Healthful

Grounding will always be an important skill, no matter how ‘advanced’ you become, so take the time to learn this now and to be able to do it effortlessly.
Stand in the ‘Standing Stake”. Go through the breathing and Full Body Awareness exercises. Visualize roots growing from your feet down through the core of the earth, just like a tree. In later meditations you can add some variety by seeing the roots flow down to a large crystal at the earth’s core. Depending on the effect you want you can vary the crystals and access different energies, but that obviously beyond the scope of this exercise.
As you inhale feel the energy of the earth being drawn up through your roots and up through your body and out through the top of your head.
On your exhale, let that energy drop back down through your body and feel all the accumulated stress of your life flow out with it and back down through your roots and into the earth. Feel your muscles relax as the stress flows out. This is a good way to release all your stresses, fears, angers and feelings of inadequacy. Repeat this exercise for awhile, as many times as necessary to clean yourself out.
There’s nothing wrong (and a lot of benefit) to stopping at this point and just doing these exercises that we’ve learned up to this point, until they become completely effortless. Whenever you feel yourself stressed or angry learn to take a moment and ground yourself and let those feelings just flow out.
Progressive Relaxation
Progressive Relaxation is easy to do and you can do it anywhere and anytime.
Assume your meditation position of choice (I like the half-lotus on a zafu) and go through all the exercises I’ve covered up to this point. Now just take a moment and feel the relaxed energy that you should have after grounding and releasing all your stress. Are you ready to get deeper into this feeling?
Feel the energy that flows up through your roots and into your feet. Now make ‘fists’ with your feet by curling your toes in as far as you can until it hurts, then relax. Now let that relaxed feeling flow from your toes back over your feet and feel them relax.
As you inhale draw that relaxed feeling up over your ankles and feel them relax completely. On the exhale let any residual stress flow back out and down through the earth.
On your next inhale draw that relaxed feeling back up over your calves, letting them relax after walking all day.
Then, draw that relaxed energy up over your thighs with the next inhale. They’re the biggest muscles in the body, so let them relax and rest now.
As you inhale feel that relaxed feeling flow up over your hips and buttocks. Feel the stress bleed away. We store a lost of stress here, so take a moment and let this area relax.
Now draw that relaxed feeling up over your stomach and lower back. Feel the muscles in your back relax and feel your stomach move with your inhale.
Bring the energy up over your chest and the middle of your back. Feel your heart area expand with the relaxed energy and feel all the accumulated stress in between your shoulder blades release and flow out and back down with your exhale.
Draw the feeling of relaxation up over your shoulders and neck. Feel any residual tension flow out with your exhale.
Now let that relaxed energy flow up and over your head. Let the muscles of your face and those at the base of your skull relax.
Now just sit here and feel this relaxed body that you have. Remember this feeling as its how you should feel all the time. Tense muscles store energy, which means that your energy isn’t flowing through you, but rather sticking in certain places in your body.
When your muscles are relaxed then your energy flows unimpeded leaving you feeling much lighter and more refreshed.

Unsaturated Fats
This can be sub-divided into two classes, namely mono-unsaturated fat and poly-unsaturated fat. These fats are good because they lower LDL (bad cholesterol) and raise HDL (good cholesterol). Mono-unsaturated fat can be found in olives; olive oil; canola oil; peanut oil; cashews, almonds, peanuts and most other nuts; avocados, while poly-unsaturated fat is available in corn, soybean, safflower and cottonseed oils; fish.

Saturated Fats
The familiar saturated fat is embedded in most of our favorite foods such us whole milk, butter, cheese and ice cream; red meat; chocolate; coconuts, coconut milk and coconut oil. We are aware that these foods are unhealthy but yet cannot bear to stay away from. These fats raises both LDL (bad) and HDL (good).

Trans Fats
Trans fatty acid (TFA) are formed when liquid vegetable oils goes through "hydrogenation", a chemical process to make an oil more solid so that it has a longer shelf life in baked products, longer fry life for cooking oils, and can provide a certain kind of texture to processed foods. These fats can easily be found in hundreds of processed products of which the ingredients contain "partially hydrogenated vegetable oil" or "hydrogenated vegetable oil". Most margarines; deep-fried chips; many fast foods and most commercial baked goods are producers of trans fats. They raise not only LDL (bad) and but also lower HDL (good). In reality, they are the most harmful materials that we are taking without any notice.

What harms can trans fat do to us? Two of the most possible ones are:

1. It clogs the arteries of the heart, making them more rigid.
2. It increases insulin resistance, increasing your chances of developing Type 2 diabetes.

Spending over US$100 million on three clinical studies, Harvard University has reported that people who eat significant amounts of partially hydrogenated vegetable oil are more prone to the risk of heart disease. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has enacted legislation on July 9, 2003 requiring manufacturers of food and some dietary supplements to list trans fat on a separate line, and is effective from January next year. FDA estimates that three years after the effective date, trans fat labeling would annually prevent some 600 to 1200 heart attacks and could save 250 to 500 lives.

It may be unrealistic to avoid all trans fat as it can be found in some natural dairy products, too. The best approach is to consume less processed foods that are possible sources of trans fats. So, the next time when you go to supermarkets to replenish your foods, don’t forget to look at the labels before you take them home.