All About the Health Fitness Business

When you get into this business, you have a lot on your plate. Having a business in general is hard enough but owning your own fitness center can be trying at times.

There is a lot to consider when opening such a business. Some things to know first are:

1. Equipment- Having the right equipment is the important part if you are going to open a health center business. When you invest the money and get good equipment, you won't have to repair it within the year. Those who purchase used equipment are in danger of having many problems.

2. Staff- In the health fitness business it is good to be sure to hire enough staff. It is never a bad idea to hire a big number of employees because there is always a need for a staff member for questions.

When employing your staff, be sure that they have experience in the knowledge of health. When people work out, they want to talk to someone who has been working with the equipment. No one likes to talk to someone who has no clue about the equipment.

3. Money- Make sure that the money is there. You don't want to over extend yourself on equipment and staff. Be sure that you have the right amount of money to see what you want to have happen in your health center.

When the money is there, there is no stress that you have to worry about. In a fitness center, it needs to be a calm atmosphere for people to come and work out.

There are many other things that you need to worry about when you are thinking of having a health fitness business. You may ask yourself, "What happens when the demand falls out?"

The market of fitness will never run out and believe it or not, you can run this type of business from home! Everyone needs exercise in order to survive although a lot of people lack the motivation to get up and exercise.

Food For Health

For years, I've been trying to convince people I love and care about and a few who were just acquaintances, that food can heal. So far no one has quite believed me. I wouldn't say that I've given up on spreading that truth, I've just decided to go about it a different way.

Our health care system is broken. Our food system is broken. Our society has moved so far away from real food and real health and toward convenience packaged as "convenience foods" and medicines, that it's no wonder most people including doctors and other highly skilled professionals are so out of touch with the healing power of real food.

Rather than try to convince you that food can heal your ills, I'm going to suggest that it's worth just seeing if it can make you feel better. Whether or not you believe food is going to actually cure you, the right foods aren't going to hurt you. Maybe you're experiencing emotional or physical stress. Maybe you're battling a serious illness such as cancer or auto-immune dysfunction. What do you have to lose in changing your diet? What if it just makes you feel better as you deal with your particular challenges? Most medicines today come with a long list of side-effects and warnings. Many cancer medications are still experimental. Medicines get stacked on to combat the side-effects of other medicines. By making simple changes in your eating habits, you can ease the effects of the medications you choose to take.

I personally know four people who have cured their advanced cancer or the advanced cancer of a loved one through nutrition and supplements alone - no surgery, no chemo. I personally know twice as many who have died of cancer or complications from cancer after using conventional treatments - surgery, chemo, radiation, etc. That's a small sampling of people, but enough to convince me personally that it's worth looking into more deeply.

Here are my basic recommendations to help you feel better when facing the smallest to the biggest challenges in life, emotional and physical:

1. Hydrate - Drink one quart of pure water for every 50 pounds of body weight. If you weigh 150 pounds, drink 3 quarts of water a day. If you are a coffee or tea drinker, add a cup to a cup and a half of water to that total for each cup of coffee or tea that you drink.

2. Eat lots of greens - Greens like kale and spinach are considered super foods because of the many vitamins, phytonutrients and antioxidants they contain. At each meal, make sure your plate is at least 50 percent vegetables and most of those vegetables leafy greens (broccoli, kale, spinach, Swiss Chard, Brussels sprouts) - not iceberg lettuce!

3. Cut out flour and sugar. These two are sure to slow you down. Cutting out flour and sugar means cutting out most, if not all, processed and packaged foods. There are so many other delicious foods to eat! Replace that bread with an extra helping of vegetables. Instead of cereal or toast for breakfast, try a smoothie with plain yogurt, fresh or fruits and some greens. Add more greens as you get used to the taste. You can also cut out the yogurt and just blend fruit and greens. If you must eat bread, go for sprouted grain, flourless breads like the ones you can get from Food For Life.

