Are You READY for Amazing Health?

Have you been thinking about lifestyle changes that will get you physically healthy again? Are you one of the 1 percenters ready to shift?

Lots of Baby Boomers are thinking about it. If you’re really ready, quit thinking and start doing.

We are looking for the 1% of all Baby Boomers on the tipping point – ready to tip over into a new, robust healthy lifestyle. Ready to let go of belief systems that don’t work any more and do not serve us mentally, emotionally or physically – and probably never have.

Why are we looking for you? Because if you’re ready, we know you’ll get involved and we know that we can help make a difference.

This is not a network marketing plan either. This is the primary Healthy Wealthy Boomer theme: How to make the 2nd 50 years Better than the 1st.

Getting in shape and FEELING GREAT does not have to be a trauma event. It should be fun – like baking cookies with our grand children. It doesn’t require making a huge change in your life to get started. Making incremental changes is easy as it should be. When things are both complex and not fun, human nature is such that we won’t do them – or at least we won’t stick with the program long enough to make a difference.

Who am I to buck human nature?

Where the 1 Percenters Can Start…

Start with simple things you can do right away that don’t require effort and do not cost money.

For example, if your morning ritual is meeting your friend for coffee at your favorite espresso shop,  maybe you can start by walking to meet your friend for coffee every morning. Maybe you can cut your latte down from a grande to a tall. Start eating carrot and celery sticks 3 times a week (as a snack in the afternoon) and cut back the number of times you eat fried food.

Start cooking at home more and learn how to make delicious, simple and healthy meals. If you don’t cook, take a cooking class or get together with friends and start cooking healthy recipes together.

Buy a blender and start making awesome healthy ice blended drinks or fruit smoothies. It’s a great time for smoothies since it’s summer time.

This is not about Jenny Craig or The  Biggest Loser. It’s about making a choice to enjoy your life better, to be happier and to LIVE LONGER.

Jamie Oliver has started something awesome that he calls the Food Revolution. He’s traveling around the US trying to get people focused on children’s  nutrition in schools and bring enough attention to it to get something done about the horrendous nutrition quality in school food programs for kids. It all starts at home and even if your kids are grown, you can get involved with your grandchildren’s food.

Awareness is a good place to start.

Here is a video of Jamie Oliver talking about how much sugar there is in commercial fruit juices.

A recipe for smoothies as an alternative follows. Here is a smoothie recipe from Jamie Oliver: Frozen Fruit Smoothies.

Many Baby Boomers realize that it’s time to do something different. The online estimates are huge – somewhere in the nature of ~23 million Baby Boomers are obese depending on the stats you read.

Obesity defined: Source: answers.com/topic/obesity

Obesity traditionally has been defined as a weight at least 20% above the weight corresponding to the lowest death rate for individuals of a specific height, gender, and age (ideal weight).

More recent guidelines for obesity use a measurment called BMI (body mass index) which is the individual’s weight multiplied by 703 and then divided by twice the height in inches. BMI of 25.9–29 is considered overweight; BMI over 30 is considered obese.

Harv Eker, founder of Peak Potentials – says,

“Clarity is Power.”

And I agree with him. Clarity can be power. Part of achieving clarity is knowing what it is you are going to do and why you are going to do it.

To some degree, clarity comes from the commitment to follow through on what you are talking about doing. To restate that what I am saying is:

Action is required for clarity to be power.

Otherwise it is just talk.

It’s funny, really, how we do things over and over that don’t work. We choose physical patterns that are are rooted in dysfunctional emotional stuff without being aware that we do it. It has become – for whatever reason – the default. When something becomes a default in human consciousness, it is no longer a conscious choice.

It is an unconscious choice.

At some point, we accept that default and get used to living with it. Sometimes clarity comes through waking up or snapping out of it – out of a walking dream state of semi-conscious behavior – a type of comatose that we have grown to accept as normal. To my way of thinking, anything but vibrant health is not a natural default, although it may be normal.

The greatest obstacles to overcome regarding health are belief systems.

What makes me an authority on this? This is an aspect of what we teach in Core Health workshops. Over and over again we see that this is true. We show people a way out of the rut and how to make new energy choices and it works.

The media and mainstream medical systems love to reinforce our dependency on the need to confer with them about everything related to our health.

Why?

Being healthy’s up to each of us. It’s part of our autonomy – part of our authenticity. We don’t need anybody’s permission to be healthy. Create your own clarity and clarify your power. It is such a great sense of release and a sense of in-powerment to take control of your health.

Choose your own perspective on health – choose a new version that suits you better and start challenging what the powers that be say to you over and over again.

Choose CHRONIC WELLNESS instead. Be a 1 percenter and jump in, if you’re ready for health.

I AM Michael Barrett and I AM a Healthy Boomer and I AM a Core Health Facilitator.

Another follow up with the Healthy Boomer Six Pack Challenge:

Reminder ==> Being Healthy Is A Lot of Fun

So often – as a culture – we make drudgery out of exercise and working out. My friend Trever McGhee said something in a video today that made a lot of sense.

Trever came up with his new word of the day: “Livit”, a contraction of the two words “Live it”.

