I’m note-taking my way through David B. Agus, MD and his The End of Illness. Dr. Agus, a top cancer expert, does his best to lay out where we are biologically and medically speaking. And what we can do about our individual health destinies.

I’m learning a lot, including finally taking the plunge into genetic testing (which his company conveniently does). The testing – not cheap – is not for myself alone, I tell myself, but for descendents. I want them, and me, to have as much information as possible. This testing promises a great deal and the book illustrates what you’ll get.

Dr. Agus got my attention early on in talking about cancer to a prestigious medical audience, “We’ve made a mistake.” The mistake is not honoring the body [mind and spirit] as a whole, but focusing smaller and smaller. “We don’t necessarily need to understand cancer to control it.” p 28

Dr. Agus says, and demonstrates again and again, that prevention is our best hope for long healthy lives. He talks of trade-offs in ways I understand: Drink a glass of red wine every night and you help your heart – But may be encouraging cancer. He notes those people relying on human growth hormone may later be up a deep creek. As my father used to say: “You pays your money, and you makes your choice.”

The information in this book is prodigious – inflammation, the inside body’s inflammation, is now on my radar in a bigger way and I’ll be even more careful with diet and exercise. While new ideas fall off the page, some sort-of-old ones get great encouragement: Michael Pollen and his The Future of Food and the value, and medical history, of exercise are examples. As Ellen Degeneres says, “Grandma started walking at 75, and now we don’t know where the hell she is.”

Can exercise physically reverse aging? Stalling or slowing down aging is one thing, but what about literally (and obviously physiologically) shifting it into a reverse gear? This question has sparked exploration of another exciting area, and though it may sound like science fiction, we already have some proof to consider. In 2008 a team of Canadian and American researchers showed that exercise can partially help reverse aging at the cellular level. They looked at the effects of six months of strength training in elderly volunteers aged sixty-five and older, taking small biopsies of thigh-muscle cells from the seniors before and after the six months. The researchers then compared the cells with muscle cells from twenty-six young volunteers whose average age was twenty-two. The scientists expected to find evidence that the program improved the seniors’ strength, which it did by 50 percent; but they were quite bewildered by the dramatic changes they found in gene expression. The gene expression in the muscle-cell fingerprint of the elderly volunteers who’d gone through the strength-training program was reversed nearly to that of younger people. In other words, their muscle gene-expression profile resembled that of a younger group. p 228

Now here is something to think about the next time I’m tempted to skip my exercise routine!

I thank Dr. Agus for writing The End of Illness. I may not know exactly where I am health wise, and more importantly prevention wise, but I’m getting a better handle on location and navigation. This book offers real support in helping us all learn why we should, and how we can, be our own doctor.

Break your heart, Hawai’i. Breathtaking beauty and the next minute you’re watching a comatose woman dying in Queen Emma’s hospital in Honolulu.

 The Descendants pulls off the miracle of expressing George Clooney’s personal tragedy and an underlying sorrow of Hawaii: the land, the land. In outward form we follow the Clooney character as he struggles with two rebellious daughters. And with learning that his wife has betrayed him. With a real estate promoter.

Clooney travels to Kaua’i. What a pleasure to see our beautiful scenery with Hanalei people so authentically portrayed. But all the while a real estate deal is beating down the door, and most cousins want their share. George Clooney should sell his inherited - probably ill-gotten by the missionaries - land, for unbelievable sums of money.

Friends call me with surprise ringing in their voices to say how The Descendants reminds them of my recent novel Princess Ruth: Love and Tragedy in Hawai’i. And that they feel they’ve learned the truth behind where a lot of those Hawaiian bodies are buried. I happily say, Yes, and refer them to this quote in Princess Ruth from Kaui Hart Hemmings that, for me, encapsulates modern Hawaii with its missionary past still impacting the present:

            To their credit, the cousins (the writer’s cousins) are not greedy or gaudy or ostentatious. Their sole purpose in life is to have fun. They jet ski, motorcross, surf, paddle, run triathlons, rent islands in Tahiti. Indeed, some of the most powerful people in Hawaii look like bums or stuntmen. I think of our bloodline’s progression. Our missionary ancestors came to the islands and told the Hawaiians to put on some clothes, work hard, and stop hula dancing. They make some business deals on the way, buying an island for ten grand, or marrying a princess and inheriting her land, and now their descendants don’t work. They have stripped down to running shorts or bikinis and play beach volleyball and take up hula dancing. – Quoted page 68 Princess Ruth.

 Will Clooney’s inherited Kauai land be sold for tons of development money? (Think of gated houses for the one percent.) Or will George preserve Kauai’s exquisite natural beauty for his descendants? You’ll have to see the movie.

I Almost Divorced My Husband But I Went On Strike Instead by Sherri Mills is for women only and very smart men. This 40-year hairdresser picks right up where Betty Friedan leaves off: Who will raise the kids and who will perform householder tasks?

