When you are planning to climb a high mountain, preparation is everything. No wonder all the guide books warn pilgrims to be mentally and physically prepared. You need to check the weather report, take enough food and water and at the same time be open to changing your plan at the last minute. When you reach the summit the views are breathtaking, but if you procrastinate too long you could find yourself exposed to subzero temperatures.
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When walking between 20-25 kilometres per day on the Camino you appreciate carrying as little as possible in your back pack. You have to go lean to go far which applies very much to life as well. The Hospitales Route or Hospital Route which we crossed yesterday is tough and called that because during the Middle Ages there were several hospitals on the mountain where ailing pilgrims were nursed.
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Day four of our walk on the Camino de Santiago. We left the mountain village of La Espina this morning. A pilgrim wrote on a marker stone: ”You don’t choose a life. You live one.” It got me thinking. Happiness has so much to do with Being rather than Wanting. And, Being for me is opening yourself to the miracles of the moment. In the daily treadmill of distractions pulling at us from all sides we miss the magic.
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The Camino experience is an anology of life – a crash course in self-development. Each day is a lesson in life. On the second day of our 21.5 km walk in the Asturian countryside of steep mountains and rolling green countryside, we had our ups-and-downs. Watch our video we took near the town of Grado:
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On the first day of the Camino it is so important to go slow and find the right rhythm. Its about feeling into the body and mind, especially if you know you will be walking a couple of weeks.
There is a saying that if you dont approach the Path with humility the Path will humble you. So here is a short video from my wife Alyce and myself while walking 12.5 kilometres from Oviedo to the small village of Escamplero on our first day:
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Next week I will be leaving for my ninth walk on the Camino de Santiago. Its become an annual must-do-event because I am convinced that such a time-out period is essential in boosting my energy, my creativity and general feeling of well-being.
In our modern world our energies are constantly being depleted by countless distractions that make us forget who we are and what soul purpose we have. Worse still: We imitate “role models” hyped by mass media, making us look foolishly unauthentic.
The tradition of walking the Camino is many centuries old. In the Middle Ages, when life was cheap and short, people had a deeply ingrained fear of burning in the fires of hell in the after life. The best possible way of gaining redemption was in walking the Camino.
Today thousands of people are rediscovering the Camino as a perfect analogy of life and a fast-track course in self-development. Here are only some of the lessons I learned on the Camino:
Never mind the enormous health benefits. I’ve noticed that walking between 20-25 kilometers a day not only detoxes the body but also the mind. It is truly “walking things off” and getting rid of the clutter, opening the channels and the senses of hearing, smell, touch and sight.
I will keep you posted on this site.
Reino Gevers – Mentor for Leaders and Achievers – Your Health Matters
Awakening the Fire Within – key principles of health and success. Enrolling now will give you a 25 per cent discount.
NEW RELEASE: “Walking on Edge – A Pilgrimage to Santiago” available both in Kindle and paperback.
Torched cars, running street battles and burning street barricades are scenes not uncommon in strife-torn countries with major social problems. This time however it hit the wealthy northern German port city of Hamburg during the G20 summit last week with many friends witnessing the violent scenes.
The violent mob had no qualms in torching and ransacking the premises of hard-working small shop-owners, beating up journalists filming the scene and setting on fire a small car with a baby seat in the back. Numerous people were injured – miraculously nobody got killed.
Politicians and the mass media are quick to blame a small minority of criminal elements and left-wing radicals from all over Europe out to stir trouble. Whatever the experts say, there appears to be a thin line between civil behavior and anarchy.
As humanity moves to higher consciousness we will experience setbacks. We will go back two step
s to take one step forward. Mankind is going through a major transition with a leap in technology and information at your fingertips that only a decade ago could only be accessed in cumbersome library research. Entire industries are changing with once secure jobs being lost and new ones being created.
A lot of people stuck in old thinking are being left behind and part of the old thinking is the entitlement culture and failing to take responsibility. Its always the OTHERS responsible for ones own mishaps and failings: the parents, the school, the state, former friends and associates, the employer. And, conceded, it makes me angry.
Never before has humanity experienced such abundance, wealth, peace and liberty. The opportunities are immense and yet a crowd out there seems to have a mindset that it all needs to be a freeload without personal commitment. Life is not like that. What you are is a result of your mindset and thought process. If you eat junk food and refuse to exercise you will inevitably end up with bad health. If you fail to commit yourself to hard work and continuous learning, stay stuck in “blaming culture”, you will lose out.
If you adopt positive daily habits and a positive mindset your life will become positive. We do have the freedom of choice. We are only to a very limited extent “helpless victims” to external circumstance.
Reino Gevers – Mentor for Leaders and Achievers – Your Health Matters
Awakening the Fire Within – key principles of health and success. Enrolling now will give you a 25 per cent discount.
NEW RELEASE: “Walking on Edge – A Pilgrimage to Santiago” available both in Kindle and paperback.
Every third person on earth has a weight problem. Its a pandemic that is causing major health problems for individuals, societies and the economic future of many countries.
The data released recently by the New England Journal of Medicine is particularly alarming because it shows a major increase in obesity among children. A diet of mainly processed foods with a high sugar content coupled with a mainly sedentary lifestyle spent behind the steering wheel of a car or on an office chair are cited as major reasons for being overweight.