He asked the question, “Who ever came up with the word “diet” anyway? Ever time you say the word, your body contracts because the word “die” is in it – so your body thinks it’s going to die and it associates it with the food around die-ting. No wonder the body doesn’t want to loose wait, it’s afraid to release anything or it might die. So instead of talking about a diet, he chooses to focus on a LIVIT.

I like that Trever. Quite brilliant actually.

Back to ‘drudgery’ and a work-out. I’m choosing to use the word play-in.

Various aspects of this:

You may have noticed that the word ends with “in”. I chose this because it implies within us instead outside of us – whereas outside implies separation.

Play-in makes a game or fun out of the experience – one of internal playfulness and joy.  Just say the word “PLAY” to yourself, out loud a few times, and see if your energy doesn’t shift. “The idea of play” makes me feel more relaxed and like I should smile and anticipate having a good time. It makes me think of kids and enjoying myself. I think about laughing and making noise and all the things we used to do when we were kids.

Adults for the most-part are lousy at playing. Life is serious, after all. We must take life seriously or we aren’t being responsible, right?

If we’re having fun, we can’t be taking it seriously.

WHO SAYS SO?

If you’re like me, you agree we can have fun and still take our duties and obligations to heart, responsibly.

Work is not a word that makes people feel all warm and fuzzy (unless of course you’re a Core Health Facilitator or a successful internet marketer – where work is pure pleasure). In general terms when most of us HEAR AND SAY THE WORD: WORK, it makes us feel tired.

And just to prove a point, I had Alexandra energy measure me personally for the word:

I said the word: WORK and it made me go weak.

I said the word: PLAY and I tested strong.

This is interesting and it follows what Dr Ed Carlson teaches us in Core Health about the power of language and choosing words carefully. Thats why, for example, he calls work-shops ==> play-shops. And that’s why Dr. Ed uses the word:

Re~Treat instead of retreat. Think about it for a second: We get to RE -”TREAT” ourselves (we get another treat) or we can retreat (run away)…

Kind of interesting , yes?

Anyway, this is the idea behind looking forward to PLAY-in instead of doing a WORK-out.

Your health and your body are a joy and a miracle. Start digging it and expressing that internal self-love. It’s healthy and thinking it and saying it are good for your health.

Make the Healthy Boomer Six Pack Challenge fun for you. Take a yoga or pilates class, start learning ballroom dancing, ride a bike everyday, take long fast walks, swim or all of the above.  Take up martial arts or qigong. Start having fun and concentrate on doing things you love – that make you feel good.  Become a healthy wealthy boomer too. You have the brains and you have the experience, you’re a Baby Boomer. Go for it.

BTW, anyone can participate, not just baby boomers.

That’s the way to get a six pack.

I AM Michael Barrett. I AM a Healthy Boomer and I AM a Core Health Facilitator.

Day Three of the Healthy Boomer 6 Pack Challenge – what an amazing day at Siesta Key beach.

It’s interesting what happens when we challenge each other in a healthy way – striving for excellence on a collective level. It’s a really positive thing to do on many levels. First and foremost, there is so much negative in the press, over the airwaves and in most conversation that counter balancing that negative with uplifting language, visuals and thoughts is so refreshing and empowering – in-powering actually. That is creating power from the inside out versus getting our power from a source outside ourselves.

By always speaking in language that enhances, we make a healthy contribution to the people and events around us. It costs nothing and it is contagious.

People like to feel good and it stands out clearly against so much negative.

Being a healthy boomer starts with thinking and speaking positively. All that is required is a choice. Making a habit out of it is what takes diligence. This is the fundamental precept in my challenge. Become a healthy baby boomer.

Start Thinking Healthy.

Start Speaking Healthy.

Start Acting Healthy.

Start Being Healthy.

This does not require a PhD in Physical Therapy or that you are working out like a professional athlete. You can start right this minute. Get up and stretch, take a walk, have a glass of water, smile about something, quiet yourself and enjoy the sunrise or go out and look at the moon for a while.

We can do many things to improve our health easily. Diminishing and virtually eliminating stress is a really good place to start. Make a choice to remove anger from your life. Smile and laugh more.

Watch a funny movie and laugh hard – often.

Quit sweating the small stuff.

If nothing else, take up the challenge strictly from the standpoint of making the determination within yourself that in 90 days you will be laughing more. That’s a huge step in the direction of health.

Whatever reason works for you – use it.

Maybe you have high blood pressure and you’re under a lot of stress and you have kids. Think about them being without a dad or a mom five or ten years down the road if you do nothing about your current situation. That’s a good motivator for many.

Think of it this way…

Life can be a lot more fun than it has been. Where do I start having fun?

Ask yourself:

Isn’t life more fun when I feel better physically?

Remember the tireless energy as a kid?

What happened to that?

Focus your attention on that to start with. Simply go into a place when you were small (in your mind and heart) and remember what that feels like. Think about what it used to feel like when you would sleep at night as a child.

How comfortable and safe you felt.

That memory and that knowledge is still locked deep within you – so you already know how to do what I am talking about.

Summon it forth.

Choose to start having fun and get a  new start enjoying your health.

