Category: Lots of Other Good Stuff

Chet’s natural health articles, brainwave entrainment MP3s, and lots of other stuff not otherwise categorized will be found here.

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How to Beat Insomnia Naturally

It’s bedtime, and you’re tired so you go hit the sack.

You invite sleep by closing your eyes, but sleep ignores your invitation. You toss from left to right and then from right to left, sit up and drink some water and again try your best to get to sleep, but all your efforts fail.

If this happens once or only occasionally, on certain bad days, for instance, you most likely have nothing to worry about. However, if sleeplessness haunts you on a regular basis, you may have a sleep disorder called insomnia.

Insomnia has various causes. It can result from fear, anxiety, stress, or depression. The side effects of some medications interfere with sleep. Mental or physical exhaustion or pain can also cause insomnia. Insomnia can be transient, acute, or chronic, depending upon its severity.

Hundreds of thousands of people pop sleep-inducing prescription drugs and sedatives at bedtime to help get a good night’s sleep. The most common drugs prescribed for insomnia are benzodiazepines. The problem with these drugs is that they become addictive, if used over a long period. There are of course non-benzodiazepine drugs, but these may also cause dependence, both psychological and physical, if used continuously.

In addition, there are quite a few non-prescription sleep-inducing drugs and herbs which are used as sedatives.

Some people resort to alcohol as a sedative, but their sleep will not be of the quality desired. And alcohol consumption is not without its side effects and hangover problems.

Happily, you can overcome insomnia without drugs or pills. Cognitive behavioral therapy has been found quite effective in reducing the problem in many people. This kind of therapy attempts to correct the distortions or unrealistic ways of thinking which appear to be the underlying cause for various types of fear, anxiety, depression or stress, which in turn contribute to insomnia in many cases.

Traditional Insomnia Tips

People have traditionally used various methods for beating insomnia without pills and drugs. Here are some tips you can use to dial down any insomnia issues you may have…

  • Drink a glass of warm milk before bedtime. Warm milk contains a natural sedative called tryptophan.
  • Adding honey to warm milk will help the body absorb tryptophan faster and will also produce a quicker sedative effect.
  • Try taking a hot water bath in the evening just before going to bed.
  • Natural nutritional factors in pomegranates will help induce sleep, so try eating one a half hour before heading off to bed.
  • Aromatherapy and listening to soft, slow, lilting music are quite effective in producing an atmosphere conducive for sleep.
  • Meditation and other mind relaxation techniques are often found to be extremely helpful in this regard.
  • Similarly, insomniacs can also try Tai chi, yoga, or acupuncture.
  • Avoid stimulants at night. That means no tea or coffee or soft drinks after five p.m. because these drinks contain caffeine that can disrupt sleep.
  • Avoid smoking in the night, a couple of hours before your sleeping time. If you can quit smoking for good – all the better.
  • Lifestyle changes that help you sleep well are your best bet for beating insomnia.

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Embrace Fear and Let Go

Before I started using brainwave audio technologies, I estimate I hadn’t recalled much more than tiny snippets of a dream in, gosh, at least ten years and probably many more than that.

One of the things I liked immediately when I began creating and using brainwave entrainment meditation MP3s was that I started sleeping as soundly as a puddle of snoozing cat and dreaming vividly and often. For the first time in years I could clearly recall in the mornings my imaginings of the nights before.

Well, soon after I started using brainwave entrainment on a daily basis, I dreamed that I was in the atrium of a large bank-like building, the front of which had huge plate glass windows. Granite columns rose from the polished floor to the top of the atrium, some four stories above my head.

I was walking through this atrium, minding my own business, when a man suddenly ran past, shouting, “The storm’s coming, the storm’s coming. It’s headed right for us!”

He evaporated from my sight as only dream people can do.

I walked toward the plate glass windows, looked outside, and, sure enough, a terrible storm was headed right for the building, a perfect storm with tornadoes, hurricane force winds, lightning, and pounding rain.

I started to run as fast as I could toward the interior of the building, but then a voice screamed, “We’re all going to die!”

I looked back and, yes, the tornado’s winds were driving uprooted trees and debris straight toward the plate glass windows.

I could feel myself panicking, sweating, shaking with fear, going zero at the bone.

I collapsed to the smooth, polished floor, worrying furiously about what I could do to protect myself. For lack of anything better, I crawled to one of the granite columns and then wrapped my arms around it even though I knew the force of the terrible winds would laugh at my feeble hold on safety and easily toss me about like an egg shell.

My eyes squeezed shut to avoid the glass fragments and flesh-piercing slivers that would be headed my way any second now.

I felt fear flooding through my veins.

My heart pounded as I clutched onto that column for dear life.

Suddenly, totally immersed in this dream, for no conscious reason, I calmly took a deep breath, opened my eyes, totally accepted the storm, and then watched in calm fascination as glass and trees and street signs and driving rain and other storm stuff flew past me, leaving me untouched, calm, relaxed, and utterly at peace.