 This defining excellent book is a must-read for women—a statement that would set me dead against the book—except read it and you will learn, and squirm, as this 40-year hairdresser takes on a societal problem that did me, and my PhD, in with barely a struggle.

“What?” you ask.

“Householder responsibilities,” is the answer.

Well duh. You’d think us bright women would have figured it out: The only way a married guy is really going to “get it” is if he has to walk a mile in your “raising a kid is the hardest no-sleep job I ever had” shoes. Sherri shows us how we’re our own worst enemy. We do it to ourselves—would the husband have time to play around with other women if he did his fair share at home? Think about it: you both take care of the work at home and you both have leftover time and energy to play.

“The biggest reason my domestic strike was a success,” says Sherri on page 102, “was because, through the process of drawing up the [marriage] contract, I slowly realized that my problem wasn’t personal. My husband wasn’t a jerk, and his disrespect wasn’t aimed at me. I saw that the problem wasn’t our men. We women were dealing with a societal problem.”          

Resentment is the outcome when things are unfair (you do the householder work; he watches tv). And resentment turns us women crazy and we get divorces from marriages that could be not only saved but made happy. Sherri includes lots of how-to instructions, warnings, a Fair Marriage Contract, and Chore Lists to raise your awareness.

Study I Almost Divorced and wise up for yourself, your kids, and fair-minded women and men everywhere.

Princess Ruth: Love and Tragedy in Hawaii is a great read! The spirit, culture, history, and people of this land resonated with my own experiences like no other novel of Hawaii I have read. Samantha’s mystical tie with Princess Ruth gives a very personal glimpse into this little-known historic figure. - Linda Pascatore - Co-Editor of IslandBreath.org

Rats! I ran out of book. Finished Princess Ruth last night. Loved it. So much more than I was expecting. Congratulations. You do good work. I passed it along to Deb. Phredd

If you want to know what goes on in Hawai’i, you have to read this book. - Lisette Langlois - Holistic Health Practitioner

Beyond being a great read, Princess Ruth has given my understanding of the Hawaiian overthrow much more depth, sensitivity and heart. Princess Ruth reads with integrity and presents some of the sweetest prose ever. - Michaela Boudreaux - Crystal Expert

I’ve no connection with Ellie Phillips, DDS author of a most informative Kiss Your Dentist Goodbye. Other than blindly checking Kiss from the library, learning enough to immediately change my dental habits, and getting angry enough to write this Blog, consider me non-involved.

Anger comes from learning my (was) respected health store provider sold me a toothpaste - touting Xylitol (good for your teeth). But then first on the list of ingredients is Sorbitol (bad for your teeth and body). If you can’t trust your health-care people, who can you trust?

And why do I trust dentist/author Ellie Phillips when I’ve scarcely finished Kiss Your Dentist Goodbye? Because she tells her story as a dentist, woman and mother with detail and documentation. I believe her. And I’ve already started her program (it helps that I’ve recently broken a tooth). My pound of Xyla (xylitol) is recently bought - two teaspoons a day for maximum benefit. I put a daily amount in a small dish and dip my finger from time to time. And chew xylitol gum. But, as I was warned, work up to the two teaspoons slowly as there is a strong laxative effect.

Save Your Teeth: And Enjoy the Process gets my vote for a new title for Kiss Your Dentist Goodbye.

Just gave myself an awesome birthday gift—finishing my three-year novel: Princess Ruth: Love and Tragedy in Hawai’i. This was/is an ambitious undertaking, way over my head. So often, struggling at the door of the next thing to do, I was tempted to let go as I didn’t know what that next thing was. Then, without fail, something would happen to move me forward with writing and planning. Princess Ruth remains an organic process with so many hands and hearts lifted to help me.

 What a relief to finish! Or abandon, [Somebody said, “Books aren’t finished, there’re abandoned”]. I’ve needed to remember this, realizing I could spend the rest of my life chasing perfection. Now only remain a few printing decisions and Princess Ruth flies on her own. With, I hope a lot of help “getting the word out’ from you and you!

I begin picking up the threads of my put-aside life. I sit in the marvelous decision of which strands to pick up first: hula dancing, neglected garden, order in the kitchen, visiting with a friend, reading for fun? A pure treasure of time and choice awaits. In this moment, anything is possible—even cleaning my storage closet, even rescuing almost forgotten collage materials. What a luxury to have time and health and how interesting on this rainy dark morning in Hawai’i to feel blessed beyond measure.

Look for Princess Ruth in a month or so: my web pages, Amazon, Kindle.

And what have I learned lately?

I’m appreciating anew the blessings of routine and habit. Walking every day and face and stretching exercises anchor and confer health and that all important feeling good (what will I do now that Ophra’s gone). But I’m learning to just do it; do the walk, the exercise. Don’t think about it—just do it!

A book I’m studying and marking and studying again is Carolyn Myss’s Defy Gravity: Healing Beyond the Bounds of Reason.

See post Avoiding the Prescription Train.

