Forget the supplements!

Step #0 - Maintain health. Get checked out! Treat and take charge of any hypertension, diabetes, weight problem, or smoking or drinking that WILL kill us if we do not.
Step #1 - Get rid of the TV.

Step #2 - Get out there and walk, cycle, mountain bike, windsurf, or, if you must run, get the best shoes, use a good track or grass or dirt, and never ever, lock your knees.
Step #3 - Use free weights. They are cheap, recruit other muscle groups besides the targets, and last forever. More muscle higher metabolism and better feeling.
Step #4 - Get an exercise buddy who can kick your ass and will stay in for the long haul.
Step #5 - Have fun! For me group exercise is great. Hip-Hop aerobics is a lot more fun than the eliptical but watch your knees on the double grapevine. Also a well-toned female butt is a better inspiration for me than a TV, book or anything else. Do what both ROCKS you and kicks ass. Like MTB, Hip-hop aerobics, windsurf, trail running, all-night sex, or whatever turns YOU ON!
Step #6 - Dance, dance, dance! Thru life and thru your attitude through your body and through your soul!
Step #7 - Nutrition. FOOD not supplements!
Step #8 - Spirit. Meditate.
Step #9 - Mind. Challenge yourself with interesting conversation, good friendship, inventing new challenges to meet at work, in play, every day!
Step #10 - Connect! Maybe you will find one who is into all you want in life. Don't settle. It is a big world and there are plenty for us to find our "just right". With #1 thru #9 we have plenty to bring into another life. If that one does not fill all these needs, then do they give you the space to do that yourself?
Step #11 - Maintain health. Treat and take charge of any hypertension, diabetes, weight problem, or smoking or drinking that WILL kill us if we do not.

My grandfathers both fought in the battle of the Argonne, in which the bodies were stacked like cord wood. One went out on patrol to scrounge supplies and trophies, fresh bread and fruit for his outfit. It was very hard for him but he did it.

What John did not say to you M and I know I went through is the inuring to blood and guts that we needed to go through to be able to think and act with clarity and excellence when there was plenty around. You will learn this. Do not let it harden you so that you cannot see the humanity and the suffering that surrounds you.

War has been much harder on the Iraqui people than anyone else. Some day we hope that they learn to enjoy the freedom that we and they have paid so dearly for.

What you are is an ambassador of all this country stands for, the personal representative of America to Iraq. Your behavior represents a truth to them that all the talking and all the politics and all the war cannot remove.

Remember that these, even your enemies, are kin in the family of man. Do not let events turn you to hatred, for then you will have lost something more precious than life, your humanity. This is not incompatible with your job.

The greatest warriors of Japan, the samurai, practiced Zen, which recognizes no boundaries between enemies.

If it is getting to you, get help. It is a lot better than when my roommate, back from special forces in Vietnam, used to wake up screaming nightly for years, was dangerous if his girlfriend woke him accidentally.

War lessens it all. We must not let it rob us of our fundamental humanity

Sorry,

Thankyou for the recommendation about **BC. I have been in there 2 times but not for services. I am very disappointed in the Baptist Churches I have been associated with. They want to support right-wing candidates that support greed and judging ones fellow man, fear-mongering and fiscal irresponsibility, not paying the taxes that are needed to run their government, dumping the burden on their children. They oppose investing in America's future through public education and they promote abortion by opposing any proven effective decent family life education for children.

In other words, I associate Baptists with everything that right-wing politics is doing to destroy this country, divisiveness, elitism and greed.

I will not support their causes or their candidates. "I got mine-you get yours" is a spirit that is destroying America. The Bush presidency is a perfect example of that. I felt that those I worshipped with were passing judgment on most of America, and an awakening of American spirit that I hope sweeps their "causes" into the ocean. Personally some individual Baptists are among my best friends. I know them and individually they are among the best people on the earth, until their religious values and political policies meet. Then they become a little illogical.

Is ** this way? Personally spiritually I have always been a Quaker, a Buddhist, a Taoist or a pantheist. I know that the very concept of a universal God is antithetical with religion. How can you wrap your mind around a universal and make That into rules and limits? You can not put God in a box, no matter how big! God has no limits, and we are all part of It - not separate. The separation is an illusion. All those disciplines - not religions and Yoga recognize this union of body, mind, spirit, and soul.