Seconds later, I woke up, happy, smiling, almost in tears because of the wonderful experience of completely letting go.

For the first time since 1980, when something similar happened to me while doing a Zen breath-counting meditation, I felt completely at one with everything in the world — the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, the violent and the peaceful.

It’s been many years now since I had that dream experience, but I still reflect on it several times a week to remind myself of the way I’m prone to attach to things I really don’t have to attach to and fear things I really don’t have to fear.

As a result of what I experienced while clutching the granite column in my dream, I’ve become a better witness of what I say and do — an observer who can now better embrace the still calm around which the storms of life swirl, bluster, and blow.

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The Diced Diet

Let’s start 2021 off right with a detox diet that’s easy and fun to do… and it tastes great, too.

Many years ago, an Englishman named Basil Shackleton included in his terrific book on The Grape Cure a health-generating meal replacement he called The Diced Diet.

Below you’ll find complete details for his Diced Diet, which is, simply put, a recipe for one meal a day that you can use to cleanse and rejuvenate your body.

The Diced Diet
by Basil Shackleton

After I had bought my farm in the Cape and before discovering the grape treatment, I made a number of experiments with raw foodstuffs to enable me to survive.

The Diced Diet, given below, is my most successful discovery next to the grape diet.

The Diced Diet is invaluable as a whole meal, lunch, or dinner, though preferably the latter. It has remarkable healing and cleansing properties, and will, if eaten regularly as a main meal during the day, actually cure rheumatism and skin rashes, and it is a guaranteed cure for constipation.

If the Diced Diet is eaten at least during five days of the week, it is impossible to be constipated, unless there is a structure in the intestines.

The ingredients of the diet are well balanced, and the whole can be considered a perfect food.

Ingredients

2 ounces of well-washed organic raisins
One medium-sized Granny Smith apple
One ripe and well-washed tomato
Two ounces sweet milk cheese (Gouda)
Two ounces dry-roasted peanuts (no oils, fats, or salt)
The juice of half a fresh, ripe lemon
The seventh ingredient is your saliva

Method of Preparation

After washing the raisins several times in hot water, place them in a cup and allow to soak in really hot water for about ten minutes.

Then squeeze the juice of the lemon into another cup and add the raisins after they have been drained of water. This may be left for twenty minutes to half an hour. The lemon juice should just cover the raisins.

Wash the tomato, cut into small pieces, and place in a bowl.

Cut the cheese into small pieces and place in the bowl with tomato.

Then throw the peanuts into the bowl, finally adding the raisins and lemon juice.

Stir thoroughly and the food is ready for consumption. In fact, it should be eaten within fifteen minutes of preparation otherwise it begins to lose its own vitality!

Now find yourself a comfortable chair and relax with a little reading matter and your feet up if necessary because it takes at least half an hour to thoroughly masticate and swallow the food.

Remember that saliva is a very important ingredient!

If possible make the Diced Diet your evening meal, your dinner, and don’t drink any liquids until two hours have elapsed after the meal.

After a week of this food as your main meal of the day, you will feel completely revitalized, especially if you cut down on other foods and leave out meat altogether during that week.

The various ingredients can be adjusted to suit individual tastes, but no other ingredient may be added or taken away. The sweetness of the diet is controlled by the time allowed for the raisins to soak in the lemon juice. The longer the soak, the sweeter the juice.

And that, Dear Reader, is Basil Shackleton’s remarkable Diced Diet.

I’ll see you again next Tuesday with another natural health tip you can use to improve your physical well-being.

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An “I Am” Meditation

For this week’s meditation, we turn to Chogyam Trungpa, who teaches:

No one can turn you completely upside down and inside out. You must accept yourself as you are, instead of as you would like to be, which means giving up self-deception and wishful thinking.

During the coming week, work on accepting yourself (and the time and space you’re currently living in) as you are and as it is, warts and all.

Once you’ve settled into a comfortable position, slowly and consciously inhale and exhale three deep breaths. With each successive breath, note how you become more aware of both your mind and body.

Now that you’re relaxed from the three deep breaths and in a comfortable physical position, let’s begin the “I Am” meditation.

This technique is very simple.

First, slowly breathe in, mentally thinking I, pause for several seconds as you complete the inhalation, and then slowly breath out, thinking AM. Again, pause for several seconds as you complete exhaling.

Note the space, quiet, and calm that always exists in every pause between breaths.

Repeat this simple meditation for at least five minutes, slowly adding more time as your practice deepens or if you’re feeling anxious.

I Am is one of the world’s simplest and yet most profound meditation techniques.

When you accept yourself as I Am, you give up self-deception and wishful thinking and attain freedom, peace, and bliss.

I’ll see you again next Monday morning with another simple meditation you can use to improve your life and sense of well being.

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Brainwave Entrainment

In this section of my blog, I’ll have download links, as well as separate posts describing the various brainwave entrainment MP3s I’ve created over the years.

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Natural Health

In this section of my blog, I’ll share everything I’ve learned about natural health since 1993 when I first started writing about the subject online.

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