When craving sugary sweetness, discover the natural sweetness of fruits and vegetables. The cravings will go away! Just give yourself a week or two. And please don't switch to sugar substitutes! They are just as harmful to you, and some more harmful, than sugar. If you must, use a little raw honey or maple syrup.

4. Eat fermented vegetables - This is an acquired taste for some. When we first started eating real fermented sauerkraut eight years ago, my husband couldn't stand the smell of it. I'd open the jar, scoop out everyone's servings and close the jar as fast as I could. It took a little time, but we all love it now and don't mind the smell at all. In fact, different blends of vegetables with a little garlic smell great! If you learn how to ferment vegetables yourself, this is a very cost effective way to get your organic vegetables in. Fermented vegetables are packed with vitamins, fiber and enzymes that help with digestion. They are also loaded with beneficial bacteria to help keep your gut flora in check.

5. Eat certified organic vegetables and fruits and grass-fed meats as much as possible. Do whatever you can to reduce the amount of pesticide residue you ingest. Also, unless you're eating organic, you can't be sure that you're not eating genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The point here is to reduce your body's intake of chemicals, growth hormones, antibiotics, and other potentially harmful substances. You want to keep your system as clean as possible.

6. Consume raw, organic dairy. Milk, cheese, butter. Full fat and raw. Milk is a live food. It's important to get to know the dairy farmer you buy from and get to know the laws surrounding raw dairy in your state. I grew up on regular, store bought milk. Now, I only drink milk raw. It tastes better, feels better in my tummy and doesn't leave the scummy feeling in my mouth. If you don't like the idea of consuming raw milk, I recommend cutting milk out of your diet or consuming just organic, plain yogurt. That is at least free of added sugar and full of probiotics.

For some of you, this may be overwhelming... too many big changes. As I always recommend, make just one change at a time if it's too much for you at once. Others will find it easier to just make all the changes whole hog. There are always ways to improve your diet. There are always healthier alternatives. Don't expect your doctor to know about healthy food choices. This is an area where you have do some of your own research and cut through the misinformation to get to the truth.

I hope that some of you will give this a try. Give yourself a month and see how you feel. Try one change and add another a week or month at a time. Maybe do it just for you and add in your other family members as you start to feel great! Find a way to get to better health.

I'm here to support you in your journey! I always welcome your comments and questions and encourage discussion among my readers. Please leave your comments below, and I'll personally respond as soon as I can.

Biographical Note: I am a cancer survivor who came through an easily cured cancer treated with surgery and radiation in 1998. I didn't know any of what I know now. I felt a constant malaise for three years after until I changed my diet. I do know that if I ever have cancer again, I will not go through chemotherapy and radiation. I will turn to food and my mind to heal myself.

Why Choose Organic Gardening?

Every year there is more interest in organic gardening. It is no wonder why. Organic produce tastes better, it is better for the environment and it is healthier for the people who consume it. But what does it take to garden organically?

There are many different ways to approach organic gardening. Some gardeners choose to go completely organic, while others will start a gradual process of eliminating chemicals from their garden. The point of this type of growing is to bring the garden and ultimately the produce to as natural of a state as possible.

Centuries ago, our ancestors grew their crops in this manner. But as technology progressed, new ways were found to combat insects, fungus, and to help plants grow larger. This new way of growing was embraced and encouraged. As a result, large farms were able to grow more and worry less about crop loss from disease and pests.

However, with the excitement over this new way of growing better crops, no one took into consideration what the chemicals were doing to the soil and the people. It wasn't until many years later that the harmful effects were realized. Many of the chemicals that were supposed to be beneficial to the farmers have turned out to be harmful for the environment. Not only is the soil and water supply suffering, but the people who consumed the food grown this way have faced health problems.

As a result, we have come full circle. Small, organic farms and home gardens are becoming more and more popular as people turn back to growing the way nature intended. But many people are still not sure how to begin growing an organic garden.

You don't need to jump in with both feet to get started. Your first year, begin with a small garden that you will grow without the help of any type of chemical. Now this doesn't mean you will have to put up with pesky bugs and poor soil. By implementing natural pest control and fertilizing methods you will be able to grow delicious produce!

