Body Wisdom

Do you suffer from information overload about healthy living? Whom do we trust with our health? As with all organisms in nature, our bodies are self-healing and we just need to trust and listen to it in our journey towards wellness. The series of articles on Body Wisdom helps you sort out confusions regarding rest, sleep, diet, refined and whole foods, food combinations, natural living , sunlight, breathing etc to lead you towards holistic health.

There are a certain set of principles that we (Wellcure) follow in our daily lives and these have benefitted our health. These are common principles advocated by natural health experts & enthusiasts. You may already know about many of these, but what we have learnt over the last few years is how to cut through the information overload caused by internet & various authorities, to make a rational choice for yourself. There is a continuous process of learning & evolving, but we firmly believe this is an effective way of staying illness-free, medicine-free.

This is what we intend to share with you through the Body Wisdom section of our website. Here are the key things we like to follow & you can read more about these in the articles that follow:

1. Natural living: Natural living means living as per how nature meant us to live. This means eating natural foods, maintaing balance between sleep & activity as nature keeps a balance between day & night, staying connected with nature, letting body do its functions instead of us interfering through medicines, etc.

2. Healing mechanism of our bodies: Our body has an in-built self healing mechanism. It always works for our good health. Every illness / disease is a symptom of an underlying problem. Instead of suppressing symptoms through medicines, we need to address the root cause of the problem. The moment we accept this, we can turn our focus on giving the right inputs to our body. All these inputs should be in harmony with natural living, i.e. with what nature has designed for us.

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3. Natural body cycle (Circadian rhythm): Our body functions as per a circadian rhythm. When we should eat and sleep or rest is determined by the circadian rhythm.
4. Acid-alkaline balance – Our body has an ideal acid-alkaline equilibrium. What should we eat is determined by the acid-alkaline phenomenon.
5. Whole plant based foods: The evolution of human beings has primarily been supported by a whole plant based diet. Whole plant based foods are not only nutritious; they are also easy for the body to digest, absorb & eliminate. On the other hand, animal foods, namely dairy & non-veg, are not our natural instinctive foods. They place a burden on our digestive systems.
6. Local, seasonal, fresh, whole foods: While choosing foods, we should view them from the prism of being local, seasonal, fresh & whole. This way you are likely to have more natural foods.
7. Raw foods are live foods, they are teeming with enzymes beneficial for health. Cooking destroys enzymes & reduces nutritive value. Hence, try to include a lot of raw food in your diet.
8. Natural foods: Based on the above, the main categories of natural foods are fruits, vegetables, nuts & seeds, pulses & beans, grains.
9. Food combinations: How we eat foods determine whether our body is able to get their nutrients or not. A few right food combinations are – Eating fruits alone & on an empty stomach, eating vegetables as salad or lightly steamed with all cooked meal preparations.
10. Unprocessed & Unrefined foods: Foods that are refined, processed, packaged are un-natural foods. They have preservatives and other artificial additives, which are not good for health. Accordingly, refined oil, white sugar and white salt, though commonly used in many homes, should be substituted by more natural & unprocessed or less processed substitutes.
11. Grains – The two main grains in the modern-day diet are wheat & rice. But nature has created a lot more variety for us. We should add amaranth, makki & millets – jowar, bajra, ragi & others to our diet for wholesome nutrition.
12. Food plays a key role in one’s health, but overly focusing & fretting over it is not good for health !! Enjoy what you eat & be mindful that there are other elements too that are important, these are: sleep, rest, sunlight, happiness / positive thinking, activity / exercise, breathing.

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13. Sleep: Sleep is important for the repair & maintenance function of the body. Without proper sleep, body is unable to clean up the toxic build up in the system & toxicity is a key reason for all diseases.
14. Rest: From morning to night we are always running around, trying to accomplish one thing or the other. Our body works best when it is relaxed. Hence, take out time during the day to drop off everything & rest for a few minutes every few hours.

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15. Sunlight: We must spend some time in the early morning or early evening sun every day. Sun is the primary source of energy for all life on earth. Sunlight’s energizing & healing abilities cannot be disputed.
16. Positive engagement: Pursue an activity of your choice – music, gardening, singing, cooking, reading, etc. This helps us to stay relaxed & be happily engaged. A stressed / sad mind disturbs the body’s acid-alkaline balance by increasing the acidic levels & hence is not good for health. All diseases thrive in an acidic environment.
17. Activity & exercise: Exercise helps to keep the body physically active & optimize its functions such as blood circulation. This is very important in today’s times where most of us have sedentary lifestyles.
18. Air & Breathing: Deep breathing helps in supplying sufficient amounts of oxygen to all body cells to carry out their functions. In the modern day life, we spend a lot of time indoors & hence we need to specially focus on deep breathing.
19. Listening to the body’s wisdom: Our Body communicates with us using signals like hunger, different emotions and also symptoms which we term as disease. In our modern lifestyle, we have somehow disengaged ourselves from this wisdom. Reconnecting to our body and taking action in accordance with its signals like eat only when hungry, rest when tired, relax when overwhelmed etc can benefit us.

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You can read more about the above in the articles under Body Wisdom. We feel each human body is unique, but these principles provide you the overall framework to achieve good health. Each one of us should work towards finding our balance.

Our own journey of a natural, medicine – free world began through late Dr Vijaya Venkat of The Health Awareness Centre, Mumbai. We are deeply grateful to her to show us this path. As we went along, we have learnt more about natural living through books, internet articles, experts & enthusiasts around us. Some of the books that we closely follow & have helped us derive our principles of natural living are:

1. Fit for Life – Harvey & Marilyn Diamond
2. What you eat today will determine how early you are inviting disease – Dr M Ted Morter
3. Become Healthy or Extinct – Darryl D’Souza
4. Nature Cure – Dr H K Bakhru
5. Milk: A Silent Killer – N.K. Sharma
6. The Health Awareness Centre – Mumbai’s health journals
7. Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul: How to Create a New You – Deepak Chopra
8. The China Study – T Colin Campbell
9. Toxemia Explained – J H Tilden
10. Wheat belly – by William Davis
11. Rogon se bachaav – by Mohan Gupta
12. You can heal your life – by Louise Hay
13. HintOn Health – by Kevin & Katy Hinton