Separating the fats and facts (Instant Youth and other fitness myths foiled)

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Perhaps not coincidentally, sizeable portions of the population suffer from anxiety, depression and other emotional ills. In Healing the Western Soul: Instead, she urges people in the Western world to reclaim their own spiritual roots through the mysticism that lies at the heart of both Christianity and Judaism, and to not see ecstatic experiences as psychotic episodes but as transcendent revelations. Lyme disease, an infection caused by Borrelia burgdorferi that has left some people incapacitated for months or even years, is bad enough on its own.

In his latest book, Natural Treatments for Lyme Coinfections: Buhner believes that infectious disease, once thought to be vanquished by antibiotics, is re-emerging as a significant threat due to a combination of environmental disruption and antibiotic overuse. Fraser Smith, Susan Hannah and Dr.

Digestive disorders are distressingly common—and often more serious than you might think. Diet, which plays a vital role in the treatment of most chronic diseases, is especially crucial when coping with ailments of the gastrointestinal tract. Two recently published books address this topic. Her recipes include smoothies, broths and other simple fare to help deal with flare-ups as well as those aimed at health maintenance such as Gluten-Free Banana Granola Pancakes, Curry Turmeric Leek Soup and Garlic-Herbed Scallops.

In a world where prepared foods often come with long lists of bewildering additives, many people are making a concerted effort to base their diets on wholesome, natural ingredients. Walters first wrote about this topic in her award winner Clean Food , and again in the followup Clean Start. While Walters addresses the need to eat clean animal products at the beginning of the book, all of the recipes are vegan. Based on the notion that our bodies have never adapted to grain-based foods, it holds that we only should eat foods that our ancient ancestors hunted or caught, such as meats and fish, or gathered, such as nuts, seeds, eggs and vegetables.

Paleo stands for the Paleolithic era, which started with the first use of stone tools approximately 2. Leanne Ely, creator of a meal planning website called savingdinner. She says she wrote Part-Time Paleo: One way Ely makes it easier to adopt a Paleo eating plan is by presenting 12 weeks of menu plans, with shopping lists, to help the reader get started.

We are in what is frequently promoted as a season of gratitude, a time to give thanks for all the good things in our lives. But for many people this is a difficult state to achieve, often for understandable reasons: How does one find gratitude under such circumstances? According to Nina Lesowitz and Mary Beth Sammons, being grateful is something best done step by step. The Secret to Happiness and the Science of Contentment. But the real strength of this book lies in the personal stories the authors use to illustrate their points.

In one case, a Chicago businesswoman found her gratitude in helping the homeless. The Grateful Life provides a valuable signpost. As a resident of Israel and as senior vice president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, Yael Eckstein knows a thing or two about spirituality. And as a host who cooks healthy, delicious meals for her family and dozens of weekly Sabbath guests, Eckstein knows a thing or two about food.

The rain falls and nurtures the fruits, plants and vegetables, animals are fed, human life is sustained. The cycle of nature is an ecosystem that, when undisturbed, is a chain that provides for all. Take a moment to recognize the journey take by the water in our cup and the food on our plate and open yourself up to amazement and appreciation.

We have the same ability to provide sustenance to others by sharing a nice word, a kind smile, or a nutritious meal. Find your way to give to others! Among other traditional staples included are shakshuka , a hot breakfast treat of tomatoes and eggs; tahini ; and carrot kugel bread, as well as more conventional dishes: Spiritual Cooking with Yael is filled with tidbits and recipes that are good for you and your soul. Exotic Flavors from My Kitchen to Yours. Her parents became farmers who kept chickens, ducks, roosters, goas and horses, and they grew a variety of vegetables and fruits.

As many as three or four hundred guests would attend parties at the family farm, and Barnes, her mother, aunts and sisters would spend the day in the kitchen cooking and telling stories. Those foods are meats, spices, and fresh vegetables, all of which get ample elaboration in later chapters and are represented by luscious, healthful recipes, including those in a traditional tagine.

