Just a heads-up about a Dr. Axe article on the health benefits of rooibos tea:
The Cancer-Protective, Heart-Healthy Benefits of Rooibos Tea
You’ll be surprised at how many benefits there are. And of course the tea tastes great as well.
Have a great end of the week.
Love
Richard
Just in case you hadn’t noticed, there are more vehicles than ever on the road.
This means that the chances of a vehicle coming in the opposite direction are pretty high, even on a country road.
So tell me, why do a lot of people drive as if they are the only people on the road? And why do they constantly drive in the middle of the road rather than keeping to their right here in Switzerland (or left in the UK)?
Is it because they are fiddling with their mobile phone, looking at a GPS screen, changing the radio station, smoking, eating a sandwich, or just because the only person who exists is ME?
I learnt to drive in the UK at the end of the 1970s when there were many fewer vehicles than now. But when I look back, I have no memory of people driving in the middle of the road. Strange, huh?
Here’s another situation.
You’re driving happily along a road at your own speed and suddenly you see a vehicle a few hundred yards ahead of you.
Do you
a) continue driving along happily at your own speed or
b) accelerate, come right up behind the other vehicle and sit on its bumper, impatient for the earliest opportunity to overtake?
If you can honestly say that you do a), then you have my congratulations.
Because the vast majority of people do b).
It’s what I call the Greyhound Syndrome, a phenomenon that I noted as early as the tender age of 16.
So why do people react like this?
We’ve already established that there is a lot of traffic on the roads, so it’s not surprising that you find vehicles on the road ahead of you.
I think it must be a throwback to our days as hunters, a sort of knee-jerk reaction, rather like the reaction of greyhounds to an electric hare ahead of them in a racing stadium.
But we’re not dogs or sheep, are we?
So the next time this situation occurs and you start to accelerate, try to catch yourself and ask why you’re doing this.
Are you really in so much of a hurry?
What happens if you let the electric hare vehicle run in front of you and continue to drive at the same speed as before.
For one thing you don’t get stressed up.
You don’t stress up the driver in front of you by sitting on his bumper which is JUST PLAIN BAD MANNERS.
You’d forgotten that, huh?
Yep, not according the respect of a certain distance between you and the next car is not only dangerous, it’s, I repeat, BAD MANNERS.
And you can continue to enjoy your driving rather than getting het up about the fact that someone is in front of you.
Of course, if your personal speed is faster than the car in front of you, you’re going to catch up eventually and overtake. Just make sure that it is your natural speed and not a reaction to the other car. And don’t sit on the guy’s bumper because, yep, you got it, it’s BAD MANNERS.
I am fortunate enough to do a lot of driving on country roads where you can still drive freely and there is space still. So these days, if someone comes charging up behind me, trying to stress me up and sitting on my bumper, I just look for a safe place, indicate and pull over or slow down to let the vehicle pass.
And then I continue on my way and laugh at the bizarre reaction of the driver who doesn’t really understand what has happened and is usually, suddenly and for no explicable reason, no longer in such a hurry any more.
Perhaps his ego is miffed because he didn’t get to overtake me ‘properly.’
If you can do this safely, then I suggest you try it out. It’s a simple but effective exercise in letting go, rather than allowing the impatient driver behind you to stress you up and influence what speed you drive at, whether it be accelerating or slowing down.
It’s not because other people on the road have the mentality of a child of three that you have to behave in the same way.
It’s your life. Drive it at your own speed!
Have a great week.
Love
Richard
I’m going to stick my neck out here.
What’s the most destructive thing to hit the human race since the atom bomb?
Answer: the mobile phone.
You may well disagree, and that’s your privilege, but the more I see people with their mobile phones, the more I am convinced of the truth of the above.
Television has been highly destructive in many ways. An incredible time waster, a wonderful way of controlling the masses and keeping them in a perpetual state of dissatisfaction, brain-washing them with mindless and endlessly repeated adverts to make them run after material objects that they frequently don’t even need or really want, just to keep up with the Joneses.
