How to Have Healthy Bowel Movements

A fascinating article by Dr. Ben Kim
To have healthy bowel movements, it's essential that you support colon and rectal health with all of your daily choices. Keeping these areas clean and healthy provides the following benefits:

1. A lowered risk of developing colorectal cancer, one of the most common types of cancer in industrialized countries.
   
2. A lowered risk of experiencing irritable bowel syndrome, chronic constipation, and chronic diarrhea.
   
3. A lowered risk of developing hemorrhoids.
   
4. Less gas production.
   
5. More efficient absorption of water and minerals.
   
6. A feeling of lightness, comfort, and well-being in your abdominal region.
   

Before we discuss specific choices that you can make to keep your colorectal region healthy and to have comfortable bowel movements, let's review some basic anatomy and physiology of this area.
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"Have a nice day, I love you!"

Just had to share this video with you of Bermuda's Happy Man:

Video from KarmaTube

To help your bowels move with ease, Put your feet on top and bend your knees

Welles Step

It’s not the done thing to talk about bowel movements, but I just wanted to share this little gem of advice with you that costs very little but makes a big difference to your everyday life.

Thanks to Thomas Crapper, toilets became commonplace in the 19th century, giving us a sanitary way to dispose of human waste.  But for what we gained in hygiene, did we loose out elsewhere?  According to Dr William Welles, we did.  Through his research, he found that squatting was the best way to eliminate waste from the body, and that toilets do not support the abdomen in the correct way. Bowel cancer most commonly occurs at the beginning of the ascending colon or the rectum, the areas that aren’t supported when using a toilet, but are supported when squatting.  Further research suggests that constipation, varicose veins, hernias, haemorrhoids and appendicitis are all attributed to the use of the toilet.

So the simple solution is to use a step (a child’s bathroom step is perfect) and hug your knees into your abdomen when on the loo.  You’ll find it much easier to pass a motion/have a poo/whatever phrase you’re comfortable with!  Steps are widely available, cheap (if you’ve not already got one lurking around somewhere), and it’s a very easy thing to incorporate into your daily routine.   So don’t be ashamed, remember, even the Queen poos.   I wonder how many Welles Steps she’d need for all her bathrooms?!!

“To help your bowels move with ease,

Put your feet on top and bend your knees”  Bess Purser, 2009.

My Second Favourite Form of Exercise

My Second Favourite Form of Exercise

I’m not a gym person.  I’ve been twice, when I was about 16, with a friend.  I was all enthusiastic about it until she couldn’t go with me the third time so I didn’t go either, and I never went back.   The thought of going to a gym to exercise just does not get me excited at all, and I think this is a common stumbling block for a lot of people.   You know you need to exercise more, but finding the time and inclination is difficult, if not near impossible.  

Let me tell you about a one (or two) of my favourite forms of exercise and why I enjoy them, in the hopes that it will inspire you to find something you love to do too.  My second favourite form of exercise is dancing, of which I do two types.  The first is Ceroc, a type of modern jive that gets your heart pumping and your feet thumping, yet forces your mind to relax.   It’s sociable, energetic and easy (ish) to learn.   For the first couple of years of my Ceroc career (once I’d learnt the basic steps which only takes a few classes), it was the only two hours in a week when I wasn’t in charge.  It’s a male led dance so as a female, all you have to do is follow the man’s lead and giggle when you get it wrong (which happens frequently, even after four or more years).  The more I concentrate on what I’m doing, the more my body tenses and the more mistakes I make.  So I just have to relax and go with the flow, feel the rhythm and keep spinning.

The second type of dancing I do is pole dancing, which could be construed as controversial, as I pride myself on my professionalism as (amongst other things) an aromatherapy massage practitioner, and the in the wrong context, the two vocations together makes for an interesting career choice!  However, the pole dancing lessons take place in a freezing cold studio on an industrial park and couldn’t be any further from a sleazy strip joint if you tried, and I have no intention of trying.  Being just a beginner in this pole dancing lark, and being rather nervous before my first class, I have found it very enjoyable, again sociable (though thankfully no men this time!) and after just three weeks my arms are already more toned and my strength has improved noticeably.  It works pretty much all areas of your body, as I found when I couldn’t change into second gear for about three days after the first class, and I can still feel it in my lower abdominals now.   It’s also a very skilled form of dance (verging on acrobatics), and I have much respect for the others in the class who can hang upside down holding on with just their thighs, whilst somehow appearing graceful. I hope that one day soon I will have the strength, flexibility and fearlessness to enable me to do the same too.

Another form of exercise I enjoy is walking.  I love having a good stomp up a hill to get the blood flowing and the heart beating, then turning round to pause and enjoy the view before carrying on.  I also love the fresh air, seeing the seasons change and exploring my locality on foot. 

There’s bound to be an activity out there that you love to do, it’s a case of experimenting and finding it.  It could be golf, martial arts, abseiling or trampolining.   There’s nothing that beats the feeling of being in the moment, with the wind in your hair and the world spinning around you.   You don’t need to make an effort as it becomes a joy to do, you don’t need to make time as it becomes part of your routine and you don’t need to worry about exercising more as you can’t get enough of it. 

