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Understanding Physiological Principles – For A Better Monday Style

Understanding Physiological Principles

My Understanding of The Big Picture

As of May 2018, it has now been exactly 25 months that I have started this journey as an attempt to change my lifestyle for a healthier one. To make this wonderful journey possible, I used several different practices that I named starting points. I also like to refer to them as seeds for change, in order to express the idea of a small habit being able to grow over time into something that can make a huge difference in our lives. Call them starting points or seeds for change, I believe that all these practices I’ve been embracing, have ended up being extremely beneficial for me in order to grow into a healthier person. There is one in particular, I believe it to be a bit different and possibly the most important one. This one consists of understanding some of the most important the physiological principles of the human body.

Learning more about the physiological mechanisms of my body not only has been helping me to to be more knowledgeable on the subject, but more importantly, it has been a tremendous motivating factor to embrace and sustain my starting point practices. This knowledge has been helping me in understanding the role these practices play in the big picture of my body healing itself and becoming a healthier and better performing entity. In this post I am going to try to explain in my own words my understanding of how I believe the lymphatic system works.

The Cell

The human body is made of an extremely large number of cells. These cells have a number of needs in order to stay healthy and accomplish the work they need to to. They need to be nourished, and since they all fulfill a function and perform tasks, they produce waste. They are in a way a minuscule version of ourselves. Cells have membranes, and its through these membranes that the exchange with the outside environment is made possible. In order for the cell to be able to evacuate the produced waste, the outer environment of the cell needs to be more alkaline in pH than its inner environment. In other words, if the outer environment is more acidic, then it becomes very difficult for the cell to evacuate its waste material. Consequently, not being able to evacuate waste material could result in having all kinds of problems at the cell level first. From there, an entire group of cells, then a whole organ could be negatively impacted and this situation can turn into what is commonly called a disease in the modern western medical lexicon.Continue reading

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Making Music – For A Better Monday Style

Making Music

Finding and Pursuing Our True Passion in Life

Although the title of this post is Making Music, this post is, in fact, more about finding and pursuing our true passion in life. This true passion of mine happened to be making rock music, but I believe that it can actually be pretty much anything as long as the true passion factor is there. This is definitely not a “how-to” post. For this starting point, I decided to rather share with you the story of how making rock music and playing in bands acted as a guiding factor and pretty much shaped my entire life. Despite all the sacrifices I’ve chosen to make in order to peruse my dream, it has pretty much brought me all the joy and positive things I highly value in life. Without this passion of mine, I am certain that my professional career and my finances would be better off today, but my life and my personal history would most likely be way duller. Finding my true passion relatively early on was certainly a blessing in order to turn this life that was given to me into an exciting adventure. That said, not having found our true passion yet, and going out there to find it, can turn itself into an exciting and enriching adventure as well. I hope that some elements of my 28-year-old story of pursuing something I am deeply passionate about can contribute to inspiring others to pursue or find their true passion in life.

My First Exposure to John Bonham in Ankara

I had the chance to grow up in a home where music was highly appreciated. My parents (especially my dad) were into the 70s rock and classical music. At a very early age, while we were still living in the Turkish capital Ankara, I was exposed to bands like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and composers such as Mahler, Beethoven and more. Besides all these great names, I personally was fascinated by what was after fact called the Turkish Psychedelic Rock movement. As a child, I was a great fan of artists such as Barış Manço, Cem Karaca, and Erkin Koray. For me, they were more than just rock stars. I used to perceive them as some kinds of superheroes. Besides the fact that they played great music in a language I could understand, they also had big Turkish mustaches just like my dad did. The ‘stache element alone could have sufficed to raise them to the superhero status for me at that time, but the reality was that they were fascinating in all aspects of their music and image.Continue reading

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Massages 101 – For A Better Monday Style

Massages 101

My Personal History Receiving Massages

Before sharing my personal experience with massages, I would like to make it clear that I don’t have an extensive technical knowledge or experience on this subject. I wouldn’t be able to tell you which type of massage is the most appropriate to promote which specific aspect of the well being of a person. All I know is that receiving massages for the past 12 years or so, has been extremely beneficial for me.