But the mobile phone is something else again. At least you used to leave the TV behind you when you went out. Now you can take it with you wherever you go. My wife and I went to see Coldplay in Zurich on Sunday. The concert was one of the best I’ve ever seen, spectacular in its execution with fireworks, light shows, imaginative use of screens and even light emitting bracelets. All this without even talking about the inspiring performances and an incredible atmosphere.
What did the man sitting next to my wife do?
He spent the whole concert watching a Euro football match on his mobile phone in his CHF 175.00 (£130.00, $180.00, 160€00) seat.
And this is where I really take issue with the mobile phone.
It prevents people from being really PRESENT. IN THE MOMENT.
It blurs the line between what is real and what is virtual.
And it’s gradually turning people’s brains into soup.
They don’t listen, they don’t read, they don’t remember, they can no longer think properly.
And they have absolutely no control whatsoever over their enslaving little device. A tool is no longer a tool if you have no control over it.
Who is really the master here?
And for an instrument which is supposed to facilitate communication, never has the standard of communication between people been so poor. I’m not talking about SMS messages detailing what you had for breakfast this morning, which station you have just passed on the train, or how you broke a fingernail, I’m talking about REAL COMMUNICATION.
You know, when people put down their phones, look each other in the eye and INTERACT with each other.
When they concentrate on the person in front of them and stop bullshitting about the values of multi-tasking.
When they’re in the present and fully human.
When was the last time you gave your full and undivided attention to another human being?
Don’t make the mistake of concentrating so much on the trivial that you miss out on the truly important, the moments that will never come again. Don’t miss out on real friends that are here, now, in flesh and blood and who may not be here tomorrow.
And don’t make the mistake of thinking that because you have instant access to most of the entire range of human knowledge on the internet you don’t have to bother to think, to remember, to work hard to master something worthwhile, or to decide what is bullshit and what is not.
I wish you a great, preferably mobile phone free, week.
Love
Richard
I saw this thirty minute film on Facebook and I wanted to give you a heads-up about it, even though it’s in French:
https://www.facebook.com/NousSommesAnonymous/videos/1714557815433970/
Unfortunately, everything that is said in this film is true. Through the use of GMO crops and pesticides, we are gradually destroying the earth, making it dead instead of alive.
If your French is up to it, please take the time to look at this film. It’s important to understand that a natural product cannot be patented and therefore you cannot make a huge profit with it. If you play God with nature and create hybrids artificially, then you can patent the result and charge people for it.
The future of the huge agro-food industry relies on convincing you that you need to grow artificial food and spray it with lots of chemicals in order to feed yourself, your children and your children’s children.
The future of the planet requires us to say no, to return to natural ways of cultivating natural plants and trees so that the soil can be rejuvenated and life continue.
As the guy in the film says, the consumer is king. If you don’t want to eat crap, then stop buying it. It’s as simple as that.
Hope the film is useful.
Have a great week.
Love
Richard
If the title of this post sounds like an oxymoron (compressed paradox), then the food industry has succeeded in brain-washing you.
If you avoid butter like the plague and always go for low fat or 0% products, you’re in for a surprise.
Just read this very clear and informative article from Dr. Axe:
Did you learn anything?
Hope it helps.
Have a great Pentecost weekend.
Love
Richard
Here I am in Paris to promote my new album MY TITANIC on Radio Aligre FM in Jazzbox on Saturday evening. Wonderful weather.
‘I love Paris in the spring time….’
You may have realized that I’m a singer/songwriter amongst other things, but if you didn’t, no matter. This post, however, is for people who like to sing.
If you do take singing seriously, then you have probably heard that dairy products are not the best thing for your voice. This is because they tend to encourage phlegm which in turn makes singing more problematic.
But what to do if you like milk?