Change what you think about health and take up the Healthy Wealthy Boomer: Healthy Boomer Six Pack Challenge whether you want six pack abs or not.

Choose to be a Healthy Wealthy Boomer and Make the Second Fifty Years Better Than the 1st. There is no asset of greater value than excellent health –  so starting developing that asset again and be a wealthy boomer too.

I AM Michael Barrett, I AM a Healthy Boomer and I AM a Core Health Facilitator

The Healthy Wealthy Boomer: Healthy Boomer Six Pack Challenge begins just as we officially enter into summer…

It’s kind of weird being in Florida – experiencing the complete seasonal transition for the very first time in its entirety. Know why? It’s because our bodies are used to a different winter cycle - I think - and on some level our bodies are still waiting for winter to come – even though it’s already officially summer. We moved here in the summer in 2009 and as far as our bodies are concerned we haven’t had winter yet.

Funny how the body works – not really funny actually, more like interesting – how we can be such biologically driven creatures and not even be aware of it on a conscious level. We certainly do have biological clocks – cellular clocks – that are synchronized with our attitudes, the weather and our environment – even when we don’t realize it. And this becomes more and more obvious as we get older.

In many ways, that is what this challenge is about.

The Healthy Boomer Six Pack Challenge is both about the outcome – a baby boomer six pack – and also becoming really conscious about our internal clocks, how we approach our health as healthy boomers, having fun being conscious of our physical condition and how we express ourselves physically in the world around us.

Five years ago, my life was a mess. I made the choice to change it and I have. It ’s been turbulent at times and I’ve made a ton of mistakes along the way since that time.

Just the same I did it…

In spite of huge issues that came along in life, we stuck it out.

As they say at Harv Eker’s Enlightened Warrior Training Camp:  “Never give up.”

And although we almost threw in the towel a couple of times, every time we got knocked down we got back up and got back into the arena. And we made it through – both tempered and strong – in one piece operating, at full capacity for the first time in a long time.

And after all the years of confusion, I KNOW WHO I AM 100% again and I AM 100% Healthy. 

It was impossible to be healthy carrying around all the emotional baggage, the self anger, anger at others and all the layers of confusion accumulated over a life time – childhood, a family, divorce and all the other life events that offer challenges and open the door for miss-takes and confusion to set in without being aware of it.

Coupled with the years of qigong practice and all the positive things I have done over the last 40 years to enhance my health,  the last 12 months we’ve done the work to clean out the energy, dump all the layers of confusion and remove all the energy glitches that made us go weak.

And now they don’t…

They’re gone now. Now comes the work of naturalizing the results and healthy behavior patterns as the new defaults. So I’m going for it and by the end of summer I am going to have a baby boomer six pack and that’s a personal promise.

Healthy Boomer Six Pack Abs Challenge

I CHALLENGE YOU to take up the Healthy Wealthy Boomer: Healthy Boomer Six Pack Challenge and join in. Play with us and re-discover that natural core of health you were born with.

Imagine how great you will feel in 3 months, 6 months and a year from now - if you get started right away. 

How about 10 years from now?

Remember what it felt like to be a kid?

NANNY NANNY NANNY, I’m healthier than you are…

Tag, you’re it.

You know you’ve been thinking about it for a long time.  Another 20 years will go by – fast – before you know it.

Get up, put your walking shoes and start…

What’s holding you back?

I’m going to make it happen, how about you?

I AM Michael Barrett, I AM a Healthy Boomer and I AM a Core Health Facilitator.

Healthy Wealthy Boomer: June 1 – Healthy Boomer Challenge

The Health Wealthy Boomer definition of health is being healthy mentally, emotionally, Spiritually, energetically, physically and financially. Inherent within this definition is the premise that total health is the single most important component of being a wealthy boomer – our most valuable asset.  Let’s look at this idea and expand it.

First a couple of statistics…

The U.S. Census Bureau says that by 2030, after all baby boomers (born from 1946 to 1964) have turned 65, more than 71 million senior citizens will be living in the USA.

Currently, more Americans than ever are obese: one-third of the adult population, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Source: www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-06-05-obesity-age_x.htm

Whatever your personal situation is, far too many Baby Boomers are putting on weight and don’t exercise. Many of us who used to be in the 15% body fat (or lower) category are creeping up to the 25% range. There are much more in-powering choices and life patterns we can make than obesity, particularly as we age.

Many Boomers have decided that it’s  too late to do anything about it and believe they are stuck permanently with sore joints, weak legs and being tired all the time – because that what happens after 50.  Collectively, this is what we have been taught to accept as truth.

I disagree.

If you left a new car out in the elements and never waxed it from day one, eventually the paint would peel off. Who would ever treat a nice car that way – particularly at $25-40K+? You wash it and wax it regularly to protect the paint and to prevent oxidation. You change the oil and get the transmission serviced so it will last as long as possible.

Bodies need love too. If you are not already doing so, start loving your body and yourself. Treat yourself like an honored guest.

If you wait until 2030 to take action, it may be too late. On the positive side, you still have 20 years to become a healthy boomer. A few years ago at a Peak Potentials Train the Trainer 1 Certification intensive, Blair Singer made an interesting point via demonstration that puts 20 years into perspective.