I started to get massages way before starting the For A Better Monday journey. That said, I don’t remember getting any before my 30s. It’s something that has been on and off in my life. I had periods when I would get massages on a regular basis, and time periods when I wouldn’t even get a single massage for over a year.Continue reading

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Hot and Cold Showers 101 – For A Better Monday Style

Hot and Cold Showers 101

Exposing my body to cold temperatures

Prior to starting the For A Better Monday adventure in April 2016,  finishing my daily showers with water at a lower temperature was already a habit of mine. If I had done some running that day, I would pass the coldest water I had access to on my arms and legs. In April 2016 I decided to start swimming in Lake Geneva. I will always remember my very first time. It was a beautiful sunny spring day at “Les Bains des Pâquis”, and the air temperature was in the 20 degrees Celsius. The water on the other hand was extremely cold. I remember it being around 7 or 8 degrees.

The place was packed with people sunbathing, but only a few people including myself dared to swim in the lake. Going into the water was a bit painful at first, but as I started to swim the enjoyment increased. I stayed for about 10 minutes in cold water. As I got out from the lake, I could feel a sensation of warmth all over my body. I dried up, and went to lay down under the sun. After a minute laying down, I was able to reach a sense of accomplishment as If I was able to get rid of if all the negative tension accumulated in my body. The combination of going into cold water and later laying down under the sun made me feel extremely relaxed.

After that day swimming in cold water became a sort of an addiction for me. Back then I held a membership to a gym nearby. This allowed me to get into the routine of working out three to four times a week, and after my workout go swim in the lake. I would do it pretty much in any weather condition. I was able to hold on to this ritual until my departure to Argentina in late January 2017. I would have never though that I’d be able to swim in lake Geneva during the fall and winter seasons. I never got sick, and this practice enhanced my life greatly during my last year spent in Geneva.

Hot and Cold Shower Rituals

In Buenos Aires unfortunately, I don’t have an easy access to cold water. Even tap water will eventually get kind of cold during the winter months, but nothing compared with the water temperatures in Switzerland. Although the temperature interval between hot and cold water are shorter here in Buenos Aires, this situation does not keep me from regularly doing hot and cold shower sessions.Continue reading

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Sauna 101 – For A Better Monday Style

Sauna 101

Safety First

Before getting into the details with this starting point, I would like to draw your attention to safety when it comes to spending time in a sauna. Especially if it’s something new for you, please make sure that your health condition allows you to be in a high temperature environment. Even if your health condition is perfect, I would advise to increase progressively the time spent in the sauna, as well as the temperature of the room.

My Sauna Experience for the Past Year

Unfortunately for me, for the past year or so (as of April 2018), having regular access to a sauna has been out of my routine. Prior to this time period, for over a month, I had a daily access to such structure, and I took great advantage of it while I had this privilege. I would use the sauna between four to five times a week. Although unplanned, this month long period ended up turning itself into an improvised detox camp.Continue reading

Eating Eating Outside of Home Journal Kidney Filtration

Journal Entry: April 8th 2018 – The End of a Cycle – More Findings on Kidney Filtration

Slightly Changing my Diet

For the past two weeks I’ve been having a hybrid diet. I’ve been juicing six days a week at home, and the rest of the time I’ve been eating at Spring which is an all you can eat vegetarian buffet. This week I have started to reduce the number of times I go to Spring in comparison to the previous weeks and replaced some of my meals at Spring by some mono meals prepared at home. Mono meals of avocado, banana, or grapes tend to work great for me. The days when I’ve been having a juice and a mono meal for the entire day were amazing in terms of the ease in digestion. It almost feels like there’s no digestion.

After a month of including some cooked vegetarian meals to my diet I have the sensation that I am reaching the end of a cycle. Although delicious, I am becoming less exited to eat abundantly at Spring, and most importantly I have lost the great hunger I used to have during the previous weeks. I think it’s time to reduce even more the days I eat at Spring and increase the days I have raw plant based meals at home. The reason why I don’t want to completely stop going to Spring is because during the past month or so I have gained some muscular mass, I feel stronger physically, and my productivity and my desire to do things have been all very high.

