How to reveal my ultimate health potential
Posted by Henry Maitland on 10th Nov 2015
Much to my surprise I am now in my 21st year of studying, pursuing, understanding and living what it means to be healthy happy and well. I started formally studying anatomy and human physiology outside school when I was 16 and qualified as a masseur for remedial massage when I was 17. Although I have had periods of less intense study due to the challenges of life, I have maintained an educational and life path in the direction of optimal health and wellness for all these years and continue to do so to the present day.
How I live my life to reveal my ultimate health potential
If one is going to walk the path of being a health teacher, a coach, a guide or perhaps a mentor for others as their profession then to do so with integrity and authenticity one needs to be truly and passionately pursing this life for themselves and have the openness to discuss where one is in one’s own journey and how one overcame apparent obstacles along the way.
All those of you reading this have taken a step and made commitment to your health and wellness in coming to Evolution Organics. You have the intention to be healthier, to heal, to improve, to do better in life. It is this intention that I honour as I write my articles knowing that we are all moving together in a direction of health and happiness.
Today I will share with you a few aspects of how I live my life, and what it takes for me to be professionally healthy. It should be remembered that although there are broadly very important aspects to health and wellness, the journey we all take can be as varied as we are as people. There are many paths to the same destination. This is just the example of a part of mine. Aspects of this may raise questions or be challenging. This is good – this is how we open up to healing.
Inner work and the spear head of healing
Meditative work or ‘inner work’ is at the absolute forefront of all health and wellness – the spear head. Our emotions and perceptions form the filters from which all of life is perceived with no exclusions as all is subjective in its interpretation. As this is a truth, one would do well to recognise this and start, with courage, to look within ourselves with the recognition that the world reflects back to us what we hold inside ourselves. As Ramana Maharshi said, “do not change the world you think you see, as the world you think you see does not exist”.
My day to day practice of remaining conscious and healing inner wounds
At this time I see my inner work as having 3 components. Each aspect on its own brings great inner rewards, and each connects to the others in intricate and specific ways creating a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.
Seated meditation
This is rewarding in and of its self. To sit in peace and observe the flow of the inner space, to watch thought float by, holding everything lightly and letting it pass. One observes from a high space of stillness, silence, love and compassion. This is often felt intensely though the body as inner energy, light, love and radiance. This is a good Day!
The practice I use most in seated mediation is one of allowing everything to flow so learning to let thoughts go. Letting it all flow like clouds drifting across a landscape, not to label anything or judge anything. If one finds one has jumped on to a thought then one move back to observing, if one finds one has moved in to emotion one gently moves back to observing.
Approaching inner work clinically, I would say that this practice is key for one to become cognisant of the inner world, to learn to hold it gently and observe it. Once we have learnt to let it flow, we can begin to identify the emotions or energies that we hold within ourselves that form our perception and so how we hold our life and world. It is our perception and emotionalised response that consumes vitamins and minerals, that induces massive free radical damage that challenges the whole biochemical and physical state. The physical body is at the effect of what we hold in mind, fear and anxiety or love and compassion, which do you feel might enhance a healing and so healthy state? I practice seated meditation only rarely now, perhaps once a month. I did however spend many years with this as my central practice of inner work as it is a very useful place to start out – to begin by looking within.
Daily awareness and contemplation
Seated meditation has one obvious limitation – it takes us out of everyday life. We have to find the time to sit, be silent and meditate. I feel it can also set up the premise that there is life and then meditation, that they are separate things when they are not. One can be still in meditation and experience anything but stillness in the rest of one’s life, perhaps not as much carry-over as one might have hoped! I have practiced seated meditation with some regularity for most of my life in many forms and a critical jump in conscious awareness came when I realised the nature of Daily awareness and contemplation.
The experience in seated mediation is being the observer, to watch everything pass by. The same is possible in everyday life. This I most enjoy in the same way. I observe everything passing, happening, being and let the thoughts pass without jumping on them. When I find I have become unconscious and moved in to thinking I simply refocus, and move back to observing. It could be said that one is as internally aware, watching the landscape of the internal world as one is externally aware. To stay on the knife edge of observation, the razor edge of the unfolding of the ‘alwaysness’ with no resistance, to be the leaf in the wind.
If I am peeling potatoes I am observing the inner state, If I am driving my car I am observing the inner state, when I am working with clients I am observing the inner state.
