever I ate pretty much came through my milk into them.  So if it can happen to us humans, it can happen to cows, right?!

So what are we to do?  How can we find meat, dairy and eggs that are not going to cause us such health concerns?

1. Be your own advocate and educate yourself.  Read articles and books, talk to many people in the health and wellness industry, Google searches, etc.
2. Use our voice!  Let your supermarket know what you want to see on their shelves.  If it worked in Australia at a major supermarket, then it can work anywhere
3. Shop at your local Farmer’s Markets where you can come face to face with farmers and ask them the hard questions about their livestock and produce.  Do they spray?  What do they feed their livestock?  What conditions to they live in? etc.
4. Go to your local farm.  Talk to the farmer, get a tour of their livestock and see where they live and in what conditions they live in and find out what they eat.

Jordan Rubin in The Great Physician’s Rx for Health and Wellness says it clearly,

” If we’re talking about food from animals, this means raising the animals the way they’re supposed to be treated because the health of the animal is intricately related to the health of the meat, eggs or milk it provides, which in turn, is related to our health.”

What Forgiveness Is:

Forgiveness is a choice, not a feeling.  Beth Moore, one of my favorite women’s speakers, says, “Forgiveness involves my handing over to God the responsibility for justice.”  This is hard; especially when someone has hurt us to the absolute core.  Handing over justice is against our humanistic nature as we were built with a primal ‘fight or flight‘  response.  This response automatically kicks into gear any time we sense attack, harm or threat to our survival.   When our ‘flight or flight’ response kicks in, it can leave us feeling like it is impossible to ‘let go’ of the one who has caused us such pain.  In these times, we have to dig deep and ask God to help us; to give us strength beyond our human nature. If we wait until we feel like forgiving someone for the wrongs they have done, it will never come.  Our humanistic nature innately wants them to hurt like they hurt us.  However, forgiveness is not about feelings but about choices.   Its a conscious step of our courage and will.

Forgiveness is acknowledging the hurt and pain.  If we don’t acknowledge the pain all the way to the emotional core of our being, the healing and freedom we gain from forgiveness will not be complete.  Its in this place of denial and or repression where bitterness and resentment can cause us further damage.  An injury has occurred and denying it only gives the pain more power to wreak havoc in our beings as well as creates a barrier to all that forgiveness offers.  Forgiveness is not saying, “It didn’t really matter”;  or “I probably deserved part of it anyway.”  Forgiveness says, “It was wrong.  Very wrong.  It mattered and it hurt me deeply.  Yet, I release you.”

Forgiveness let’s go of the blame.   This is probably the hardest step in forgiveness.  We want to know why this has happened to us.  Blame seeks the culprit.  If we can just do that, then maybe we can keep it from ever happening again.  The reality is, we will never find a good enough reason for some of the wrongs done to us because there is not any one reason.  As mentioned in Part 1 of this blog series, we are all broken people and broken people often times hurt other broken people.  Nobody is without spot or blemish from hurting another person.   At one time or another, we have all played our part in hurting others.

Forgiveness is a work in progress.  As mentioned in Part 2, depending on how deep the injury went into the soul or how long we have been carrying the weight of the pain, the work of forgiveness is a process of sifting through layers.  Many times, its not a one off decision (although it could be in some situations) but a decision that needs to be made over and over again.   Just when we think we are over it, a trigger happens and we find ourselves back in the thick of it and we have to make a conscious effort to ‘let go’ all over again.  If we fall backward and regress in our walk toward forgiveness, we need not to get discouraged and understand that we are still making progress.  Just get back up, dust yourself off and take another step forward.

The benefits of forgiveness are far too precious to pass up as life is too short to be bogged down by choosing to carry and hold onto pain and resentment.  According to Katherine Piderman, Ph.D.  of the Mayo Clinic, walking in forgiveness offers the following health benefits:

• Healthier relationships
• Greater spiritual and psychological well-being
• Less stress and hostility
• Lower blood pressure
• Fewer symptoms of depression, anxiety and chronic pain
• Lower risk of alcohol and substance abuse

In short, forgiveness is a choice – no one can make you do it.  Forgiveness is acknowledging the hurt and pain – not dismissing it or pretending it didn’t matter.  Forgiveness is letting go of the blame – we have all fallen in an area of weakness and no one is without penalty.  And finally forgiveness is a process – its the direction we are taking and even if we regress, we can get back up on our feet and keep moving forward.