First of all you will want to amend your soil with organic material. This can either be compost or aged manure. Both these will help enrich your soil and allow it to retain moisture and nutrients for a healthy garden. In addition, use organic mulch such as shredded bark, grass clippings, or leaves to help keep the weeds down and hold the moisture in. Using mulch will let you cut back on how much you water the garden which will be another beneficial contribution to the environment!

As far as pest control, there are many ways to combat nuisance bugs in the garden without resorting to chemicals. Usually a simple solution made with water and a mild dishwashing liquid such as Ivory is sufficient to keep many bugs at bay. If this doesn't work, you can use predatory insects such as parasitic wasps, praying mantis, and lady bugs to do the dirty work for you.

Growing a garden organically isn't a difficult thing to do. It is just a matter of changing your mindset away from using chemicals. The delicious produce that you grow is worth the effort!

Natural Health and Energy Medicine

Anyone who has visited one of my websites can see that there are a handful of natural health therapies that I consider the best and most effective for easy, accessible and inexpensive ways to maintain and restore health naturally. I believe that Energy Medicine is one of the most inexpensive, easy and safest ways to restore and improve your mental, physical and emotional health.

Energy medicine is derived in part from the ancient art of acupuncture. Energy medicine uses well-mapped if not entirely well-understood, energy pathways and energy systems that run through and around the body. The energy pathways, called meridians, have been extensively studied and mapped out over the last 5000 years in Traditional Chinese Medicine.

The energy that runs through the human body can be measured with scientific instruments and is the basis for western medicine diagnostic tools such as the MRI. The meridians can be likened to the body's circulatory system but instead of carrying blood they carry electrical energy. And in the same way an artery can become clogged, your energy pathways can become congested and stagnant causing discomfort and eventually if left untended, disease.

Energy medicine essentially involves using your fingers to tap on specific acupuncture points on the body, or using the energy in your hands and can be used in a variety of ways. My two favorite ways are Donna Eden's five-minute daily energy routine and Gary Craig's Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT).

The daily energy routine is a series of 5 or 6 different exercises that just take a few minutes and serve to keep your body's energies humming. Moving your body in ways that help the energy to flow and remove stagnation and blockage will help keep your energy level high, your immune system healthy and increase your health, vitality and clarity of mind. Detailed explanations of the exercises can be found in Donna's Book Energy Medicine. If you are interested in learning more about this interesting way to increase your health this book is well worth reading.

Emotional Freedom Techniques are an effective and fast way to delete, manage and diminish emotions of stress and fear. The basis behind EFT is that most negative emotional issues have an energetic basis. An energy system became stuck or 'short-circuited' at the time of an original trauma and may, without your even being aware of it, cause you to react in a limiting way. Phobias are a good example but there are countless other such reactions that may be less obvious such as weight and eating issues, sleep disturbances and anxiety. You can learn EFT by going to the EFT website emofree.com and downloading the free manual.

If you have serious physical or emotional illness you should of course consult a qualified doctor or professional therapist.

Energy medicine techniques such as EFT and the Daily Energy Routine can help people to overcome self-defeating emotional habits, enjoy greater health and a more balanced and less-stressful life. These natural health therapies are tools that are well worth exploring and I hope you are able to use them and share them as successfully as I have.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy - A Viewpoint

Background: Since the late 60s I've followed a progression of fashionable therapies and studied others back to the turn of the previous Century. I've seen little genuinely new. Mostly just repackaging under new authorship. Long before the term "CBT" became popularised psychologists were making full use of it but they simply talked of an "eclectic cognitive restructuring approach" or "behaviour modification techniques." Then there's the question of the effectiveness of one therapy compared to another. There seems to be no dearth of impressive looking research proving that each therapy is superior to each other! And note well: CBT is not really a single therapy or technique.

