Five Things to Restore Your Body

Categories: Blog Oct 04, 2021

The body is amazing. It is designed to move well and regenerate itself throughout life. Basically, the body is designed for health. This is a cooperative design though, it takes your participation to help the body stay healthy so it can carry out its restorative functions optimally. This means you are responsible for making good choices, or the best choices you can, given the moments you are presented. Having said that, here are some excellent choices you can make to give your body its best advantage in staying strong, able, and healthy throughout your lifetime. 

1) Stay hydrated. You’ve already heard this. You’ve heard it so much you don’t even care when you hear it. BUT, your body is composed of 60-70% water. Water pretty much makes you work and keeps you alive. When you are well hydrated, all systems have what they need to function optimally, and all tissues (muscles, tendons, ligaments, discs, cartilage, bones, etc.) can remain soft, supple, flexible, and resilient. 

When you’re not hydrated, Peter starts to rob Paul. That is, the body makes choices and compensations to try to keep the main thing the main thing - survival to see another day. This means there is not enough water to maintain the optimal health status, so resources may get redirected towards the most critical areas for survival (brain, heart, organs, etc.). This could result in feeling like crap, getting injured, or really damaging the entire system depending on the severity of the drought.  

You don’t need to carry a milk jug of water wherever you go. You just need to make sure you’re drinking water. Make it a priority. The gold standard rule of thumb is eight glasses of 8 oz. Don’t get hung up on that though. If you’re living life and staying active, that may be the bare, bare minimum (or just too little). 

Speaking of milk jugs, Got Water? (It’s funny to me…)

2) Eat nutritious foods with gratitude. I’ve written about this in my books, but it’s not enough to eat nutritious food, you need to do it with a thankful heart. Bathing your food in thoughts of anger, shame, guilt, or whatever puts the body in the sympathetic state, the fight or flight state. If we want to glean the nutrients of our foods, we need to be in the parasympathetic state, the rest and DIGEST state. 

Nutritious food is always the best choice but if your body can’t digest the food you eat because it’s too busy trying to survive because of your negative thoughts or because you are dehydrated, well then, that’s a problem. To get the nutrients out of our food, we need to be able to optimally digest our food. To do this, we need to live in our designed default state of being, the parasympathetic state. 

Having said that, make the best food choices you can make at the times you make them. Choose natural over processed, baked over fried, fruit over donuts, etc. But whatever you do, don’t put anything in your mouth while bathing it in guilt. Get rid of the “should haves” and the excuses when you eat and eat in gratitude and joy.

Oh,  don’t forget to chew your food well, until it's a liquid. And don’t forget to drink some water to help your intestines out…

3) Sleep, but with a smile. You already know sleep is the period that the brain processes the day’s lessons and the body repairs itself. You know that sleep is recovery central - when the nervous system is in the parasympathetic state. Any sleep can be needed and helpful sleep, but sleep had in the REST and digest state is optimal sleep. 

Like being dehydrated, low sleep, or poor-quality sleep will be directed towards the areas that need it most (the brain), leaving other areas lacking. But still, poor sleep can only help the brain so much. So, don’t go to bed angry, worried, or upset. It wrecks your sleep and keeps you in survival mode. If you want to have true, restorative sleep, go to bed with a smile. Be happy, thankful, hopeful, and confident when you let your head rest on the pillow. Easier said than done, but done easily with practice. For anything to be easy, you need to get good at it… The point is, if you’re angry, let it pass before you go to bed. If you’re worried or upset, think about the things that make you happy and dwell on those instead of dwelling on what is upsetting yet. 

4) Move and change positions often. You’re made to move, movement is what optimizes your body’s processes, and keeps your nervous system healthy. Movement puts the water you drink in the places it needs to go, like your joints for instance. In other words, movement is the vehicle that delivers nutrients throughout the body. 

Take walking for example. Walking strengthens the nervous system and keeps the brain healthy. But walking also brings blood flow and fluid to the major muscles and joints of the body because walking creates a demand on those muscles and joints. Not only that, but walking also stimulates and massages the internal organs, keeping them healthy. Being static, not moving for long periods of time, is like robbing the body of its senses. There is no information, no demand for the body to meet. Therefore, there is no need for health. 

Really, the body meets the needs it is presented with. You can have “optimal health” for a static life but once you need to engage in life you will likely find you don’t have optimal health for that engagement. The bottom line is if you want to live a good and long life you need to move often and provide your body with the message that says, “I need and want to move.” Your body will meet that need. It’s a partnership after all. 

5) Keep your head up. This runs along with what I said about eating. If you want to truly be healthy from the inside out, from top to bottom, you need to work on the inside top - you need to get your head right. Practice being grateful. Practice letting go of negative thoughts (fear, they all stem from fear). When we engage in the negative, we ignite the sympathetic state, the Danger state. When we live here, we slowly destroy our health, and sometimes not so slowly.

We are designed to predominantly live in the parasympathetic state, the Peaceful state. When we are here, the body can truly function optimally. When we can keep our thoughts “above the line” of courage, when we can quit poisoning our body with our toxic worries and opinions, then and only then can we have a solid foundation for health. This alone is the greatest key to living an optimal and healthy life. Keeping your head up, keeping your thoughts on what is really true about you, is the foundation that allows the other things you do in life to make a positive effect. Water, good food, and movement can do a lot, but they can do a lot more when you aren’t rehearsing damaging lies in your head. 

Anyway, that’s about it. If you can partner with your body and cooperate with your design, you’ll find that your body is not only wonderfully designed, it’s designed to feel amazing. Do these five simple things and discover for yourself how great it feels to be You at any age and at any stage in life. 

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