If you have someone that you need to forgive (even if that someone is God or yourself!) and you’ve been carrying the load of pain and resentment, get back on your feet and take a step toward to a healthier life and healthier relationships.

Be gentle and forbearing with one another and, if one has a difference (a grievance or complaint) against another, readily pardoning each other; even as the Lord has [freely] forgiven you, so must you also [forgive].  Colossians 3:13

In order to complete the process of forgiveness, it’s important to note that forgiveness involves 3 elements:

1. Acknowledgment that an injury (of the heart and soul) has occurred
2. Recognizing that a debt is owed as a result of that wrong done against you
3. Cancellation of the debt

Forgiveness can be so difficult to navigate that we may even find ourselves not wanting to forgive others for the wrongs they have done against us because in a strange way, we feel comforted by keeping that person(s) ransom for what they have done.  We want them to feel what we feel and hurt like we hurt.  We want justice.  However, as mentioned in Part 1 of this blog, more than anything else, withholding forgiveness keeps ourselves ransom in a self-made, self-protected prison called ‘safe’.  Yes, we’re safe from ever being hurt by that person again, however, we are also “safe”, or rather ‘closed off’, from ever receiving from that person again, no matter how sorry they are or how much they have the potential to grow.   Unfortunately, love and pain are part of the same coin, just opposite sides of it.  If we open our heart and make ourselves vulnerable enough to receive love, we also make ourselves vulnerable enough to receive pain.   We are not lucky enough to have one without the other.   Love and pain are partners.

To help us let go of our preconceived ideas of what forgiveness really is, let’s look at what forgiveness is not before working toward what it is.

What Forgiveness Is Not:

Firstly, forgiveness is not the same as trust.  If someone has broken our trust, we can forgive them and still not trust them.  Trust is something that is earned and needs to be rebuilt.  Trust is defined as: “a firm reliance on the integrity, ability, etc., of a person or thing”.  Forgiveness is defined as: “to cease to demand a penalty for, to cease to blame”.  In other words, we can still ‘cancel the debt’ of what others have done to us without firmly relying on them.  For example, if someone borrowed our car and then thrashed it, we could forgive them without turning around and immediately give them the keys back.

Forgiveness is not containing or restraining our hurt or anger.  It is not pretending those feelings are not there.  If we attempt to repress our pain-filled emotions, especially when we have been deeply hurt, it will only result in deep rooted bitterness and resentment and remain unresolved.   Bitterness and resentment are killers of our health (mentally, emotionally and physically) and our relationships.  Time alone does not heal wounds of the soul.  It is the combination of time, God and working through the pain that eventually brings healing.  To repress our pain and emotions would be the same as putting a band-aid over an infected wound.  Infections need to be cleaned out in order for a healing process to begin.  So is it with wounds of the heart and soul.

Forgiveness is not letting someone off the moral hook.   Its not ignoring the wrong done.   It is not saying, “It wasn’t a big deal and it didn’t do any damage.”  The truth may be that it was a big deal and it did cause a lot of damage.   If pain and damage didn’t occur, there wouldn’t be reason to forgive in the first place.

Forgiveness is not understanding the motives and reasons behind the offense.  Understanding their ‘why’ helps us progress toward forgiveness and possibly even gives us a sense of compassion for them, but it is not the same as ‘canceling their debt’.  We are capable of logically understanding their ‘why’ while still holding onto the pain and not releasing them of their debt.

Forgiveness is not forgetting or having some kind of sentimental amnesia.  When we are really hurting, we don’t just say, “I don’t even remember what they did” or “I don’t even think about it.”  If the person that hurt us really matters to us, we can’t forget what they did no matter how much we wish we could.  The pain is too much in the forefront of our thoughts.   When God says he “remembers our sin no more” it doesn’t mean he’s incapable of remembering.  It means he doesn’t call them to mind or reflect on them.

Forgiveness is not reconciliation.  Reconciliation means that after a breakdown in the relationship, something has changed and the friendship has resumed.  You can release them and the offense in your heart without wanting or accomplishing reconciliation.

Forgiveness is not dependent on someone asking for forgiveness.   The person we need to forgive may not even realize what they have done or may no longer be alive.  When we think about forgiveness freeing us from being ‘safe’ and freeing us from the damages of bitterness and resentment, it becomes clear that forgiveness is about our own freedom.  Yes, it cancels their debt, BUT, it sets us free.