Before I describe what Blair did, let me tell you a little about who Blair Singer is (in case you don’t know). Blair Singer is close friends with Robert Kiyosaki (author of Rich Dad Poor Dad,  a real estate investor and all around entrepreneur). Blair is a Rich Dad Adviser and a highly respected “sales trainer” – the guy companies call in to get results in sales by training their staff. Blair was also a student of Marshall Thurber, a genius in his own right and a protege of Bucky Fuller.

By the way, Blair Singer is a healthy wealthy boomer…

Here is a short video entitled Blair Singer: Secret Formula For Business Success that will give you a sense of how dynamic and talented Blair is and why he is such a successful trainer:

So back to my story…

Blair called volunteers to the front of the room ( we had about 600 attendees of which I was one) and had them line up facing the audience across the entire width of the room – and I would guess it was about 200 feet across. Then he had the volunteers stretch out a single rope all the way across the room each person in line holding the rope and keeping it level. He said that this rope represented a “whole lifetime”.

Next he talked about how a person can learn almost anything they need to in 90 days – with the right instruction, information and diligence.

Then Singer had another volunteer attach a piece of red string 3 feet long to the “life rope” and he asked the group,

“What do you all think that 3 feet of red string represents?”

He got all kinds of answers – and everybody’s attention.

Blair finally said,

“That 3 feet of string represents 90 days of your life. You can learn how to do just about anything in 90 days. And look what a tiny portion of your entire life that time really is. If you think about it, no matter how hard the challenge or how uncomfortable it makes you feel, you can both learn:

• whatever you want to learn, or
• need to learn or
• have to learn

and you can stand whatever it is for 90 days knowing it is such a small percentage of the total. Don’t you agree?”

He got absolute consensus from the group. In the big scheme of things, the time period is truly insignificant relative to your entire life. It really was an effective visual – and we often learn easier visually.

In this case, I certainly did.

Here is my Baby Boomer challenge to you:

Take the next 90 days and do something to improve your health.

Be realistic.

Take a step and start creating new habits.

Here are my basic suggestions:

• Start walking more…  Use the stairs at work, park in the far corner of the parking lot when you shop, walk to the store to get the paper or buy a quart of milk instead of driving 5 blocks. You get the idea. Start taking a walk everyday – intentionally. It relaxes you, it stretches your muscles and it activates your metabolism. Walking for health is something all of us can do.
• Keep a journal of what you do.  Keep tabs on what you are doing everyday so you can look at your progress on your self improvement journey. Not a big deal – maybe: “I walked 15 minutes today.”
• Find out about meditation – take a class or watch You Tube videos, or meet with a friend -  and if you already know about meditation, start doing it again.  Meditation is one of the best things you can do for your health. It improves so many things by default. And if nothing else, just sit quietly on the back porch for ten minutes (no phones, television or noise) and watch the sun come up or enjoy your garden or look at the moon. Getting quiet is a very good thing to do on a regular basis.
• Drink more clean water. Learn how to hydrate your body better.
• Stretch every day.
• Start going to bed earlier.

Do this for 90 days and you will feel significantly better than if you continue to postpone that period of time represented by the 3 feet of red string.

Why wait?

The purpose is to create new habits or re-create them…

If you choose to go further with this, we have created courses  and workshops that really work and help people learn how to walk their talk. Get in touch on our contact page and let’s move forward.

In 20 years, you can actually be healthier than you have been in a long time and you can still become a healthy boomer. Why wait any longer to get started? You can do this incrementally gradually increasing the distance you walk and the intensity with which you exercise. Cut back on fried foods and start eating more Omega 3’s.

Start gradually and work up and in no time at all you’ll look forward to talking a brisk walk and having a tall glass of water. Think how much more energy you will have in 20 years compared to what you will feel like physically if you don’t start now. Many of the effects of aging can actually be reversed, so why wait?

Speaking of Boomer Health: What is your health worth to you?

As far as being healthy goes in 2030:

• what will that health be worth to you then? Or said differently,
• what will it be worth you in 2030 to get your health back?

To my way of thinking, being a healthy boomer is a really good investment in your future – and in your wealth – because the root of real wealth is based in pure health. It is one of those intangibles that you can control in your life. And in time, the results will become tangible – one way or the other.

When you are healthy, you have more creative energy, more energy to work, start new projects and build your wealth along the way. On the other hand, not only is it hard to work and be creative when you feel lousy, it’s no fun. How can you distinguish between wealthy boomer and a healthy one? Do you agree that health an essential component of abundance and wealth?

It’s amazing how many people I have met in the last couple of years – in their mid to late 60’s that wish they had taken better care of their bodies when they were younger. I have also met a number of people who are healthier now – in their 60’s and 70’s than many people I know in their 40’s.

• Will you be getting healthier all the time by the time you are 65?
• And will you be actively building your wealth and living the life you want, or
• Will you be working every day to pay the rent and eat like so many people in their 60’s today?

There’s no time like the present.

In fact there only is the present. The past is history and the future hasn’t come yet.