The week did not start very well for me

On Mondays Spring is closed, and I was missing produce to make my own juice at home. I went to this place where they have good tasting cold pressed juices named Juice Up. I ended up having three bottles of their delicious green juices. Although their recipes are right on in terms of taste, I think that it’s a shame that they are not using organic produce. I am wondering if having a non organic cold pressed juice does my body more good or bad.Continue reading

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Dry Brushing 101 – For A Better Monday Style

Dry Brushing 101

My Personal History with Regards to Dry Brushing

Dry brushing is one of the practices I’ve included at the very early stages of my lifestyle change in April 2016. As of April 2018 it has been exactly two years that I have been dry brushing regularly. As opposed to other starting points, I haven’t been experimenting extensively with this actual practice. So far it has been a pretty straight forward practice that I happened to include in my weekly routine. I have no real evidence that it is specifically helping me in my regeneration process, other than seeing all the dead skin falling out of the surface of my body, and feeling more energized after each dry brushing session.

As with sunbathing and other starting points that I’ve been sharing on this blog, one should adapt this practice to her own reality in order to be safe and get the best results. As I mentioned earlier, my approach is fairly simple and hasn’t changed much since the beginning. That said, there are plenty of different approaches, information, and opinions about dry brushing on the web. There seem to be plenty of room to get more involved than I have been with this practice and experiment more extensively with it.

While browsing through the information that is out there, I have to admit that I was a bit surprised to see articles and posts about dry brushing on many beauty websites. I personally see dry brushing as practice to support well being more than beauty. The positive effect in beauty is a sort of a byproduct of getting healthier in my opinion, but obviously there is a lot of emphasis out there on the superficial benefits of dry brushing.Continue reading

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Writing 101 – For A Better Monday Style

Writing 101

My Personal History with Regards to Writing

Learning How to Write in Turkish

As a child I wasn’t too much interested in school. To the point when I was attending first grade at the elementary school in Ankara Türkiye, halfway through the school year I was the only one in class who still wasn’t able to write. I suspect my school teacher thinking that I was retarded. At one point we had a long religious holiday weekend. Before the recess, the school teacher met with my mom and told her that I was the only one in class who could not read and write. For the holidays my family had plans to go Bursa to visit my uncle’s side of the family. It ended up being vacation time for everyone in the family except for me. My mom turned the Bursa trip into a writing labor camp so  I can move out from my illiterate situation. Even to this day when I think of the actual trip, the only memory I have, is me sitting at the dinner table with my books, and learning how to write in Turkish. Once the holiday was over and it was time for us to go back to Ankara, I had learned how to read and write. In that sense the writing labor camp was a success. Even though, I had the worst time of my life during that actual holiday in Bursa, I am extremely thankful that my mom took the initiative and forced me to learn how to write in my native language.

Learning How to Write in French

A couple years later my family decided to move to the French speaking part of Switzerland. I was a third grader in Türkiye at that time. If you ask me, I was more of a dreamer, and a terrible student, still not very interested in school work, but somehow I was getting good grades and nobody was giving me trouble. Moving to Switzerland meant that in terms of reading and writing I had to start the entire learning process all over again. Continue reading

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Breathing 101 – For A Better Monday Style

Breathing 101

My Personal History in Consciously Breathing

My very first encounter with breathing techniques, occurred while I was taking a singing class during the mid 90s. Learning how to breath may have or not helped my singing abilities, but I believe something more important as a consequence of this happened. During the same time period, I had started to turn into a mellower person from my more hyperactive initial nature. I’m not sure how much of it was due to the natural hormonal transition as I was leaving my teenage years, and how much of it was due to me learning how to breathe. One thing is certain, I did change and become a calmer person. I also went from mostly playing and listening to Trash and Heavy Metal to Post-Rock.

Consciously breathing was brought to my attention again, not long ago during a Yoga class I took with Fabio Filippi. Prior to the Yoga class, when we first met in the Bains des Pâquis in 2016, we had a little conversation about detoxifying the body. I remember him saying something like “Detox is all about breathing”. It did not make much sense to me back then, but today with the knowledge I have accumulated on how our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system work, I understand better what he probably meant.Continue reading

Eating Getting Started

Salt Flush 101 – For A Better Monday Style

Salt Flush 101

My History in Terms of Including Regular Salt Flush Sessions into My Life

I started doing salt flushes in February 2018. I’ve done 5 salt flushes at this point. Although the practice is still fairly new to me, the results went beyond my expectations. It has been one of the most spectacular starting points to this date in terms of getting immediate results.

What is a Salt Flush? How to do one?

A salt flush is the action of swallowing water with salt on an empty stomach first thing in the morning in order to cleanse the digestive system. Continue reading