Serene Chopin/Stella Body

Why danger can be good for your child

…this danger

is danger of love, of complete love

toward all of life,

toward all lives

-Pablo Neruda (Nobel Laureate)

As parents, we want to keep our children safe. Perhaps no generation has been kept as withdrawn as the current one. Recent research shows that today‘s kids go outdoors 50 per cent less than we did at school age. That percentage is alarming enough in itself, but what if we multiply it by another generation or two? If reduction in nature activity continues at this rate, our long-term descendants might face life as prisoners of the indoors, in a world limited by the frame around their screen.

How has this reduction in physical play happened? One way is that when both parents are working full-time, there is no adult ‘safety anchor’ in the home to make free exploration viable. In many homes this translates into no outdoor play till Mom or Dad gets home. Yet by that time it’s often too dark and parents are too tired to take on anything active. So, like much of the school day, the entire after-school time is spent locked in a seat: a brief break for dinner, perhaps homework and then back to the gaming chair. We are keeping our children confined for most of their lives. But how safe, in truth, is this routine for them?

Because they are so inactive, our children’s generation is facing higher rates of obesity and related diseases then any before. Study after study shows them at an unprecedented risk. So how can a working parent support a child?

1) Trade the certain danger of being an inactive child for what I call the ‘beneficial dangers’ of getting out of a chair.

Examples of this:

Take a night hike with your child, wearing reflective clothing and headlamps to spot interesting nocturnal life.

Sign the whole family up for evenings at the local YMCA or Community Centre. Let each family member pick their favourite activity: from rock-climbing, to swimming, to Tai Kwon Do.

If transport is a problem, keep the exercise close to home with spot-lit trampoline in the backyard.

2) Plan to keep Nature a part of your family’s life (no matter the weather)

When snow lights up the evenings, build an ice rink for skating or simply release your family into the delights of forts, ice sculptures and snowballs. Walking with their parents round the neighbourhood will make them the first to spot changes such as a “haunted house” or Christmas lights!

Make simple purchases (such as cheap rubber boots and plastic capes) to ensure rain outings are possible. Buy these for yourself, too, and learn to enjoy the scent of fresh-washed air.

For times when going out simply won’t be possible, bring the wild to your home. Help your child plan, seed and grow an indoor garden. Consider getting at least one pet for your family. Skills like grooming, feeding and caring for a living creature enable your child to develop emotional intelligence and prepare for important life relationships.

3) Make balance, not indulgence, the first parenting principle for your child.

(Recognize that being responsive to your child doesn’t mean indulging every urge.)

Yes, your youngster will play with his iPad till he collapses at 3am, but he and his teachers will one day thank you for putting it away (and keeping it from him) much earlier. Bedtime stories are a good way to break the gaming cycle and ensure quality time for literacy and family bonds.

4) Limit the time your family members spend alone with devices.

Scheduling is probably the greatest challenge parents face today. So, become an expert at it. Set up regular routines so that it becomes easier to get your child away from a computer. If you just leave him to it, it’s obvious that he will have more and more trouble becoming engaged with other living beings. “Alone together” is a phrase without meaning. If each of you is pursuing a separate virtual world, there will be no togetherness.

5)Access the power of your child’s own creativity.

Be assured, your child’s natural imagination can be your strongest ally in overcoming a videogame obsession.

Plan special outings and new books from the library to read and act aloud, so that you’re offering something interesting as an alternate to technology. My son was spending four hours a night playing video games, till we asked him to act out his favourite books for us. Now it’s the first thing he asks to do when we get home. He gives readings while we do our evening chores, and keeps the family together and well-entertained!

Your input would be most welcome:

I’d love to hear your ideas for loving, non-punitive ways to pull a child back from the virtual towards the natural world. I’d also like to find out what you’d like to see in this space in the future. You can comment, make a request, or simply like us on Facebook.

Need to change eating habits? Try a six-point nature therapy

“The only true nourishment that lasts a lifetime comes from within.”

-Deepak Chopra, The Soul of Leadership

Are you worried about eating habits impacting health for you and your family?

You are right to be concerned. No single habit affects our health so quickly as what we consume on a daily basis. Yet access to nutrition facts and even to affordable, good quality food does not guarantee that we will eat well. Even in the information age, with double incomes per household, more of us than ever before are suffering from obesity and related illness.

The state of need is a loss of balance. So if our bodies are provided for, and our minds well-informed, what is missing from the equation? Chopra’s quote invites us to look inward to the spirit, and I can share my own, slightly different experience of how that enlightenment can happen.