Wake up, tune it and get with it.  I double dare you…

The choices you make today will determine what you become in 20 years. When the time comes, don’t say “nobody told me”. Are you really too busy to care of your health?

Get started now on the Healthy Boomer Challenge.

I AM Michael Barrett and I AM a Core Health Facilitator and Boomer Health Coach

Strength is an important topic, particularly for Baby Boomers.

The good news is that age and genetics do not determine nor limit strength.

Look at the old gentleman in the following video. If he can do that, we can most certainly walk 3 miles a day – or whatever it takes – to get the metabolism going again and to get the job done. Watch this guy, it’s quite impressive.

Size and gender are not limiting factors either.

Have you ever seen a mother protect a young child?  Have you ever tried to take something out of a little baby’s hand when they get a grip on something – like an expensive earring?  It’s hard to take it out of their hand.

The baby can do this because they use all of the energy in their body and their consciousness at the same time. It is life force (chi in Chinese). As western adults, most of us have forgotten how to use our life force as the core of our strength. The old gentleman in the video hasn’t forgotten. And the infant knows nothing else but full expression of self.

Anyone can choose strength.

Strength is a Key Ingredient to Long Lasting Health

Strength is essential for physical alignment and daily life, yet is often overlooked as a key ingredient to long lasting health. As a rule, we tend to take strength for granted – until we don’t. In most cases, we miss strength most when we no longer have full command of it. Two common examples of the loss of strength are:

• trauma from injury or
• an illness that forces us to be sedentary or bed ridden during the recuperative time

More commonly, we become aware of the need for strength when we bend to lift something and twist and find ourselves struggling with both the load and the execution of the range of motion. Or when we notice how sore our lower back muscles are after we rake and bag the leaves in the back yard.

Muscle tone and adequately strong muscles make life easier as we age.

If we have been inactive for some time, we can reactivate our physical tone fairly easily by becoming active physically again. It does not take much to get the body awake and alert. It does take persistence.

The body actually likes it.

More than that, “waking the body back up” takes a new decision to do so. Once you focus your attention on the result and create a mandate for yourself – clearly and definitively – it will begin to manifest itself in physical form.

Bill Bartmann, a Healthy Wealthy Boomer from Tulsa, made that choice a long time ago. He is a martial artist and takes care of himself although he wasn’t always in good shape.

Earlier in his life, he lay in a hospital bed after breaking his neck falling down stairs and was told by doctors he would never walk again. He made up his mind there and then that was not acceptable. Months later, he walked out of the hospital on his own. He used his determination to walk again and he used it to turn his life around from alcoholic, gang member, homeless high school drop out to billionaire and one of the wealthiest men in America.

Bill does not set goals:

“I don’t set goals. Instead I make promises because in my experience, we are far less likely to re-neg on a promise than a goal. The results are consistently better.”

This is a good approach. When it comes to setting up a personal set of protocols to get back in shape, Bartmann’s idea makes sense because not achieving a goal is one thing, breaking a promise is another.

When you make a promise to yourself – or someone else that you care about – you are more thoughtful about what you are committing to. When you treat your self as your best friend, you are less likely to promise something you do not intend to keep.

Treat your body as Your Best Friend.

This is the basis of health and strength – to love your body and groom it, care for it, feed it really good food and attend to it with loving attention – in the same way you would care for a championship show dog or a horse.

In many ways, strength is a measure of vitality and physical consciousness – a sort of gauge for aliveness. You can use it as a self-measurement tool for alignment and clarity.

Strength is what provides the support for the skeletal system in our body. It is an integral component of physical and postural integrity, and provides for efficient mobility. As such, it is our best natural defense against many common injuries.

Strength, coupled with flexibility, is the most effective counter measure against general aches and pain. These aspects of strength are valid at all ages but are particularly important as we get older.

Like the Baby, True Strength is Rooted in Life Energy

And strength is – in large part – the primary physical coordination function for the body. In general, a real misconception is that size is the key determinant of strength. True strength is a measure of the individual’s ability to use the entire body as a single unit – as opposed to muscle mass.

Strength in this context is integrated use of the skeletal system, connecting tissue and powered by “life energy” running through the whole system – simultaneously.

Once we achieve flexible strength, we rarely get sore when we use our muscles and our body.

What Prompted The Post…

Last month a baby boomer named Arnie started a new thread in our Facebook group Baby Boomer Health and Wealth: Healthy Wealthy Boomer, by asking this question:

“Hey what do you think is the best approach to maximize physical strength as we age?”
Here is what I wrote about to Arnie…

• Physical activity is essential we are too sedentary in today’s lifestyle.
• Walk everyday, stretch every morning, learn and practice the Tibetan Rites at least 3 times a week.
• Be physical again. Walk up the stairs at work. Park the car further away from the entrance at Costco and walk both ways.
• Take dance lessons and PRACTICE – it’s so much fun.
• Ride bicycles again.
• Learn Qigong or Tai Chi or one of the soft Kung fu systems from a qualified master. Take up yoga.
• Swim again.

When you choose an activity that’s fun for you, you will do it more often. Exercise should be an enjoyable experience, not a chore. Add the “fun back into it”. For example, take long walks with people whose company you enjoy and who you find interesting.

