Good Wednesday to You!
I hope you are all enjoying the many experiences life brings you.
I had another very busy, but productive day yesterday.
My evening tai-chi session was beautiful. I was out in the rock garden with Rory as the sun was setting.
As I was exercising my diaphragm to maximize breathing and organ efficiency, the birds were coming home to their nests in all the trees around me and the little creatures were busy eating bugs and enjoying their day.
I always get a great sense of joy when I see half eaten oranges sitting on top of my stone meditation seat in the garden. It’s fun knowing that the squirrels enjoy eating where I enjoy meditating.
When I finished my tai-chi session, I was in a lucid high.
Though I was walking across the ground on the way into the house for dinner, it was as though everything was perfectly still in and around me, and I was part of everything that is.
My body felt perfectly balanced and optimally efficient; I wish everyone could feel this way all the time.
Of course if that happened, the medical system would crash taking the economy with it, but hay, at least we’d all have a clear head and could reinvent social systems that actually work!
Yesterday, I got into the gym for a lung (185 x 4), squat (185 x 4), cable twist (110 x 10 ea.)(x four circuits) workout. I was still feeling my deadlifts and rock lifting. I
often couple my deadlifting sessions with lunging and squatting the next day to drive motor recruitment deeper into the motor neuron pool.
I use this method because to get more strength than I have now would require that I spend more time in the gym and that becomes impractical for a man with my workload.
This isn’t a method that should be used by those without a solid conditioning base because it can produce deep, long lasting post-workout soreness.
Because the butt and abdominal muscles are typically the first to weaken and atrophy once a person reaches 40 years of age, it’s important to keep those muscles well conditioned or your body actually believes you are getting old!
I don’t want my body to every believe it’s old; that’s typically not good for your love life either!
There are so many people out there who’s torso is sewing their ass for lack of support I’m sure the lawyers are busy handling all these shitty deals!while their asses fall too!
There’s more to life than being too busy to live, love and care for yourself.
By the way, if you don’t like lifting weights but want an incredible backside, rollerblading works magic!
I remember when I was about 35 or so and I’d just began dating after my divorce. I met an incredibly beautiful woman about 56 years old who used rollerblading as her primary form of conditioning.
This woman had the body of a 25-year-old woman and could have been a butt model for sure!
If you just go watch where rollerbladers go to skate, such as along beach paths, you can see an incredible display of great butts and legs. Hopefully, that will motivate some of you to levitate what’s losing the battle with gravity.
Here you can see me and Penny getting a good partner’s workout together at her mother’s home in France.
We are often on the road in places where gym access is limited or non-existent from time to time, but I never make excuses about why I can’t take care of myself.
I just put Penny up over my head and climb stairs with her, or on my back and do squats with her as my functional gym.
You’d be amazed at how many ways there are to keep fit and healthy if you just get a little creative!
The first and most important step toward total body conditioning should always be mastery of our own body weight.
This is particularly essential for children, who should never be exposed to weight training until they master their own body.
If people learn weightlifting before they master their own body, the weight lifting only magnifies the motor imbalances they already have for a simple reason.
Bodyweight training teaches your nervous system how to recruit muscles and stabilize joints with total body participation.
Only when the whole neuromuscular system has been integrated through self-mastery can you apply that level of control to external resistance.
If you add external resistance before gaining control of your body, it’s like adding another 100 horsepower to a beginner driver’s car; all it does is increase the likelihood they will crash because their reaction times and coordination are not developed enough to handle that much power.
TIPS FOR COLON HEALTH and POOPING BETTER
Constipation is common among approximately 90% of the world population according to a variety of research papers I’ve studied over the years. I also see it as a frequent symptom for many of my patients – even in small children as young as 18 months.
Being constipated is a great way to get tired and sick!
When you are constipated, dangerous bacteria have time to come out of spore form and proliferate in your intestinal tract, as do parasites.
Once they have time to set up shop in your intestinal tract, they begin migrating through your body to their favorite organs.
Once there, they begin eating into your tissues to lay their eggs, producing high levels of inflammation. As inflammation increases, so too does cortisol production, which will exhaust your adrenal glands typically within as little as 4-6 months.
In addition, if a person is dehydrated (the most common cause of constipation), toxins concentrate in the colon.
Since the colon is the first place the body tries to harvest additional water in a dehydrated person, as the body squeezes water from your stale old poop, it also takes in very toxic liquid that puts a huge burden on the liver and detoxification systems in general.
This leads to a wide variety of confusing symptoms, often resulting in a plethora of unnecessary drugs being prescribed to address the symptoms of autointoxication.