Manifestation: How to Bring into Being what you wish has long been of interest. Healing. Better relationships. Money. Happier lives. I can do manifestation. I have done it. I just don’t know how I do it. My hit or miss method with manifestation works swimmingly at times. Other times, not so hot.

Three books add enormously to my conception of reality. And how to create spaces that better please and satisfy. These books required much effort from their authors. I am deeply grateful to each of them.

In the order they entered my life: Jill Bolte Taylor, My Stroke of Insight, Kenneth Smith (Ken Eagle Feather), Awakening the Energy Body: From Shamanism to Bioenergetics, and Deborah Denicola, The Future That Brought Her Here: A Memoir of a Call to Awaken.

My Stroke of Insight helped me ‘get it’ about right and left brain. And how we know things without knowing how we know. Jill Taylor’s description of negative people (energy vampires) and their impact makes a deep impression. Sensing energy from others, Jil Taylor quickly decides that she is responsible for protecting/conserving/spending-well her own precious life energy.

“One of the greatest lessons I learned was how to feel the physical component of emotion…. I knew that no one had the power to make me feel anything, except for me and my brain,”pp 120-1. For me, Jil Taylor’s insights provide a foundation, from the inside out, of how our brains and bodies function. For what it’s worth, I did not read her pages in order, but did read them all.

 Awakening the Energy Body. This astonishing work expands my knowledge of energy and reality. And how to use and better integrate them into a creative life.

Creativity, or bringing something into being, results from the interaction between form and potential. Form is cohesion, a type of energy field. Potential is abstract energy; that is, energy that has possibilities of realization but isn’t there yet. Pure potential is completely abstract, the infinite creation, which contains everything but has no form.

How these energies play together determines what is created—the imagings of our life and world. p 136

How purely refreshing to find someone actively exploring how to live a more human life, imaging our positive potential future. I have not finished studying this book.

Deborah Denicola’s, The Future That Brought Her Here: A Memoir of a Call to Awaken is a fabulous title and so is this book! My feminine soul delights in this well-written, fascinating depiction of one woman’s journey – well part of it, because she’s not finished yet. “Spirit doesn’t create our fate; it just reflects back to us how we create our own. And it’s there for us, if we ask,” she says on page 136.

What is deeply satisfying to me in this memoir is how I resonate and understand these spiritual experiences that are off the beaten path; I, too, live many of them.

We understood that we could state what we wanted and put it out there for the universe to deliver. However, we all knew, as well, that timing is key; because the cause/effect relationship on the Earth plane is much slower than it is in other dimensions. Yet a persistent practice and the right attitude can help enormously. John had taught me to state my preferences for what I want, but accept in peace whatever comes as a part of my growth. I kept this lesson close to my heart. If we can undo our negative thoughts by being positive 51 percent of the time, we can effectively co-create. p 301

            Staying positive 51 percent of the time – now that is doable!

The feminine way of knowing is one of many direct routes into wholeness. With its emphasis on faith, intuition, and inner vision, it is now gaining respect over the dominating rational mind and patriarchal logos we have experienced and expanded for five millennia.  

By the time I got to this quote on page six of Deborah Denicola’s, The Future That Brought Her Here: A Memoir of a Call to Awaken, Ibis Press, 2009, I was firmly fascinated. What fun to find an entertaining, far-out-there book that nicely confirmed many of my own experiences—yet was teaching and showing more details of a future each of us are making.

Once started, I not only quickly finished The Future That Bought Her Here (what a great title!), but I got on the internet to learn more about the author -  http://intuitivegateways.com/books_the_future_that_brought_her_here.shtml

Deborah Denicola was giving a Dream Workshop about an hour away; there was a phone number and when I called, low and behold, Deborah was willing to meet with me early at the bookstore—so enjoyable to meet a fellow poet; in our free-ranging discussion, I found her delightful and informative.

I’m interested in a lot of things as you can tell from my writings (see my newly designed website and all those ebooks for sale—a little commercial here folks!). My spiritual journey is important to me as it provides motivation and support, sometimes desperately needed over the years. Our truthful inner woman’s experience hasn’t gotten much credence in our society. Deborah Denicola’s, The Future That Brought Her Here helps change that. This quote demonstrates:

I knew that inner changes can happen by holding and sustaining an intended image consistently and faithfully, until it is a stable new field of reality that I can then step into and inhibit….. success is happiness. A psychic named Angel Gail once told me that. And happiness is a psychic state within that does not necessarily translate into material comforts, but rather into spiritual wholeness, love for others, and self-acceptance.

            We all need all the help we can get. This book helps.

And moving right along, there’s an interesting study showing how as women age we need more exercise if we’re not to gain a middle-age, or more! spread. An hour a day is what they’re suggesting. As one who has quite consistently kept her weight where she wants it for years, I find five or six brisk half hour walks a week will do the trick. Eating really healthy food and drinking and taking ‘right for you’ supplements also make huge differences. Try walking; its fun. And good for you as it also gets you out in the sunlight - which we also need.