The key is activity:

• use your body,
• use your muscles.
• achieve a healthy tone over time.
• treat your body like your best friend.
• balance your exercise to match your lifestyle and vice versa.

Strength is a component of longevity and is a great anti-aging tool. It is a metaphor for the quality of life. Baby Boomer Health is all about choices.

Be healthy. Choose strength.

It is a better choice than choosing the alternative. Quit listening to the media and think about the old man and the bottle. You are never too old.

If you have been thinking about it, now is a good time to get started. You can do it.

I AM Michael Barrett. I Am a Healthy Boomer. I AM a Core Health Facilitator.

Wusthof Chef Knives
Source:wusthof.com

Baby Boomer Men Who Cook Love Sharp Knives

Having sharp knives is a point of contention with me – or perhaps more accurately – dull knives. Many kitchens have knives that ’saw’ through foods rather than dice, slice or chop.

One of my favorite places to spend spare time is in the kitchen because I like to cook and I’m getting better at it. It’s kind of becoming a “sport-hobby” for me – as a genuine wannabe chef. Because, I am a Healthy Boomer and very conscious about the quality of food that I put into my body, the preparation of food is done with great care and conscious attention to detail. Good cooking tools and sharp knives are essential in the kitchen in order to create delightful and healthy meals fast.

Over the years, I have made a sincere effort to learn how to sharpen a knife correctly – with only limited success to my satisfaction. In part, this is because those who tried to show me didn’t know either.

After college, I took several woodworking classes making furniture using traditional woodworking tools. Part of the curriculum was learning how to sharpen hand plane blades and chisels.

Source:japaneseknifesharpening.com

I accomplished some degree of success first using Arkansas oil stones and a lot of elbow grease. Later I learned how to use Japanese water stones to sharpen to these tools to a mirror finish.

Every cutting edge requires a specific bevel angle, or what’s called a primary angle. On steel knives the angle usually varies from 15-25 degrees depending on the style of knife and how it is manufactured.

In order for a the cutting edge to work effectively, there needs to be a relief angle – in addition to the primary bevel. On square edged tools like a chisel, this can be achieved by grinding a second bevel. Another way to create a relief angle is by using a grinding wheel to create a hollow grind. What creates the most effective cutting edge on a chisel is actually a combination of the two: First a hollow grind, then a secondary angle and finally the primary edge

What really makes a cutting edge work efficiently is the second bevel angle. In this context, you end up with 3 bevels on a cutting edge. The primary angle, the second angle and a relief bevel. Here is an excellent description of how to sharpen a knife on Mike Casey’s Knife Sharpening Page.

Scroll down to Figure 5 to see the three bevel angles described above. This visual may help. A triple bevel cutting edge creates a very strong and durable cutting edge with exceptional ‘relief’ to reduce friction and resistance when the cutting edge is in the material you are cutting.

On the Subject of Edges and Honing

Here is a good series of magnifications showing the cutting edge of a knife sharpened using an F. Dick SM 111 sharpening machine.

1. Before 2. After 3. Ground 4. Honed 5. Polished (SM-111 only)
(source:http://users.ameritech.net/knives/dick.htm)

Frederich Dick SM 111 3 Stage Sharpening Machine

Sharpening A Square Edged Tool…

Sharpening a square edged tool is fairly easy because we only have one plane to be concerned with. As long as we keep the cutting edge at a 90 degree to the grinding surface, it’s pretty straight forward.

We need some type of jig or fixture to maintain that relationship so we can create a constant angle across the entire cutting edge.

The SM111 is a great way to grind, remove the burr and hone fairly quickly and consistently. This looks like a good machine that runs about $2600.

A Radiused or Contoured Cutting Edge Is a Different Story.

When we sharpen a contoured edge, maintaining constant bevel edges across the entire cutting edge surface is a different story.

It requires a way to maintain a constant bevel around the contour of the knife. If you use water stones, this requires a great deal of skill and practice although this can be a very effective way to sharpen knives.

Look at these before and after pictures and see Dave Martell can do with waters stones, by hand.

What about a regular guy who isn’t an expert with water stones?

A Chef’s Recommendation…

Edge Pro Knife Sharpener
source:http://www.edgeproinc.com/

With an Apex Knife Sharpener, Putting a 600 Grit Finish on the Cutting Edges of Your Knives Is a Snap…

About a week ago, I was talking to a chef from the Ritz in Sarasota and he told me about the Apex Edge Pro. He bought one himself to keep his $250-300 knives razor sharp. He was actually looking at a new fillet knife when I spoke to him because he needed to fillet a large grouper for a function at the Ritz that night.

Watch this sharpener in action, it’s so easy to use.

When I got home, I took a look at what Chef was talking about. I’m impressed. So much so that I am going to get this system myself. It’s about $575 with attachments and a carrying case.

What qualifies me to talk about sharpening?

I founded and was the managing partner for True Cut Saw and Tool in Hamilton, Montana for six years. We did industrial grinding for the woodworking industry specializing in cemented carbide tooling. Our niche was carbide tipped router bits. We sharpened, manufactured and retipped router bits, shaper cutters and circle saws, maintaining a high level of professional quality.

