Every impulse of life can be considered in terms of whether it brings nourishment or toxicity to body, mind, and spirit. A nourishing experience brings you health and happiness. A toxic experience brings misery and contributes to poor health.

We need to purify both emotional and physical toxins on a regular basis in order to experience true health and emotional freedom. Addressing emotional toxicity is the first step to total rejuvenation—if we allow toxic emotions to accumulate, the emotional toxicity ultimately leads to physical toxicity as well. Whenever you carry resentment, hostility, regret, or grievances in your heart, your health and vitality are eroded.

Dealing effectively with emotions requires knowledge and practice. Use this seven-step process to release emotional toxicity and purify your emotions.

1. Identify the emotion. Whenever you find yourself in a state of emotional turmoil, find a quiet place and identify the emotion. Say to yourself, “I feel _____.” It may be angry, sad, hurt, betrayed, etc. As clearly as possible, define and describe what you are feeling.

2. Witness the feeling in your body. Emotions are thoughts associated with physical sensations. Observe the feeling and allow your attention to embrace the sensation. Breathe into the feeling. By allowing yourself to experience the physical sensations, you’ll find that the charge of emotion dissipates.

3. Take responsibility for what you are feeling. One of the most important aspects of healing the emotional body is understanding that we have a choice in how we respond to and interpret our experiences.

4. Express the emotion to yourself. You can write about your feelings or speak them out loud or in private. Describe the situation or circumstance and the effect that it has on your heart and soul. Allow the words to serve as a conduit to release the emotional toxicity. Studies have shown that journaling about upsetting emotional experiences can improve your immune function, as well as help you gain clarity and insight.

5. Release the emotion through some physical ritual. Do some deep breathing, get a massage, dance with abandon, or go on a long run. Allow your body to release the tension that is stored with the emotion.

6. Share the emotion with the person involved in the situation, once you have calmed down. If you have processed steps 1 through 5, you should be able to share it without blame and without trying to manipulate the person for approval or pity.

7. Celebrate! Do something nice for yourself. Reward yourself for uncovering and releasing the pain of the emotion. Nourish yourself: Listen to your favorite music; buy yourself a present; eat a delicious meal.

 

By following these steps when you find yourself reacting strongly to anyone, and by making a commitment to regularly acknowledge gratitude and relinquish all grievances from your heart, you will feel truly emotionally refreshed and rejuvenated.

 

 

CHAKRA 1 (RED)

The first charka is the foundation of emotional and mental health. Your connection to traditional familial beliefs supports the formation of identity and a sense of belonging in a group.

SACRED TRUTH – ALL IS ONE

You are connected to all of life. Every choice you make and every belief you hold exerts influence upon the whole of life.

ORGANS

Base of spine, legs, bones, feet, rectum, immune system.

EFFECTS

Chronic lower back pain, rectal and immune disorders, depression, multiple personality disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, addictions, sciatica & varicose veins.

ISSUES

Physical family and group safety and security, the ability to provide for life’s necessities and stand up for yourself, feeling at home, social and familial law and order, abandonment fears, family bonding, identity, tribal honour code, support and loyalty.

 

CHAKRA 2 (ORANGE)

The second charka is your centre of personal power, creativity, sexuality and finances. Issues of physical survival, control and one on one relationships are at the core of this energy centre.

SACRED TRUTH – HONOUR ONE ANOTHER

Every relationship you develop, from casual to intimate, helps you become more conscious. No union is without spiritual value.

ORGANS

Lower abdomen to navel, sexual organs, large intestine, lower vertebrae, pelvis, appendix, bladder, hip area.

EFFECTS

Arthritis, chronic lower back or hip pain, sciatica, pelvic/low back pain, sexual potency, urinary problems, prostate or ovarian/uterine illnesses, fibroids, menopause severity.