The other factor is that our fast-paced Western lifestyle is flooding our bodies with stress hormones that stimulate the building up of fat reserves in the lower belly. In previous generations humans were stressed by the fear of suffering from drought or famine, which is why the stress hormone cortisol is designed to tell the body: “Alert: Store fat because hard times are coming.”
How do you determine whether you are overweight? Take your body length. Lets say 176 cm, divide that by half which is 88 cm. Your belly at the height of your navel should therefore not measure more than 88 cm.
Why should you watch your weight? Obesity is the major cause of cardiovascular disease, diabetes II and a host of skeletal problems. The fat tissue in your lower belly is creating pressure on all your body organs which increases your blood pressure and the danger of suffering a stroke. Obesity also affects our mental state of mind, our self-image, self-esteem, vitality, libido and most of all your longevity.
Motivate yourself by writing down at least three major reasons why you want to live a long and healthy life!
So what do I do to reduce weight? Don’t postpone action. Start today by clearing your fridge and kitchen cabinet from all processed foods. Educate yourself on a low-carb diet. Try and avoid completely all sugars. Start exercising by at least taking brisk walks during the day. Best download an app on your smart phone so that you can monitor yourself by taking at least 10,000 steps a day. Try sticking to that plan rigidly for at least 40 days and you will notice a significant improvement.
If you want to kick-start your vitality and health check out my my online course: Awakening the Fire Within – key principles of health and success. Enrolling now will give you a 25 per cent discount.
Reino Gevers – Mentor for Leaders and Achievers – Your Health Matters
NEW RELEASE: “Walking on Edge – A Pilgrimage to Santiago” available both in Kindle and paperback.
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Mass media influences us in a negative sense more than we think. The emphasis is mostly on deviant behavior of the “rich and famous” or some catastrophic event , mostly in a far-off place that does not directly affect us or where we have never been.
How would you answer when asked to estimate between 40 and 80 per cent how many people in the world cannot read or write? Most people put the figure at below 60 per cent. The truth is that some 87 per cent of people in the world today can read and write. What an astounding achievement!
You would, also not know it from the headlines that we’re currently living through one of the most peaceful times in human history. This chart by Max Roser from Oxford University shows the global death rate from war over the past 600-plus years.
Most people view the European Union as a bureaucratic monster. This fake-news emphasis was largely responsible for the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the E.U. The truth is that the EU with its consensus-building policy and inter-dependent structures between nations has largely been responsible for the longest period of peace and prosperity in central Europe ever. Whatever its faults this for me is the one major reason to keep preserving the concept of a European unity between nations.
Negative or fake news is designed to appeal to our lower instincts. It does more than that. Fear-mongering and negative thoughts directly affect our immune system. Stress hormones that induce flight or fight symptoms in the body are steered by the reptilian or instinctive part of the brain. It does not react rationally or with logic. The reptilian brain’s only job is to decide whether the information is threatening, edible or sexually attractive. Does that ring a bell next time you open the pages of your gossip rag?
We need to guard our mind against all the negativity thrown at us from all sides because whatever information we feed our brain is that what we become, consciously or subconsciously.
Reino Gevers – Mentor for Leaders and Achievers – Your Health Matters
NEW RELEASE: “Walking on Edge – A Pilgrimage to Santiago” available both in Kindle and paperback.
The biblical saying of “turning the other cheek” is often misunderstood as being passive and weak toward those who insult, belittle and deride us. I have a different take on this: Your enemy can be your best friend if he galvanises you into action, shakes you out of your comfort zone and stimulates your creativity.
In the ancient Chinese philosophy of the Five Elements and the yin and yang, life is a never-ending cycle of ebb-and-flow, night and day, birth and death, growth and decay, happiness and sorrow.
In the dynamic interaction with the opposite, the opponent, the different world view, we form our own identity and get clarity of who we are and what we really want to stand up for.
In the bigger political scenario the bad leader is inevitably compared to the standards set by the predecessor and the other way around. There is hardly a politician out there at the moment who seems to polarise as much as Donald Trump. In contrast to most people however I don’t see Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris climate accord as the end of efforts to mitigate climate change. It will have the opposite effect. The decision has already galvanised politicians, civic action groups, city mayors, environmentalists, scientists, artists and millions of people all over the world into greater efforts to really do something about cleaning our planet.
In my home country South Africa, Nelson Mandela, was a shining example of a leader who reconciled, forgave, mediated and worked tirelessly the last years of his life for charity. The current leaders could not be more corrupt and far removed from the ethics and ideals Mandela stood for. It is however galvanising people into mass action who want no more of the ineptitude, lack of ethics and corruption. The bad leaders now are providing the fertile ground for the good leaders of tomorrow.
On the relationship level we so often find that the member of the family, associate or friend who tried to tell you that you could never do it, actually was the jet fuel that set you on fire to follow your dream.
We can go on and on through history. The terrible devastation of World War II gave birth to the community of nations in the European Union in the longest era of peace we have seen in Europe ever. So it is my hope that the current tide of xenophobia, religious intolerance and fundamentalism will galvanise the majority into the opposite direction.
Reino Gevers – Mentor for Leaders and Achievers – Your Health Matters
NEW RELEASE: “Walking on Edge – A Pilgrimage to Santiago” available both in Kindle and paperback.
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