Health Tips
Qi Gong
The following exercises are simple exercises designed to nourish and free up your internal organs.
They are called the Eight Brocades and, ideally, should be practiced first thing every morning. At no point should you be breaking into a sweat or breathless! The power of these exercises is in their gentleness. Enjoy and feel energised.
Ps if you feel sleepy after these that is fine too… go have a catnap.
Spelt Bread Recipe
The Romans called spelt flour marching powder* because of its wonderful ability to give sustained release energy. Unlike wheat, spelt is relatively unchanged from its ancient origins and this means that it is still easily digestible.
The wonderful thing about this spelt recipe is you dont need to get your hands dirty or need to wait for it to rise twice. The whole thing can be done in a bowl with a spoon and takes just a few minutes. Basically just put all ingredients in a bowl and mix thouroughly.
500g spelt flour
400ml warm water
teaspoon of yeast
tablespoon sugar
half teaspoon of salt
I always put on the timer to remind me not only to take out of the oven, but to also check to see if it has risen – normally about after an hour.
As a rule ALWAYS use organic flour including pasta as well. The glyphosphate they spray on wheat is extremely toxic and destroys, amongst other things, a healthy micriobiome in the gut**.
Happy Baking
Dr Dan Keown
*Not to be confused with the Colombian viariant.
** For students, this microbiome is controlled by the spleen.
Proprioception
Proprioception is the word for knowing where your body is in space. It comes from the Latin ‘proprio’ one’s own, ‘ception’ to grasp.
Proprioception is the ability to, amongst other things, connect your fingers together with your eyes closed and stand with your eyes closed.
Proprioception occurs because your brain has a mental map of where your body is in space. If you get injured the body can move in space, for instance a broken leg may cause it to slightly shorten. The change in body position will not be recognised by the brain and this can cause problems with gait that, over time, can cause significant problems such as hip arthritis.
The good news is that retraining your brain with lower leg injuries is easy. Simply stand on one leg… with your eyes closed. It is closing the eyes that is important as with the eyes open the brain ‘cheats’ and simply uses the eyes to judge balance. With eyes closed the brain has to use the information from the leg, in other words, use proprioception.
Thats it! Its just a simple game of seeing how long you can stand on one leg with your eyes closed. Aim for a minute but build it up slowly. This really is an exercise for life because when you get old one of your greatest enemies becomes falls – and good proprioception invariably helps prevent them.