IMPORTANT: Always check with your medical and mental health care professional before beginning any new regimen.

1. EXERCISE:

Brisk walking: Three to five miles a day.

Neck roll: Twice a day. (Do this exercise slowly and carefully until your neck and spine become loosened up). Touch your left ear to your left shoulder three times. Then right ear to right shoulder three times. Next, touch your chin to your chest three times. Now bend your head backwards as far as you can looking at the ceiling, three times. Now combine all four movements; begin with touching your chin on your chest, then rolling your head to the left and touching you ear to your shoulder, then roll your head back, then roll your head and touch your right ear to you right shoulder, and end up touching your chin to your chest again. Do this in a rolling motion, three times in each direction -- left three times, then right three times.

Waste roll: Twice a day. Same as above, except bend at the waste instead of at the neck

Mini sit-ups: Twice a day. Lie flat on your back and lift only your shoulder blades off the floor, then lie back down. Work up to doing 100 mini sit-ups.

Toe touching: Twice a day. Stand upright with arms and legs spread. Touch your left toe with your right hand, keeping your knees from bending if possible. Then touch your right toe with left hand. Touch each toe alternately ten times.

2. DIET: (Adjust quantities to your particular weight @ 12 calories per pound: For example, if you weigh 200 pounds; you will need approximately 2400 calories).

Two lbs. Green beans (350 calories), 1 lb. lean ground turkey, chicken, fish, or tofu (700 calories), 3 tbl. olive oil ( 380 calories), 2 cups cooked whole grain brown rice (500 calories), 3 grapefruits (150 calories), 2 apples (200 calories), 1/2 cup blueberries (50 calories), one whole egg (70 calories), salt 1500 mg. to 2500 mg. (Total calories: 2400)

3. SUPPLEMENTS:

Buffered Vitamin C (begin with 1,000 mg. a day and work up to 5,000 mg. per day. Taking too much vitamin C too quickly can cause temporary diarrhea), Garlic (1000 mg.), Fish oil (1000 mg.), high quality multi-vitamin (one), folic acid (800mcg.), Vitamin E (natural D-alpha only-400 mg.), B complex (one), calcium (600 mg.).

4. MEDITATION:

Start your meditation session by taking a deep inhalation, filling your lungs. Begin this inhalation from the tip of your tailbone and visualize it as a ball of intense white light, moving in a seemingly reverse fashion, up your spine and over the top of your head. Then exhale slowly, imagining the light showering over your chest and between your legs like a waterfall, releasing all the tensions in your body, as they fall along with it. Repeat this cycle three times, around the back and down the chest. Then remain bathed in your shower of white light as your breath floods and cleanses your entire body

On the fourth inhalation, draw one-third only of the inhalation into your forehead, just above and between your eyes, and open this area as if a flower is opening. Draw the second one-third of the inhalation into your throat below your Adams apple and again open this area as if a flower is opening. Draw the final one-third of the inhalation into your heart, and open this area as if a flower is opening. Then, hold the breath in your heart for ten seconds opening, opening.

The fourth step begins with releasing the breath that you are holding at your heart, but only release a third of it. Drop this partial, one-third exhalation into your solar plexus just above the naval. Now fill your solar plexus with a complete in breath, and again open this area as if a flower is opening.

For step five, exhale completely letting it all out, dropping the breath from your solar plexus into the pubic area (this might be felt as a tingling in the sex organs). Now, open the pubic area like a flower by inhaling fully.

For step six, exhale completely, dropping your breath from the pubic area into the base of your spine near the coccyx area. Fill this area with a complete inhalation, and imagine it opening like a flower. Then exhale completely into this coccyx area.

Step seven brings your next inhalation up your spine, stopping at an area two inches above the top or crown of your head. Open this area wide, as if a flower is opening out into the entire universe. Then fully exhale, reaffirming your intention to calm your body and mind so that they remain healthy.

This completes the exercise. At this point, return to your normal meditation of perhaps concentrating on the feeling of the breath in your nose, or in your solar plexus. Try to meditate at least once a day, two times if possible, and for at least twenty minutes per session.

After meditation, always remember to close the centers that you have opened. To close the centers, visualize each one closing as if a flower is closing. Always begin with the base of the spine, then the area just below the naval, followed by the solar plexus, the heart, the throat, the forehead, and always end at the crown, but instead of closing the crown as you have done with the other centers, leave the crown open. This is the one exception to closing your centers the crown always stays open.

It is quite normal to feel strange sensations and see various colors; maybe visions, as you focus on the different centers. Be certain that no attempt is made to create these sensations, just do the exercises, observe what happens and let it go, similar to releasing your thoughts during meditation.

Author's Bio: 

E. Raymond Rock of Fort Myers, Florida is cofounder and principal teacher at the Southwest Florida Insight Center, www.SouthwestFloridaInsightCenter.com His twenty-eight years of meditation experience has taken him across four continents, including two stopovers in Thailand where he practiced in the remote northeast forests as an ordained Theravada Buddhist monk. His book, A Year to Enlightenment (Career Press/New Page Books) is now available at major bookstores and online retailers. Visit www.AYearToEnlightenment.com