For me, looking outward to Nature enabled me at age 30 to overcome a crisis in work and health. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat well due to stress. Then a transit strike forced me to walk 25 minutes to work every morning and back at night. To my surprise, I felt less hungry and more energetic. I was able to give up the coffee and sugary treats I’d relied upon to get me through the day.

When the strike was over, I kept walking. I added a noon outing to clear my head and find healthy salads nearby. I explored the neighbourhood, not just for tastes, but for other close pleasures (plant scents, sunny alcoves) that would make me enjoy my noon meal and feel less needy for food.

In sum, the transit strike provided me with a lasting insight and a sustainable approach to healthy eating on the job. The key? How we eat is just as important what we eat. Here’s a point-by-point summary of what works for me.

Use exercise to wake your brain instead of sugar or caffeine. This will make it possible for you to:
Get enough sleep and only eat when calm.
Keep well-hydrated (avoid the sugar cravings that come from thirst).
Get up and move as often as you can during the day (let your circulation nourish you naturally).
Don’t use chemical appetite suppressants. Simply and naturally, cleanse your palate with salt, gum, toothpaste after every meal.
Don’t let taste be your only pleasure focus.

Nine Ways to Balance your Life, Starting Today

What is life balance and why is it so important?

There’s a lot of talk about balance these days, probably because few of us feel that we’re reaching it. I learned my definition of life balance the hard way, which I’ll tell you about in a moment, but first let me share it with you:

Life Balance is not an accounting formula, a set of rules, or a place you arrive.

Life balance is a process of ongoing communication between all areas of your being: mind, body and spirit.

One cold March day in Toronto, Canada, I arrived at my office. It had been the usual 90 minute commute on bus, train and subway. My husband had dropped our daughter off at her home daycare, while my expectant body worked on nourishing our son, due in May. We had recently bought our first house, and I was vaguely hopeful that I could keep going at work until the last moment. Like many of us, I somehow believed I was indestructible. Yet now I was feeling a little strange… Maybe all I needed was to sit down, for the first time that day. Then something hit me hard, on the cheekbone, and everything went black.

What had knocked me out, I learned later at the hospital, was a cement floor, from my full standing height. It was one of many things I hadn’t seen coming. I hadn’t seen how, day by day, as my moving got slower, I had less time for the things I needed: rest, careful exercise, and the right foods. I hadn’t seen how I, after working as a trained communications expert for 15 years, had lost all communication with my own body. The precious burden I carried was now seriously at risk.

It was while shivering under a thin hospital blanket, not knowing whether or not I had lost my future son, that the first principle of Life Balance came to me:

Balance principle 1: Always focus on what’s most important.

You can imagine the tremendous remorse I felt when I realized that I had been ignoring my son’s needs. In my excitement to earn money to pay for a better home, for his future, I had actually forgotten what I owed him in the present moment. We were both fortunate to survive, and to have a lesson which has kept our life in balance ever since.

Maybe the title of this point seems overly simple to you. Of course we all want to emphasize what means the most – our health, our loved ones. Yet how many of us map out what’s important, and match it to a schedule of how we really spend our lives? I did, after I almost lost my baby, and it’s a process to which I return often.

2: Be aware of the choices you’re making. (Don’t let others profit by taking you off track.)

Advertising is one main reason we lose our focus and then our life balance. That beautiful home in the newspaper that we can’t quite afford might in truth be an ugly picture – one that shows us working far too many hours and disappointing those who need us.

In order to spend less time working, I’ve learned to avoid decisions other people would like me to make. I’ve stopped watching television and blocked ads on the Internet. I don’t go to stores as often as I used too. When I do shop, it’s with a written list and a time limit. If I browse, it’s online, and with a cool head comparing prices and value.

3: Be guided by your principles, not public opinion. (Balance is individual).

Recognize also that there is an inner kind of marketing, when ‘keeping up with the Jones’’ threatens to take over. Make a list of your family’s unique priorities, and the chances are ‘having a car as new as the neighbor’s’’ won’t even make it on.

4: Listen to your body. (Balance is natural.)

Our own bodies, which are equipped to self-heal, make energy from good food and respond to exercise, have never been so abused. The ‘brain work’ that most of us are now doing has trained us to ignore the body’s signals, even to treat it as separate from the mind. Heart disease and obesity are reaching closer each year toward us and our children. Most of the kids I teach at the school board prefer onscreen ‘brain play’ instead of the outdoors. Teach yourself and your offspring to care for their body. As for a loved pet.

