Ryan Rivera is the publisher and founder of the Calm Clinic, a website designed to help people find valuable information about anxiety disorders. Ryan speaks directly from personal experience. After spending seven years suffering from panic attacks, severe anxiety, agoraphobia, social anxiety, unbearable physical symptoms, headaches, neck pains, constant tension, diarrhea, palpitations, pounding heart, Ryan reached a tipping point and found a way to embrace a movement toward the elimination of anxiety from his life. Ryan found Exploring Life through the article, Emotional Terrain: Anxiety – Fear in Search of a Cause, and has kindly offered to contribute an article.

Anxiety affects all of us to one degree or another. No one is immune from its influence. In my own experience, I have found that a great deal of what I become anxious about is in fact a complete fiction constructed by an over-active imagination. When we choose to go inside our anxiety to reveal its source, I felt a sense of irony in realizing that often my own periods of anxiety were self-induced. However, modern society seems to have a morbid obsession with anxiety and the media all too often seem to obsessively and foolishly fan its flames. Anxiety can also take the form of a weapon of deception, manipulation, control and submission that imposed upon us by an external agent. In other words, anxiety can force itself upon from the outside. Regardless of its source, anxiety simultaneously affects body, mind and spirit, and therefore changes our very perception and appreciation of life. In this article, Ryan focuses on the inexorable link between food and anxiety.
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[Exploring Life] What is a superfood? The promise of superfoods seems to originate in the idea that some types of food are unusually rich in nutrients and therefore must confer greater benefit to our health. In addition, a superfood is often considered be a natural medicine, or nutriceutical, that promote healing. The evidence for superfoods originates in nutritional science as well as anthropological field work that correlates a specific type of diet to a low incidence of disease in specific communities. The hope of superfoods lies in the provision of food to the general population that helps to decrease the incidence of illness and disease in society.

If a food is deemed to be “super” then it is in some manner of superior quality with respect to the health benefits it provides. Nutritionism is, however, a slippery slope and is frequently inexact and sometimes completely incorrect. The notion that we can isolate nutrients and take them as artificial supplements is far from being a precise science. In our food, nutrients exist in interrelationship with one another in their natural form. In a pill, nutrients are isolated in a kind of artificial reality. Eating food that is of superior nutritional value is better than ingesting artificial nutrients in pill form liquid form. However, the destruction of the environment as well as mass food production practices has only served to decrease the nutritional value of our food supply, and as a result we experience more illness and disease. Superfoods may be an inviting concept that allows us to inspire and reanimate our relationship with food.
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[Exploring Life] Most of what we buy in a grocery store is not food. Manufactured, processed, or modified products are not food; they are edible food-like substances. GMO crops are not food; they are experimental transgenic food-like substances. Pesticide-laden (non-organic) crops are not food; they are toxic food-like substances. Hormone and antibiotic laden meat is not food, it is a chemically altered food-like substance. Food, it seems, has become an endangered experience.

Grocery stores have few, if any, meaningful standards for the products they sell to the public. In other words, a grocery store is in no way concerned with human health and well-being. The presence of health or organic foods does not offer any redeeming qualities since these products are immersed in a sea of imposters. Food is inexorably connected to our physical and mental well-being. Bad food makes us ill; good food promotes health. However, we have devalued food into mere commodity produced by a “food industry” that lacks any meaningful sense of accountability and responsibility. The marketing and advertising of degenerate food products is fundamentally an insult to our intelligence. A grocery store is far less a source of food than it is a system of carefully marketed contradictions and misguided priorities all exquisitely designed to produce a profit.
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[Exploring Life] One of the most important principles in a functional fitness program is the even, coordinated development of the muscles. Unfortunately, many exercise programs tend to treat muscles as if they exist in isolation. Strength exercises that isolate muscles can be dysfunctional with respect to the proper functioning of the body. Balanced muscle development is essential to the proper functioning of joints. Uneven muscle development can actually be the cause of joint misalignment, which in turn leads to chronic inflammation and eventually degenerative disease. Catherine Guthrie’s Knee Deep in Yoga provides some important insight into the need for functional exercise with respect to the knees.
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[Exploring Life] What makes you hold your breath? describes the importance of optimizing our breathing pattern in order to promote healthy digestion as well as calming the nervous system. The authors recommend that the stressors that are the root cause of holding the breath be identified as they happen. This brings us to the threshold of that which is in our awareness, and that which lies just outside of our awareness. The focus of subtle learning here is to train breath awareness so that we pay more attention to how we are breathing throughout the confluence of everyday life.
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[Exploring Life]The world of fitness and exercise is becoming increasingly complicated and often times confusing. Various styles and methods of exercise constantly compete for our attention. My own experience in fitness and exercise include Yoga, Pilates, weight training, cardio routines and stretching. While each method has benefits when practiced correctly, I have yet to discover a comprehensive method of fitness training that is focused on maintaining and strengthening the essential functionality of the human body throughout life. Functional fitness is a term gaining recognition, yet its definition is less certain. In this article I offer a definition of functional fitness, describe five key principles for designing a functional fitness program, and briefly explore how the principles should be applied.
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[Exploring Life] Contrology is the term coined by Joseph Pilates to describe his method of integrated mind-body fitness. Today it is commonly referred to as the Pilates method. Joseph Pilates wrote two books: a) Your Health-1934; and Contrology-1945 [1]. These are the main primary sources materials and should be required reading for any teacher and student of Pilates. In these books Pilates reveals his ideas about the mind-body connection, functional fitness, breathing, body awareness, precision, control, alignment, symmetry, strength and flexibility.

Contrology, or the original Pilates method, is significantly more than a program of exercise – it is a program for the balanced development of mind and body. In addition, it is also important to understand the major influences and events in Joseph Pilates life since his method is a direct extension of these experiences. Many fitness trainers have incorporated aspects of Pilates work into their own Pilates inspired programs, but these programs are not authentic Pilates and often represent a dilution of Pilates ideas and intentions. Further complicating the situation is the lack of credible and intensive certification programs for aspiring instructors. The purpose of this article, The Essence of the Pilates Method, is to explore the original and authentic method as developed by Joseph Pilates.
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[Exploring Life] The word core means the center of an object. The Earth’s core, for example, is also referred to as the center of the Earth. The core area, or centre, of the body is the site of the internal organs. The core area includes the entire area from the diaphragm down to the base of the pelvis. Core development means the integrated and coordinated development of muscles, internal organs, posture, and breathing. With respect to exercise, the core area of the body is the single most important consideration in any fitness program. In this article I will explore the basic musculature of the core area, developing body awareness of the core, and defining principles for the correct development of the core area.
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[Exploring Life] A common understanding of posture is the body’s alignment when it standing still. The word posture originates in the Latin positura meaning position. If posture is good, then often a reference is being made to a preferred shape of the spine when it is at rest. This perspective on posture is, however, quite limited when we consider the fact that the human body was designed for movement. Posture, in a more important sense, is an inquiry into the dynamics of movement and the nature of human embodiment.
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[Exploring Life] Correct breathing is a primary goal and basic fundamental in the Pilates method. Practicing Pilates exercises while using abnormal breathing patterns can be very detrimental to both the body and mind. Unless a student is capable of breathing correctly under normal conditions, the probability of breathing correctly during exercises is poor. Breathwork is therefore the first component of Pilates training.
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