Don't Just Change: Transform
A Message from Dr. Matt Mumber and Heather Reed:
In our new book, Sustainable Wellness: An Integrative Approach to Transform Your Mind, Body, and Spirit, we introduce a series of safe and reliable techniques that can help you to make adjustments needed to rebalance yourself as you move through the stages of life. These particular techniques come out of Dr. Matt’s extensive training and experience as an integrative radiation oncologist and Heather’s experience as a Yoga and meditation teacher. The book reflects our decade of work with people facing challenges of all kinds – including life threatening ones. Rather than a quick fix or fad diet, this program is grounded in the cultivation of awareness. After interacting with hundreds of people in retreats and group settings, we’ve learned it’s the familiar tools consistently applied that facilitate the greatest benefit and become our strongest allies, even if these tools change over time. Our Website, www.sustainablewellnessonline.com, offers further resources, practices, and ways to stay in touch with us. Please think of us as guides and part of your support team as you take gradual steps toward sustainable wellness. Here’s an excerpt from the book:
A sustainable approach to health should be practical and should fit into everyday situations. Our actions reflect our inner nature, and vice versa: Consistent choices made over time can influence this inner nature and its expression. This is the work of transformation via the use of well-chosen tools. Small changes can have a big impact on our lives. Heather describes this through an experiment she did as a child:
As a little girl, I wandered through summer fields of wild-flowers. Queen Anne’s Lace was always my favorite. I wondered how the rain got into the tiny white petals and asked my father to explain. He said the flowers would show me. We picked a bunch of lacey flowers and placed them in a jar of water. My father asked me to choose among the small vials of food coloring in the kitchen cupboard and to squeeze a few drops into the water. I saw the water turn blue and asked what would happen next. He smiled and said, “You’ll see.” I watched the flowers throughout the day. By the next morning it happened: the tinted water had traveled up the flower stems. The petals were blue!
Later, I learned the science behind the flowers’ transformation. It paled in comparison to the magic that I witnessed with my own eyes. Over time, the power and significance of my experiment has deepened. More than ever, I’m amazed by the effect of a few small drops.
This process is similar to creating a practical and sustainable health practice: The jar and the water represent our inner nature, whereas the flower reflects its expression in life. The drops of coloring are new tools at our disposal. When we use tools that merge with the substance of our inner nature, they are absorbed in a way that feeds our life and changes its expression effortlessly. If we use tools that don’t align with our inner nature, they will not enter into the solution of nourishment. In our example, this would be like dropping a rock into the jar of water. The rock would sink to the bottom and would have no influence on the expression of the flower.
Throughout this book we’ll offer exercises like the small drops of coloring added to the water nourishing the flower. We call these “Yoga Bits” and we encourage you to drop them into your daily life with intention and awareness. They’re helpful in maintaining your chosen health practice and can be performed in as little time as taking a breath.
Dr. Matt Mumber and Heather Reed are the authors of “Sustainable Wellness: An Integrative Approach to Transform Your Mind, Body, and Spirit” published by New Page and due out September 22, 2012. EAN 978-1-60163-234-0, Canada $17.95. Dr. Matt is a 2002 graduate from Dr. Weil’s Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona.
