Lesson 3: Daily Routines for Automatic Health
I want to see you climb to better health rather than allow your body to slip into disease. Even though I know you’re trying to have your best health and are doing many things right—just as with your house there are things that should be done every day–so with your body you should do some things every day if you wish to see glorious health or miraculous healing.
If you must every day reconsider what things should be done (redesign the whole plan), you will not practice a consistent routine that leads to health because by the time you figure out what to do every day, you’re tired of the whole process and ready to get on with something else other than your health.
The people whom I have known who enjoy superior health spend time occasionally thinking in detail about what will be in their daily routine, then they simply go through the routine every day and trust it to take them to superior health.
If you do the same things, you get the same results.
If you do something different, you will get different results.
So, if your body is not where you want it to be or as healthy as it can be, let’s consider carefully what to include in your daily routine so that the routines will take you where you want to go. Then you simply follow the routine most days without needing any energy to decide what to do—you just wake up and go.
What you do daily will change when you want something different.
For example, you may develop an interest in a new sport and want to change your physical routines to match the skills necessary for that sport. Or you may want extremely time-consuming career goals and need to decrease the time you spend in daily exercise. Conversely, you may want extreme physical goals and so greatly increase the time spent in physical exercise.
When you find that you are not following a daily routine (and you often will), then you should not conclude that routines do not help. You should consider that perhaps your routine does not accomplish what you really want. Or, perhaps, the amount of time available does not allow for completion of the routines and so you need to either change the goals or find more time for the routine.
When your routines match your available time with what you want and when you remind yourself regularly of this matching—then you will follow the routines and find the wanted results.
Ingredients of a Daily Routine
Daily routines should consider your mental, physical, and spiritual health. If you do not move forward in all three areas, then you are building your health on an unstable foundation.
When you design a weight-training routine, you consider all of the muscle groups. If you have an area that is not developing then you find another exercise, or you spend more time working that area. So, as you develop your daily routines you consider all areas of your health. You occasionally reevaluate results and modify the routines to make sure that you’re getting what you want.
But, and this is the important part, you make the routines separate and calm so that when it’s time to act, you need make no decision except to do the routine. This helps you move forward every day in the right direction and without the inertia of indecision or even thought—you simply wake and go.
Just as if you were analyzing a diver from a diving board into the swimming pool, you might spend time thinking about each movement and developing where you pace your hands or how you tuck your chin as you go into the flip-in the same way, you think about every part or the routine that brings you to superior health.
But, then, when it’s time to actually do the flip you execute quickly the flip and it goes smoothly. In the same way, when it’s time to do your daily routine, it should go smoothly with not much thought about the next step and with loss of concept of time.
Do not be discouraged that routines will consume too much of your time or energy. Routines will require time and energy, but, if the routine is worthwhile, you will gain more time and energy than they require.
If you want to read more about routines, I highly suggest Stress for Success: Jim Loehr’s Program for Transforming Stress into Energy at Work
He also makes the case that the man or woman working at a career or as a parent needs for routines even more than does the professional athlete (Example: If you’re a pro athlete pitching in the world series and you have a bad day, then tomorrow you open a car dealership with your millions; if you’re an ER nurse and have a bad day–then someone is dead and you’re looking for a job).
I used the idea of routines to stay as healthy and focused as possible while working as an ER physician in a busy inner-city ER (where life and death situations and sleep deprivation were common).
Was not Daniel’s routine of prayer 3 times a day a sort of routine (that landed him in a cage full of lions)? Routines are not a new idea but there’s been some progress about what should go into a daily routine.
Now let’s consider how to put the routine idea into your life.
Example Routines
Here are possible routines that will take you through the day in an energized and health-giving way (all of these routines have been used by Loer to train elite athletes): 1) Go-to-bed routine, 2) Wake –up routine, 3) Go-to-work routine, and the 4) After-work routine.
Just as the baseball player goes through a routine that prepares him to hit the ball before stepping to the plate. So, your routines will prepare you to do your work.