Barnes also takes readers to the souk, or marketplace, for a look at Moroccan street food beyond the kebab: Beautiful color glossy photographs of the dishes accompany each recipe. Food, Family and Tradition: Hungarian Kosher Family Recipes and Remembrances.

The recipes in Food, Family and Tradition should be pored over slowly and savored. They are, after all, more than recipes. They are at once tributes to Jewish lives cut short by the Holocaust and by survivors who thrived and adhered to their faith and traditions in the harshest of circumstances. It is in that optimistic, life-affirming spirit with which recipes such as one for latkes, or potato pancakes, traditionally eaten during Hanukkah, are offered. When all is said and done, plates of both types of latkes are usually left empty.

The book is filled with gems, such as a challah recipe from the first kosher bakery in Chicago, a pair of delectable stuffed cabbage recipes, a surprise chop suey, a traditional Sabbath Chulent or stew , among many others. Food, Family and Tradition is a living treasure chest to be enjoyed by many, many generations to come. Yoga and Body Image. Forty years ago, disco was king, white polyester was a fashion statement and yoga was barely noticed outside of its native India.

Yee, who has been making audiovisual yoga instruction guides for two decades, moves through the poses at a deliberate pace while providing an easy-to-follow voiceover. After the Yoga Basics section—which presents such foundational poses as Mountain and Plank—the DVD provides three additional segments with sequences designed for flexibility, energy and relaxation.

If you are a yoga veteran, you may want to peruse the pages of Yoga and Body Image: Reinventing a Favorite Food. Consider, if you will, the potato chip. The book presents chips made in several styles—frying, dehydrating, baking—that include the potato but extend to such novel ingredients as butternut squash, mushrooms and pears. That leads to one of the big questions of our existence: What are we to make of woe? Can it ever be fruitful, or is it just meaningless suffering?

The authors of three recently published books offer their perspectives on this age-old query. To cope with her overwhelming emotions, Carmen developed a philosophy she calls Maybe, which she outlines in The Gift of Maybe: Finding Hope and Possibility in Uncertain Times. It entails accepting that all potential problems in life—whether they involve health, money, relationships or career—have a number of potential outcomes, some good, some bad.

Learning how to cope with such situations is the subject of Expectation Hangover: Overcoming Disappointment in Work, Love and Life. Life is built on relationships with partners, children, family, friends and coworkers—and with hidden aspects of our own selves. While such associations can be sources of both joy and frustration, Shakti Gawain, a personal development seminar leader, and long-time collaborator Gina Vucci also believe relationships can be channels for self-awareness, an idea they explore in The Relationship Handbook: A Path to Consciousness, Healing and Growth.

The authors believe we can use relationships as mirrors in which we can discover our disowned selves and become conscious of such internal entities as the Rule Maker and the accomplishment-driven Pusher; the exercises provided are designed to turn self-knowledge into self-liberation.

For anyone who runs repeatedly into the same relationship difficulties, The Relationship Handbook may prove helpful. Tuning the Human Biofield. In fact, some researchers claim that the body is enveloped by its own electromagnetic matrix called the human biofield. Science has since closed the circle; we now know that matter is basically solidified energy. And that realization has brought the various therapeutic uses of sound, such as music therapy, back into favor.

Therapeutic sound is the focus of Tuning the Human Biofield: Healing with Vibrational and Sound Therapy. In the course of explaining how she came to practice sound therapy—specifically through the use of tuning forks—McKusick presents the scientific reasoning behind this modality. McKusick says tuning fork therapy can clear these blockages, resulting in better physical, mental and emotional health. In Tuning the Human Biofield , she argues that such approaches to healing are both real and powerful.

The love between Warren—now vice president, senior director of publicity and acquiring editor for Da Capo Press—and her parents shines through The Good Luck Cat , a love that always extended to their animal companions.

And soon a strong bond grew between her ailing father and the lively, mischievous little gray presence in their New England home. The Good Luck Cat is an ode to how four lives—three human, one feline—intertwine in acts of devotion large and small, and how those connections foster healing in the worst of times. The Good Luck Cat eloquently explores the notion that there is no such thing as a mere pet. The Best Natural Homemade Soaps. Many prefer to hand-craft their gifts, believing it gives their offerings a more personal touch.