Forgiveness is not an impossible destination.  Sometimes the thought of attaining the ability to ‘let go’ of the wrongs done to us feels insurmountable.  Especially when the soul injury is still raw and bleeding.  I have to come to this place in my own journey, and the resounding helpful theme was ‘let go and let God’.  That sounds cliche I know, but when push comes to shove, its true.  When you get down to the raw, vulnerable areas of the soul, all you can do is ‘let‘… call on and allow God to keep you moving forward one step at a time.  The energy to ‘do‘ is even too much.  When Scott Smith, founder of Motivation To Move lost his wife to cancer, his motto was, “Get up, take a step, repeat.”  Thinking about the end goal of forgiveness and freedom can be all too much.  But thinking about taking just this step, the step that is right in front of you, is much more manageable.  And after that one step, then repeat.  Eventually the completion of freedom and forgiveness will be your next step and your soul will be made whole once again.

Pain and offense are things that we carry.  Nobody pins these things on us or makes us hold onto these resentments.  We are responsible for our own lives.  Unfortunately, our families pay the price for the offenses we hold onto.  If we want to move forward in love and life and allow the wounds of our soul to be healed, we will have to dig into the layers of our soul and acknowledge our wounds.   To continue our journey, we will look at what forgiveness is in Part 3.

A number of months ago, when I saw the movie, 127 Hours, it hit me like a ton of bricks.  Its based on the true story of a hiker named Aron Ralston, who became unexpectedly trapped in a Utah canyon in Moab National Park.   Ralston, as one critic put it, was:

Drifting through the canyons alone, deep in thought, the explorer who presumed he was ready for anything quickly discovers just how fast things can spin out of control when a rock gives way as he shimmies down a crevice, and pins his hand to the unforgiving wall of stone.

In many situations, that’s exactly how the test of fire hits our relationships: fast and out of control; and sometimes, unexpected.

What do you do when the fire hits the relationship and you feel you are truly stuck between a rock and hard place?  When you feel your damned if you do and damned if you don’t?  When you know that either path you take (of restoration or execution) will require great effort and sacrifice.   Aaron Ralson was in such a predicament.  He came to realize that if he stayed where he was, between the rock and the hard wall, he would die.  But if he sacrificed (or cut off) the part of himself that was stuck, he would live.  Many times, this is exactly where we find ourselves while in the fire, or point of crisis, in our relationship(s).  We find ourselves in such a predicament that we either have to ‘cut off’ or begin to ‘let go’ of the offense or pain that we are holding onto, in order to move forward in the relationship.  Otherwise, the relationship (or the quality of the relationship) will eventually die.

For those of us who have been deeply wounded, we tend to feel that if we take steps toward forgiveness and begin taking steps to reconciliation, it feels as if we are being asked to cut off an arm or a leg.  Our humanistic nature feels justice needs to be paid.   However, as harsh and unfortunate as this may sound, if we don’t cut off, or ‘let go’ of the pain and or offense and forgive the other (whether we stay in the relationship or not), we will forever be bound to a self-made prison of ‘un-forgiveness’.

Recently, I attended a Personal Development conference on Business Strategies, and interestingly enough, the habit of forgiveness was listed as one of the daily habits that lead to success.  The question that was asked that we were to personally reflect on was, “Am I quick to forgive, or do I take offense?”.    We all know that some offenses are pretty intense (like when trust is totally broken, vows are shattered or character is slammed), however, the principles of taking offense and withholding forgiveness still hold true no matter the size or intensity of the offense.  Offense is something we take and hold onto.  It becomes a dead weight in our lives.  It is powerful enough to hold us back from reaching our potential in all areas of life, not just in the relationship itself.

When we take and hold onto offense, we are basically withholding forgiveness.  Un-forgiveness is a prison called “safe”.  We are now ‘safe’ from the person(s) who hurt us.  We are locked in our self-protected armor.  The problem is, we are no longer free to be all who we were meant to be and we are no longer free to experience all we were meant to experience.   Unfortunately, we are now trapped in in-authenticity, making it impossible for future relationships to not be ‘broken’.  Perhaps this is the reason that the divorce rate on 2nd, 3rd and so forth marriages are twice as high as the 50% divorce rate is on first marriages.  There are always better odds to working through the crisis of first marriages than moving on and trying to make it work with yet another ‘broken’ person.