Katy Grazebrook & Anne Garland write: "Cognitive and behavioural psychotherapies are a range of therapies based on concepts and principles derived from psychological models of human emotion and behaviour. They include a wide range of treatment approaches for emotional disorders, along a continuum from structured individual psychotherapy to self-help material. Theoretical Perspective and Terminology Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) is one of the major orientations of psychotherapy (Roth & Fonagy, 2005) and represents a unique category of psychological intervention because it derives from cognitive and behavioural psychological models of human behaviour that include for instance, theories of normal and abnormal development, and theories of emotion and psychopathology."

Wikipedia free dictionary: "Cognitive therapy or cognitive behavior therapy is a kind of psychotherapy used to treat depression, anxiety disorders, phobias, and other forms of mental disorder. It involves recognising unhelpful patterns of thinking and reacting, then modifying or replacing these with more realistic or helpful ones. Its practitioners hold that typically clinical depression is associated with (although not necessarily caused by) negatively biased thinking and irrational thoughts. Cognitive therapy is often used in conjunction with mood stabilizing medications to treat bipolar disorder. Its application in treating schizophrenia along with medication and family therapy is recognized by the NICE guidelines (see below) within the British NHS. According to the U.S.-based National Association of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapists: "There are several approaches to cognitive-behavioral therapy, including Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, Rational Behavior Therapy, Rational Living Therapy, Cognitive Therapy, and Dialectic Behavior Therapy."

The above "definitions" have the practical advantage that they don't really definine CBT; they don't tell us where it starts and ends. For example, there are published on the net results of comparative studies comparing CBT with a number of other therapies. One of those other therapies is "modelling" (I call it monkey-see-monkey do). But modelling would be considered by many therapists, certainly myself, to be ecompassed by CBT and not something to be compared with it. Modelling is how you learned your most vital skills, like driving a car and your most vital occupational skills. It's how your local brain surgeons, bakers, mechanics and airline pilots learned their skills and how the bird in your backyard learned to pluck a grub from under the tree bark. Modelling is so important that it could not be ignored by a therapist on the basis that it did not fit some purist definition of "CBT". But "modelling" is only one psychological phenomenon not encompassed by some definitions of CBT but which are too important to be ignored.

If I am right, and CBT as it is practiced is a mishmash of therapeutic approaches that have always been used in an eclectic approach to psychotherapy then one might wonder why there was any need to invent the term CBT? Well, for a start it justified a book and I suspect it helped American psychologists sell psychotherapy to their relatively new "managed health care" (insurance) system as being "evidence based therapy". It leans heavily on the conditioned reflex idea and has a "no-nonsense-let's-get-'em-back-to-work-at-minimal-cost" ring to it. (never mind about how they feel!)

Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT) can be seen as a repackaging and franchising of a group of therapies dating from before the 60s, with some emphasis perhaps on Albert Ellis' ("A guide to rational living," Harper, 61) "rational emotive therapy" (RET) which shares many of the underlying tenets of Buddhism (without the Nirvana and reincarnation), and Donald Michaelbaum's ('70s) "self talk" therapy - (see also "What to say when you talk to yourself", Helmstetter, 1990) in which like Ellis' he holds that we create our own reality via the things we say to ourselves; and the various techniques of attention distraction and use of countervailing mental images as described under the name Neuro-linguistic programming, e.g. "Practical Magic", Stephen Lankton, (META publications 1980) & other books by Bandler & Grinder.

Arguably, other related ideas of the era encompassed by CBT can include Maxwell Maltz's "Psycho Cybernetics" (like a servo-mechanism, we automatically approach increasingly more accurate approximations of our persistent goals) and Tom Harris' "transactional analysis" (TA) which is a simple, pragmatic and non-mystical explanation of psychodynamics. It encourages insight into self and stresses the importance of "adult" rational responses. CBT is even consistent with some "existential" approaches, e.g. of Auschwitz survivor psychiatrist Victor Frankl ("Mans' search for meaning," 1970 & 80 Washington Squ Press) which can involve asking oneself what one would do with ones' life if one knew when one was going to die?