ISSUES

Fear of loss of control, or being controlled, through events such as addiction, rape, betrayal, impotence, financial loss or abandonment by partners or colleagues, ability to take risks, personal identity, blame, guilt, money. Sex, power, control, creativity, ethics, honour in relationships, decision making ability, power to rebel.

 

CHAKRA 3 (YELLOW)

The third charka furthers the development of self esteem and personality, separate from your tribal identity. This is where you learn to draw and maintain strong boundaries and a personal code of honour.

SACRED TRUTH – HONOUR ONESELF

Be mature and honourable in the relation-ship you have with yourself, and accept responsibility for the person you have become.

ORGANS

Abdomen, stomach, upper intestines, liver, gall bladder, kidney, pancreas, adrenal glands, spleen, middle spine behind the solar plexus.

EFFECTS

Arthritis, gastric or duodenal ulcers, colon/intestinal problems, pancreatitis/diabetes, chronic or acute indigestion, anorexia, bulimia, liver dysfunction, hepatitis, adrenal dysfunction.

ISSUES

Trust, fear, intimidation, self esteem, self confidence, self respect, ambition, courage, ability to handle crisis, care of yourself and others, sensitivity to criticism, personal honour, fear of rejection and looking foolish, physical appearance anxieties, strength of character.

 

CHAKRA 4 (GREEN)

Here lies the powerhouse of the human energy system. From its middle position the fourth charka mediates between the body and spirit and determines their health, strength and balance.

SACRED TRUTH – LOVE IS DIVINE POWER

Emotional energy – love – is the central power point and true motivator of your body mind and spirit.

ORGANS

Centre of the chest, heart and circulatory system, lungs, shoulders arms and hands, ribs/breasts, diaphragm, thymus gland.

EFFECTS

Congestive heart failure, heart attack, mitral valve prolapse, cardiomegaly, asthma/allergy, lung cancer, bronchial pneumonia, upper back, shoulder pain, breast cancer.

ISSUES

Love, hatred, bitterness, grief, anger, jealousy, inability to forgive, self centeredness, fears of loneliness, commitment and betrayal, compassion, hope trust, ability to heal yourself and others.

 

CHAKRA 5 (BLUE)

The fifth charka is the centre of your struggle with choice and the ability to release your will to divine guidance. It’s essence is faith – faith in our fears or faith in the divine.

SACRED TRUTH – SURRENDER PERSONAL WILL TO DIVINE WILL

Your every choice, thought and feeling has biological, environmental, social, personal and global consequence. Actions motivated by personal will that trusts divine authority, gives you the richest power.

ORGANS

Throat, thyroid, trachea, neck vertebrae, mouth, teeth, gums, jaw, esophagus, parathyroid, hypothalamus.

EFFECTS

Raspy throat, chronic sore throat, mouth ulcers, gum difficulties, TMJ, scoliosis, laryngitis, swollen glands, thyroid problems.

ISSUES

Choice and strength of will, personal expression, following your dreams, using personal power to create, addiction, judgment, criticism, faith, knowledge and the capacity to make decisions.

 

CHAKRA 6 (INDIGO)

The sixth charka is the energy centre of intuition, intellect and reasoning. Known as the third eye, it involves our mental abilities and our psychological skill at evaluating our benefits and attitudes.

SACRED TRUTH – SEEK ONLY THE TRUTH

Continually search for the difference between truth and illusion, the two forces present at every moment. Trust what you cannot see far more than what you can see.

ORGANS

Brain, nervous system, eyes, ears, nose, pineal gland, pituitary gland.

EFFECTS

Brain tumor, hemorrhage, stroke, neurological disturbances, blindness, deafness, full spinal difficulties, learning disabilities, seizures.

ISSUES

Self evaluation, truth, intellectual abilities, feelings of inadequacy, openness to the ideas of others, ability to learn from experience, emotional intelligence.

 

CHAKRA 7 (VIOLET)

The seventh charka is our connection to our spiritual nature and our capacity to allow spirituality to become an integral part of our physical lives.

