How to keep your energy high throughout the day
Wednesday, August 8th, 2007Learning how to conserve energy throughout the day is one of the most important things one can learn. Proper energy conservation ensures that one always has the energy required when it is needed most. What’s important to know is that unless you are specifically doing some activity to gain energy, your body is always losing energy. The reason for this is a concept from physics called entropy, the second law of Thermodynamics.
Fundamentally, the Law of Entropy states that all types of energy spontaneously disperses from where it is concentrated, to where it is more spread out, if it isn’t hindered from doing so. The classic example used by John Baines is that of two adjacent rooms with a closed insulated door in between. If the temperature in one room is eighty degrees and the temperature in the other is twenty degrees, what would happen if you opened the door? With the hindrance removed (the door’s insulation), the high energy of the eighty-degree room would disperse into the twenty-degree room until both rooms had the same amount of energy (at about fifty degrees). Make sense?
Another manifestation of the Law of Entropy is the tendency of things to move from a state of order to a state of disorder, unless additional energy is spent to keep them in order. Imagine the place where you live. It is always getting dustier, and more out of order unless you (or someone else) put energy into cleaning it. If you left your home unattended for a year, would you expect it to be cleaner or dirtier when you returned? That is entropy in action.
What does this mean for us? It means that the high level of energy we accumulate in the morning will still be dissipated into the relatively lower level of energy in the environment around us — unless we take actions to hinder that from happening. Here are some of the key reasons our energy dissipates and ways to conserve it better:
- Muscle Tension: Unconscious muscle tension burns up a tremendous amount of energy. Imagine making a tight fist with your hand and holding it for one minute (try it if you’d like). How tired would your hand be afterwards? This is basically what we do all day, but unconsciously in our backs, necks, jaws, stomachs, etc. Imagine keeping your fist clenched all day, and you will get an idea of how much energy you would save by learning how to keep those muscles relaxed.
To preserve energy lost in unconscious muscle tension, try the following:
- Exercise helps to release muscle tension, so make sure to maintain your exercise routine.
- Relaxation is a wonder. Either in silence or with some peaceful music lie down and place your focus on each part of your body, starting with your feet, and relax each part as you get to it.
- Try Yoga or Tai Chi. They are both excellent natural ways to relax and get more in touch with your body.
- Massage and reflexology are also great ways to treat yourself, and reduce energy loss due to muscle tension.
- Stress: Almost everyone knows what stress feels like, but what is it, really? Basically, stress is your body adjusting to its environment. Positive stress puts you in gear to tackle challenges, or gets you out of imminent physical danger by triggering your “fight or flight” response. What is damaging (and energy draining) is the long-term, chronic stress that many of us are affected by in our busy lives. We finish our days (months, years…), feeling “drained” by the various demands and stresses placed upon us.
Modern stress can be so draining and damaging to our bodies, because it is normally triggered by psychological rather than actual physical dangers. We are no longer chased by tigers — we are chasing deadlines (or our own perceived notions of “success”) — but our bodies still produce the same “fight or flight” response. The body produces all of the chemicals and hormones that we need to prepare us to fight for our lives (like cortisol and adrenaline), to the detriment of using this energy for other growth and regeneration-related processes. Typical effects of the “fight or flight” response are:
- The heart rate and blood pressure soar to increase the flow of blood to the brain in order to improve quick decision making
- The body uses its energy storage to increase the blood sugar level in order to provide more available fuel for immediate energy
- Blood moves from the stomach and the digestive system, to the muscles in order to provide maximum strength.
- Blood clotting occurs more quickly to protect the body in case of injury.
As we stated previously, all of these reactions are appropriate if we are facing a life and death situation, but what do you think would happen if we have this type of reaction in the body every day, or even constantly throughout the day?