The "behaviour therapy" or "behaviour modification" aspect naturally makes use of the principles of classical and operant conditioning, i.e. associating one thing or behaviour with another - e.g. a reward, or an escape, i.e. the reinforcement. To be effective reinforcement requires motivation, a need or "drive state". Thus a response to the first thing becomes modified, or a style of behaviour becomes "reinforced" and therefore likely to reoccur in specific circumstances. Classical conditioning applies to the reinforcement of autonomic responses, and operant conditioning to reinforcing skeletal responses.

In practice, the "behaviour" part of CBT often involves using Wolpe's progressive desensitisation method (or a variation) which was originally based on the notion (partly false) that anxiety cannot exist in the presence of skeletal relaxation. This method involves a yoga style of progressive relaxation together with graded visualisations of the threatening situation. The client gets accustomed to visualising a low grade example of a threatening situation while staying relaxed, and when this becomes easy, moving on to a slightly more threatening visualisation. When this method is combined, in the later stages with real world exposure to graded examples of the threatening situation (preferably at first in the supportive presence of the therapist) it becomes a powerful treatment for phobias.

What is CBT used for?: Just about everything! The main things: panic, anxiety, depression, phobias, traumatic and other stress disorders, obsessional behaviour and relationship problems.

The procedure. A. In collaboration with the client, define the problem. If the problem is intermittent look for triggering or precipitating factors Try to formulate concrete behaviourally observable goals for therapy."How would your improved confidence actually show to others?" How could your improvement be measured? How will you really know you are "better"?

Lead the client to expect a favourable outcome. This is using suggestion. Doctor's words on medical matters, even their frowns, grimaces and "hmm hmms" have enormous suggestive power and can do both harm and good. Anxious patients are prone to misunderstand and put negative interpretations on what is said to them. Also they may hear only certain key words and fail to put them in the context of the other words which they might not "hear" or understand - i.e. they are "looking for trouble", jumping to the wrong conclusions or to use a term coined by Albert Ellis, "catastrophising".

B. Of course CBT requires all the normal forms of good practice in counselling technique best described elsewhere.

C. According to the exigencies presented by the client's problem and lifestyle, make use of any one or combination of the following:

1. Simple measures like practising slow diaphramatic breathing during panic attacks, getting sufficient exercise and giving attention to good nutrition and adequate social contact. Mental (cognitive) rehearsal: (a) Ask the client to divide a desirable response into a number of steps or stages. (b) Have the client imagine actually performing each desirable step leading to the complete satisfactory response. (c) Set a homework assignment of actually experimenting and practicing in "real world" some or all of the steps drawing upon the imaginary practice for confidence.

2. Client's journal: A diary can be divided into time slots, smaller than a day if necessary. Or the diary can focus on just the significant events. Some headings: (a)The time, (b)what happened, (c)how I actually behaved including what I said, and (d)what I felt. (e)What should have I done/will do next time? Over time the diary or journal can be a valuable learning tool and source of confidence and inspiration for mental rehearsal.

3. Modelling: This is what I call "monkey see monkey do." In its purist form it involves learning by observing and receiving encouragement and useful feedback from someone who is expert in the desired behaviour. Practice and competence banishes anxiety. This is how all vital skills are learned, from surgery and aviation to panel beating. I once sent a timid youth out night-clubbing with another young man who was expert at approaching strangers of the opposite sex, and totally devoid of social fear. Training videos can provide a useful and convenient form of modelling. For example there was a time when South Australia's Mental Health service's Cerema Clinic made use of videos modelling sexual behaviour for sex therapy. Videos on various topics can be helpful to corporate persons with anxieties related to their performances (e.g. speaking up at meetings, or speaking to high status persons - "executive phobia".). Modelling can involve joining a special interest training group, e.g. Toastmasters or the Penguins as part of the homework.