SACRED TRUTH – LIVE IN THE PRESENT MOMENT

Achieve a personal relationship with the divine. All physical, psychological and emotional illusions or fears need to be removed from your life. Let go of the past, do not anticipate the future and live in the presence of the divine.

ORGANS

Muscular system, skeletal system and skin.

EFFECTS

Energetic disorders, spiritual depression, chronic exhaustion that is not linked to a physical disorder and extreme sensitivities to light, sound and other environmental factors.

ISSUES

Ability to trust life, values, ethics, courage, humanitarianism, selflessness, ability to see the larger pattern, faith, inspiration, spirituality and devotion.

 

Resource:

http://www.myss.com/library/chakras/

 

Sunday, May 24, 2009 by: Tiffany Boutwell, citizen journalist

(NaturalNews) It turns out that setting a romantic mood by lighting candles during sex may be good in more ways than one. Several scientific studies have linked artificial lighting at nighttime to breast and prostate cancers.

One study completed by the University of Haifa in Israel found that of 164 countries studied, the countries most brightly lit during twilight hours had the highest rates of these two cancers. These industrialized countries also had more than double the cancer rates as those countries in the dark, so to speak. Research has also been conducted in the United States by the American National Cancer Institute and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Their research also concluded that there is a greater risk of breast and prostate cancer when people are exposed to artificial lights in developed countries.

The key to this discovery lies in the melatonin levels in one’s body. Melatonin, a hormone produced to help regulate your sleeping and wake cycles, or circadian rhythm, also plays a role in your immune system, body temperature, and endocrine functions. “Melatonin interferes with the tumor`s ability to use linoleic acid as a growth signal, which causes tumor metabolism and growth activity to shut down.” Dr. David Blask, M.D., Ph.D., a neuro-endocrinologist said. He is a researcher for Bassett Research Institute and a lead author on one of the studies. Blask also states “Evidence is emerging that disruption of a person’s body clock is associated with cancer in humans, and that interference with internal timekeeping can tip the balance in favour of tumour development.” This is where the problem with artificial lighting comes in. Your body is unsure if it is day or night because of the lighting and it begins decreasing production of melatonin which in turn, causes your system to go haywire.

The good news is you don`t have to go completely primitive to reduce your risk of breast and prostate cancers, although getting back to a more natural state of living is better for your body. Just 20 minutes of natural sunlight in the morning can help reset your body to producing optimum melatonin during evening hours. Also, sleeping in complete darkness with no lighting from television can help ensure your body doesn`t decrease it`s melatonin production. And what better excuse do you need to turn off the lights and get a little closer to your special someone than preventing cancer?

To read more about the research conducted, visit bio-medicine.org.

Sources:

*http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Health…
*http://www.bio-medicine.org/biology…
*Reader`s Digest May 2009

Sunday, May 24, 2009 by: Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

(NaturalNews) Social networking is an illusion. The term is almost self-contradictory, like “jumbo shrimp” or “military intelligence.” Networking on the ‘net is, by any real measure, anti-social.

I know a young guy who has over twenty thousand friends on Facebook and MySpace. That sounds impressive at first: Twenty thousand friends? Wow. Except there’s a problem:None of them are real.

Not in any way that matters, anyway. They aren’t real flesh-and-blood people who he’s ever chatted with face to face. He doesn’t know their real names (only their screen names) and wouldn’t even recognize them if he passed them on the street (a real street, not a virtual world street). In effect, this guy who has twenty thousand friends is completely alone in the real world.

He has no real friends, he lives in his parents’ basement (how classic is that?) and he rarely leaves his house. He’s vitamin D deficient from the lack of sunlight, socially deficient from the lack of face-to-face interactions, and even though he has twenty thousand friends online, he still hasn’t managed to find a girlfriend in the real world (inflatable dolls don’t count).

