Water: the Most Essential & Cheapest Super Food?
I’m passionate about the very excellent benefits of drinking water. I aim for between 2 or 3 litres a day of either Brita carbon-filtered or bottled water between meals, and herbal/green teas, home-juiced fruit and veg juices also count and are excellent to drink. Clients are likely to hear me remind them to drink more water at some point, especially when a muscle just doesn’t fix/strengthen during a kinesiology treatment dehydration is a factor that can just keep muscles weak, and exacerbate the very symptoms we want help with.
Tea, coffee, hot chocolate, milkshakes, squash, fizzy drinks, sparkling water, alcohol may be more fun and have appealing/stimulating effects, but actually dehydrate us and come with warning signs of their own… you know already the long term effects of caffeine, sugar, dairy and alcohol on the body is not good, and are SO addictive to boot. If you have a resolve to utilise the magical effects of staying hydrated and reducing or stopping your reliance on caffeine and sugar etc, I think a very good approach is to reduce gradually, as you increase your beneficial liquid intake, and be kind but firm with yourself as you do.
Houseplants with Emotions
I like the adage that we are essentially houseplants with emotions, some would argue of course that plants and trees do have consciousness and is therefore not so far fetched to think they do have emotions too. But all the same we know to give houseplants a good amount of water regularly to keep them alive and well, and we need water to survive, thrive and to stay at our best too.
Because cleaned, drinkable water is so plentiful in the First World we take it for granted and don’t appreciate it as much as we could. We literally do have it on tap in our homes. What we appreciate we value more and so I’d like to remind you of some of the numerous, fabulous benefits of staying hydrated that I think you will appreciate:
And we Have it on Tap!
1 Drinking your 2 litres plus of water a day will keep you strong and energised, and will also address any tendency to overeat or snack by mistaking thirst for hunger.
2 It helps prevent digestive issues such as constipation, gas, bloating, nausea, indigestion and loss of appetite. Slowing down your drinking 15 mins before eating and resuming 1 hour after eating is best to ensure the digestive juices your body naturally produces are able to effectively break down your food and are not disrupted by being diluted by too much water close to the time of eating.
3 We can prevent premature ageing by keeping the water volume in our cells plentiful and meeting our body’s needs for water on a daily basis. It is typical for the elderly to not drink enough, thereby speeding up the ageing process. By being in the habit of responding to our thirst we won’t do the same. Source: The Water Prescription by Christopher Vasey.
4 Stress relief – there is a link between mild dehydration and increased stress hormone production. Staying topped up will also balance out the dehydrating effects of stress on the body, such as increased sweating and breathing more heavily. Source: Water and Stress Reduction: Sipping Stress Away.
Water Enhancers: love will find a way
Lots of motivating good reasons to drink up, right? And there are so many more benefits to drinking water, and since it is the only substance that is essential to life - as we can’t survive more than 3 days without it - I consider it to be the most essential super food. What do you think?
We can further enhance the health-giving properties of water by blessing it with love and gratitude as we drink or use it. A friend of mine likes to place her glass on a phrase she writes on a piece of paper love will find a way, and she can feel the love as she then drinks! She saw this phrase written on a wall by the white spring outside Chalice Well in Glastonbury, my home town, I feel very lucky to live near a natural spring.
You may already be familiar with Masaru Emoto’s Water Experiment and book The Hidden Messages in Water. He discovered that positive feelings such as love change the structure of water cells into beautiful snowflake type shapes, while harmful feelings create ugly, sick-looking shapes when seen under a microscope. It’s worth returning to this concept to connect with the beauty and abundance of this essential resource every day. And when we feel love, joy and gratitude for what’s in our lives that further uplifts us too, win-win.