Optimum Vitality“Optimum Vitality – having enough energy to successfully complete all your day’s duties and tasks whilst still having a reserve of energy at the end of the day that allows you to do the things that you really love to do” – Rohan James An abundance of energy is important in order for us to be able to be and operate at our best. Mind and body are intrinsically linked and a change in one always affects the other. A decrease in physical vitality results in a challenged mental capacity and a compromised mind leads to physical disorders. Have a think about when you have experienced indigestion or a stomach virus and how that affects your ability to think clearly. Or when we have excess worry and mental stress in our lives and how that affects our vitality, our ability to digest food and in excess can lead to physical disorders such as stomach ulcers and heart failure and the list could go on ad infinitum in regard to the mind body connection. Much of what is written about physical vitality in the West surrounds diet and is related to ingesting protein, carbohydrates, fats, sugar, fibre, vitamins and minerals and so on. This is a very limited view as there are many more factors that affect how much energy we have. To be honest this subject of Optimum Vitality could fill a whole book and at some stage I will undertake the task of writing that book but for now I would like to give you an overview of this subject so that you may do your own experimenting and research for yourself.
Now that we know this we need to take a look at how to gain and maintain Optimum Vitality through other means other than trying to weigh and measure calorie intake. Twenty four years of experimenting, trialling and researching how to optimise the health of a human body has led me to believe that there are five main factors that influence our vitality at any given time. If we are able to optimise these five areas for ourselves we can just about kiss goodbye any future need for intervention by a health practitioner for any chronic ailments that we may have previously had. Of course common sense should always prevail and it is important that you obtain advice from a qualified health practitioner before making any significant changes to your health regime. Health and Vitality is the responsibility of each individual for themselves and when you intelligently incorporate the following five limbs of vitality into your life will see an enormous improvement in your energy levels.
Pre natal energy is the energy we receive from our parents and ancestors. This ‘essence energy’ is stored in our kidneys and is released into our body’s system as it is required. It provides the building blocks for growth and procreation and it is considered that when we exhaust the full supply of this ‘original essence’ our physical life is over and our body dies. We are unable to ‘make’ or ingest any more of this vital energy than what we are given at birth so we need to be careful how we use this energy if we want a long healthy life. We cannot make any more of this essence but what we can do is conserve this energy through good habits in our day to day living. For example, overindulging in sexual activity can draw on an excess of this energy from our kidneys and compromise the quality of and shorten our life. The old wives tales told to boys and young men “if you do it too much, you will go blind” is absolutely true because as we deplete the store of prenatal energy from our kidneys our body must then draw extra energy from somewhere else. The ‘blindness’ or fuzzy vision occurs when we stress the liver which has to provide the extra energy that the kidneys would have normally provided. On the other hand if we have good sexual practises we can enhance our vitality and become more energetic. What are good sexual practises? When we talk about the conservation of prenatal energy and good sexual practises it usually relates to the practises of males more than females due to the fact that males ejaculate their essence outside of their bodies while the female secretions occurs mostly within the body and can be reabsorbed by the female if she knows how to do this. A good sexual practise includes ejaculation control by the male which simply means having sex without ejaculating too often. A man’s ejaculation frequency should be regulated taking in to account his age and physical conditioning. A basic rule of thumb is that if a male feels his vitality depleted after an ejaculation he is doing it too often. If he feels light, energetic and peaceful following an ejaculation he is probably regulating his loss of essence quite well. Young males can afford to ejaculate more often than older men without doing themselves too much damage but by the time a man reaches the age of forty he should be very well acquainted with ejaculation control practises otherwise his life force will be depleted very quickly leading to lethargy and all sorts of chronic illnesses caused by the body drawing on extra reserves of energy from the vital organs, resulting in a premature death. To give you an idea of how this practise can enhance your vitality I am currently in my seventh week of non ejaculation even though my beautiful partner Yasmin and I have a very robust sex life. In the past seven weeks I have written a 90,000 word book called ‘Mastering Golf’ and have posted eighteen pages/articles on this website. I know through my own experience that there is no way I could produce the same output if I were ejaculating every time I had sex. If a man is familiar with the practises of ejaculation control he not only conserves his own prenatal energy but he also absorbs sexual essence from his partner which increases his vital energy. And the beauty of good sexual practises also means that a woman will not be depleted of vitality if she is familiar of how to re-absorb her energy following an orgasm. The other great benefit of this sexual practise is that the two partners will never get enough of each other and will bring them closer together romantically as well as physically. (The subject of ejaculation control and good sexual practises is very involved and will be discussed in more detail in future articles). As mentioned earlier we are unable to produce any more prenatal energy than what we are given at birth and so if we want to be operating at our peak we must learn how to conserve and protect our prenatal energy through ejaculation control by the male and re-absorption by the female.
