We’re not a blank canvas, and nor is this sweet baby. But at her tender age of seven weeks her parents are better able to put in place habits for health from the start, than we are for ourselves after a lifetime of comfort eating, or sedentary ways. Is she going to be given an iPad at two, or is she going to explore the world as it is, feel the paint, touch the toy, or scrabble around in the dirt outside?
In this blog I want to write about habits for health. I didn’t need to think about health so much when I had young children. But back then in the early eighties our food sources were not as compromised as they are now. I didn’t have any friends with an autistic child thirty years ago. Now, in one week, I heard of two friends, one with an autistic grandson and another with a newly diagnosed autistic son. Is this shocking or is it becoming so ‘normal’ we forget that it used not to be?
Both my parents needed looking after in residential homes in their old age, so I know what losing your health means. Though my father’s old age was long and active up until his early nineties. What was his best ‘habit’ til he was 91? Ballroom dancing two or three times a week! (Note not a treadmill in the gym, but graceful movement with music, whilst connecting to someone else sharing the experience) But at the same time, as someone who lived until 95 his diet did not reflect any new eating ‘fads’ such as low fat. He was too old to be seduced into following it, when it came to prominence in the eighties in the UK. And in his childhood, having been born in 1911, some of his meals consisted of bread and dripping. In one of my future blogs I’ll be covering animal fats and what they do for us.
My father aged 93 with his partner, aged 92. She is now 100!
Thankfully, this blog is not going to be just about what works for me. Perhaps there are people out there who can teach me more than I now know at the start of this journey. What I want to share with you is a spirit of curiosity, a wanting to learn, and some kind of discernment about how new ideas and habits could FIT with you and your lifestyle. Habits don’t come from nowhere. They are either handed down from generation to generation, or they gradually creep up on us, from new ways of doing things. Are there some old ‘ways’ that deserve our attention? How do we judge the new in relation to the old? First you have to believe what is possible. Then you have to set new priorities in your life.
So over time some of my blogs will be about what can we learn from our parents or grandparents before we throw the baby out with the bathwater. Lets be inspired instead by that fresh canvas that babies show us, and respond to the world out there with wonder and with joy, whilst at the same time keeping our wits about us to fight against forces that want to take over our minds, as well as our health. That way we might just act to save our planet, as well as our selves.
So in a Nutshell a few bullet points:
Wise up to Health – habits for health as we grow older
[checklist]
- Using curiosity, to creatively honour our grandparents’ wisdom
- In honoring the past, when it works, we have permission to leave behind what does not work
- Having the courage to not do what we are told, if so-called ‘experts’ cling on to ‘being right’,
- when observation and intuition point to another truth.
- Health as the new politics: learning to read hidden agendas in the politics of food
- Developing gratitude for the food that truly sustains us
- Health at the level of the cell: when sound and light come together
- Unlocking the cell memory that holds us back from our true potential
- Why empathy is the way to go: without it our health becomes locked
into ‘me’, and never experiences the ‘other’ and how we are all connected
[/checklist]
[testimonial name=”Gill” gender=”female” company=”Wise Up To Health”]This blog is dedicated to my mother’s bravery, and dedication to finding answers, before we knew what we know now.[/testimonial]