4. Relaxation techniques. These can involve the techniques commonly used with hypnotherapy. The relaxation procedure itself follows closely the format of yoga relaxation. Once a pleasant state of relaxation or trance like state is achieved systematic desentisation can be attempted and so too methods such as encouraging clients to construct or their own mental place of refuge to which they can retreat any time they choose for mental refreshment - it can be simply a room or a castle or whatever pleases the client. A variation or addition to this technique can be the invention by the client of a fictitious guru or teacher. Some religious people are already using this technique in the form of a belief in guardian angels. But literal belief is not necessary.

4. Systematic desensitisation: E.g. for a spider phobia. The patient is guided through a relaxation routine similar or identical to yoga relation and perhaps then asked to visualise a tiny little spider down the end of a long hall, so far away it is hard to see it. When the patient can visualise this without rising tension (patient can indicate tension by raising index finger) the image is made slightly more threatening. With spider phobias I make use of a children's book with the artists' friendly stylised pretty spiders being held up at a distance, and moving up to a documentary book with clear photography, the book eventually being held on lap by the client and browsed. Finally the client keeps and feeds a spider in a jar at home at the bedside, brings it to sessions and in my presence opens the jar and releases the spider. I always try to introduce real-world practice. I have spent nearly 2 hours riding up and down an elevator in Adelaide's David Jones store in Rundle Mall with an elderly lady clinging to my shirt. We were getting strange looks from the store detectives! She was after about 2 hours, able to do it alone while I had coffee in a totally different store 100 metres away.

5. Self talk: Get the patients to identify what they are saying to themselves during episodes of say anxiety or depression and to document the precipitating stimuli. This where the journal or diary mentioned above can be useful. Then the patients are asked to write a better script, more uplifting or productive things to say to themselves during such times. This is where Albert Ellis' (mentioned above) ideas can be useful. He points out we make ourselves miserable by catastrophising, and by expecting too much of the world. It is not reasonable to expect to be liked by everyone. A failed dinner party is a trivial matter not genuinely "ghastly", "horrible", or "terrible"! We should do what we can to make a bad situation better, but worrying beyond that is wasted emotional energy.

Does everyone agree CBT is a good thing? No. Arthur Janov of "The primal scream" fame (70s) saw these methods as a symptom of a useless, superficial "let's get ourselves together" approach that ignored the inner realities, the neurological concomitants of neurosis. Simon Sobo, in his Psychiatric Times article (July, 2001), "On the banality of positive thinking", sees CBT as a symptom of economic rationalism and the whole "cookie cutter" one treatment fits all approach to both psychological diagnosis and treatment. Again he argues that the patient's realities get ignored. But one does not have to totally discard all the concepts of analytical therapies. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater would be a big mistake. For example it would be a massive mistake to dismiss the importance of symbolism just because symbolism is a feature of Freudian and Jungian psychology. We are symbol using animals. These very words are symbols. The psychology of symbolism is not alien to stimulus-response psychology because it is precisely via the processes of reinforcement that things and events acquire their symbolic value. http://www.psychologynatural.com

If you look at books on CBT you will see that it is recommended that patients keep a journal with many headings. A great many of patients suffer depression. Depression patients lack energy and are procrastinators so about 30-40% of them never get as far as even buying a little book to write in. Others don't bother because they are quick to see that the CBT procedures or "homework" being recommended are irrelevant to their situation. For example some of my depression and panic patients are women who are trapped in a marriage with a husband they despise but at the same time are dependent on. There often seems to be a passive-aggressive lose-lose aspect to their behaviour as refusing to drive a car, or spending husband's entire pay packet or credit card limit on the "pokies" in hotel gaming rooms, or getting arrested for shoplifting.

I'm inclined to agree with Sobo. CBT has been packaged and marketed in a way to make it agreeable to the USA's managed health care system - and of course to health insurance systems generally. So we therapists go on doing what we've always done but with attention to the required nomenclatures and of course we try to bring in some positive results at the stipulated price. The bottom line is that unless our patients/clients have access to substantial health insurance benefits then all we have is a cottage beer money industry, which has been the case in Australia until November 2006.