Ever since childhood, I’ve always been a great fan of cereals, preferably low sugar or no sugar versions. My very favourite is Bite-Sized Shredded Wheat. Curiously, this product is not available in Switzerland. I say curious, because the brand belongs to Nestlé since they bought out Nabisco. You can get the crappy sugar-covered ones but not the original 100% wheat variety. But I digress.
Anyway, you can’t have cereals without milk. And I’ve noticed that if I have a cereal in the evening and do a voice warm-up the next morning on my way to work, then there is more phlegm and this can cause problems.
But I recently made an interesting discovery.
If you like milk, then you have probably noticed that the quality of pasteurized milk is going down. When I went to England last year, I was appalled at how bad the pasteurized milk had become. And recent milk in France has also been bad. Even Swiss milk has deteriorated in quality.
Now as part of my health research, I recently decided for a variety of reasons to try out raw milk.
And guess what?
I’ve noticed that if I have a cereal with raw milk in the evening, then I don’t have problems with phlegm the next morning when I’m singing.
Isn’t that interesting?
So if you love singing and milk, you can heave a sigh of relief and continue with both.
It does, however, beg the question of the effects that pasteurization has on milk… but that’s another article.
Let me know if you try out this tip and discover the same thing. It would be great to hear from you.
Hope that’s useful.
Have a great Ascension weekend, wherever you are.
Love
Richard
I was reading an article about grounding and the benefits of walking barefoot when I saw a comment suggesting that there was no scientific evidence for grounding and that it “sounds like placebo.”
I’m always amazed at the way people sneer as they say “placebo.” It’s a bit like those stories of doctors looking patients over and then declaring, “There’s nothing wrong with you. It’s all just in your head.”
You’re merely stupid and weak-headed, right? Ready for the loony bin.
My advice if this happens to you is to walk out of that surgery and never look back. Find someone who is capable of seeing you as a human being and not just a series of moving parts.
We underestimate the power of the mind to affect our health at our peril. Even if the doctor is right and the symptoms are entirely in your mind, that doesn’t mean you’re not ill. It just means the illness is in a different place.
There have been numerous studies which show the power of the mind in healing. A lot of people feel better just by fixing a doctor’s appointment. There have been controlled studies where patients healed better on a placebo than using the prescribed drug for the problem (not really surprising if you consider the crap that goes into patented drugs).
You’ve heard of Quantum and Newtonian physics? Well, there’s Quantum and Newtonian medicine too.
Let’s say you have a pain in your knee. You go to the doctor and he looks carefully at your knee. He might take an Xray. He might suggest an exploratory operation. He might tell you that your cartilage is worn out. But the chances are, he won’t examine the rest of your body to find out if something else is causing the problem in your knee. Essentially, he’s looking at the knee as the site and the cause of the problem. This is Newtonian medicine. You look at the result, but you don’t necessarily search for its real origin.
Quantum medicine is when you look at the person as a whole and try to understand the forces at work behind a problem. A physical problem may very well have its origin in your mind, your emotions, your experiences or in a completely different part of the body from the site of the pain. It’s important to realize this, because until you get to the root of the problem, it will never really be solved. This is where good nutrition, for example, or tools like tapping come in handy.
Last summer, I talked to a school friend that I hadn’t seen for some years. He was a GP (General Practitioner doctor) for many years after leaving school and one of his tasks these days is to go round medical surgeries in the UK and verify ‘best practices.’ I suggested that one way of tackling the soaring health costs that bug the UK – or any other developed country for that matter – might be to use more alternative medicine.
‘What about nutritional advice?,’ I said.
‘No scientific evidence that it makes any difference,’ he replied.
‘What about tapping?’
‘No scientific evidence.’
To be fair, the medical care system in the UK is so blinkered that a doctor suggesting alternative protocols can lose his right to practise. It does, however, indicate the problems that individual patients face in using conventional medicine.
‘Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food,’ said Hippocrates (he of the Hippocratic oath).
Most doctors now practising spent approximately one morning learning about nutrition in the course of their seven years of study. Things are gradually changing, but it’s going to be a slow process.