Consider some these possible routines and modify them to suit your purposes:
Go-To-Bed Routine (GBR)
Most people consider the morning as the start of the day. But the day starts when you go to bed. What time you wake to feel refreshed depends upon the time you go to bed and how well you rest.
Ingredients of the routine include what you thought and ate or drank the few hours before bed.
Part of resting properly depends upon going to bed at the same time and getting up at the same time daily. Even on the weekends, you will fell better and do more if you keep a regular bedtime and wake time.
I have seen times when my schedule became almost completely incompatible with some of these ideas. As an emergency room physician, my job required that I work night shift and day shift within the same week. So, I could not have a regular bedtime. But, I still followed a routine at whatever time I did go to bed.
Go-to-be might have been 9 am on Tuesday and not again until 8 pm on Thursday, but by following a wakeup routine and a go-to bed routine at whatever time hose events occurred, I found much better health than if I would have seen had I ignored the routines simply because I did not sleep every day and I did not sleep at the same time.
There are times when vacation, or travel, or work dictates that I must break a routine. That’s OK. The routines are there as a way to keep you in your best health. They are part of the keeping the tool ready but sometimes the use of the tool necessitates that you break a routine. When that happens, simply be grateful for the time you spent preparing and then get back to your routines as soon as possible.
Sample Go-to bed routine:
1. Snack and supplements.
I know that some think you should not eat at bedtime. I think you sleep better if you do enjoy a light snack at bedtime. My habit for years has been to drink a protein shake with fruit as a bedtime snack. At times, if I am fasting, the snack may be water. At times it may be fruit or yogurt or both. It is never junk food or alcohol. I just do not allow junk food to remain in my house. If you do allow junk in your house, then you will likely eat it at bedtime—so simply throw all the junk away and don’t bring it back.
Snack time is also when you should take whatever supplements you have determined to be most useful to you. What these supplements are will vary based upon what’s happening with you (your physical and mental goals and how old you are) and with advancing research. But, that you should enjoy a bedtime snack and take supplements/super foods will not change with time.
When I am fasting, my snack may be mineral water and the supplement may be something as simple as a natural source of fiber.
When I am gaining strength, the snack may be 6 raw eggs mixed with cream, whole mile, and fresh fruit in a blender.
This is also the time to take any evening medications.
2. Shower, Skin, Teeth
Next in the routine is a hot bath or shower. If you have time, I prefer a hot bath at 104 to 106 degrees Fahrenheit followed by a cooler shower. The hot water of the bath helps with relaxation and development of peaceful thoughts and leads to deeper sleep.
After the shower, then have a regular routine for caring for skin and teeth.
My preferred products for these routines will change as new products develop but the daily care of body, teeth, and skin will not change because these are areas that by the Law of Health need daily focused attention.
The health of your mouth and teeth causes a profound effect on your whole body. You may escape attending to your mouth and teeth during the day with not as much harm (though attention after every meal is best). But, the most important time to attend to the teeth is just before sleep. During sleep, you produce less saliva. The decreased saliva production allows for more bacterial overgrowth and tooth decay. Making sure the mouth has less bacteria and less food particle to feed the bacteria will protect the teeth during sleep.
The natural tooth-protecting ingredients included in saliva are sodium bicarbonate and hydrogen peroxide. The best way that I currently know to use these to keep your teeth white and clean will be found here on TempleRepair.com.
3. Meditation and Prayer
After you shower, you will be more relaxed and clean. At this point, most will go to bed and rest peacefully. But with about 20 minutes of additional effort, you can enter a deeper meditative sate and both rest more peacefully and renew your spirit.
Hatha yoga; followed by meditation and prayer works miracles in your life. Here are instructions for both.
4. Scripture
Reading the Bible (or your scripture) for 10 to 15 minutes following your shower puts you in contact with the ancients. Here’s a suggested Bible reading plan. This and other scriptures are around for thousands of years because they work. Some would say discard the old and dusty scriptures and write your own scripture.
If you feel inclined to write your own scripture, then who am I to argue with you and GOD? But, even if you feel inclined to write your own scripture (which you do with your life even if you never write a sentence), the scripture you write will spring from a deep and pure well if you connect with the thoughts of those who walked the desert when wealth was measured by the number of sheep that followed you.