If you want to learn more about this, I’d suggest reading Dr. Jensen’s Guide To Better Bowel Care, by Bernard Jensen. This is a very good book that everyone should read if they want to stay healthy.
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If you look at my drawing, you will notice that in a full squat position, your ascending colon is being compressed by your right thigh, and your descending colon is being compressed by your left thigh.
This natural pressure serves to aid voiding.
The human being is the only animal that has to push feces up hill against gravity.
If we stop using our bodies functionally, the result is that we don’t get enough pressure fluctuation in our internal body cavity.
Internal pressure fluctuations are a significant aid to pumping organs, maintaining organ motility (internal movements), and keeping blood delivery and waste removal optimal.
When you sit on a typical western toilet, you can’t get the support needed to get the feces up the hill and around the corner into the transverse colon.
The result is that most people have to strain in attempt to push their poops out, which can have a variety of negative effects.
One negative effect of straining to poop is that it can put so much pressure on the colon that it bulges. These bulges are called “diverticula”.
As you can see in the image above, these pockets created by excessive stress and pressure on the colon become dangerous little compost piles.
The problem is that the diverticula are areas where the smooth muscle contraction stops working and bacteria, parasites and toxins collect there.
After enough time, they can poison the body, or!they can pop, which can kill you.
Here are some simple tips you can use for better, more enjoyable pooping:
1. Make SURE you are drinking enough water! Half your body weight in ounces of water daily is a safe amount to shoot for.
2. Do breathing squats as demonstrated in my book, How To Eat, Move and Be Healthy!
Breathing squats are simply done by getting your feet into the stance that allows you to squat comfortably into the same position you’d poop in if you were out in the woods camping.
Then, from the standing start position, take a deep diaphragmatic breath.
As you lower your body into the bottom position of the squat, exhale progressively with the movement.
Once you need to inhale, begin standing up until fully upright again.
For those of you that are constipated, I recommend at least 20-30 repetitions of this exercise every hour; a good reason to get up and away from your computer!
If you have not made time to do this, you can always do 30 reps at breathing pace just before sitting on the pot and you’ll probably notice immediate benefits from that alone.
3. Put your Feet up!
I found this image on a blog site by The Joyologist with a great little article titled, “Put Your Feet Up” (Go to: https://www.yourjoyologist.com/2011/01/04/put-your-feet-up/).
When you put your feet up high enough to recreate the same basic position created by deep squatting, it allows the sigmoid colon to straighten where it is commonly kinked when sitting on a toilet.
It also allows you to lean forward, take a deep breath, and get the needed compression on the ascending and descending colon, aiding the bowel movement process.
There are a variety of places that sell footrests for toilets, such as drug stores and web sites. I’m sure you can find one or make one easily. A few phone books stacked up will do the trick.
4. Use your breath. If you are in a place without a footrest and for whatever reason, are having a hard time moving your bowel, you can simply lean forward so you are laying over your thighs like you would do if you were in an airplane that was about to crash.
As you can see in the drawing above, as you inhale, the diaphragm drops down, creating a negative pressure in the lung cavity, drawing air in.
When the diaphragm drops down, it puts gentle pressure on the internal organs, which aids in moving fluids through the system and feces out of the system.
While down there, take deeeep, slooowww breaths. This will trigger peristalsis, which is the wavelike contractions of the smooth muscles in your colon.
After about 6-10 deep breaths, hold the inhale and gently bear down while doing your best to totally relax your whole body, particularly your pelvic floor.
If while you are down there in that position breathing you find the smell of your own gas or poop repulsive, it means that you are not eating correctly and/or your body is dirty inside.
Remember, if you can’t stand the smell of you, neither will any of the people you may want to make love to stand it either!
5. Increase the fiber in your diet.
As I’ve mentioned in past blogs, adjusting your vegetable and fruit intake (preferably raw) to the point that your poops float well, smell earthy and natural, and pass easily is critical.
Fiber gives enough bulk to your feces to give your colon muscles something substantial to move through the system.
Fiber also absorbs toxins from the body as well as having a sweeping effect on the colon.
Eating packaged, processed foods is a sure-fire way to become fiber deficient, toxic, constipated, and earn yourself some diverticula to share with a doctor that would love to operate on you!
OK, that’s enough about pooping today!
After all, there’s an old saying that says, “The most overrated thing in life is sex and the most underrated thing in life is a great shit!”
That said, I’d rather enjoy both and I hope you agree!
Get yourself healthy and clean and you can enjoy all life offers.
Love and chi,
Paul Chek