Written by Mar Gomez, who leads natural products workshops, it provides recipes for soaps that are not only lovely to look at but are healthful as well. Some use beauty standbys, such as cocoa butter, which helps nourish and moisturize, and rose, recommended for sensitive skin. But you can also find soaps with such surprising ingredients as carrots for mature skin and irritation-easing green tea.

The authors begin by discussing dozens of essential oils, including such long-time favorites as clary sage and geranium along with lesser-known oils like galbanum and hyssop. One section is devoted to medicinal uses for various oils blends, including sweet almond, lavender and Roman chamomile for insomnia and eucalyptus, tea tree, lemon, thyme and cinnamon for coughs and colds.

The author of The Burst! One strength of The Burst! Level I exercises are bodyweight only, while Levels II and III use for the most part low-tech aids such as stability balls, resistance bands and dumbbells. Besides clear illustrations, exercises such as the Band Squat, Chair Spinal Twist and Ball Thigh Stretch feature tips on proper form and ways to either increase or decrease the intensity level.

Exercises suitable for office use are marked with a phone icon. A journal at the back lets the reader track progress. Workout may be what you need to finally make that happen. Energy medicine—broadly defined as techniques that tap into the universal energy field which animates everything, including people—has long been an accepted mode of healing among alternative practitioners. Two recently published books expand on that concept in interesting ways.

Yoga is linked to prana , an Ayurvedic term for the cosmic energy that sustains life.

In Energy Medicine Yoga: This stuck or fixed energy becomes painful, and that pain signifies something, whether physical or emotional, needs to move. Eden herself has already written a book on energy medicine with her husband, clinical psychologist David Feinstein. Keys to a Fulfilling Partnership. Like Walker, Eden and Feinstein aim to help people change unhelpful energy patterns. A society in which gender roles have become more flexible makes relationships more complicated. Many of us live in relationships with intimate partners, and how we interact with our loved ones can profoundly influence our physical and mental well-being.

The Energies of Love can help strengthen those relationships so each partner benefits. As any gardener knows, one of the factors that determine how well plants grow is the pH, the balance between acid and alkali base , of the soil. Everything else can be perfect: But if the pH balance is off, plants will simply fail to thrive. Eating the Alkaline Way Every Day , who say consuming a mostly plant-based diet produces the mildly alkali environment that best promotes health. Corrett, a vegetarian chef, and Edgson, a nutritional healer, use the first part of their book to explain the principles behind alkaline eating and help the reader set up a pantry accordingly.

The recipes in the second half are creatively arranged. Honestly Healthy for Life can help you stay balanced in style. But today the well-educated chef stays on top of the latest trends in healthy eating, an effort aided by three recently published cookbooks. Written by Chicago food blogger Kim Lutz, it provides some basic information on these extremely nutritious foods before presenting more than 75 recipes, including such novel items as Strawberry Breakfast Pudding which uses chia seeds and Hemp Tofu Lasagna. Bread has been a dietary staple for thousands of years.

But in Bread Revolution: For people who are serious about the art and craft of home baking, Bread Revolution provides a master class on materials, including sourdough, and techniques that include baking with healthful sprouted grain flour and making specialty items such as croissants and English muffins. Simone Wright says all those notions are simply wrong. Wright, who consults on this topic with clients ranging from athletes to cops to CEOs, says that everyone has a sense of intuition.

Not a voodoo, woo-woo thing…I can teach anyone to do it. A series of exercises helps the reader put this information to work. Wright says intuition is that tool, and First Intelligence is her guide to wielding it most effectively. Laticia Jackson is having none of it. Trying to measure up to these unrealistic expectations has the ability to create feelings of inadequacies, low self-worth and low self-esteem. Jackson, a certified trainer who holds degrees in exercise science and public health, is determined to push back against these pressures.