Without connection to the ancients, your scripture will likely be polluted by the electronic and mechanical machine guns that pellet your brain with peace killing noise.
5. Grade
After reading the scriptures, this is a good time to briefly connect to the virtues to which you aspire and to grade yourself. I prefer a modified version of the 13 virtues as outlined by Benjamin Franklin (see this website).
You will review the day, whether you make a concerted effort or not. What you grade and measure will improve—automatically—just from the grading. If your mind drifts without direction as you fall to sleep, you will review and grade the more reptilian efforts of the day. But, if you focus and grade yourself upon the virtues, then you will improve those efforts and this will lead to better health.
6. Goals
Think of what you want to accomplish the next day—no more than 6 things. Chose the things if you did them not, your family or business would be seriously affected. Write them down where you will see them and carry them with you the next day. One or two is better if you are getting none of your list done. You can work up to six. If you start getting nothing on the list done—then change back to 1 or 2 again.
7. Sex
As part of GBR, as part of connecting with GOD and LOVE, you may want to connect with your lover and your family.
When my children were young, one of the last parts of my GBR was to read to them. We read most of the Harry Potter books, Treasure Island, Tom Sawyer, and others.
When they grew older, then we simply connected by saying “goodnight” (since sometimes they went to sleep after me). But, always, I tried to touch their head or shoulder—just to put a hand on them.
I never lay in bed with them. If they were sick or disturbed, then I would sometimes lay on the floor beside them. Sometimes I would rub their shoulders or back.
Everyone needs to be touched. It’s odd that, when our children are very small, you find it easy to touch them or to hug them. When they grow older and connect with a lover, then they may no longer need the touch of a parent. But, in the early teen years, they have no lover and sexual boundaries in the developing child make it uncomfortable for parents to touch their children—it feels inappropriate. These early7 teens will fight with each other—just to be touched. The girls will often experiment with pretend sex with their girlfriends—just to be touched.
So, if you have children, just a hand on their shoulder or a short upper back and shoulder rub works miracles and fits into a GBR.
Next, this is a wonderful time to connect to your spouse or lover. Take the love and energy and connection to GOD that you found in our meditation seat and use that to connect to your lover. Then sex becomes worship through the connection to your love you find in your lover.
Sex is not penis in vagina. Sex is expressions of the deepest love through emotional and physical touching. You can learn more about how to use sex for health and spirituality in my 15-Day course for men, Anytime…for as Long as You Want: Strength, Genius, Libido & Erection by Integrative Sex Transmutation
Finally, there comes a time when all activity stops and you give up the day to sleep. Remember the GBR is really the beginning of the next day. So, as you fall asleep, spend the last waking moments in prayer or mediation on goodness, on GOD, or on what you wish to materialize in your life.
Napoleon Hill, in his The Law of Success – Complete
As a teenager and in my twenties, to avoid continuous sexual thoughts and masturbation, I often fell asleep listening to recordings of lectures on philosophy or the scriptures. Who has not struggled to stay awake during a lecture in a place of worship? It is good that people fall asleep in church. It means that they are filled with peace from the words and thought of the place. So, use this to your advantage and think on such things when you are ready to give up the day.
Other Routines
You can see by the GBR that many details are considered. Then no thought is given to the routine, the list is simply followed, at first by a checklist if you want, eventually, by habit without thought.
When you develop by practice routines that lead you to health simply by following a list, and when the list has be consciously considered by you in such a way to take you to your best health, then you have created a healthy lifestyle that brings health and healing almost automatically without much thought by you.
Even more exciting, it will feel near effortless to stay healthy when you are simply following what is your natural habit because you took the time and effort to consciously practice health-giving routines until they became unconscious habit.
To Do Next
Consider and write out the following routines (and reconsider every 3 to 6 months):
1. Go to bed routine
2. Wake up routine
3. Go to work routine
4. Come home from work routine
©2009, 2020 Charles Runels, MD
This is one of a series of lessons in the Law of Health: 10 Essential Steps to Glorious Health & Miraculous Healing
Other Routines…
