Twelve Wisdoms to a Healthy Heart (http://www.12wisdomstoahealthyheart.com/)
Gifts Brought by the Challenges to Your Heart
Adversities and life challenges can be viewed as burdens and liabilities, or as gifts and opportunities. A heart attack or diagnosis of heart disease presents you with a dramatic wakeup call. Dr. Patrick Porter and I (Dr. Michael Irving) are convinced in their hearts that you too can be one of those who discover the gift in a cardiac challenge is its motivation for you to become a totally different person.
Your heart disease likely started early in childhood with slowly increasing damage and the forming of bad lifestyle habits.
With a comprehensive program, http://www.12wisdomstoahealthyheart.com/, Dr. Porter and I assist you to open your mind and heart through a powerful guided visualization process that uses light and sound technology to enhance learning and reframing belief systems to bring about dramatic life changes. Our visualization sessions, e-books, daily planning forms, newsletters, blogs, chat rooms and other resources help you define and be motivated to follow through on important initial heart felt resolutions and changes that you will need to stick with for the rest of your years.
Our goal is to assist you to live a vibrant, vital and well heart healthy life that you deserve and can expect. A cardiac challenge can open your heart and passions to make you feel better about being alive and greatly increase your appreciation of others. We know you can allow your cardiac crisis to deepen your sense of commitment that there are many reasons for you to fight to stay alive.
Self reflection will be a valuable component of moving forward to create a healthy heart lifestyle. Inside your heart are the reasons for embracing the life and people around you. Every day, in little moments and special periods that you set aside, find time to explore meaning, purpose and motivations that are found in the gift of your heart crisis. Use the items below as themes to ruminate on during times of meditation or self reflection.
Meditations for Reflection:
1. I am still alive after a heart attack or diagnosis of heart disease and I have been given the gift of a wakeup call.
2. I can become one of those who say my heart attack was the best thing that could happen.
3. I can one of those who discover the gift in a cardiac challenge is to become a totally different person.
4. I can meet the challenge of the hard work in front of me to reverse heart disease after a life time of bad lifestyle choices. There are wide spread changes that I will bring about in my body, spirit and mind.
5. I will find important and meaningful reasons for the hard and extensive work of recovering from heart disease.
6. A healthy heart is the outcome of a heart health life style. Lifestyle changes are as important as medicine for heart health.
7. My heart disease likely started in earliest childhood with slowly increasing damage and the forming of bad lifestyle habits.
8. A sudden cardiac crisis is initially sobering and motivating. To live a vibrant, vital and well life into the future I will need to stick with important initial resolutions and changes for the rest of my years.
"Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Matthew, 6:21
Happy New Years,
Dr. Michael C. Irving
http://www.irvingstudios.com/
http:www.12WisdomstoaHealtyHeart.com/
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Discovering a Gift Through a Heart Attack
12 Wisdoms to a Healthy Heart
Our society is plagued by an epidemic that did not exist a century ago. Half a million in the US will die of a heart attack this coming year, and more Americans will die of heart disease than all cancers, automobile accidents and AIDS combined. In every year since 1900, except 1918, CVD (cardiovascular disease) accounted for more deaths than any other single cause or group of causes of death in the United States. Daily, 2,000 Americans die of heart disease, which amounts to one death every 44 seconds. An estimated 80,700,000 American adults (one in three) have one or more types of CVD, of whom 38,200,000 are estimated to be age 60 or older. A third of the people you come into contact with this week may die from heart disease. This epidemic is completely preventable through basic lifestyle changes.
This holiday season is particularly meaningful to me because I can more fully appreciate each day and moment with a full heart. Last winter, a TIA (mini-stroke) left me blind for 10 minutes. The blood clot in my brain dissolved enough to pass before there was significant damage, and over the following month, the medical system took amazing care to monitor me and prevent a full blown stroke.
To recover from a heart attack 18 months earlier, I had been doing exemplary cardiac rehabilitation work. In the weeks directly following my attack, I changed to an ultra-low fat, vegetarian approach to eating, inspired by Dr. Dear Ornish. Over the next few months, I began a regimen of walking and jogging, and by the next summer I regularly ran long distances. I made more changes in the next year of my life than in any two decades before. Eight months after the heart attack, my rehab supervisor said that, in her 25 years at one of North America’s largest cardiac rehab clinics, she had never seen a patient improve as much across so broad a range of measures.
In reflecting on what lead to my dramatic life changes, I found that I employed “Twelve Wisdoms to a Healthy Heart” which are:
· Taking Charge
· Family and Friends
· Health Care Team
· Medicines and Supplements
· Visualization
· Heart Healthy Food
· Exercise for Life
· Stress Reduction
· Listening to your Heart
· Harmony and Balance
· Meditation and Relaxation
· Spiritual Connection
After loosing 80 lbs and finishing half a dozen runs in the summer - including a half-marathon and an 85 km bike ride - my high, perhaps overblown morale was greatly humbled by an unexpected stroke the following winter. The surgeon who cleared the 99% blockage in my carotid artery said there was new stenosis that he felt was primarily a result of stress. In his words, “I cannot stress how much you have to get stress under control.”
After the initial wake up call of my heart attack, I internalized lifestyle lessons related to diet, exercise, family, medicines and supplements and a health care team. What I did not grasp enough was the importance of reducing stress and taking time to meditate, reflect, take it easy and live from the heart. “To get stress under control”, I became more involved in mindfulness practices, stress reduction techniques, managing priorities and changing my basic world view to see the positive aspects to all life activities and events, however seemingly inconsequential or large. I started immediately looking for the gifts and opportunities to be found in adversities that came my way. I began to reflect on how to be grateful for life and the people around me and provide acts of generosity to others.