Her diet recommendations focus on the now-standard triad of lean protein, healthy fats and low-glycemic carbs. Her exercise background comes through in the fitness section, which covers setting goals and measuring progress, cardio fitness, resistance training basics and exercises for the upper and lower body as well as the abdominals. Allergy-Free Cooking for Kids.

A lengthy list of foods have been found to cause adverse effects in a significant number of children. Some suffer from true allergies, in which an abnormal immune response can lead to potentially life-threatening reactions; others experience food intolerances, which can result in digestive upsets, headaches and hives. But one thing all these kids have in common—they all still need to eat.

Many of the recipes avoid multiple offenders. For example, the Beef Lasagna in the gluten-free section, which features rice-paper pasta, is also nut-, dairy- and egg-free. Allergy-Free Cooking for Kids helps make that job easier. WHO estimates that million people worldwide suffer from the sadness, fatigue and apathy that mark depression. What makes it worse is that this common mood disorder has been linked to physical ailments such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes. One therapeutic response to depression involves mindfulness-based cognitive therapy MBCT , which helps the mind avoid the autopilot mode that allows negative thinking to take hold.

Their latest volume, The Mindful Way Workbook: And while extreme anxiety and panic should be discussed with a practitioner, milder occurrences are amenable to self-help. Addiction extracts an enormous human and societal toll. And what addiction costs to the people involved—not only the addicts themselves but also their families, friends, neighbors and coworkers—is incalculable.

These costs explain why addiction treatments have proliferated over the past several decades. Many programs are based on the step treatment model, in which addiction is seen as a progressive disease and the lifelong abstinence required to keep it under control necessitates the addict admitting his or her own helplessness. Not surprisingly, statements like this have their detractors. Mindfulness—paying deep attention to the present moment—lies at the heart of this book.

The tasks of daily life can occupy many hours without providing any deeper payoff. Bills need to be paid and clothes need to be cleaned, of course, but is that all there is to existence? The life coach and retreat leader has written The Life Organizer: Fifty-two Weeks of Mindful Living. How might shadow comforts or time monsters block me from trusting myself or from exploring the yearning I just named?

What would help my body feel listened to and loved? How have I been talking to myself lately? Many women give so much of themselves away to others that they have a hard time attending to their own concerns. The Life Organizer provides a gentle path to self-care. A cancer diagnosis is always unwelcome, no matter what the circumstances are.

Surviving Cancer Against All Odds. The others exist in that borderland where body, mind and spirit meet. I want to keep living. To read case histories, or to report your own story, go to radicalremission. Passover is the holiday in which Jews swap out bread products with yeast for matzah. The move symbolizes the desert wanderings of the ancient Hebrews after their deliverance from slavery in Egypt, when their mobility did not offer enough time for bread to rise. Food and symbolism are also central to the seder , the festival meal that marks the beginning of the eight-day holiday.

The seder plate holds foods such as horseradish, or bitter herbs, representing the slavery; charoset , a mix of chopped nuts, apples and wine, symbolizing the mortar with which the Hebrews were forced to make bricks for the Pharoah. Passover is also laden with fried foods, but many of the more than recipes in A Taste of Pesach —and more than of those are gluten-free—marry good health and great taste.

Some of us cook on a budget; others will splurge on more exotic items. So while A Taste of Pesach has something for everyone, there is plenty to satisfy the health-conscious kosher cook. A Mushroom-Stuffed Sole will make for a hearty and wellness-promoting main dish, while a Roasted Vegetable Medley will help balance out the plate. No one said Passover had to be a holiday of deprivation. Instead of that big fat ham that usually sits in the middle of your Easter table, why not add religious resonance, and a more healthful approach, to your holiday meal by turning to the region most central to the Easter story—the Mediterranean?

The collection features traditional classic dishes, such as Lamb Kebabs with Yogurt and Pita Bread, with inspired contemporary variations. Saffron Rice with Zucchini Flowers will add a nice touch of Easter yellow to your holiday table, while Salt Cod and Potato Pie and other fish dishes may put you in the mind of the Galilee.