Well, increased blood pressure causes hypertension, increased blood sugar causes diabetes, decreased digestive ability can cause all sorts of gastrointestinal problems, and unnecessary blood clotting can cause a stroke. In fact, it has been estimated that 75-90% of all visits to primary care physicians are to address stress related problems. Daily stress burns our energy at an alarming rate and deteriorates our health by keeping our body in “attack and protect” mode instead of “grow and repair” mode.
How do we learn to live less stressful lives? As we know, stress usually causes muscle tension, so many of the suggestions from the previous section will also help relieve us from stress. Another great method for overcoming stress is to do one thing (and only one thing) at a time with the body, heart, and mind. This requires the ability to concentrate and not be distracted — a complete union of thoughts, emotions and actions reduces the amount of expended energy, and improves efficiency — you will probably get a lot more done and be much less tired doing it.
Many people think one thing while feeling and doing another. How often do we find ourselves doing just that? Upset about a previous argument, or worried about an upcoming event, we perform our daily tasks without really being involved in what we are doing. Furthermore, with our minds and hearts elsewhere, we divide ourselves even more by trying to increase efficiency through “multitasking”. In fact, many studies have shown that juggling between many different tasks can actually give you less ability to successfully perform each task and can take you more time overall to complete them all than if you had completed one task at a time. Therefore, contrary to what we may think, multitasking makes us less efficient, less effective, and more stressed out (draining our precious energy).
Many times we do things reluctantly and with the inner wish that we didn’t have to do them, complaining the entire time either vocally or in our heads. This is like driving with your feet on the gas pedal and on the brake at the same time — and the results are the same — burning up many times more energy than is necessary to achieve the desired result.
As we stated earlier, stress triggers the “fight or flight” response in us, which is our body’s reaction when we are afraid for our lives — therefore stress is a manifestation of fear. Emotions, such as fear, have a profound effect on our energy level. Let’s examine this phenomenon below.
- Negative Thoughts and Emotions: Did you know that your emotional state affects your energy level? Have you ever seen a depressed person who is bounding with energy? Have you ever had such a heated argument that you were completely exhausted afterwards? Our daily emotional responses to life have a lot to do with our rate of entropy (that is, the rate at which we lose energy). John Baines says, “negative emotions pull us down; superior emotions raise us.”
In Power vs. Force, Dr. David R. Hawkins states that our emotions and attitudes have a profound effect on our level of energy and either strengthen or weaken us (and those around us) at every moment (pp. 68-69). In fact Dr. Hawkins asserts that positive emotional states such as: trust, optimism, acceptance, forgiveness, reason, understanding, love, reverence, joy, serenity, peace, and bliss make us stronger and help us to feel more energized. And negative emotional states such as: pride, scorn, anger, unbridled desire, fear, anxiety, grief, regret, despair, apathy, guilt, blame, shame and humiliation make us weaker, draining our vital energy.
Let’s take a closer look at fear (also called worry or anxiety at different levels of intensity), which is a particularly powerful negative emotion, to see how it affects our energy level. Remember what we said about stress triggering our “fight or flight” response? All of our fears trigger that same response. Moreover, the same chemicals and hormones that are produced when we are stressed are produced when we are afraid, with all of the damaging effects discussed above. Any time we are overcome by fear, we burn up our energy for a false alarm and shut down our natural ability to digest, grow, and heal. Furthermore, each of our fears is another limit — something that we avoid — and 360 Degree Success is all about overcoming limits.
Fear is just one of the negative emotions that suck our energy daily. Each negative emotion puts us on a low wavelength that drains us. Look at the list of negative emotions above and think about how many of those emotions invade us throughout the day. Each negative emotional outburst (whether expressed or repressed) literally drains our life force. Repression of negative emotions can be even worse than expressing them because you either become a ticking time bomb, ready to explode at any moment, or the negativity remains inside of you and rots, continuing to damage your system until it is released.
So, how do we overcome negative emotions, if we don’t want to repress them? We learn to sublimate negative feelings and be more positive overall — but this is a skill that must be learned overtime. Try some of the exercises here, from the Institute for Hermetic Philosophy, to work on sublimating negative emotions.