I began to let go of regrets about what could be or what could have been. I found forgiveness and letting go to be much more calming than thoughts about how I had been wronged or taken advantage of. I lit candles wishing for wellness and peace for those who acted or thought in negative ways towards me. I found small ways to breathe, feel my feet on the ground and notice my hands at the end of my arms. I am grateful for the life I have had and I learned to gain strength and peace by being particularly grateful for my adversities, for theses challenges have been some of my greatest teachers. Whenever I fall, I find myself spontaneously wondering, “what opportunity will come from this adversity?”
There are some tremendously caring and wonderful people in my life; young and old, small and tall. The most important moment is now and there is nothing that I will take with me, only what I leave.
I see my heart attack and mini-stroke as the best thing that could have happened to me at those points of my life. Both calamities brought remarkable gifts personally. Both have greatly enriched the quality of my life.
I have a passion to share with others the lessons I have learned, the peace and health I have found in confronting the challenges of the heart. Dr. Patrick Porter and I have integrated the 12 Wisdoms to a Healthy Heart Lifestyle Program with creative visualization and relaxation through light and sound technology. You can download an MP3 file of a demo session to play on an MP3 Player or on a CVR light and sound machine through www.12wisdomstoahealthyheart.com.
I hope that, through collaboration with Dr. Patrick Porter, my 12 Wisdoms to a Healthy Heart can encourage others to find more quality in everyday life and to develop heart healthy lifestyle practices that have so remarkable changed my own life.
Our society is plagued by an epidemic that did not exist a century ago. Half a million in the US will die of a heart attack this coming year, and more Americans will die of heart disease than all cancers, automobile accidents and AIDS combined. In every year since 1900, except 1918, CVD (cardiovascular disease) accounted for more deaths than any other single cause or group of causes of death in the United States. Daily, 2,000 Americans die of heart disease, which amounts to one death every 44 seconds. An estimated 80,700,000 American adults (one in three) have one or more types of CVD, of whom 38,200,000 are estimated to be age 60 or older. A third of the people you come into contact with this week may die from heart disease. This epidemic is completely preventable through basic lifestyle changes.
This holiday season is particularly meaningful to me because I can more fully appreciate each day and moment with a full heart. Last winter, a TIA (mini-stroke) left me blind for 10 minutes. The blood clot in my brain dissolved enough to pass before there was significant damage, and over the following month, the medical system took amazing care to monitor me and prevent a full blown stroke.
To recover from a heart attack 18 months earlier, I had been doing exemplary cardiac rehabilitation work. In the weeks directly following my attack, I changed to an ultra-low fat, vegetarian approach to eating, inspired by Dr. Dear Ornish. Over the next few months, I began a regimen of walking and jogging, and by the next summer I regularly ran long distances. I made more changes in the next year of my life than in any two decades before. Eight months after the heart attack, my rehab supervisor said that, in her 25 years at one of North America’s largest cardiac rehab clinics, she had never seen a patient improve as much across so broad a range of measures.
In reflecting on what lead to my dramatic life changes, I found that I employed “Twelve Wisdoms to a Healthy Heart” which are:
· Taking Charge
· Family and Friends
· Health Care Team
· Medicines and Supplements
· Visualization
· Heart Healthy Food
· Exercise for Life
· Stress Reduction
· Listening to your Heart
· Harmony and Balance
· Meditation and Relaxation
· Spiritual Connection
After loosing 80 lbs and finishing half a dozen runs in the summer - including a half-marathon and an 85 km bike ride - my high, perhaps overblown morale was greatly humbled by an unexpected stroke the following winter. The surgeon who cleared the 99% blockage in my carotid artery said there was new stenosis that he felt was primarily a result of stress. In his words, “I cannot stress how much you have to get stress under control.”
After the initial wake up call of my heart attack, I internalized lifestyle lessons related to diet, exercise, family, medicines and supplements and a health care team. What I did not grasp enough was the importance of reducing stress and taking time to meditate, reflect, take it easy and live from the heart. “To get stress under control”, I became more involved in mindfulness practices, stress reduction techniques, managing priorities and changing my basic world view to see the positive aspects to all life activities and events, however seemingly inconsequential or large. I started immediately looking for the gifts and opportunities to be found in adversities that came my way. I began to reflect on how to be grateful for life and the people around me and provide acts of generosity to others.
I began to let go of regrets about what could be or what could have been. I found forgiveness and letting go to be much more calming than thoughts about how I had been wronged or taken advantage of. I lit candles wishing for wellness and peace for those who acted or thought in negative ways towards me. I found small ways to breathe, feel my feet on the ground and notice my hands at the end of my arms. I am grateful for the life I have had and I learned to gain strength and peace by being particularly grateful for my adversities, for theses challenges have been some of my greatest teachers. Whenever I fall, I find myself spontaneously wondering, “what opportunity will come from this adversity?”
There are some tremendously caring and wonderful people in my life; young and old, small and tall. The most important moment is now and there is nothing that I will take with me, only what I leave.
I see my heart attack and mini-stroke as the best thing that could have happened to me at those points of my life. Both calamities brought remarkable gifts personally. Both have greatly enriched the quality of my life.
I have a passion to share with others the lessons I have learned, the peace and health I have found in confronting the challenges of the heart. Dr. Patrick Porter and I have integrated the 12 Wisdoms to a Healthy Heart Lifestyle Program with creative visualization and relaxation through light and sound technology. You can download an MP3 file of a demo session to play on an MP3 Player or on a CVR light and sound machine through www.12wisdomstoahealthyheart.com.
I hope that, through collaboration with Dr. Patrick Porter, my 12 Wisdoms to a Healthy Heart can encourage others to find more quality in everyday life and to develop heart healthy lifestyle practices that have so remarkable changed my own life.
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