Although this guy is alone in the real world, he’s not alone in his pattern of virtual social interaction. An alarming number of teens and twenty-somethings follow much the same pattern, and the sheer numbers of people engaged in the seductive pull of online social networking are beginning to define the social interactions of an entire generation.

The more active people are in online social networking, the more isolated they become in the real world.

Online relationships do not replace real social interaction

Social networking interactions are no replacement for real-world bonding between friends. Real-world friends build commonality and trust based on shared personal experiences. Bike rides, hiking trips, shopping experiences, skipping school, dance parties… These mutual histories form true friendships based on common experiences that reinforce shared worldviews, an important foundation for any lasting friendship.

Such experiences are utterly lacking in the online world. Hurling photos, movie links and clever chat quips into the vast void of the public ‘net is no replacement for private, shared events witnessed and remembered with your friend at your side.

This is why the internet, while it appears to be connecting us, is actually driving us apart. We are friends online but strangers in the street. We live in boxed houses, year after year, never even knowing the names of those souls who live right next door. We stand in line at the grocery store like automatons, afraid to make eye contact with anyone other than the cashier, for which eye contact is “safe” — but only at the appropriate moment, after the previous customer has cleared the space and handed it off to you.

The people who physically live closest to us are, in reality, our greatest strangers. We don’t know their interests, their favorite bands or recipes, or their intimate secrets. Those details are more readily shared online, usually in an attempt to replicate the feelings of intimacy and bonding where no such bonding is realistically possible. A stranger on the ‘net who knows your deepest desires is not necessarily your friend, even if they follow you on Twitter. They might just be some future stalker.

It this age of great digital connectedness, we increasingly find ourselves clinging to illusions of intimacy, adrift in a sea of anonymity, surrounded by the great faceless, nameless masses from which no commonality can be extracted. 

In many cities, the mere act of attempting to connect to a member of these great masses — “Hi, what’s your name?” — is perceived as an act of aggression or mental instability.

Many of the most prolific internet users are ironically more alone today than ever before in the history of human life on our planet — alone in an age of great connectedness, where words can leap across the planet at the speed of light, where we can broadcast video from our desktop, or podcast audio from our cars, or communicate with millions through the tapping of our fingers on plastic keyboards.

We have every astounding achievement of communication that has ever been invented at our disposal… and yet, wading through this deluge of digital communications, most of us have yet to find any real meaning in life. The medium of the internet, it appears, cannot yet encode and transmit the essence of the human spirit; nor love, compassion, empathy or consciousness.

Google has spidered over eight billion web pages, and indexed each one, and displayed them as results in hundreds of billions of user searches, and yet not once has Google transmitted love or friendship or understanding. It is outside the specification of digital information.

The shock of seeing real people

Much of this duality between the virtual world and the real world became suddenly clear to me recently when I hosted twenty-five NaturalNews readers at a conference event in Vilcabamba. It was astonishing at first, to see these readers — who had until that point been only virtual “friends” — set foot on my land, in flesh and blood, and share the same personal space. (Not “MySpace” but “my space.”)

We shared a “group juicing” out of my garden; we breathed the same air; we lavished in the same sunshine and listened to the same singing of the birds that populate the bamboo forests surrounding my yoga room pavilion.

People who once existed to me only in concept were suddenly being, in person, face to face. And from that, we were able to grow closer over the two-day seminar, coming to appreciate and trust each other in a person-to-person way that simply isn’t possible across any communication medium.

And to them, much the same experience was happening. The Health Ranger — an online personification of a theoretical individual — suddenly became real to them, too, almost like turning the pages of a pop-up book and discovering a real person walking off the page and into your living room.

The fact that this experience was noteworthy for all of us is, in itself, a disturbing commentary on the state of internet social interaction today. We think we know our virtual friends (or celebrities), but we really don’t. We don’t know each other until we meet in person, and even then, our experiences of each other are often filtered through the thick haze of preconceptions acquired from virtual contact on the ‘net.

