“When you make a choice, you change the future.”
Deepak Chopra
Take this moment to choose your health and change your future. With the right tools in your toolkit, you have the means to take full responsibility and gain increased autonomy over your wellbeing, your present experience, and your future.
Here is an bullet-point overview of practical tools in the pursuit of self-mastery, wisdom, self-care & Earth-care restoration, healing, actualization and reconnecting to our inner and Greater nature.
Here is an bullet-point overview of practical tools in the pursuit of self-mastery, wisdom, self-care & Earth-care restoration, healing, actualization and reconnecting to our inner and Greater nature.
Tools of Transformation
- "Eat Like A Human" (Dr. Bill Schindler) with a whole food animal-based, nutrient-dense diet. Even if you are not interested or ready to try out a full carnivore approach, there are so many benefits to be gained by shifting to a meat-based diet while minimizing plant foods as needed for optimal/desired health outcomes (especially the "worst offenders" with the Big 3: refined sugar, vegetable oil, and modern flours/grains) and focusing on nutrient-density, bio-availability, and building metabolic health and flexibility.
- Try out a "Bulletproof breakfast" as a first step! No, I am not referring to coffee blended with butter, but a fat & protein based meal that "bulletproofs" your cravings, blood sugar and mood for the day! Base your first meal on whole protein and healthy animal fat sources. "Breakfast" doesn't have to refer to an arbitrary morning time, but is whenever you "break your fast"; your first meal of the day, whether that be 8am or 2pm.
- Intermittent fasting / compressed feeding window. 18:6 or 16:8 or something inbetween or defined as optimal for you based on your context and goals (women may do better with shorter fasting windows, and athletes also may not need as long daily fasting windows due to the autophagy benefits of fasted exercise); but the main idea is that it is not natural nor healthy to be in a fed state all the time. At the beginning it may help to stick to a strictly defined feeding/fasting window to adjust to this pattern of eating, but then I like to transition to a flexible/organic fasting/eating window that adapts to your lifestyle, natural and healthy hunger cues (only truly intuitive when in a healthy metabolic and psychological state).
- Prolonged or extended fasts can be implemented on a yearly basis; I like to aim for a 3 to 5 day water fast 1x a year in a phase of otherwise healthy nutrient status and homeostatic metabolic balance (i.e NOT when cutting or coming out of a calorie deficit phase!)
- Being in a fat-adapted state makes intermittent fasting almost effortless and natural; being highly carb dependant and metabolically dysregulated will make any sort of structured fasting extremely hard AND stressful for the body. I recommend FIRST getting fat adapted and focusing on gaining metabolic flexibility
- Metabolic flexibility and fat adaptation
- If struggling with autoimmune, metabolic or another chronic condition, I highly recommend a "Healing Phase" of at least 30 Days of strict carnivore as an Ultimate Elimination Diet protocol: beef and water style, re-assess as needed and expand to other animal foods (organ meats like liver, pastured eggs, wild fish, seafood, other meats, etc). See various Tiers as proposed by Dr. Paul Saladino here for ideas and meal plans.
- Resistance training with progressive overload. Muscle is the organ of longevity and builds the metabolism, while strength is as an important a metric of health as cardiovascular fitness (or I would argue more so) ! Building and preserving strength as we age means preserving function and increasing *health* span. Resistance training is medicine! It literally makes us tougher to kill ;)
- Parasympathetic Self-Care Days
- Work in/out balance. Check out Paul Chek's valuable concept of Working In here for a 101 lowdown and here for a comparison of Working in vs Working Out. When this is out of balance, "working out" may actually do more harm than good, and it is a dynamic dance to avoid excessive or insufficient stress that leads to degradation of the body's systems and instead stimulate the right amount of stress for positive adaptation, continued development and growth; "the sweet spot" Goldilocks for stress adaptation.
- Parasympathetic breath work; making the exhale longer than the inhale activates the parasympathetic branch of the nervous system.
- A 4-2-8 count is a nice place to start (4 count inhale; 2 count hold; 8 count exhale). From there, there are countless breath work techniques to explore, including Box Breathing,
- Lying down on your back can facilitate learning proper diaphragmatic breathing. This re-teaches how to utilize full lung capacity as well as stimulates the parasympathetic state.
- Epson salt baths. Wonderful self-care time!
- Hot/cold hydro-therapy. Home version: alternate hot/cold in the shower!
- Digital minimalism
- My goal is to make my default to be offline and unplugged, instead of the other way around!
- Some general practices around tec use can be really helpful to create a clear structure and system
- Digital sunsets
- Selective inputs
- Digital Sabbaticals to reset; I personally implement a 3 to 7 day one monthly.
- Solitude. Solitude refers to a mental state without external input. A state of mind without distraction and incessant stimulus. You need not isolate yourself on top of a mountain for this!
- A meditation and/or mindfulness practice
- Meditation: there are many different types of meditation. Not one is better than the other, but I would encourage you to find one that you resonate with.
- Vipassana 10-Day Silent Meditation Retreats; these are offered globally on a donation basis, and so freely accessible to ALL. You can find out about Vipassana and their retreat centres here. Vipassana is a meditation technique that translates as "to see things as they really are".
- Mindfulness: as a psychological process it relates to bringing one's attention to the present moment with intent and non-judgmental, gentle awareness while adopting an attitude of openness towards the surrounding inner and outer environment. It's about cultivating the SKILL of observing our thoughts and feelings without being swept away by them through over-identification and about gaining a more intimate and constructive relationship with our inner world by building a Trust/Being/Conscious based system over a Fear/Conflict/Unconscious based system. This allows us to be receptive to our experience in the present moment, as it is. Cognitive dissonance, disconnect and disillusion begins when this is broken. We can only start a process of change from where we are in reality, and wanting to be anywhere else can set us up for failure and suffering. Accepting where we are without judgement, even when painful and contrary to where we want to be, is giving ourselves the best chance of moving forward constructively, soberly, and grounded in the truth of the present moment.
- The neuroscience and neural integration behind mindfulness is fascinating and empowering. I can recommend the books Mindsight by Daniel Siegal and Mindfulness by clinical psychologist Mark Williams as good starting points.
- There exists a multitude of mindfulness techniques and practices to explore!
- Meditation: there are many different types of meditation. Not one is better than the other, but I would encourage you to find one that you resonate with.
- Mindset
- Stoicism is an ancient Greek school of philosophy founded by Zeno. 3 of the most well known ancient Stoic philosophers are Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus.
- The concept of AMOR FATI has changed my life and is my favourite mantra.
- Carpe diem: seize the day!
- Carpe punctum: seize the moment! Which is of course, even more accurate because all we have is this moment, and in fact precisely how we can seize the day is moment by moment by moment... on repeat.
- Carol Dweck's Growth mindset
- Stoicism is an ancient Greek school of philosophy founded by Zeno. 3 of the most well known ancient Stoic philosophers are Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus.
To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.
- Steve Prefontaine