Ronald Reagan and Socialized Medicine

Food for thought or fodder...depending on your views...

Smaller Houses, Bigger Lives

By Abe WalkingBear Sanchez

Some younger people fear that in their future they will not do as well materially as their parents' generation. Well I have good news and better news.

GM (General Motors), the old GM that once roamed the world stage like a 900 pound gorilla not the "new" smaller and more humble GM that filed for bankruptcy, came up with the idea that the car you drove defined who you were and created different brands for different classes of consumers.

The same concept was applied to other products...your stuff defined you and people were constantly told and bought into the idea that the quantity and quality of their stuff reflected their worth as a person. He who dies with the most stuff wins. This excessive consumption and accumulation of goods knowing that there were others in need is the very definition of greed, which is both an economic and moral sin.

Proof that people around the world bought into the "pack rat" mindset is the number of mini-storage warehouses, garages, attics, basements and storage sheds bulging with unused and often forgotten stuff. This accumulation is fed by fear, God forbid someone points out that you are wearing/using the same "old thing". There is a company now called, yes..Pack Rat, which will bring a really big box out to your home and when you've filled it with stuff they'll pick it up and store it for you.

The consumer society is about more than just need, or at least physical need...it's a sickness.

But we are recovering from the fever and awakening from the consumption nightmare .

Since WWII we have had several generations sell the most precious thing they have...their lives, for stuff they really didn't need or even used. It was OK to spend more time with your co-workers than with your family. Fighting rush hour traffic was a good thing because your kids could then wear the "right" shoes. Better an expensive electronic toy then tossing a ball with your kids or just sitting and talking..but all that is coming to an end.

Our future lives are not about the quantity of the stuff we possess or which possesses us , but rather about "quality essentials". In the physical world this concept of "quality essentials" is manifested in education, energy, health care and the goods we produce.

Technology brings with it new efficiencies, a greater return for the investment made and is the basis for "quality essentials" and for new understandings about what is good and right, about new values.

In Native American teachings children are told that life is a gift and that they are also given free will and can choose the road they walk in life. The Red Road is based on love , the Black Road is based on fear and is about focus on self . The opposite of love is not hate its fear for hate like all moral and economic sins is fear based.

Irrational fear holds back the change for the better. Fear creates what the Toltecs called mitote, the fog of the mind and of the soul which clouds our vision but once we let go of the fear and stop giving it energy the fog dissipates.

My friend and mentor , Jack Brightnose, a Cree medicine man once told me that words are magic, that the very idea that by making sounds or putting down symbols we can paint picture in the minds of others is magical, and that we get to choose whether we practice white magic (love) or black magic (fear).

The good news is that the world economy is changing from one based on saturation and excess to one based on fewer "quality essentials" . The better news is that people will be set free from the consumption nightmare.

Through the use of computer and communication technology we are sharing what we have learned and reaching new levels of efficiency; and in so doing we are moving away from an "us and them" time into the time of the "we"; a time of smaller houses and bigger lives.

Mitakuye Oyasin (we are all related).

Thanks so very much Abe for sharing this article with us.

Why You Should Concentrate on Wellness...Not Just Health

Wellness is a topic that many may not think of in total, but it encompasses the big picture. While health focuses on certain and rather specific aspects of how you live your life and what you can do to feel better, wellness is the whole enchilada. Wellness incorporates your physical and mental health, your emotional well being, and how you look, feel and perceive yourself and the world around you. Here we look at why concentrating on your wellness is more important than simply looking at your health as one step in the process.

