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My boyfriend, apart from being a wonderful guy, happens to be a mover. Sometimes his clients are also trying to get rid of things, because they won’t fit or for whatever other reasons. One day somebody wanted to get rid of a huge box of books. My boyfriend wanted a couple of them, but he was told if he was going to take any of them, he had to take all of them. Imagine my excitement-like a kid in a candy store–when he came home with this big box of books. There were only a couple of titles that grabbed me on my first look through, but now that I’ve finished those, I’ve realized that quite a lot of them interest me.

What does this have to do with getting healthier? Well, one of these books happened to be a book called New Choices in Natural Healing. It says edited by Bill Gottlieb. That’s the only name on the front. The book is several hundred pages long, including an introductory section which briefly discusses each method of natural healing, and remedies for dozens of common health conditions. Most of these remedies are ancient, and they can be good research for us as writers and as people. What we learn in books like these can be applied both to our every day lives and to our writing–that’s part of what makes it so exciting.

This book contains pretty much everything. They discuss acupressure, aromatherapy, massage, yoga, food therapy, herbal therapy, and I’m sure there’s something I’ve missed. So far I’ve only read a couple of the introductory chapters–acupressure, aromatherapy, massage and yoga–but I’m already fascinated. I’ve got some other books on the go, and they’re library books, so this book will be more of a side project than anything else for the time being. But I’ve already started to make it useful in more ways than one.

Somewhere in the five hundreds, they have a series of illustrations for acupressure, relaxation and meditation, yoga, and reflexology. The yoga exercises which have been illustrated are an excellent basic routine for day to day use. I’ve started to do these yoga exercises in the morning when I wake up, although I haven’t been doing them for long enough to notice much of a difference. During the school year, this might become something I do after school (I doubt that I’ll be up for the task of waking up a half hour early to do yoga), but I do hope to continue. Having the book with the illustrations makes me a lot more likely to do it than if I were to look up yoga online-by the time I’m on the computer, I’m very hard to distract from whatever I’m doing.

I already eat fairly well–mostly veggies and whole grains, since I don’t eat meat–but I don’t spend a lot of time exercising or meditating. Yoga for me is a good combination of both, and it’s something I’ve enjoyed in occasional one hour classes. My brain is such that I could never really remember more than a couple of the exercises though, so having this book to guide me will hopefully help me get into a proper yoga routine.

For those of you who, like me, don’t get a lot of exercise and tend to stress about things, yoga’s a great solution. Part of yoga is focusing on your breathing, and this will help calm you during the exercises and throughout the day. It strengthens your mind and your muscles, and helps you learn to live in the moment. Focusing on breathing and keeping your mind clear from worries will help you focus on your writing, too. Let the focus on your breath that started during your yoga follow you throughout the day, and you’ll probably enjoy your day a lot more–and even get more done.

If you can get your hands on a book or a DVD that will guide you through the first poses of yoga, do so. Start doing them every day and learn them well. Yoga is a mix between stretching, relaxation and exercise; it really is something you can do every day if you put your mind to it. If you can afford a class, that’s even better. Someday I hope to take yoga classes, but for now, with no budget to speak of, I’ll stick with this book I happened into.

How do you try to stay healthy? Have you ever tried yoga?