The enticing color photographs that accompany the recipes show that presentation is an important ingredient for preparing these dishes. Pickled Zucchini Salad, for instance, is a handsome sculpture of green, while a Chicken Tagine with Dried Plums is dressed in its holiday best on a bed of finely shredded Swiss chard leaves. But you can dip into Mediterranean Cooking any day of the year and it will feel like a holiday.

Once little known outside of its native India, yoga has become one of the hottest wellness trends in the United States. But for the neophyte reading a class schedule it can all seem a bit daunting: What do those names mean—and which of them do I try?

Exploring and Understanding Different Styles of Yoga. A chart near the front of the book that highlights core elements—intense or gentle, for example—of the different styles with references to specific chapters makes it easy for the reader to find a yoga format suitable to his or her purposes. Each chapter then provides an overview of a single style, such as a discussion of how Bikram Choudhury came to set his posture sequence in a room heated to degrees or why the Integral style takes a big-picture, combined-method approach to yoga practice.

Additional material, including a history of yoga in the US, provides a framework that helps explain how yoga got from its ancient roots to its modern incarnations. Pick Your Yoga Practice can help make that decision easier. Veganism—a form of vegetarianism that eschews all animal products including dairy and eggs—is becoming ever more popular, especially among people who eat a plant-based diet for both health and ethical reasons.

At one time the budding vegan would have been hard-pressed to find any cookbooks on the subject. Two recent examples come from Da Capo Press. One thing that puts off some would-be vegans is the thought of having to give up such favorites as cheese. The pictures in this beautifully produced book will make you want to gnaw on the pages.

It is the concept of keeping kosher, the name given to food that adheres to Jewish dietary laws. The author calls upon both her lifelong Jewish observance and her credentials as a registered dietician and certified dietician-nutritionist to present a fascinating hybrid approach to health. In her nuts-and-bolts explanation of kosher dietary laws, Warren notes that keeping kosher is a commandment from G-d, but she also endorses eating kosher as a way toward better health.

It encourages inspection of food packages, training your eye to search labels for wellness-promoting ingredients. And keeping kosher encourages discipline. Warren is quick to add, however, that foods with a kosher symbol on the package do not automatically make them more healthful. Most Syrian dishes that Warren recounts included vegetables such as okra, eggplant, potatoes, mushrooms, as well as a variety of beans, lentils, and peas—healthful ingredients, to be sure. With an accessible writing style, she offers meal plans, case studies of some of her clients, and pragmatic tips.

Her explanations about such subjects as grass-fed versus grain-fed beef, alternative milk sources, wild versus farmed seafood, how to identify food intolerances, and a host of other topics will help you make the shift from a diet of processed foods to a real life with real food. Adaptogens in Medical Herbalism. Asthma, depression, high blood pressure: Scanning even a partial list of the disorders that researchers have linked to stress can be a sobering experience.

Given the potentially fatal consequences of these illnesses, it is no exaggeration to label stress a killer condition. Fortunately, nature provides an answer for the biological havoc that uncontrolled stress can create. Adaptogens are herbs that, as the name suggests, help the body adapt to both physical and emotional stressors. These plants, prized by traditional healers the world over for centuries, have made their way into modern alternative medicine.

But anyone who takes their health seriously will find an abundance of valuable information within its covers. The second part presents writeups of more than 60 adaptogens, supplemental herbs and nutrients. Each section covers traditional usages and modern research, and includes a reference list.

Adaptogens in Medical Herbalism allows you to make intelligent choices when it comes to stress management. Practice using your heart, gestures, body language, facial language and touch to unite with others. You cannot create a new image in the reflection. Your life is a reflection as well, mirroring back in physical matter the quality of your thoughts and your beliefs. The pool can only reflect back what is there.

It is available in bookshops, boutiques and at DianeDaversa. The relentless nature of heart disease has led researchers to look for some way to slow the torrent. And one of the simplest, yet most promising, may be to increase our national intake of magnesium.