The second source of energy we receive and assimilate is from the food (including beverages) that we consume. Our body takes on the food and digests it drawing nutrients to build and repair our physical body and drawing the energy or life force from the food to ‘energise’ our vital system for action (including mental activity). It is finally becoming well accepted that not only are we physical beings but we are also non physical and up until now our eating habits have been conditioned to an outdated model of focussing only on the building and repair of the physical body.
We must not only feed our physical body but we must also feed our ‘energetic body’ which the Quantam Physicists are now telling us that it actually exists.
We eat plants and vegetable because not only for the physical nutrients for building and repair of the physical body but also because plants and vegetables receive vitality directly from the sun and the earth and it is this ‘energy’ that we digest and assimilate into our ‘energetic body’.
Why is this? What our bodies really need in order to function properly is the energy from the plants that the animals have eaten and because we are getting it third hand after the animal has digested the plant life it is much more difficult for us to digest and requires far more of our energy in order to extract that which we need, the vital energy. This is why meat stays in our digestive tract for weeks after we ingest it. There are many people around the world who are known as ‘breatharians’ who live on life force energy alone not eating any food at all. While I believe that this is possible to achieve after years and years of dedicated training and with zero stress in one’s life, I personally don’t subscribe to this way of being and wouldn’t recommend it to anyone simply because we live in a physical body that requires certain physical nutrients in order to function properly and we have a very complex digestive system for a reason! What we need from our food for optimum vitality is the nutrients for cell building and vital energy from the sun and from the earth to energise our system. The simplest and easiest way to do this is to eat plants that absorb this energy directly from the sources. Flesh is an inferior alternative to robust plants that are eaten in sufficient quantities and in the correct combinations. To give you an idea this evening before writing this article I cooked up some fresh corn, pumpkin, carrots and a fresh garden salad topped with avocado and a sprinkle of grated cheese. It is now four hours later and I have not had any indication of hunger and I feel great. When I used to eat meat I always found that I craved a ‘sugar hit’ in the form of ice cream or chocolate following a meal and I have since worked out that it was because it takes so much more of my vital energy to digest flesh than it does vegetables. Since eliminating flesh from my diet I no longer get these cravings for sugar following a meal. However I do enjoy ice cream and chocolate from time to time just because I like it but no longer because I crave it. And from what I have been able to determine from research and my own experience of maintaining stable weight (not losing as you may expect) after giving up flesh it appears that vegetables when combined correctly actually contain more protein than flesh and it is certainly easier for the body to digest. In my twenty odd years of experimenting with and trialling different ways of eating I have discovered that the best way to approach what to eat is to become aware of how you truly feel after eating particular foods. If you feel energised and light following a meal, great; keeping eating that. If you feel heavy and lethargic you may need to consider whether you should be eating what you just ate or was it that the combinations of food were not complementary? (Food combining will be discussed in future articles)
We have within our body a very clever and complex energy system that is not unlike an electrical circuit that enables any electrical appliance work. The first two limbs above provide energy for this system and we add further to this energetic system with the energy contained in the air that we breathe. This energy has been known to many of the ancient cultures for thousands of years. It is known to the Chinese as Chi (or Qi), the Indians as Prana, the Japanese as Ki and the Hawaiians refer to it as Mana.
The first known person in the West to recognise this energy was Wilhelm Reich in the 1930’s who called it Orgone Energy. The Quantam Physicists of today recognize this bioelectrical force as being the substratum on which our entire universe is built.