I was also a foodservice broker in Seattle for 5 years and have interfaced with thousands of chefs. Cutlery has been an interest of mine for many years.

A key to Baby Boomer Health is eating right. Baby Boomer Men who cook love knives. Knives are an integral part of food preparation and eating right.

I AM Michael Barrett and I AM A Healthy Boomer

Healthy Wealthy Boomer is back on the radar with a lot to say…

After 35+ years of search and study – looking for the best ways to achieve comprehensive natural health most effectively, I finally found what I have been looking for:

Core Health

Heart Forgiveness

Funny With Money

My discovery is THE ultimate Baby Boomer natural health solution and over the next few months we’ll fill you in on the details. This system is endorsed by both Dr. Bruce Lipton and Gregg Braden.

The last six months have been an accelerated period of energy expansion and learning. During that time I have been an active participant in 7 weekend sessions of intensive training in Energy Essentials facilitator certification courses.

I am eager to tell you about my experiences as a student of Core Health, Heart Forgiveness and Funny with Money. As of this date, I am now a certified Core Health Facilitator, Heart Forgiveness Facilitator and a Funny with Money Facilitator.

There are so many meaningful relationships that have grown out of this training as well as so many wonderful experiences.

Dr. Ed Carlson is the founder of Energy Essentials. He has become my mentor, trainer and a dear friend. Dr. Ed is one of those rare individuals that is both a research medical professional and an intuitive. He is driven by the desire to contribute and make a difference in humanity.

Core Health, also known as comprehensive kinesiology, is a system of energy expansion based on principles and functional applications of kinesiology, cutting edge biology and quantum physics.

Core Health is all about energy.

Life energy flows through plants, animals and people as a function of aliveness. When we cut a flower from a bush, it starts to wilt.

Life energy show up as an heart EKG and a brain EEG – no waves, no life.

We can measure what enhances life energy and what diminishes it and the simple measuring device is your arm.

Core Health is a system to clean out all the energetic and emotional junk and debris accumulated throughout our life. We free up and clear our true core of health that we were born with.

Heart Forgiveness is a system to remove and clear the anger we have been carrying around most of our lives – whether we are aware of it or not. Once we remove the anger, forgiveness is easy – forgiving others and most importantly forgiving ourselves.

Funny With Money is a workshop that consciously teaches us how to identify and release all negative programming about money in our lives.

All three are amazing and fun.

Stay tuned for more discussion and stories. In the meantime, you can read a great deal more at this two blogs:

Core Health and Heart Forgiveness.

Nice to be back.

Michael Barrett

Baby Boomer balance has everything to do with alignment and walking our talk.

How many times in your life have you verbally committed to doing something and then reneged at some point because something came up – or the memory and focus of the original conversation faded and became a distant glimmer of muffled sound – like a silhouette of a campfire on the beach against a cliff late at night?

Was it your intention not to follow through? Did you actually make the commitment intending not to follow through?

In a peculiar way, this is the truth.

Recently, on a personal level, I have learned about authenticity – living it, speaking it and looking for it. This ties in directly to other aspects of what I am learning that I would like to share with you. See how it sits with you and maybe it will make sense to you the way it is beginning to in my life.

Lately many aspects of emotion are becoming clear in my life.

What emotion is, for example.

As far back as I can remember, emotion has been something usually associated with discomfort – something to “kind of walk around” or to be cautious about not stirring up the mud in the bottom of the pond, so to speak.

Because there was so much turmoil in my household as a boy, it became easier to avoid emotion than deal with it. As a memory, there is a great deal of fighting and negative emotion throughout much of the childhood experience. So looking back at the chain of events in my own experience, I see that inadvertently, as a young man my “internal” system gradually guided me in the direction of avoiding emotion as a survival tool, because many times this was easier than experiencing the emotion that was available there.

It was not a conscious choice, in retrospect.

And looking at that process, it becomes clear to me that a great deal of my subsequent experience around emotion was either directly – or indirectly – linked to the that “unconscious choice” so many years ago.

What is interesting about this scenario is that I have always been a highly sensitive human being with an singular sense of fairness and equity that has always been a major part of my personality. Being a “Cancer” with a heavy emphasis on emotion, this aspect has often been a double edged sword for me.

More often than not, I felt more than the others around me did. Many times it created a situation where I really felt like an outcast – the weirdo, the odd one – that got messages and direction that nobody else seemed to understand – or be aware of. At the age where peer approval was so important to a young man, this was often troubling and confusing. And yet on a certain level, I really didn’t care what they thought either. I rarely listened to what other people had to say.

Talk about confusion…

So here I am as a teenager:

• becoming a master of avoiding emotion while simultaneously
• being highly sensitive to the energy and emotion around me
• angry and aloof – getting tons of “downloads” encrypted in a language that only I seemed to understand

So back to the “truth” of not intending to follow commitments – of having intentions NOT to honor commitments we make – even though we are verbally nodding our heads.

