Many people tend to gravitate toward caffeine via coffee and chocolates and more sweets, to get through. Unfortunately, this can be a huge mistake. The caffeine addiction cycle only leads to addiction and eventual burnout. Natural energy is not a hard thing to achieve.
Now before we get to the 10 most important factors that conserve and build vitality, it's important you know that, VITALITY IS NOT THE SAME AS "BEING ENERGETIC". Many seemingly energetic people live on stimulants, for example, such as sugar, drugs, coffee or other caffeinated foods or drinks. Many things can stimulate a person, such as anger, fear, sexual drive, music on the radio, various foods such as sugars, drugs such as ADD drugs and more. However, these destroy vitality, rather than enhance it.
Let's begin!!
1. Food & Diet -- include eating habits such as food quantity, food habits, chewing and so forth. See the articles on the Fast Oxidizer and Slow Oxidizer diets for more on this subject.
2. Drinking Water is Most Important -- The best overall drinking water for most people is either steam distilled water for only up to about three to six months, and for long-term use the best is a good quality spring water. It does not matter if you must buy it in plastic jugs or bottles at the supermarket, although it can often be delivered to your home.
The next best choice of drinking water if spring water is too expensive or hard to find is usually carbon-only filtered tap water. This surprises me, but it seems to be the case. All other drinking water such as most well water, reverse osmosis water, alkaline water, structured waters and others do not seem to be as good and often end up diminishing vitality, even if you feel better drinking them.
3. Rest & Sleep -- This includes going to bed by 9 PM, taking naps when needed, sleeping at least 8 or 9 hours daily, and to some extent factors such as having fresh air when sleeping.
4. Deep Breathing -- This can do much for healing in some cases. Obtaining enough oxygen is also extremely helpful for health. Ways to assist this are to live in a rural area with trees nearby, or use an ozonator/ionizer air filter in your bedroom, such as the Better Living or Eco-Quest units.
5. Avoiding All Toxic Exposures and Detoxification Or Removing Toxins From The Body-- This is critical today thanks to the many toxic substances that everyone must contend with. These include toxic metals, toxic chemicals, and even electromagnetic toxins found in cell phone emissions, computer emissions and others.
6. Sexual Continence -- This can be another important factor in building vitality for everyone today. Holding on to the sexual fluids, in both men and women, conserves vital force. This is not a popular stance these days, but has been known for thousands of years. It is especially important for men, as they cannot reabsorb their seminal fluid, but it is also important for women, as well.
(I would suggest you read and educate yourself further on this subject, starting with books on Taoist, one that comes to mind is, "The Tao of Health, Sex, & Longevity", authored by, Daniel Reed.)
7. Move Subtle Energy In A Downward Motion Through The Body -- There are various ways we recommend doing this, including using the Roy Masters meditation exercise and no others, and the use of near infrared sauna therapy, coffee enemas and a few particular foods and food supplements.
8. Make The Body More Yang (in almost all cases) -- This is an ancient Taoist concept of vitality that is extremely important today. The bodies today are mainly all extremely yin due to radiation toxicity, a poor quality food supply, toxic chemicals and toxic metals in the environment and in the food and water, electromagnetic stress and a few other factors.
This is one of the primary reasons fruit-eating, raw foods and vegetarianism are foolish practices today, even if they were wonderful 100 years or more ago. They are just too yin today. The same is true of fermented foods, eating nightshade vegetables and the use of most herbs and nutritional supplements in large doses.
9. Activities -- Certain activities, notably walking, greatly enhance energy absorption. Most other sports tend to deplete a person’s vitality, at times, if overdone. However, breathing deeply that occurs during exercise is helpful. Rest and activity alternating, however, is the best combination.
10. Mental Attitude, Thought Patterns and Emotional Control -- These two are very different. However, I am listing them together to keep this article simpler.
Mental attitudes have to do with the person’s approach to life. Are you a positive thinker or do you think negatively? Do you like yourself or do you actually loathe yourself in some ways? Do you enjoy life, or is life a drag, as they say? Do you enjoy other people or do you prefer to be just by yourself. Being alone is actually better in most cases for development, although it can lead easily to boredom, depression and negativity in most people.
Thought patterns are somewhat related but have more to do with your beliefs, your neuroses, and other thought patterns, some of which are helpful for health and vitality, while others, such as cynicism, negative thinking and victim thinking, tend to severely low one’s vitality, eventually.
Emotional control has to do with the ability to focus your mind and control the mind’s tendency to wander and become over-excited, at times. For example, if you become upset over every little problem, this tends to use up your vital energy much more than keeping calm.
Got other tips? Leave your comments below!
Sources: Dr. Lawrence Wilson, The Centre of Developement