The heart of forgiveness

What does forgiveness mean to you?  To ‘forgive and forget’ is often said but rarely actioned, as it can be interpreted as ‘What you did to me is ok’, when that’s the last thing on Earth that will ever be ok.   So you hold onto the memories, the anger, the resentment and the fear, and everytime you think of that person or event, your jaw tightens, your shoulders get closer to your ears and your stomach starts hiking up the acid production.

It’s not a nice place to be, and holding onto those emotions can lead to illness on a physical level.  Louise Hay states that the liver is the ‘Seat of anger and primitive emotions’ and that the probable cause of indigestion is ‘Gut-level fear, dread, anxiety’.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful to let go of all those negative emotions and feel free from the people and events that have caused you pain?

So how about a change of definition of forgiveness...  Doreen Virtue, in her Healing with the Angels Oracle Cards, explains forgiveness as ‘I am no longer willing to carry around pain in response to your actions’, and Oprah Winfrey’s favourite explanation is ‘Giving up the hope that the past could be any different’.

Hold those words in your head, roll them around in your mind.  Can you feel them anywhere in your body?  It made me take a deep breath the first time I heard Oprah give her definition.  I was watching one of her lifeclass webcasts on facebook (highly recommended) and had to keep re-running that part just so the words could sink in and I could feel the release in my body. 

It might be that you have no-one to forgive but yourself, and sometimes that can be the hardest.  Again, you can’t change the past, and you won’t be doing it again, so don’t beat yourself up about it.  Doreen Virtue goes on to say ‘When we hold unforgiveness in our hearts, we only punish ourselves’.  So stop it.  Take a deep breath and forgive yourself.  Aaaah, there you go, feels better doesn’t it?!

Christmas greetings with love

Hello, how are you?  How was your day? It’s great that you’re able to take time to read this, thank you so much.

When your partner or child walks in the house what do you see?  What do you do?  Do you notice the stain on their tie, or their shoes that need polishing?  Do you tell them to ‘hurry up and get a move on because we’re going to be late’?  Or are you doing something important and merely glance in their direction, mumbling at them to get their homework done?  How does it make you feel?  How does your loved one feel?  Are you even aware?

During an (old) episode of Oprah the other week, one of her guests had a brilliant lesson on greeting your loved ones with joy.  It's a very simple thing to do, but makes a massive difference to the quality of your life and those around you.  The next time you greet someone, whether they’ve come home from work or school, or you haven’t seen them in a while, smile, make a fuss, get excited, run to the door to hug them.   Make them feel that they’re the centre of your universe, that they’re number one.  It only has to take a few seconds of your time and gives you both a lovely lift for the day.

Why not make this your new year’s resolution?   It’s enjoyable for all involved, meaning it’s far easier to keep to after the second week!

Wise words from Rita & Eckhart

www.oprah.com/oprahs-lifeclass/The-Complete-Webcast-of-Oprahs-Lifeclass-with-Eckhart-Tolle-Video

In this inspiring webcast by Oprah Winfrey & Eckhart Tolle (please click the link to view), we meet Rita (21 minutes in, though I encourage you to watch the whole thing), an audience member, who shares a wonderful lesson on not allowing other people to hurt you.   Rita says “I don’t any longer think it’s possible that other people can hurt me.  They’re just giving me their observation, and I’m giving it meaning, and so I get to choose what that meaning is.”

She then goes on to say that her favourite response when she’s receiving criticism is ‘You could be right’.  How magical is that?  It completely dissipates the negativity and transforms it into nothingness.   What the other person is saying to you is their opinion, they’re entitled to it and in their mind, it’s right.  That doesn’t mean that it has to be right for you.  You have a choice.   You can choose not to get upset, angry and to enter into an argument about it.   You can choose to ignore it, or act upon it, but it doesn’t have to hurt you anymore.

Imagine the next time someone criticises you “The house is too messy and you’re a slob”.  When you feel that hit you and the anger rise inside, it would be very easy to say “How dare you call me a slob, you’ve got no idea how busy I’ve been today and when was the last time you did any housework anyway?”  You can see where that’s going, it’s a one-way street to argument town and before you know it you’re shouting and screaming obscenities at each other.  You both end up feeling wounded, frustrated and exhausted.  Now what would happen if you replied “You know what, you might be right”?   Not a lot, as the comment is completely blown through you.  No sore spots hit, no chords struck, just inner peace allowing the negativity to dissolve into nothingness.

It works for positive comments too.  People say nice things to you, and you can become addicted to that.  You can live for the appreciation, the ego boost, and get hung up on it when you don’t receive it.  When you make a choice about how it’s going to affect you, you can decide that whilst it’s lovely to hear such things, you’re not dependant upon it.  You’re not going to feel sad if no one complimented you today.

You’re no longer dependant on what other people say.  You’re no longer a slave to other people hurting you and making you feel bad, or relying on an outsider to give value to your life.   You’re enough when you receive negative comments and you’re enough when you receive positive comments.   Repeat after me – ‘I’m enough’!   What an amazing place to be.  Thank you Rita, Oprah & Eckhart.