The Beautiful Healthy Mind ToolKit

Maintenance  is the key to keeping anything of value in good working order. We practice maintenance on our homes, cars, tools, household machinery, infrastructure and so on.

Somce of us are aware enough to go beyond practising maintenance simply on the things in our lives and use this discipline to improve relationships, careers, bodies and other intangible areas of life.

Most of us are aware of the need to maintain our bodies to ensure good physical health, and yet there's not many people who have a daily practice of maintenance to develop and keep good emotional, mental and spiritual health.

We seem to simply expect to enjoy good health in these areas and are surprised, frustrated and ultimately distressed when we lose our emotional and mental balance and well-being.

Thankfully, there is a growing trend for energy healing including meditation, yoga and tapping (EFT) sweeping the world, a trend that is truly a guardian of emotional and mental good health.

Yet, there are still so many people unaware that how they feel is essentially their own choice, truly a choice of their own, they decide how they feel, and yet they remain at the mercy of their feelings, trapped by their own lack of maintenance and self discipline.

Once one has suffered mental distress, no matter how severe its manifestation, it's important you start harnessing strategies that can be used to help you recover and then to safeguard you from a return to dark days.

It is so important to practice preventention, to take control of one's emotions to ensure emotional well-being and balance as a constant state.

I have a number of strategies that I use daily to ensure my emotional equilibrium, and beyond that some techniques I use to clear negative emotions, so that I am able to live freely from their impact.

I can them my tools, and like any master craftsman, I take care of them, use them appropriately, choose to learn more and improve in my use of them, and they aid me in my drive to achieve a happy, healthy state of being as my emotional setpoint.

I'll describe a slew of tools here, not all will be compatible with you right now,however I woudl suggest you try them all, no matter how sceptic you feel about it's efficiacy. You'll be amazed at what works for you, some will clear stuck energy, some will uplift you, others will simply keep you steady day after day.

I urge you to build up your emotional health toolkit and learn which particular processes help you in each circumstance you face. Discover what works for you, when it works, and do it, regularly.

I've found that even the best of us can get complacent and I know when I stop practising my daily routine for emotional health, I very quickly feel the effects and get sluggish, feel low, lethergic and skirting depression.

This takes self discipline, just like the routine you use to promote a healthy body. Sometimes you have to compel yourself to stick to healthy foods in your diet and to complete your exercise programme. Likewise occasionally you will have to compel yourself to complete your emotional and mental health routine, probably most likely at the beginning before it becomes habitual. Soon, you'll no sooner think of missing your daily meditation than you would miss brushing your teeth.

As you build your toolkit, practice your daily wellbeing processes, learn and develop your emotional and mental muscles, you'll realise there's no reasonf or you to suffer through a bad day again.

Don't just carry your toolkit around with you, open it up and use it!

Big Mac - Would you like depression with that?

Fast Food Linked to Depression

By Traci PedersenAssociate News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on April 2, 2012

There is a direct relationship between eating fast food or commercial baked goods (doughnuts, cakes, croissants) and the risk of developing depression, according to a recent study by scientists from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and the University of Granada.
The findings reveal that consumers of fast food are 51 percent more likely to develop depression than minimal or non-consumers.
Furthermore, the connection between the two is so strong that “the more fast food you consume, the greater the risk of depression,” said Almudena Sánchez-Villegas, Ph.D., lead author of the study.
The results also showed that those participants who ate the most fast food and commercial baked goods were more likely to be single, less active and have poor dietary habits (eating less fruit, nuts, fish, vegetables and olive oil). It was also common for individuals in this group to smoke and work over 45 hours per week.
The results were equally consistent in regard to the consumption of commercial baked goods. “Even eating small quantities is linked to a significantly higher chance of developing depression,” said Sánchez-Villegas.
The study sample consisted of 8,964 participants who were part of the SUN Project (University of Navarra Diet and Lifestyle Tracking Program). The subjects had never been diagnosed with depression or taken antidepressants. They were assessed for an average of six months, and during this time, 493 were diagnosed with depression or had started to take antidepressants.
This new data supports the results of the SUN project in 2011, which recorded 657 new cases of depression out of the 12,059 people analyzed for over six months. This study showed a 42 percent increase in the risk of depression associated with fast food, which is a lower percentage than found in the current study.
Sánchez-Villegas said that “although more studies are necessary, the intake of this type of food should be controlled because of its implications on both health and mental well-being.”
Previous studies suggest that certain nutrients play a preventative role in depression. These include B vitamins, omega-3 fatty acids and olive oil. And an overall healthy diet has been linked to a lower risk of developing depression.
This study has been published in the Public Health Nutrition journal.
Source: AlphaGalileo

Stress: Portrait of a Killer

Stress has been found to be responsible for 95% of all illness, menatl or physical. This fascinating video showcasing some of the research by Professor Robert Sapolsky shows how stress can kill if not managed.

Watch it, you'll be glad you did.