5: Act, don’t just read, for health. (Research is not enough)

I teach a regular evening Wellness class at the local YMCA. When I ask people what they’re doing to keep well, most of them say: “a check-up every year and I read the Mayo Clinic website”. There’s nothing wrong with either of these, but both are passive. They are better than nothing, but neither show that the individual is taking charge of her health. She is leaving it in the hands of others. Nor do they show forward planning or adaptability. Life Balance is not a textbook formula or something you can rely on someone else to do for you.

This was identified by such great men as Thomas Edison, who said to his students, “I can teach you nothing”. There is a huge difference between just collecting information and true learning, where we make knowledge our own. Balance can only happen when we take the giant step of making good habits fit our schedule and thus change our own behaviour.

6:Avoid extremes.

It might seem obvious that extremes are the opposite of balance. Yet many of us, when we resolve to bring more balance into our lives, start with an extreme. Here are some examples from people in my area. They may seem familiar.

A woman who is just getting back into fitness classes after fifteen years, decides she will run a marathon, one week from today.

A man who has been prescribed daily heart medication abandons it in favour of an unregulated, unproven homeopathic remedy.

The problem that the above actions share is an ‘all or nothing’ attitude. Force is counterproductive. A body, like a human psyche, prefers its developing needs to be met in flexible, adaptive ways.

7:Plan for life as well as work.

Transfer the discipline and planning skills you use at work to strategize your workouts, nature moments and quality time with loved ones.

8: Connect with your true self every day.

By this self, I mean the being who is part of Nature’s unity. On this level, you are aware of yourself as a creature born with a wondrous body and abilities who deserves to live in health and wellbeing. As Deepak Chopra writes, “Spending time in Nature will give you access to the field of infinite creativity, freedom and bliss.” Find time to fit in a quiet walk every day of the year – before work, at lunch or on the way home as needed.

9: Put your health to good purpose.

We’ve all experienced the joy of giving, and the mutual wellbeing that results. Your health is also a gift you can allow to flow from you to benefit others. As psychotherapists like Dr. Frank Burns have documented, the momentum of taking action can carry you physically out of fear and moping toward strength and health.

HOW TO CREATE A NEW HEALTH IDENTITY: Taking Charge

“Nothing has more power to transform than awareness.” Deepak Chopra, 2012

Nature and Identity

Can Nature help form a new identity, free of the fears and sufferings of our family’s past? Many so-called “inherited” ailments are no longer necessary, made out-of-date by new findings in science. Yet, because we are descendants, the psychological hold on us may still be strong. Before we look at how a Nature connection can assist health, let me tell you about an unexpected encounter I had with a University of Toronto medical professor, who, over forty years had seen health trends in countless families.

Taking charge of my own health

I consulted Dr. Rodger Hines while I was a mature student at the university. After too many late nights studying with coffee, I was convinced I had a stomach ulcer. By way of introducing myself, I mentioned that I had many relatives with similar problems. To my astonishment, he replied: “So I expect you’ll have “indigestion” printed in gilt letters on your family crest.”

My first reaction was embarrassment, then a touch of resentment that he might be poking fun at us. I had expected him to order tests, repeat visits, a life-long prescription. Instead, he made me take charge of my own health.

To sum up:

– Doctor Hines suggested that I explore my family’s attitudes to illness, especially to symptoms I might currently be experiencing. He urged me to act as an impartial observer, a “reporter” whose health profile might be quite different from the vision I had formed from my family’s past. At first, I didn’t like the idea of separating my identity from my family.

– Then he explained that I was looking for clues to what I now think of a ‘self-created health identity’(quite possibly mistaken or outdated). As a way of connecting with my family, I might have subconsciously adopted suffering from the past.

– I soon found links between stories I had heard in childhood and symptoms I had considered chronic and “a part of who I am” for most of my adult life.

– The doctor put the ball back in my court by telling me to find a new way of feeling close to my family, one that did not involve my reliving events from their medical past. I found the courage to follow this approach when I realized that if my symptoms were unnecessary, I might find a way to avoid passing them on to my own children.

I’m happy to tell you that haven’t had chronic indigestion since that med-free consult with the exceptional Dr. Hines (sadly now deceased), and it’s been over twenty years.