The balanced use of the internet

I believe the internet has tremendous potential for uplifting human civilization. It is obviously a tremendous medium for transmitting knowledge, for aggregating the wisdom of many and for bridging the cultures of the world.

But if the internet is used as a replacement for real human interaction it becomes a hindrance to human progress. An entire generation becomes lost in the virtuality of fictitious spaces and make-believe friendships. Connection with the real world is lost, and netizens, glued to their virtual worlds, eventually find themselves utterly incapable of existing outside their fabricated, artificially-illuminated worlds.

These people, in a very real way, become domesticated. In exactly the same way that a domesticated dog cannot survive in the wild, domesticated humans cannot survive outside the manicured mazes of concrete cities and fiberoptic data pipelines. They almost become a new race of people – Homo netizens – with soft fingers and skin unable to wield simple tools; with pale skin unable to bear sunlight; with a complete inability to recognize and name a single food crop growing in a farmer’s field. These Homo netizens have ventured into their own imaginary worlds and created fictitious friendships, fictitious personalities and in the case of MMORPGs, even fictitious, thriving economies.

The problem is that none of these things are real. One moment without electricity and their entire universe collapses into nothingness. One cut of the fiber optic line and those twenty thousand virtual friends vanish in an instant, to be replaced only by the bitter loneliness of an empty room, a disheveled bed and a hunk of useless electronics on a decrepit desk.

Keep it in balance

If you want to see an amazing demonstration of social networking insanity, take a teenager who’s immersed in the internet and make him go camping in the woods for 72 hours, with no laptop, no PSP, no electricity and no mobile phone for texting. The kid demonstrates a kind of biochemical, brain-busting withdrawal that’s eerily similar to someone coming off a bad crack habit.

I don’t say this in jest: This is a very real phenomenon that alludes to the depth of the behavioral distortions created by an unhealthy attachment to online social networking and online gaming.

What we are collectively witnessing with all this is the drowning of a generation of people in a world of delusion, devoid of real meaning, abundant only in its ability to trigger the brain into believing some real connection is taking place. Online social networking is the social equivalent of playing slot machines in Vegas — it preys upon the behavioral “addictions” of people who come to depend on a repetitive, fabricated stimulus that ultimately delivers nothing of value in the real world.

There’s nothing wrong with a little online networking if it’s pursued within the frame of having a real life, with real friends in the real world. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and online gaming can be experienced responsibly by those able to maintain balance. The danger emerges when people allow their lives to become immersed in these virtual realities at the expense of abandoning their existence in the real world.

If we choose to use social networking sites, we must strive to keep our lives in balance by remembering the real, physically-present people around us. And parents must be especially vigilant to avoid losing their children to the seductive pull of online worlds that far too many children and teens secretly wish could replace their real lives.

Adventuring into imaginary worlds can be a wonderfully entertaining and educational experience. Just don’t forget to come back to the real world.

Thursday, May 21, 2009 by: S. L. Baker, features writer

(NaturalNews) Not everyone who is exposed to an infectious disease, even the widely-feared new “swine” flu (H1N1), gets sick. And many people who do come down with the flu or another illness get over it without much trouble. While a lot of factors can be at work, from good nutrition to physical fitness, a new study suggests an all-too-common toxin in the water you drink could play a role in whether an H1N1 infection makes you seriously ill.

According to scientists at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and Dartmouth Medical School, the ability to mount an immune response to H1NI infection, a form of influenza A, can be significantly compromised by even low levels of arsenic exposurethat commonly occur through drinking contaminated wellwater.

Respiratory infections with influenza A virus are a worldwide health problem and kill about 36,000 people each year according to the CDC. The recent outbreak of a type of influenza A known as H1N1, or “swine flu”, has killed over 70 Mexicans so far and at least six Americans. The fact that Mexico has large areas of very high arsenic in well water — and these include the locations where H1N1 first appeared — intrigued the MBL and Dartmouth research team.