This article is about how to gain and maintain optimum vitality and not about breaking concrete so I will only take this discussion as far as is required for optimum health. The electrical (energetic) system in our body has three main components. We have a battery in our lower abdomen which is named the (Lower) Dan Tien by the Chinese (or ‘Hara’ by the Japanese), meaning ‘elixir field’. This area also happens to be our body’s natural centre of gravity (a nice coincidence, not). This region of our body is where the energy from our pre natal essence, the food we eat and the air we breathe all mix in order to produce the electricity (energy) on which our bodies operate. An enormous amount of energy can be stored in this region due to the anatomical construction of the tissue of our small and large intestines which are poor ‘conductors’ of energy but brilliantly constructed for the ‘storage’ of energy. The energy from our ‘battery’ (Dan Tien) is released as required in to the eight major ‘vessels’ located throughout our torso and limbs that act like capacitors or condensers in an electrical circuit as they in turn feed and maintain the volume and frequency of the energy flow in the third major component of our electrical circuit; the twelve major ‘meridians’ or rivers of energy. The twelve major meridians are located all throughout our body energising blood flow, nerve fibres, muscle tissue, organs and brain function. There are thousands of more minor meridians that are fed from the twelve major meridians, but for the discussion here these are not relevant. Ok, so here’s how it works. There are hundreds of techniques that we can use in order to extract the energy from the air that we breathe and store it in or bodies and they are all based on a very simple law of the universe and that law is “Energy Flows Where Attention Goes”. Do you like that? Energy flows where attention goes! Think about it. Children love being the centre of attention; why? Becoming the centre of attention means that the energy flow is toward them energising their energy field and making them feel good. Why is the class clown the class clown? Because by acting stupid he gains the attention of the teacher and his classmates creating a flow of energy toward him, increasing the flow of energy through his system which in turn makes him feel good. And like the publicity stunts of the Hollywood actors because ‘any’ publicity is ‘good’ publicity i.e. there is a flow of energy toward them and they hope also a flow of money which of course is also just energy, but that is for another discussion. Energy flows where attention goes. I could list a thousand examples but the three above should give you enough insight in to this irrefutable law that operates in this universe. Understanding this is great because if we know that energy flows where attention goes all we have to do in order to add energy to our system in to breathe in good quality air that contains plenty of ‘energy’ (good country air or at sunrise and sunset) and as we breathe out, focus our attention on our Lower Dan Tien; our battery. There is a wonderful meditation exercise that I use regularly which is used for developing energy for martial arts practise known as “Zazen”. You simply sit in Lotus position or any other sitting position which allows you to maintain a straight upright spine (sitting on a straight back chair is fine), hands rest in your lap forming an open oval shape with left fingers resting in the right palm and the tips of the thumbs touching each other. As you breathe in allow your abdomen to expand and imagine drawing in universal energy into you Dan Tien area and as you breathe out contract your abdomen and use your imagination to create a ‘ball’ of energy about the size of a tennis ball in the Dan Tien area. Continue for a minimum of twenty minutes up to however long you are able to sit comfortably and focus your attention. Sitting in Zazen is like putting your body’s battery on ‘charge’ and the other benefits of sitting in Zazen are creating balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems bring into balance anything that has been out of balance and calms the emotional mind bringing clarity of thought.