FOLLOW-UP: If you would like to expIore your own health identity in this way, I’ve prepared a toolkit, which I can gladly provide for you to fill out privately. I use myself as a “how-to”example of how to question assumptions about one’s own health, but I’ve met many others who’ve shared this experience. Rob Hawke, author of Kicking Cancer’s Ass, tells how he overcame his inherited family belief that the diagnosis of cancer he received could only be fatal. He has moved way past the “terminal” deadline, and now spends his time helping others with similar diagnoses.

Since Rodger Hines handed me back responsibility for my own health, I’ve spent very little time in doctor’s offices. I have, however, spent a lot of time with Nature. This leads to the next section of this topic, Nature and Identity. If we find, by exploring and research, that the health identity we’ve created for ourselves is outdated or even mistaken, we need to shed that false identity and find a different one. The first key way Nature can find new aspects of our identity is first to help us lose it. In our next session, we’ll look at some techniques and strategies for doing this, and for finding a new sense of self in Nature.

For now, I’d like to share with you a piece I wrote in response to someone who suddenly did lose their identity as the result of an accident. His story helped me to visualize the inherent strength and health we each hold within us, independent of any name we might be given. (Continued… )

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WHY WE NEED NATURE: 5 Fundamental Concepts

The Nature of Your Body

The body itself is a screen to shield and partially reveal

the light that is blazing inside your presence.

Each of us is born into Beauty,

But we need to be walking in a garden to see it.

-Rumi (OHBW, p.27)
Imagine your body as an eco-system. You marvel at its streams and waterfalls, would never dream of pouring poison into the play of its waters. The longer you spend inside this place, the more you become aware of a delicate balance between parts, of how easily you might tear the carefully strung web. Where you seek to nourish, you might weigh down and destroy. You learn to touch carefully here, to tune your senses to a rhythm you could once barely perceive.

Or perhaps you prefer the image of your body as a treasured pet. A pony, for instance, that you longed for as a child. You clean and polish the bright skin so it will gleam like your dreams. You set free the strong spine and limbs to massage themselves often with joyful movement, never allowing sad stasis to take hold. Together you and this loved creature dance as one being, as the interplay of two kinds of life. You begin to feel that within his strength, there is a vision as creative as your mind’s, that his beating heart will carry you much further than you could go alone.

The lovely quotes at the start of this chapter are from the 14^th century Sufi poet Rumi, whose words effortlessly lift the human body into unity with Nature and the spiritual power within. For thousands of years, aboriginal tribes and religious groups have sent members into the wild in the belief that this would be a growth experience for them.

Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha and many other prophets have gone into outdoor isolation for a time. They found a truth that was solitary, but would later benefit the world. The coming-of-age Nature ritual has also been an important part of an adolescent’s life in many cultures, often with the young person’s name changing afterwards to reflect a truer understanding of the self. Yet, as the Australian aboriginal “walkabout” proves, the transformational power of Nature can take place at any age.

From these examples, we learn that from many different world cultures, some have gone into Nature to contemplate spiritual unity. In each case, Nature has the effect of therapy, and these people emerge not always as visionaries, but often as empowered individuals with ideas that nourish their lives and those of their people for generations.

WHY WE NEED NATURE: 5 Fundamental Concepts

These are the core ideas which have supported me in making my own Nature connection.

We need to pay attention to our physical selves and the world around us to survive.

Despite technological changes in our outward manner of living, ours is not an Artificial Intelligence. We have not evolved beyond our fundamental physical state. We are creatures whose growth and wellness needs Nature as a reference point.

2. Psychologically, If we ignore our need for Nature,we develop a deep-seated unease.

If we remain unable to make meaningful contact with our natural needs and environment, it will impact wellness and eventually health.

From instinct, we still reach toward our natural environment according to the drives we are born with.

As Michael Hyatt recently put it: “We are hard-wired for contact with Nature.”

3. Opening one’s life to include a relationship with Nature can assist healing and the achievement of lasting wellness.

This needs to be done gradually and according to one’s own pace. It does not require rejecting your doctor, religious faith or medication.

4. At times of crisis, rather than becoming self-destructive, we can turn to unity with Nature to fortify our self-care.

As we move closer to understanding Nature, we learn to better appreciate and care for our own bodies, thereby becoming proactive about our health and wellness.

5. We can learn from people who have a powerful personal connection with Nature, such as aboriginals, prophets and nature writers. We can then adapt what we learn to form our own unique, personal relationship with the Earth.

Author: Serene Chopin/Stella Body