Lastly, we are not designed to stay ‘stuck’ between a rock and hard place.  That is grey matter and it is impossible to live in that space for long.  When we are truly ready to take responsibility and begin taking steps to free ourselves from being stuck between the rock and the hard place, we must ask ourselves the hard questions, “What do I really want?  Death of the relationship or restoration?  And if I want restoration, do I want to live in constant fear, pain or resentment?  And if not, then what steps am I going to begin to take to get me out of this tough spot?”  I believe all relationships have the potential to be restored and to be made better than they were before the fire hit.  However, it will cost us something.   It will cost us to ‘let go’ of the offenses and the hurt that we are holding onto and begin to gravitate toward a place of forgiveness.

At the end of the day, the buck stops with us.  We are responsible for the quality of our lives and for our own authenticity within the context of our relationships.  Nobody can do this for us.  Walking in forgiveness gives us the space and the ability to become all that we were meant to be and ultimately to be our true-self.  As long as we are carrying offenses, we are too overloaded to run the race that was marked out for us to run… to live the life we were meant to live and to be the person we were meant to be.

In my own (on-going) journey of learning to ‘let go’, I came to realize that learning what forgiveness really is and what it is NOT, is key.  This will be discussed further in Part 2 of this blog.

We are all guilty of abusing media as a crutch from time to time for ourselves and for our children.  We are lucky to live in a world of technology and we rely on it in many ways.  So I am not talking about the use of media devices, as we all use them.  I am more so talking about abusing them to the point of losing the health benefits of being outside.   It’s when media starts becoming the ‘reality’ of our lives and the lives of our children as opposed to ‘actual’ reality.  For example, I recently took my oldest son bowling and he absolutely flipped out at the sheer excitement of actually picking up a bowling ball and sending it down the lane toward the pins.  Much different than swinging a Wii control back and sending a ‘virtual’ ball down a ‘virtual’ lane.

An article from The Seattle Times titled, “Spending time outside has many health benefits” reported,

“New research published in July 2010 by the American Cancer Society found that women who reported sitting more than six hours a day were 37 percent more likely to die during a 13-year study period than those who sat fewer than three hours a day. The most sedentary men were 18 percent more likely to die than the more active.

A new report from the National Wildlife Federation on the importance of outdoor play for kids paints an even more dire picture: Surveys by researchers at the University of Michigan show that children are spending only four to seven minutes a day in unstructured outdoor play. By contrast, 8- to 18-year-olds are connected to some form of electronic media for eight to nearly 12 hours a day, according to a study done for the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Parents take children to soccer and horseback riding and lacrosse and Boy and Girl Scouts and scads of other organized activities. What there’s not much of is free time — time for kids just to be kids — outside.”

So what exactly are the health benefits we and our children could gain from spending time outside?  According to various studies researched by the National Wildlife Federation here is snapshot of what the great outdoors can do for our children:

Body

• Outdoor play increases fitness levels and builds active, healthy bodies, an important strategy in helping the one in three American kids who are obese, get fit.
• Spending time outside raises levels of Vitamin D, helping protect children from future bone problems, heart disease, diabetes and other health issues.
• Being out there improves distance vision and lowers the chance of near-sightedness.

Mind

• Exposure to natural settings may be widely effective in reducing ADHD symptoms.
• Schools with environmental education programs score higher on standardized tests in math, reading, writing and listening.
• Exposure to environment-based education significantly increases student performance on tests of their critical thinking skills.

Spirit

• Children’s stress levels fall within minutes of seeing green spaces.
• Play protects children’s emotional development whereas loss of free time and a hurried lifestyle can contribute to anxiety and depression.
• Nature makes you nicer, enhancing social interactions, value for community and close relationships.

If this is what being outside does for our children, then wouldn’t we gain the same results?  Even just changing things up a bit and listening to outdoor sounds on our iPod or looking at pictures of nature can give us a boost of vitality.  Medical research shows that patients who can see trees and other greenery from their hospital window require less pain medication than those who don’t have a green view.  Just visually experiencing a natural setting can be shown to reduce stress.

The bottom line is this, one has to admit that when you take an activity outside and are able to see and experience nature (even if it’s just the flowers in the gardens you are passing by) verses running on a treadmill at a gym or playing Wii Sports, everything changes.  You see things that please the eye and touch the soul.  You feel the chill of the wind or the warmth of the sun on your skin and it reminds you that you are alive!  You smell the trees and flowers around you and begin to breathe a little deeper, getting those natural aromas deep into your being.  Nature is simply food for the Spirit, Soul and Body and just as it is alive and breathing, it offers us life and breath.  So get outside and capture it for yourself!