7 Reasons Wellness Should Be Your Focus

1. Wellness encompasses everything. While health focuses on prevention of conditions or how you eat and exercise, wellness takes on everything. This brings elements such as mental and emotional well being, rather than just the physical and more obvious aspects. This is important to your longevity and how much you enjoy your overall life now and in the future.
2. Wellness goes above and beyond the minimal to get by. With health it is often about what you can do to get by or prevent certain conditions. For example, you are told to exercise at least three times a week as a minimum to ensure that you don’t gain undesirable weight and prevent the onset of health conditions. With wellness it is really more about how good exercise can make you feel and what it can do for you mentally and physically to ensure that you don’t get sick in the process.
3. Wellness doesn’t focus on restrictions, but rather what works best for you. Many times in health the focus is on eliminating things such as fat or sodium to ensure you don’t develop conditions such as high blood pressure or obesity. Wellness focuses in on foods or food groups that will allow you to look and feel better such as garlic or leafy greens. This is a more comprehensive approach that doesn’t deal so much with restrictions as recommendations.
4. Wellness looks at what you do in your life and weighs how it can benefit you. This means that you look at the big picture in terms of what you do for a living for example rather than simply saying reduce your stress. Wellness is about finding what you are passionate about and pouring your positive energy into it.
5. Wellness focuses on the positive rather than the negative. As wellness is about your overall well being and what your life means to your health and other factors, it looks at what will make you happy and bring you joy and a better quality of life rather than what you have to do to get there. Eliminating stress is important, but doing something that makes you truly happy makes more sense.
6. Wellness recognizes some alternative sources of well being. So things such as being outside or laughing daily come into play as a measure of how great your life is and how that can contribute to your well being. This means that measuring these things becomes equally as important as simply diet and exercise.
7. Wellness as a focus can lead to a better quality of life. Health is important, but if you have good health but aren’t happy then are you achieving the very best quality of life? If you focus your time and efforts on only what you need to do to be at an optimal weight or prevent disease, but not how happy your life makes you then are you really getting everything you want?

Being truly well and content requires more than just maintaining a good health and fitness routine. It requires attending to the whole self, and all aspects of it. When you do that, you will feel much bigger benefits than just the physical, and will be well positioned to live your best, true life. And that is the best reason of all!


A big thanks to Mary Ward for this post. It really makes you think huh? Mary blogs about various health care job issues, including how to study to obtain an online MHA.

Get Great Skin - The basic things you can do to protect yourself and our environment

With the rat race to keep up with the newest products, we're not only wasting hard earned dollars, but vacuum through an enormous amount of products that wreak havoc on our skin and environment. Yet, all the products and spa treatments in the world don’t beat the basic things we can do to keep ourselves looking our best.

Sleep Does Wonders for Your Complexion

Ever wonder why your skin looks healthy and rosy when you wake up? When you sleep, your body has the chance to focus all it’s energy on healing and repairing, and that includes your skin.
There’s a reason it’s called beauty sleep. Not sleeping enough is a sure fire way to wake up looking like you’re ready for Halloween. But if you can’t catch up on your zzz’s, make sure you have a few tricks up your sleeve.

The most fast-acting cheapest trick is to use a bit of rose water on a cotton ball, and dab it on your eyes. This is an instant pick me up, smells great, and costs next to nothing! Rose water even works great as a toner, acting as an antibacterial cleaner minus alcohol.

Oxygen Facials

All living things need oxygen, and our skin is no exception. The trick is finding the right way to harness a natural free element that’s already around you.

There are two ways to deliver oxygen to your face. The first is an oxygen facial. For about $500 a treatment, you can get oxygen blasted directly at your face. This is a favorite of Madonna, who loves it so much that she dropped $7,000 to have her own unit at home. Oxygen calms inflammation, treats acne, kills bacteria, drives antioxidants and vitamins into the skin, and makes your skin younger looking by providing oxygen to the skin cells. 1

The second way revolves around the hype of beauty products that claim to tote O2 in their product. Oxygen is a gas. There is no way to put that into a cream, keep it there, and then have it released when it hits your skin. Even if creams did provide some extra oxygen to the skin, the effects would last only minutes at best.

But cost conscious beauty whizzes have wised up to the smart cost-effective way to get a similar treatment for far less. The buzz has already been hovering around the idea of using high quality air purifiers, such as Blueair Air Purifiers, Austin Air Air Filters, and IQAir Air Cleaners.