That includes the processes by which cellular energy is produced critical for hard-working cardiac muscle blood vessels relax to lower blood pressure and calcium goes into bones instead of arterial walls. In the book, Goodman explains how to increase magnesium levels through diet and supplementation. Magnificent Magnesium makes a strong case for that scenario. Notable Books of There is no shortage of books that aim to improve your health. Baking By Hand shows aspiring bakers how to make artisanal breads by getting up close to their ingredients and forgoing a mixer. There are plenty of step-by-step photos to help you craft your breads.

Eat to Live Cookbook: In this companion cookbook to his bestseller Eat to Live , Dr. Included are breakfast recipes, including Polenta Frittata and Blueberry Nut Oatmeal, main meals such as Too Busy to Cook Vegetable Bean Soup, among many others that will help keep you in top-top shape.

Caught between greed and religion: the battle for Kansas public education

Hope and encouragement are key ingredients in any effort to regain good health, and they are supported by the important themes of Dr. The Immune System Recovery Plan is a highly accessible read, with sections on food as medicine, understanding stress, healing your gut and liver support. This book is a roadmap for treating autoimmune diseases—and then preventing them.

Dennett is one of our most important philosophers, and this volume collects many mind-stretching exercises and vignettes. Intuition pumps are thought experiments that grew out of a seminar to a dozen freshmen at Tuft University, where Dennett is the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy. Invisible Worlds comprises 99 photos of objects in nature, biology, chemistry, medicine, mineralogy and textiles, and represents the best of microphotography.

Most have been taken by scientific researchers. Invisible Worlds is at once a breathtaking scientific journey, a work of art and the basis for a spiritual awakening. Even more than that, by showing how beautiful these objects are in their most basic forms, these photographs make science and our potential to understand life less daunting. There is plenty here to please the naturalist and health enthusiast. As Coquart explains, sage was seen as a universal remedy during the Middle Ages, and today is mainly cultivated for its essential oil, used in making vermouths, liqueurs and perfumes.

Page after page, this book puts on display the building blocks of life in all their inspirational glory, making a journey to these invisible worlds well worth the trip. The idea of going vegan can be daunting, but Isa Chandra Moskowitz makes veganism fun and accessible in this delightful cookbook. Illustrated with handsome photographs of the meals and segmented by headings in fun typefaces, Isa Does It is chock full of recipes like Ancho-Lentil Tacos and Pesto Risotto with Roasted Zucchini that anyone would love.

As the title of this unconventional cookbook shows, Lust for Leaf also puts the fun in healthy cooking. Authors Brown and George employ plenty of alliteration Verdugo Verde, Radish Remoulade and Summer Seitan and heaping servings of cool in edgy and entertaining recipes like Ambient Nachos, solar-cooked on a cookie sheet, and Eggplant Crasserole. Afterward, we just may take in a Green Day show. A lengthy appendix of recipes, coupled with the in-depth look at each mental affliction, caught our eyes.

Sicily is at once a cookbook and travelogue, a book of history and health. In a section on olive oil, for instance, we learn that the olive was probably introduced to Sicily by the Phoencians, but that the citrus fruit took priority under Arab rule, with the olive regaining its crown in the Middle Ages; we also learn that unfiltered oils have the best flavor and health benefits.

Putting a new spin on seasonal cooking, Quatrano features recipes for each month of the year. Eating collard greens on New Years Day, for instance, is a traditional way to ensure wealth, she writes in her Braised Winter Greens recipe. Reading Summerland any day ensures immersion in a regional culture and its culinary riches.

A Holistic Approach to Healing for the 21st Century. With tasteful cartoon illustrations by Freya Harrison and written in plain English by the Deaks, this book urges adolescents to understand the processing power of their grey matter rather than their iPads. A follow-up to Your Fantastic Elastic Brain , it tackles the tough subjects and feelings young people are likely to encounter: Tis the season to…feel more stress than during the other 11 months combined.

As it turns out, happiness is the topic of two recently published books and a strong component in a third. You would think Trista Sutter has every reason to be happy. Life since then must have been easy, right? Mother and son are now fine. We have more choices. We make more money…And yet, research shows that collectively we are less happy than we were 40 years ago.