In 2005, at a Peak Potentials Wizard Camp (a 5 day intensive seminar not to far from Whistler, BC) I had an epiphany. I learned first hand what commitment means. This took place in the form of a direct experience – but also, I actually saw commitment with my own eyes. I have written about this experience in depth in my book so I will not reiterate it here.

I really got something in that experience that I have carried forward with me since and have grown to realize that it affects everything we do in life – all the time.

To summarize, this is it:
Commitment does not exist in the cosmos as ‘partial’. It is all or nothing. We are either 100% committed or we are not committed. There is no such thing as “sort of committed”.

This is the crux of the theme of this post: Baby Boomer Balance.

Lately, as a I mentioned earlier, many aspects of “emotion” are becoming clear to me.

1. I have recently heard this: emotions are the way that God speaks to us.
2. Emotions are the internal guide posts that empower us to choose the right decision.
3. Emotions have nothing to do with pain or fear – both of which stem from our reaction to what our emotions are telling us – rather than what is actually being said.
4. Most of us avoid experiencing emotion like the plague because in much of our experience, when we feel emotion, we feel pain – so we associate it with pain.
5. Emotions are tools to guide us in the decision process. That decision process is very simple: Does this choice feel good? Or does this choice not feel good?

When we pull this understanding into our daily life as an operating tool, emotions make it easy to decide what to do. Esther Hicks and Abraham always talk about “going upstream or going downstream”.

I am learning how simple this is – but it took a long time for me to “get it”.

I am learning to use this tool frequently throughout the day. Any time I start to feel agitation about something I am hearing, or about something I am thinking or a choice I am about to make, I ask myself:

Does this feel upstream or downstream? If I get the feeling that the “thing” is upstream ( a choice that will take me into a situation that will mean “fighting my way upstream”), I choose consciously not to do that thing, or say those words or go that direction. No explanation, no argument and no rhetoric.

If this thing makes me feel “downstream” – like flowing with the current and really going with the flow, that is the choice I make. I find that as soon as I identify internally what feels good and what feels downstream, all sense of agitation and discomfort – in the bottom of my stomach immediately fades away and I feel good.

What a cool way to deal with emotion. It now becomes a tool for choosing our path and for making decisions all the time. And it is so simple – as long as we just listen and do not resist or react.

Now more about balance…

I am finding that living our truth is all about balance.

To be authentic we must live our truth. That means we can not go against what we know is right within us. In other words, we must always choose what feels downstream in order to follow “what feels right for us”. Any time we make a choice other than this, it means that we are making a choice out of alignment with who we are.

Maybe this is to please others whom we admire and whose approval we are seeking. Maybe we want a different outcome to be our reality so we think that if we ignore that “feeling” it will come out the way we really want it to happen.

The truth is that we can only make choices in alignment with our “authenticity” if we want to be authentic. Nothing else makes sense. The interesting part is that as soon as we choose this, everybody else around us identifies our authenticity and starts to respect it.

Now how does commitment fit into this picture?

It is very simple yet subtle – much in the same way how easy it is to choose “upstream or downstream”. Yet, perhaps commitment is one of the most misunderstood concepts in modern society at this point. Truly most of us think we are committed when we are not.

Because being committed means that no matter what we will follow through. It means our word is our bond, it is an extension of our truth and it is a big part of being authentic.

How is this so?

If we are truly being authentic, we follow through on our commitments because when we are following our inner truth, we only commit to those things that make us feel “downstream:” We choose what is right for us at all times and we choose to be in the flow.

When we are authentic, we are choosing that which is alignment with our higher self – which also means we are choosing that which is in alignment with the part of us which is Divine.

When we are authentic, we only agree to commit to anything that we choose to be in alignment with. What this means, therefore, is that it is really ok to say NO.

Simply go inside and ask yourself: If I commit to this does it make me feel downstream or upstream? Then base your commitment on that feeling – one way or the other.

If we commit to something and we do not follow through, either we were not being authentic when we entered into the commitment, or we are not being true to ourselves when we do not follow through to that commitment.

We are the leaders for future generations. What happens is our responsibility. How can we lead these kids and guide the flow “downstream” in the bigger picture if we are not committed to our principles, our values and our integrity?

And how can we expect those who are so desperately needing our leadership to believe us and follow our direction if:

• our walk is not in alignment with our talk and
• if we are not being authentic

We cannot expect them to listen because it will not feel “downstream” to them. And they will blow us off.

We have a chance to make a real change as we head into the magnificent transition into the new paradigm that is coming.

Commit to your own alignment and your Baby Boomer Balance.
Being in alignment is a big part of Baby Boomer Balance as well as a major ingredient in Baby Boomer Health. Coming to grips with these issues are not only a component of who were are becoming as leaders, it is also a big part of choosing emotional cleansing and self esteem on a conscious level – instead of an unconscious one.

Are you ready to see it all in a different light and quit fighting the inevitable – upstream?

I am.

Blessings.

Michael Barrett

You know I just Googled “Boomer Health” and I was appalled at the titles of two of the top four pages:

Here are the search results:

1. Boomers Biggest Health Mistakes
2. 12 Risks of Aging that Boomers Can Avoid
3. Boomer Health
4. Boomer Health Care Dilemma