A very important factor in regard to our energetic wellbeing and subsequently our physical wellbeing is with who and how we interrelate to other people. The people around us can affect us in two different ways: Different Vibratory Levels of Individuals Everyone has their own quantity and frequency of energy and generally we get along well with those who have similar types of energy fields. People who are light, fun and playful will tend to have a higher frequency than those who are serious, critical and analytical whose energetic fields vibrate slower and are denser. In order for people to interact and empathise with each other their vibration levels must be similar. Have you ever been in the company of another person when it just didn’t feel right? They seemed nice enough on the surface but you just didn’t seem to be able to ‘connect’ with them? I have had this loss of vitality experience often when I have been surrounded by very aggressive, competitive people who although they may seem very personable even charismatic on the outside but they are actually quite selfish and are only on the lookout for their own well being. Having done a lot of personal development and spiritual study and practise for many years I felt I was not on the same page as most of these aggressive people simply because we were vibrating at completely different frequencies and I found it challenging to have conversations of any meaning with these people. In order for me to relate to these people empathically I would have to slow my vibration and therefore my vitality in order to match those of who I was interacting with and when I did this I always felt bad. It felt very uncomfortable for me to slow my vibration down for any length of time and often I would excuse myself from situations which were actually beginning to make me feel physically sick. When this first began happening I wondered what was wrong with me as I found that everyone else was getting along well but I always seemed to be the black sheep in some of these situations. It is interesting that my network of friends and colleagues now is made up almost entirely of people who are very spiritually aware and who are vibrating at a very similar rate to what I vibrate to. This is a classic case of ‘birds of the same feather do flock together’. So if when you come into contact with other people and you begin to feel a little off colour (and you had been feeling quite well before the interaction) recognise that it is the different frequency of vibration that is making you feel unwell and then decide if that person is someone who you want in your world and whether or not the differences can be overcome. Not everyone is equal in this respect and this is why ‘people only like people who are like themselves’. Lower vibrating frequencies do have an effect on you as your energy field will naturally try to match the one you encounter as you engage the person with attention and your vitality will suffer as a consequence. Higher vibrations have the opposite effect and raise your frequency and they make you feel good. This is why we always feel good in the presence of sages and genuine spiritual adepts. Exchange of Emotional Energy The quality of our interactions with others has a very big impact on our wellbeing and our interactions with others are governed by the universal law of that ‘energy flows where attention goes’. When we interact with another there is an exchange of energy and generally one person gives while the other person takes and vice versa. When someone is talking the attention and therefore the flow of energy moves towards them and the person who is listening is ‘giving’ their energy (attention) to the speaker. This is why if we are relating to someone who talks a lot and who is not a good listener in return we often feel a little drained by the experience. And even more so when we are interacting with people who complain a lot or always see fault in others or the world. With these interactions we ‘give’ our energy by listening to the person in the first instance and our energy is lowered even further because the negative emotions have a slower frequency than positive emotions. Does this scenario sound familiar? What about talkative people who are eternally optimistic? People who are eternally optimistic generally are not very ‘real’ and they go out of their way to tell you how great life is whether or not you want to hear it. If someone has to do this you can be guaranteed that on a subconscious level they are feeling the opposite, maybe even depressed which is why they command your attention and therefore your energy. Finding Balance It is normal as human beings that we will ‘have our moments’ if we are real in our interactions with others so don’t be too concerned about letting off some steam when it may be required and appropriate. The old adage of ‘not saying anything if you don’t have anything nice to say’ is ridiculous as human beings, along with everything else in the universe naturally seek balance and how can you have balance if you are not allowed to express your frustrations? The thing here is to be aware that what we think any convey verbally has a big impact on our own energy levels as well as those of the people around us. So if you do have something ‘negative’ to say make sure that the impact is lessened by direct constructive expression rather than verbal abuse so as to not ‘steal’ energy from someone else.
Our subconscious body mind is like five year old child in the respect that it operates purely on feelings (either good or bad) and if it is forced into too much discipline (bad for a five year old) it will begin to shut down the supply of energy by causing blockages in the meridians causing either pain or fatigue or both. Just like a five year old would refuse to clean up his room if he had been stuck reciting his times table for hours on end, too much discipline (hardness) causes resistance (also hardness). If we deny the child within for too long these blockages can become quite severe and cause very serious problems particularly to the internal organs such as the pancreas which is intrinsically linked to feeling the sweetness of life as well as the heart or breasts which are related to the love for and nurturing of oneself. Just like the five year old child in order to keep the energy flow in our meridians open we need to make time for play and /or nurturing. What did you love to do when you were five years old? Did you like to sing or dance? Did you like to stretch your body? Did you like to swim? Did you like to draw or paint pictures? Did you like to lie on your bed and daydream? Did you like to dig your hands into the dirt? Did you like to climb trees? Did you like to do somersaults and cart wheels? These questions will give you an idea of what you may wish to incorporate in to your life if you are not already doing it. I have always liked nature and fresh air and to move fast so I windsurf as often as I can and snow ski when I am able to. If ever I am stuck writing I will take a break and do either Yoga or Qi Gong because my body loves to stretch and take in fresh oxygen. Once the energy is flowing again I can return to my work with a fresh perspective and a fresh supply of energy. Optimum vitality ought to be the goal of anyone who wants to live the truly inspirational life of their dreams. Incorporating the above five limbs into your life will ensure that you always have an abundant supply of energy and will greatly assist in fast tracking the manifestation of your dreams.
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