When Jesus said "I am the way, the truth and the light. (Meaning He embodies that union of body, mind and spirit) Noone comes to the father except by me" - meaning that Yoga practice or other disciplines doing the same thing are Jesus's way to God. Orthodox Jewish prayer, TM and Muslim prayer practice all go this same way. This is the closest thing to religion you should try. Anything else - including Church attendance - does not lead to God. We are all part of something larger whether we want to see this or not. "Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am" not 2 or 3 thousand.

Sorry to all my Baptist friends out there. I know you recognize the spirit of the lord in your hearts, minds, and souls. I have seen it in your faces and in your actions. This is a fundamental aspect of you and of God, not the particular discipline you chose or found. If God spoke to you and said "Go, be a Baptist"

then this is right for you. I thought so until I saw our leaders and elders passing judgment on our national leaders and supporting the politics of greed, deficit spending to "keep what is mine", and supporting transfers of their rightful taxation to the nation's children.

I say to them "Look at the coin in your pocket". We are all blessed by the Lord in this country. Let's live like this is true and share, or at least support our current obligations. There is nothing wrong with capitalism except the NEED for regulation by properly elected civil authorities. Look at melamine in baby food in China and our recent financial collapse to see the fruits of unregulated capitalism.

It is not in danger from the Obama administration. If you judge you are pahrasees, and no redemtion is promised for the religiously proud, only judgement by the same stick!

Jim

Medically, there is treatment for the imbalance with antidepressants.  Some, expecially those who live and work with their feelings, may feel isolated from them by the medication.  Writers who can accept the ups and downs can use this cyclic fuel to work their magic, but bail if it gets too black and alone in there.  Remember: Help is always here with you.  ECT may be better than the drugs for severe depression.

I do believe Hemmingway could have written "The Old Man and the Sea," without having to eat his shotgun. Unfortunately the time of black moods is, by definition, not a time of good judgment and good perception.  There IS treatment!  It IS a chemical imbalance!  The treatment DOES WORK!  Have a plan for the time that may come when it does not feel worth it and a lifeline in place. 

Took my dog Sandy for a walk yesterday, and we went on a long trail in the National Park.  Just when I was wondering if it was worth it, we entered this majestic space of serene calm, one of those places where we know instinctively that God lives in the stillness. I will call this a Muir Woods moment, since if you have been there you will know exactly what I am talking about. If you haven't, you should go if you get within 100 miles of SF. 

Immediately after that experience, we were slogging up a narrow shoulder, with an incessant stream of cars going by in a hurry to get somewhere from somewhere else. The drivers were completely unable to see the glorious experience that a little time and inclination would have led them to.  We walked up that hill together by the road.  Silently we endured the harassment of the hurry of the armored brigade of domestic tanks so dangerously almost touching us - no sport in those utility vehicles, nosiree.  The drivers' faces set with some preoccupation other than than the here and now.

The reward was to visit slate,  the new restaurant, where I could eat outside and where Sandy could get water, and a couple of pieces of fresh bread and a little of my jerk chicken.  I didn't share the shiraz or the mixed green salad with raspberry vinaigrette, but we did share the warmth of the afternoon sun and the quiet respite from all those vehicles.  Our walk home was a gentle amble down quiet streets, imbued with the mutual understanding of accepted love and companionship, and, for me the aftermath of good wine and good food...

The point is that there are rhythms to life.  God was, is and will be there all the time.  His work keeping us safe from the SUV onslaught was just as important, but not noticed without the serenity before and after.  I have received from the Zaadz/Gaia community better support in my mourning than from any other quarter.  We are the seeds of serenity, scattered on the earth.  I KNOW that we did not create this life, but we nurture and cultivate each other, and Gaia will be what we make of it for us and those who are fortunate to receive the love given.  In turn, to pass it on in an infinite growing spiral of love that comes from the Source of all.  Thank God for this day and all perfect days.  I pray that each breath will be a celebration of this life and this love.  God bless us all with the abundance of love that we have come to share and give and accept here and everywhere in our lives.

Thank you all for this blessing.

Re: Sierras

You know there are a lot of agarophobic climbers out there. I went on a technical climb once for that reason.  It was a blast.  I now can scale a climbing wall almost as well as my 5 y/o girl, who can climb anything and is not afraid to walk across the 2x4 at the ridge of the monkey bars, while daddy hawks below, trying not to look the least bit afraid or like he's ready to spring to catch her...