“One thing that did strike us, when we heard about the recent H1N1 outbreak, is [that] Mexico has large areas of very high arsenic in their well water, including the areas where the flu first cropped up. We don’t know that the Mexicans who got the flu were drinking high levels of arsenic, but it’s an intriguing notion that this may have contributed,” Joshua Hamilton, the MBL’s Chief Academic and Scientific Officer and a senior scientist in the MBL’s Bay Paul Center, said in a statement to the media.

Immune response seriously hampered by arsenic exposure

In a study just published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, Hamilton and his colleagues reported on their study of mice that ingested 100 ppb (parts per billion) of arsenic in their drinking water for five weeks and then were exposed to H1N1.

“When a normal person or mouse is infected with the flu, they immediately develop an immune response in which immune cells rush to the lungs and produce chemicals that help fight the infection,” Hamilton stated in a press release. But in the lab animals exposed to arsenic in their water, something was clearly amiss. The researchers found that the animals’ immune response to H1N1 infection was initially very weak. But, several days later, the rodents’ immune systems produced a reaction that was too strong and too late. 

“There was a massive infiltration of immune cells to the lungs and a massive inflammatory response, which led to bleeding and damage in the lung,” Hamilton said in the media statement. He also noted that morbidity from the influenza infection was found to be significantly higher for the arsenic-exposed mice than the control animals who had not consumed arsenic-tainted water.

Hamilton and his research staff have been studying the effects of arsenic for years. They’ve found that arsenic exposure not only disrupts the immune system but also disrupts the endocrine system, causing unusually broad hormonal upheavals. 

“Most chemicals that disrupt hormone pathways target just one, such as the estrogen pathway,” Hamilton explained in the media statement. “But arsenic disrupts the pathways of all five steroid hormone receptors (estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, glucocorticoids, and mineralocorticoids), as well as several other hormone pathways. You can imagine that just this one effect could play a role in cancer, diabetes, heart disease, reproductive and developmental disorders — all the diseases that have a strong hormonal component.”

“We don’t yet know how arsenic disrupts either system at the molecular level. But once we know how it affects one system, we will have a pretty good idea of how it affects the other systems as well,” he added. Currently, Hamilton’s lab is working on understanding the unusual dual effect arsenic has on the endocrine system. Very low amounts of arsenic stimulate or enhance hormone responses but at doses just slightly higher, like those found in drinking water, it appears to suppress those hormone responses. “Our principal focus is to figure out this switch. We think that will help us understand why arsenic does what it does in the body,” Hamilton stated. 

He explained that for arsenic to have health consequences, it requires exposure day after day, year after year, such as through drinking water — and that’s exactly the kind of exposure far too many Americans have to the toxin. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) claims 10 parts per billion (ppb) of arsenic in drinking water is “safe”. However, according to Hamilton, concentrations of 100 ppb and higher are commonly found in well water in many regions of the country including Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Florida, and large parts of the upper Midwest, the Southwest, and the Rocky Mountains.

As reported in Natural News last fall (http://www.naturalnews.com/024909.html), research suggests the EPA’s supposedly “safe” level of arsenic allowed in water supplies for public consumption isn’t safe at all and could be causing a host of health problems, including high blood pressure and artery-clogging atherosclerosis. What’s more, when the non-profit Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) analyzed data compiled by the EPA, the group’s most conservative estimates based on the data indicated that more than 34 million Americans were drinking tap water supplied by systems containing average levels of arsenic that posed unacceptable cancer risks. Now it appears another serious health problem — a higher susceptibility to a serious case of “swine flu” — can be added to that list of arsenic-in-drinking-water linked worries.

Reference:
Kozul, C.D., Ely, K.H., Enelow, R.I., and Hamilton, J.W. (2009) Low dose arsenic compromises the immune response to influenza infection in vivo. Environmental Health Perspectives, doi:10.1289/ehp.0900911 

For more information:
http://www.mbl.edu/news/press_relea…
http://www.mbl.edu/news/press_relea…
http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/…