You can take her quiz at HappyWomanTest. Other chapters cover topics such as managing finances, learning how to relax and practicing gratitude. Learning how to be grateful is the focus of Living a Life of Gratitude: Your Journey to Grace, Joy and Healing. Our hearts crack open. Life is full of interrupted plans and unexpected occurrences; the art of living lies in learning how to find contentment and delight amid the challenges.

These three books, each in their own way, provide guidance for navigating the often-rocky road to happiness. The Essential Book of Fermentation. In a complex, globally connected world filled with forebodings of catastrophe, some people are actively preparing for the unraveling of society as we know it. Many modern homesteaders see farmhouse arts such as conserving food—a skill now mostly lost to an urbanized population—as sources of joy and improved health.

As its title implies, The Artesian Market: Cure Your Own Bacon, Make the Perfect Chutney and Other Delicious Secrets takes an enjoyable high cuisine, rather than rough-and-ready survival, approach to food preservation. Nutrition is more front-and-center in The Essential Book of Fermentation: As a long-time writer and editor in the fields of food, wine and gardening, author Jeff Cox sees vital linkages between an organic approach to growing food and the use of fermentation in food preservation.

And that includes us. Recipes that include the finished products allow the reader to incorporate fermented foods into meal planning. The Artesian Market and The Essential Book of Fermentation are valuable sourcebooks in passing along this ancient knowledge. Natural Posture for Pain-Free Living. Most of us are unaware of how we position our bodies on a daily basis until pain, either transitory or persistent, reminds us that our skeletons are not infinitely flexible.

Much of this misery can be attributed to the fact that people, who are meant to walk upright, now spend much of their time sitting down—and misalign themselves in the process. The Practice of Mindful Alignment. Porter, director of the Center for Natural Alignment in Portland, Oregon, says modern living, with not only its sedentary nature but its emphasis on appearance over functionality, promotes poor posture by encouraging people to hold their bodies in unnatural positions; think of the teenager with a hip cocked out at a defiantly cool angle.

Eventually such postures become ingrained, leading to skeletal imbalances and pain. In Natural Posture for Pain-Free Living , Porter explains what normal human alignment looks like and how to re-establish this crucial baseline. Porter then provides a simple exercise called Turning Your Wheels designed to bring the pelvis and rib cage back into proper alignment.

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Natural Posture for Pain-Free Living provides a blueprint for returning to that state of nature. It happens thousands of times a day across the country: People file into small cubicles, roll up their sleeves and have blood taken for testing. But what do those tests measure and how are the results interpreted? Standard blood tests are broken into several categories including the lipid panel, which includes cholesterol and triglycerides; the basic metabolic panel, which measures blood sugar, kidney health markers and various mineral levels; the hepatic function panel, which assesses liver health; a complete blood count, which measures red and white blood cell markers; and hormones, such as thyroid and sex hormones.

LaValle addresses all these test categories along with several optional tests, such as those for levels of homocysteine and C-reactive protein CRP. For each test, LaValle provides reference ranges, possible causes of high readings and associated symptoms, and drugs, supplements and lifestyle changes that can be used to bring readings into the normal range. For example, high levels of bilirubin, a product of red blood cell recycling, indicates liver dysfunction. LaValle lists possible causes of high bilirubin levels ranging from mononucleosis to liver failure; along with a drug used to fight this problem, he also lists supplements such as alpha lipoic acid and lifestyle changes such as getting more sunlight exposure.

Your Blood Never Lies gives you the information you need to address health problems before they worsen. A hallmark of societies in which technological advances have outstripped innate wisdom, this disconnect may help explain rising rates of emotional illness, including anxiety and depression, as well as the anomie and rootlessness that afflict so many people. But what if the body itself provided the blueprint for a renewed union of our physical and spiritual selves?

I n a hypothetical Venn diagram, one circle representing extremist Christians and the other fundamentalist capitalists, the lens-shaped overlap contains Sam Brownback, the newly re-elected governor of Kansas.

