WHY DO WE WANT TO BE HEALTHY?

At our retreats we hold classes every day to educate our clients on the subject of health. That’s why they go home full of ideas on how to live healthy, and why so many of them tell us about their new healthy lifestyle several months and years after an Olive Retreat. Health starts with knowledge. Knowledge empowers us to take action. In other words, we learn what the options are and what to try when moving forward in our health journey.

What we noticed over the years is that people in their late twenties and early thirties are joining our retreats more than before. All of them have one thing in common no matter where they come from or what their age: they all come with questions! Especially about nutrition. They crave information, but more so they crave someone to trust. The “experts” tell us new things to do every week, and what was healthy a few years ago is what makes us ill now.

The lack of trust this creates stems from a lack of understanding of our needs. If we don’t trust our body signals, no expert, no matter how educated they are, will be able to help. Science evolves, and new evidence and "proofs" will change recommendations in time. We can get information from experts, but only as individuals can we know what is good for us, which is why we ultimately teach body awareness. You have to rely on yourself. Feel in not out, and trust the 13.7 billion years of evolution that brought us here in the first place. Nature knows what is healthy. We are nature.

 

Why don’t we want to be healthy?

Once you have the knowledge it's only a matter of doing it, right? Is it really that easy?

No, not at all. Research shows us it's not easy. We know what to do, but we don’t do it. Smoking is a good example. Every smoker knows it's unhealthy. So why is it so hard to quit? After all the questions about food are answered, why don't people eat in a healthy way?

To find our own health and wellbeing seems to be so difficult for most people, whether it's getting rid of bad habits, keeping stress levels down, or cooking our own food. Our society and way of living doesn’t always support our efforts. It seems that many off us have to suffer the loss of loved ones, illnesses, or accidents to become committed. So what is the key factor needed to start a healthy lifestyle, both for the body and the mind?  No matter how healthy we eat, or how much exercise we do, we still need to know why we do it, or it's not going to last longer than the most recent diet or a gym card.

 

Self Love

After all these years we see one reason underlying all the different manifestations of unhealthy living: the lack of love for ourselves, and for life. That makes us live unhealthy, and unaware of our being unhealthy. If we don’t really see the point in being alive, then why be healthy? And when we fall out of good habits and into bad ones, we often justify them as something we "have earned", or "are worth" because we have worked so hard, or have had such a tough life. That form of reasoning is the total opposite of love. It is a reasoning of extreme self-pity and self-punishment. Pity is the worst obstacle to compassion and love. Pity is passive. Compassion is a responsible action, and a large ingredient in compassion is understanding, especially for ourselves.

When we achieve this state of awareness we have a choice. Not everyone will choose to be healthy when the awareness arrives, which is perfectly fine. No one can make us live healthy unless we want to, or make us want to live if we don’t want to. It's always a question we have to answer for ourselves and the answer has to be respected by our loved ones. Our experience is that it's very rarely a true choice. To live and be healthy is a life force, an instinct, something beyond our intellect, inherited and programed in our cells. Those who chose to continue being unhealthy are living through reasoning and intellect, and that's always painful. It's not wrong. We don't believe there is anything wrong or right. It's only about feeling, about how it feels. If a destructive habit like smoking feels good, it is therefore in a way healthy, so one should keep enjoying it instead of beating one's self up for it. But if we know we had a choice to quit, we believe we would. We recommend that we seek the causes for unhealthy habits, and that's part of our Mind Detox program.

All of us can appreciate life when awareness of choice comes to us. We can all be grateful that life, that choice, was given to us, the place and time it was given to us, and learn to respect it.

Only then can we be healthy and totally alive.

 

Love,

Olive Retreat

 

 

We hope you enjoyed this little cookbook. For more information about Olive Retreat please visit us at: www.oliveretreat.com.

We would also like to invite you to read our other books, available on our website.