I suppose I love mountains for the same reason.  I CAN meet my fear - and that of others - when the chips are down.  When I was 17 I went with my family out west to glacier, Banff &cet. 

In Glacier (now a misnomer by the google map images I got) NP I hooked up with two trail crew members - summer college kids.  We went on a 3-day backpack.  THe second day out, it was late afternoon and we were on the west side of the ridge going south from triple divide peak.  The trail had washed out or avalanched out and we were scrambling over scree and talus at close to the critical angle, sending rock showers down about 50 feet to a sheer 1000 ft. cliff below.  One crew member was a mountain goat familiar with them.  The other was a city slicker.  We had gone about a quarter mile of very careful and slow progress into this when the weather started to close in, the cieling about 100 feet up and the lightning strikes starting, the wind ripping the raindrops like razors into our faces.

City slicker freezes up and cannot move. Mountain goat pulls a seeyalater and splits.  I am shitless, but know that if I show it, it will only feed slicker's gaping maw of terror that he is balanced on.  I take his hand and start talking and we finally get moving inch by precious inch back north to the saddle and safety and a better way out to the ranger station.  When we are back to the saddle, my teeth start chattering and I start shaking - I will never know from fear met or from hypothermia.

I will always remember the view from that saddle before we started that traverse. The valley to the west went for miles and miles and miles, and had cubic miles of space to the next ridge. I have never had such a perception of awsome expanse and how preciously precarious and tiny we are but still essential to the universe and important in God's eye.  Mountains for me are solitude without isolation, and a direct communion with God.  I know what you feel in that wind that is painful and elemental and real on a scale we do not usually feel in our everyday lives.  I want to feel it again. I close my eyes in mediation and to the tune of ayumm I pass through God's eye and see that He is Me and everything I see together - looking in and looking out.

Jim

When I was a second year resident, we had a policy of keeping twins in the hospital on bed rest from 28 weeks to 34 weeks to prevent premature birth.  One such girl and I had become friends in my month-long rotation to care for her.  She was looking forward to caring for twins with mixed feelings, but her anticipation was greater than her fears.

It was the day for her to go home, and she was enthusiastic about getting out of "jail."  I discharged her on my morning rounds and then went to surgery. 

In the middle of a cesarean section, I got a page from a nurse.  The circulating nurse answered it and told me that the patient's blood pressure was 130/90.  It had been lower but this was not a really high reading. I said that she was just excited about going home, and not to worry about it, but rest at home and come to clinic in a week.

Five days later, the day of her clinic appointment, I came on night duty to find out that she had come in seizing, had had several toxemic seizures at home, in the ambulance, and had come in unresponsive.  A stat cesarean section produced two healthy babies. 

She was in intensive care with no evidence of brain activity.  She had negative cold calorics, negative doll's eyes, no response to deep pain, was totally flaccid with a flat line EEG. She did not breathe when the ventilator was turned off.  She met the criteria for brain death in Virginia.  They were talking about pulling the plug....

The next call night I brought one of her babies into the room. I put the baby in bed with her and placed her index finger into the baby's tiny grip. The baby's fingers wrapped around her finger and held on strong.  I told her that she could not die as she had two babies to come back and care for.  I prayed and took the baby back to the nursery.  I have never done anything  so unconventional before.  

The next day she was decerebrate with typical posture and breathing. Brainstem responses only. The next day she had typical decorticate responses.  Mid brain  was back.  The next day she was talking in simple sentences, sitting up.

The next day I asked her where she had been.  She told me that she was waiting in a bright white place, in no pain, feeling good and a little hopeful.  Then she was pulled by her right index finger down a long dark tunnel and woke up.

The place she had described to me is mentioned so many times by those who have been there, I am sure that it exists and that we are dual entities with access to that place.  I also believe that that place is a place of waiting for renewal of the spirit. 

While I have never been in that place in meditation, I know  it transforms those who have been there.  They lose their fear of death.  This happened to my Dad. 

Based on this single experience when I know there was healing beyond the powers of man's thought and medicine, I can guess that  "success" involves one's will, forthright direction, expectation of success, and goes in congruence with the spirit, will, nature and desire of the one who is healing.

Go do this with love, respect, hope and prayer.

Namaste
James S. Smeltzer, MD
c 2007 - May be freely reproduced in toto with attribution for teaching, healing, helping and love ;^) JSS