Living Life by Design
I'm a practical person. I tend to look at life and find the design in it. What was this designed for? How was it designed to function? This greatly affects how I look at things like health, birth, gardening, and education.
In regards to our health, our body was designed to function and live for eternity. Sinful choice brought death originally and our own choices bring a slow death (and sometimes a fast one). A healthy condition is brought about by a balance of eating good food, drinking enough good water, breathing deeply of good air, working, playing and exercising in the sunshine, getting enough sleep, and having a good attitude towards life (one of the best ways to deal with stress). It is not brought about by drugs and being cut on or fad diets or exercise programs. We do not have drug deficiencies, but nutritional deficiencies. All the parts of our body are important so it is best to find out why something is not functioning and then address the root before just cutting it out. Balance is very important in all of this. We can eat right, but if we spend our days in our "cave" sitting at a computer, we will still have problems with health. If we have not learned to breathe deeply but breathe shallowly, then we compromise our health. The same goes for lack of sleep, water, sunshine and being negative and ungrateful. To have good nutrition a large portion of what we eat should be as close to its original state as possible. Raw food contains lots of living enzymes that are destroyed by heat. The more processing and chemicals used to make "food" the less good it will do your body and the more harm.
I had my first 2 babies in the hospital and quite naturally for being hospital births. It still was not what I desired for birth. There were too many interruptions and having to conform to someone else's idea of how birth should be. I then was able to find doctors that were willing to come to my home for the next 2 births. They had nurses there. The focus was still that birth was a medical thing that needed medical personnel there to be "safe." Then I decided to trust G-d in giving birth and for my 5th birth had some friends there along with my family. There were too many people present and it was more like a performance. For my last 2 births, it was just my husband, myself and the One who designed birth. Those were my favorite births. Birth is an intimate experience just as the act that made the baby in the first place and should be guarded from strangers and too many observers. The mother will relax the most in that situation. I know there are times that genuine problems come up in a birth and each situation needs to be evaluated as to whether there is need for help or not. I am not advocating giving birth in ignorance, either. Since our society does not prepare women for birth, a woman needs to seek out information for herself. She and her husband need to pray and seek G-d's leading, too. The best help for a good birth, though, is for a woman to have confidence that she is designed to give birth and a quiet, calm atmosphere in which to birth. Complications are far fewer in that kind of situation than where man puts birth on a schedule and expects it to conform to a certain pattern and tries to make it do so.
Organic gardening is the healthy way to garden. Organic gardening is not just growing fruits and vegetables without chemicals, but it is making a healthy environment for those plants to grow so they are strong and can resist the pests and diseases. Animals are healthiest when grown in natural environments, too, and produce the healthiest meat, eggs and milk for our use.
Our society is artificially oriented in so much of what we do. We eat artificial food and ingest chemical medications and wonder why we are unhealthy. Birth is done in an artificial environment and results in a high proportion of interventions and c-sections. Food is grown in chemical laden soils and becomes bereft of nutrition for humans or animals. Animals are raised in artificial conditions and then become rife with disease and then given antibiotics that throw off the balance. The education of today is artificial, too. Children are not made for sitting in classrooms with a lot of other children their age and learn just from books and the lectures of a teacher. Children were placed in families and are best socialized with all ages. They learn best when they can experience life in natural environments. Children need lots of time for creative play and to think and process what they learn. Education is not memorizing a bunch of information and regurgitating it back. Education is not a bunch of people all learning the same thing and expected not to think and question. Education is lifelong process of learning how to learn and then relating it to the body of knowledge we have already accumulated. It is questioning and thinking and thinking and questioning. It is the freedom to approach a piece of knowledge creatively and use it "outside the box" and possibly come up with something "new" because of it. We live in a real world and learning a good work ethic, managing one's home and finances, finding the joy in creating with one's own hands - these things are what makes for a good life. When we aren't expected to conform to everyone else in what we are learning, we are free to find out how we fit in this world and what our unique purpose is in this life.
In regards to our health, our body was designed to function and live for eternity. Sinful choice brought death originally and our own choices bring a slow death (and sometimes a fast one). A healthy condition is brought about by a balance of eating good food, drinking enough good water, breathing deeply of good air, working, playing and exercising in the sunshine, getting enough sleep, and having a good attitude towards life (one of the best ways to deal with stress). It is not brought about by drugs and being cut on or fad diets or exercise programs. We do not have drug deficiencies, but nutritional deficiencies. All the parts of our body are important so it is best to find out why something is not functioning and then address the root before just cutting it out. Balance is very important in all of this. We can eat right, but if we spend our days in our "cave" sitting at a computer, we will still have problems with health. If we have not learned to breathe deeply but breathe shallowly, then we compromise our health. The same goes for lack of sleep, water, sunshine and being negative and ungrateful. To have good nutrition a large portion of what we eat should be as close to its original state as possible. Raw food contains lots of living enzymes that are destroyed by heat. The more processing and chemicals used to make "food" the less good it will do your body and the more harm.
I had my first 2 babies in the hospital and quite naturally for being hospital births. It still was not what I desired for birth. There were too many interruptions and having to conform to someone else's idea of how birth should be. I then was able to find doctors that were willing to come to my home for the next 2 births. They had nurses there. The focus was still that birth was a medical thing that needed medical personnel there to be "safe." Then I decided to trust G-d in giving birth and for my 5th birth had some friends there along with my family. There were too many people present and it was more like a performance. For my last 2 births, it was just my husband, myself and the One who designed birth. Those were my favorite births. Birth is an intimate experience just as the act that made the baby in the first place and should be guarded from strangers and too many observers. The mother will relax the most in that situation. I know there are times that genuine problems come up in a birth and each situation needs to be evaluated as to whether there is need for help or not. I am not advocating giving birth in ignorance, either. Since our society does not prepare women for birth, a woman needs to seek out information for herself. She and her husband need to pray and seek G-d's leading, too. The best help for a good birth, though, is for a woman to have confidence that she is designed to give birth and a quiet, calm atmosphere in which to birth. Complications are far fewer in that kind of situation than where man puts birth on a schedule and expects it to conform to a certain pattern and tries to make it do so.
Organic gardening is the healthy way to garden. Organic gardening is not just growing fruits and vegetables without chemicals, but it is making a healthy environment for those plants to grow so they are strong and can resist the pests and diseases. Animals are healthiest when grown in natural environments, too, and produce the healthiest meat, eggs and milk for our use.
Our society is artificially oriented in so much of what we do. We eat artificial food and ingest chemical medications and wonder why we are unhealthy. Birth is done in an artificial environment and results in a high proportion of interventions and c-sections. Food is grown in chemical laden soils and becomes bereft of nutrition for humans or animals. Animals are raised in artificial conditions and then become rife with disease and then given antibiotics that throw off the balance. The education of today is artificial, too. Children are not made for sitting in classrooms with a lot of other children their age and learn just from books and the lectures of a teacher. Children were placed in families and are best socialized with all ages. They learn best when they can experience life in natural environments. Children need lots of time for creative play and to think and process what they learn. Education is not memorizing a bunch of information and regurgitating it back. Education is not a bunch of people all learning the same thing and expected not to think and question. Education is lifelong process of learning how to learn and then relating it to the body of knowledge we have already accumulated. It is questioning and thinking and thinking and questioning. It is the freedom to approach a piece of knowledge creatively and use it "outside the box" and possibly come up with something "new" because of it. We live in a real world and learning a good work ethic, managing one's home and finances, finding the joy in creating with one's own hands - these things are what makes for a good life. When we aren't expected to conform to everyone else in what we are learning, we are free to find out how we fit in this world and what our unique purpose is in this life.