It is also important not to be sucked into anyone else’s negative emotions as well. Have you ever had an experience when you were feeling positive and great, until someone comes to you expressing anger or depression — and it just ruins your day? Their negative feelings drag you down to their level, and you spend the rest of the day replaying the scene in your mind, thinking about the negative experience over and over again. Negative emotions can be as contagious as a disease (and sometimes as destructive). It is important to focus on remaining positive and avoiding potentially negative situations whenever possible.
- Diet: Okay, we all know that diet affects our energy level, but most of us still don’t eat as well as we should to maximize our potential. Knowledge of biophysics gives the old expression “you are what you eat” a brand-new significance, as we will see below. Since I am no dietician, let’s just go over some general rules that should improve your energy:
1. Eat as many raw organic vegetables and fruits as you can: Modern science tells us that all living cells emit pulses light, called biophotons. And it has been discovered that the quality of food may be determined by the nature of the biophotons it emits. Guess which foods emit the best (as in least entropic) biophotons? You got it. Fresh raw organic vegetables and fruits. Many experts claim that 70% of your diet should consist of this type of food, but I personally just try to eat as much of them as I can.
2. Keep the sugar intake down: Refined sugar is bad, bad, bad for you. While it provides a quick perceived energy “boost”, it also elevates your levels of insulin and stress hormones, which damage the main energy producers in your cells, the mitochondria, over time. Once the cell’s energy producers are damaged, you will have a very hard time recharging your batteries. And that goes directly against what we are trying to do here. Do those cookies and sodas still taste so sweet when you know that they are draining away your life energy and your possibilities for 360 Degree Success?
3. Drink enough pure water: As our bodies are over 70% water, we need to make sure that we remain properly hydrated. Even light dehydration can make you feel more tired and sluggish, and affect your mental capacity. Even more interesting, science has proven that water maintains the energy frequency of any substance that has been dissolved into it — even when there is almost nothing left of the original substance. Water, therefore, conducts and stores energy. (Read The Message from Water, by Dr. Masuro Emoto to see how thoughts and words also alter the structure of water.)
Most experts say to drink eight glasses of water throughout the day. Even better if it has been purified and non-fluoridated. According to the incredible book, Water & Salt: The Essence of Life, by Dr. Med. Barbara Hendel and Peter Ferreira, the best water you can drink is FIJI brand artesian bottled water.
4. Avoid drugs of any kind whenever possible: Your body is the most amazing pharmacy in existence. Read Candace Pert’s brilliant Molecules of Emotion to get an idea of its complexity. Anything else that we add to the mix merely gets in the way of our body’s normal method of keeping us in equilibrium. In addition, both prescription and non-prescription drugs can have dangerous side effects.
Read Kevin Trudeau’s Natural Cures “They” Don’t Want You to Know About to learn more about the havoc drugs can cause in your body. Of course, if we have a serious condition that requires medication, continue what you are doing by all means. However, any unnecessary or “recreational” drug use should be seriously curtailed or stopped completely.
The increased awareness you achieve by being more connected to your Essence is a better and longer-lasting high than you can get from any drug anyway. Don’t most people get into drugs because life seems so boring and mundane? If you focus on achieving 360 Degree Success, you will open the doorway to an exciting new adventure called your real life, and you will never feel that life is boring again. Trust me on that one.
- Masturbation: All right, I said it; the “M” word. Even though most sex experts say that this is a healthy way to get rid of tension, we know that it drains us. Deep down, we know. In Morals for the 21st Century, John Baines uses a voltmeter to show the effects of masturbation on the level of bioelectric energy (the “L-fields”) in the body. The results show that masturbation causes a significant and substantial drop in the level of energy in the body, while normal sexual activity provides a slight boost to the body’s level of energy. There is no judgment here. Do what you want. It’s just science.
So, now we have a greater understanding of energy, and the ways to gain and regulate energy throughout our day. Let’s use these tools to keep us charged up, energized and aware throughout our day.