In time with continued practice one becomes the observer of ones emotions not the emotion itself. There is space between the rising of a feeling and the brain getting hold of it and attaching it to something. This then allows one to see that the world does not cause us to suffer or feel emotional, the emotions are learnt patterns often from childhood wounding’s that in certain situations become triggered. Once we have become conscious of this we can learn to understand them, re-contextualise them, and can then let them go.
Ceremonial practice and inner healing
For me, the ceremony and practice that I have learnt as one who is walking in the direction of becoming a shamanic healer has revealed to me what I presently regard to be the spear head. The exact moment of interaction between what one has learnt to observe from the practices of meditation and daily contemplation of one’s inner terrain, and the actual process of healing the emotion. This is classically called surrender.
I go through a full healing ceremony a few times per week, however I went through a year of doing almost every day to learn to feel what was happening and to let the energetic state reveal itself to me.
The process of letting an emotion or energy go, to surrender it, is very simple indeed and profoundly powerful. The part that can be tricky is learning to observe the inner state and to come to the realisation that all emotions can be let go. The technique, for me, involves having observed an emotional response to something in my life and to have recognised consciously that this is what is occurring. In ceremony I then move deeply in to the feeling of the emotion in the body, where I hold it and how it resonates with in me. There is no mind in this, no thinking or mentation just the feeling, the energy. I then allow the energy to be fully present with no resistance or suppression and examine it, do I need this, does it serve me? The answer is always no and with this I let it go.
I found as with all things that with continued practice it is truly possible to let emotions go as energies so that they are no longer present in ones field of conscious awareness. They are no longer activated by any circumstances of life. This means we are no longer the victim, we are no longer at the effect of the world. This brings about a progressive awareness of happiness, contentment, stillness and silence.
In this state of being, the nervous system is calm and parasympathetic dominant. The body can then use its resources in repair and recovery. We have let go of the primary trigger for disease and revealed a true state of health. After all, if you are happy and content is there anything that you can add to that?
Evolving ones way with food
If we take into consideration that context is everything and the way in which we hold the world is the most important aspect of health and happiness then, diet for me is simply an extension of this understanding.
I eat according to my metabolic type – a way of eating that best supports my own biochemical environment. I am a fast oxidiser and so need a high protein diet to make sure my blood sugar stays level and that I have optimal energy for as much of the time as possible. If my blood sugar is level I will have better hormonal regulation which allows for the most balanced psychological state. This is of great importance if one is deeply pursuing inner work as blood sugar fluctuation and hormonal dysregulation is going to make inner interpretation unnecessarily complex.
An average breakfast for me will be something such as:
- A large salmon steak
- Three eggs slow fried in coconut oil
- A large portion of Swiss chard or other leafy greens
- A shot of wheat grass juice
- 2 capsules of Green Pasture’s cod liver oil mixed with high vitamin butter oil
- 2 x capsules of turmeric
- 1 x sachet of glutathione
- A dose of some type of north American herb and spice oil.
- 1 x shot of bullet proof coffee espresso.
The vast majority of all food I buy is local and/or organic and I eat in this way almost every meal to ensure optimal balance. I am not however worried if I can’t eat this way due to some circumstance and enjoy eating things that are not in the health plan…Marie-Eve (my wife) bakes very good cakes…It’s all about holding these concepts lightly and so enjoying both eating healthy and eating cake! One just needs to find the right balance.
Exercise is what it needs to be
It seems that as a whole we still, as a society, have not got to grips with exercise for health very well at all. The primary focus is usually on what we look like and backed up by an element of weight control. It is not that I don’t train to some degree for aesthetics and I do indeed want to keep my body fat percentage at a healthy level however there is so much more to be achieved.
For me training is what it needs to be to make sure I stay healthy well and pain free. I have a history of severe mechanical injury after a long period of intensive sports including some extreme and very dangerous ones. I train two times per week and focus my attention on stretching to ensure optimal biomechanical balance and muscle health. I usually stretch for 20- 30 minutes and then go in to my training session. My training will include between 4-6 exercises and will focus on movement and stability more than anything else. At this stage of life I want to make sure I am pain free and functional, the 6 pack abs are a pleasant side effect!
Where has this brought me to and how the journey goes on?
My experience of what it is to be healthy is to be happy and content, to have a body that is for the most part pain free and functional, and to be able to access inspiration, enthusiasm and the energy for action to bring the life I dare to dream of into being.
It is possible to achieve incredible states of health and wellness. I very much hope that this will have given you an incite in to how I live my life as a professionally healthy person and that you find some inspiration or education to help you on your journey.