The air purifiers filter the air and create an optimal clean air environment rich with pure O2. For added benefit, regardless of beauty objectives, it's advised to have one in your room while you sleep. With the average person sleeping for about 6 hours a night, you're guaranteed a long fresh O2 session by the time you wake up. Oxygen’s also become the must have for the dressing room of any beauty maven, regardless of whether you’re a natural beauty or a glamazon.

Limit Your Sun-Exposure

Everyone knows that excessive sun exposure is one of the worst things you can do for your skin, but we all still covet that Hollywood orange (I mean, “golden”) glow. Tanning beds are no better. Neither are chemically saturated self tanning lotions. But turmeric, a dark yellow spice native to India, has been used for centuries by Indian women to provide a natural glow.

Mix half a teaspoon of turmeric with whole milk to get a paste, and leave it on a facial mask for five minutes. After you wash it away, you’ll notice a soft golden glow without the use of chemicals or plastics – and you’ll have done something great for your skin.

Aside from making skin soft and supple, turmeric has immense healing properties including getting rid of acne and discoloration. This mustard colored spice can also be mixed in larger amounts and used anywhere on your body to reveal your inner golden goddess. Best of all, you only need to travel as far as your local grocer to pick it up.

But if you want it at pennies on the dollar, and want to support local mom and pop stores, skip large scale commercial grocers and pay a visit to any Middle Eastern or South Asian supermarket. While you're there, pick up a bottle of rose water too, and save yourself the shipping cost plus the wasted paper and energy of mailing.

Keeping Your Mind Healthy

Creating more stress in your life is a fantastic way to invite all kinds of diseases to attack the body. Equally as bad, stress is reflected on your face the minute you experience it.

When you're chronically stressed, the adrenal glands are forced to work overtime and eventually exhaust themselves, inhibiting the immune system and triggering a number of health complications.

One of the best stress fighters is exercise – but there’s one problem with a routine trip to the gym. The constant noise of bad gym music and weight stacks falling abruptly is hardly a recipe for de-stressing. Point being, the gym offers an opportunity to train the body, but not the mind.

A great alternative is yoga. These simple stretching exercises have been used by civilizations for over thousands of years and far surpass the manic hustle and bustle of corporate health clubs.

A switch to yoga effectively trains both mind and body and keeps you away from wasting money on health clubs, which not only deplete resources but are proven breeding grounds for illness.

A big thanks to Shireen with Air and Water, Inc. for this information.

Air Purifier information sourced from http://www.air-purifier-home.com
Twitter @AirPurifierHome

Important Swine Flu Vaccine Information - Stay Informed

I received the following information through a Facebook friend, Sam Adkins, which she had seen posted on Mail Online News and I had great interest in it. The article talks about the Swine Flu vaccine and its possible connection to Guillain-Barre Syndrome or GBS. My father contracted the chronic form of GBS from a Hep-B vaccination.

The important thing to remember is that all vaccines carry a risk. The more info you can get, the more prepared you will be to weigh those risks and make a decision as to whether or not you want to get the Swine Flu vaccine for yourself and your family.

Swine Flu is all around my family now and obviously we must continue with our lives. My 9 year old daughters last day of camp was cancelled because a camp counselor had a confirmed case of Swine Flu. Another local church, a mile from my home, supposedly had a case.

The CDC says that Florida alone should currently have 60,000 cases.

Please take a moment to read this:

Swine flu jab link to killer nerve disease: Leaked letter reveals concern of neurologists over 25 deaths in America

A warning that the new swine flu jab is linked to a deadly nerve disease has been sent by the Government to senior neurologists in a confidential letter.

The letter from the Health Protection Agency, the official body that oversees public health, has been leaked to The Mail on Sunday, leading to demands to know why the information has not been given to the public before the vaccination of millions of people, including children, begins.

It tells the neurologists that they must be alert for an increase in a brain disorder called Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS), which could be triggered by the vaccine.

GBS attacks the lining of the nerves, causing paralysis and inability to breathe, and can be fatal.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1206807/Swine-flu-jab-link-killer-nerve-disease-Leaked-letter-reveals-concern-neurologists-25-deaths-America.html#ixzz0OPPQHVPO