8 Weeks to Optimum Health: WEEK SEVEN

"The eight-week program consists of small steps that build on each other until, by the time you complete it, you have laid the foundation for healthy living. You can then decide how much of the program you want to maintain on a permanent basis. It's all about changing behavior." -Andrew Weil, author of 8 Weeks To Optimum Health

I found this book on my mothers bookshelf... or it found me. - M-Z

WEEK SEVEN (of Andrew Weil's Eight-Week program)

Projects:
-Do some kind of service work this week, such as volunteering for a few hours at a hospital or charitable organization or helping some-one you know who is disabled or shut in -any activity in which you give some of your time and energy to help others. Your new project this week sounds simple, but it touches on a profound subject that is very relevant to health: your sense of self in relation to others. Human beings are highly social, communal animals. We are meant to live in families, tribes, and communities, and when we lack those connections we suffer. Service work is a way of developing and demonstrating your sense of universal connectedness with other human beings. It is, truly, its own reward. It is considered one more piece of the whole picture of health. 




-Continue the steam baths or sauna twice this week. Use it for up to twenty minutes one day. It should be hot enough to make you sweat freely; be sure to drink plenty of pure water to replace lose fluid. The value of sweating: It allows the body to rid itself of unwanted materials and also highly salutory for our minds and spirits.




Diet: -Continue eating as before: at least two meals of fish, two of soy protein, generous servings of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, ginger, and garlic, and cook greens twice this week.
        



Supplements:
-Continue the supplement/vitamin regiment offered in week one, two, and three.

Exercise:
-Increase your aerobic walk to forty minutes, five days of the week.

Mental/Spiritual: *Recommendations that fall under this heading are most important.
-Reach out to resume connection with someone from whom you are estranged. Practice forgiveness. Human relationships are complex, often marked by upheavals. The joy of intimate connection is often balanced by the pain of separation and estrangement. Healing relationships, emotional pain, and the sense of isolation that is at the root of much human disease is a necessary step in helping the healing system perform most efficiently. To take the first step toward reconciliation is difficult, requiring emotional maturity and skill, it can also put you more in contact with your higher self.
-Make time for flowers, music, and art.
-Increase the relaxing breath to eight cycles, twice a day.

Optional (but highly recommended)
Eat nothing but fresh fruit one day of the week, and drink as much water and herbal tea as you want. Take vitamin C but skip the other supplements on this day. Limiting your diet to just fruits and vegetable juice is a way to give your digestive system a good rest.
_________________________________


Good luck, have fun, see ya next week !


Love,

Maryam