The person in the best position to look after your health is YOU. No one else can be in your skin and no one is going to care about your health as much as you. So if you feel that your health interlocutor is not really listening to you or your concerns, take matters into your own hands. Research on internet, change your diet, do more exercise, try working on your self-limiting beliefs, your traumatic past experiences, even find another doctor who takes your problem seriously.
But don’t give up and don’t underestimate the power of your mind, both as a prime cause of illness and as an indispensable tool for healing.
Have a great week.
Love
Richard
Ty Bollinger and the team at *The Truth About Cancer are giving a last chance this weekend Saturday 23rd and Sunday 24th April to watch the 9 episodes of *“The Truth About Cancer: A Global Quest” for free.
Here’s the info:
So if you missed an episode or two or never got around to looking at the series, here’s your chance to make up for lost time.
I watched this series in October 2015 while in Corfu.
It doesn’t sound like the sort of thing to watch on holiday, but I sat and watched the first couple of episodes on the terrace in front of the studio we were renting and I was so passionate talking about them that my wife finally had a look. After that, we sat together and watched an episode each morning. The weather was pretty appalling, so you have to imagine us watching on a laptop on this covered terrace, turning the volume up to max when the rain really came down.
We were fortunate to have a roof on our terrace, I can tell you.
It’s hard to describe the impact these films had on me. I experienced many emotions while watching, but if I had to choose one, it would be anger. Anger that so much suffering is caused by treatments that just don’t work, that so few people seem to be aware that there are natural alternative protocols to the cut, poison and burn strategy of ‘conventional’ medicine. Anger that over $600 billion have been donated and spent on cancer research without anything to show for it except higher dividends for shareholders in the big pharma companies.
It’s got to stop. People have to wake up. Your doctor is not necessarily your best friend and advisor. There are conflicts of interest.
And in the end, the only person responsible for what you do or allow to be done to your body is YOU.
For me, watching this series galvanized me into action. In the last six months, I’ve done more research into health and diet than in all my 60 years (birthday next month!) put together. I’ve always done some kind of exercise, and I’m in fairly good shape, but I’m determined to approach old age on my own terms.
I’m tired of hearing people say that it’s normal for someone to be in crappy condition because he or she is old. No, it isn’t. And it isn’t a fatality. We can all look after ourselves better.
But for that to happen, we have to value our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health more than the accumulation of wealth and objects.
So my advice is to watch half an hour of the first film in this series.
If you don’t like it, then you can go to the mall and buy yourself an ice cream.
But don’t say, “Oh, I don’t want to think about this. It’s so depressing. It makes me afraid.”
Your life or the life of a loved one might very well depend on your taking the time to watch these films.
Isn’t that worth more than buying a new shirt that you’re never going to wear anyway?
The link again:
*“The Truth About Cancer: A Global Quest”
And yes, if you click on the link I do stand to gain a dollar or two as an affiliate. But if you think I’m suggesting that you look at the films so I can earn some money, you haven’t understood the whole point of this website.
Have a great weekend, whatever you decide to do.
Love
Richard
* denotes affiliate links
We all know that money is a pain in the butt metaphorically (never have enough?), but what about literally?
As someone who carried his wallet in his back pocket for years (see photo above), I was particularly interested to watch a video in which a chiropractor suggested that this might be a source of lower back pain, provoked over time by the imbalance in the pelvis due to sitting on the said wallet.
If you carry your wallet in your back pocket, then this video might interest you:
The sound is a bit weak, but the explanation is clear.
Conclusive proof that money can – literally – be a pain in the butt.
Have a great week.
Love
Richard
Just a reminder that the series of excellent films on cancer:
*The Truth About Cancer: A Global Quest
continues until 20th April.
So even if you have missed the start of the films, you still have time to catch the later programs on the internet for FREE if you so desire.
The link again:
*The Truth About Cancer: A Global Quest
You might learn something that will save your life or the life of someone dear to you.
Love
Richard
* Denotes affiliate links