Speaking volumes

It also includes a broad spectrum of citizens who have supported him: Governor Brownback, in his state of the state address, said: And we are not going back. On this point, too, Brownback is not going back: Last month, a district court ruling all but sealed the deal. In , not long after successfully restoring rigorous science standards infamously undone by school board creationists during the previous decade, Kansas quietly became the fifth state, following Texas, Florida, Arkansas and Oklahoma, to pass controversial civics education legislation creating what some view as legal wiggle room for teaching US history with a religious slant.

While de-funding and de-secularizing both amount to aggression toward the public school as we know it, the finance issue was more pressing and the stuff of national news. School districts in other states have brought similar lawsuits summoning constitutional language to demand increased funding and awaited the Kansas ruling as a legal guidepost.

Once the state court sided with schools, the nation had an example — but Kansas still had the governor who helped create its current budget mess. I have neither time, assistance, or inclination for moralizing: But I feel quite as much indignant contempt for that large class of women who are ever ready to use their beauty as a trap to catch male gudgeons; who look on all men as fair game, to be lied to, and played on, generally to the tune of rustling silks, and crisp bank notes; and whose utter heartlessness belies the index of their sex. There's quite as many heartless shes as hes in the world; only that one soulless woman is a greater danger to the world than a dozen scoundrelly men; for her sex gives her points of advantage denied to all of the opposite gender.

A good, true woman is a diamond; a bad and heartless one worse than Milton's Satan. Sitting near me in the eating-house where I dined yesterday, were four grave men, deliberately traducing their mother's sex. They went into paroxysms of what they called "Fun" anent pregnancy, menstruation, and sexive matters generally. They, and millions like them everywhere, in every bar-room, hotel, stable, store, grocery, consider it "smart" and manly to, even before young boys, habitually blaspheme Deity and dishonor the mothers that bore them, by irreverent, flippant and obscene speech concerning the sex.

Poor wretches who disgrace the forms they bear by speaking of woman as if she were nothing but a target for filthy tongues to hurl their venom at; or, at best, as destined victims to their own abominable lubricity; mere extinguishers of the bale-fires rioting in their own veins,—the venomous fever-passions of their own gross natures, and far more ignoble than those of the four-footed dogs that run our streets.

It made me sick; it always did—to listen to the outrageous talk going on everywhere about women, whenever two or more human males of the "civilized" kind happen to get together for an hour. Even stately officials, fathers of families, do; and if not, at least often allow it in their presence, which is almost as bad.

So almost universal is this foul talk, to be heard everywhere, at any time,—ribald, coarse, obscene, and altogether devilish,—that it is no wonder that the public mind is debauched and totally demoralized. It is a curious fact that people will talk smut, laugh heartily at coarse jokes and improbable stories concerning the eternal God's method of peopling the worlds, and filling up the starry domes beyond the grave, when of all human deeds it is the most sacred, serious, and laughless.

No human being laughs then ; for the weight of worlds rests upon human shoulders. It is a bad sign any man hangs out when he makes "fun" of what ought to challenge his holiest emotions and most profound respect. There was a young man of the fun-making genus,—a fellow whose nature was inflamed nearly a year before his birth, and who kept it up to boiling-point by food and drink, and the secret books he first read, and then so artfully concealed, that the servant-girls were sure to find them,—read, get detected,—of course, by the owner.

Well, this Lothario's eyes used to fairly glisten when they rested upon any young female form, and the burden of his talk was the victories he had won over too confiding women. It so happened that he was one of a jury of inquest over the dead body of poor Maria Lee, a child of sixteen summers, whom a rich merchant of Loudon had betrayed, and then procured a double murder at the hands of an abortionist. The rich merchant paid some money;—some more in charity: The medical practitioner went to jail for six months; was pardoned out in five weeks; and the babe went back to heaven in the arms of its slaughtered mother.

But there she lay, poor child, upon the long work-table of good Simon Scott, the carpenter, all pale and delicate as finest Parian marble or wax-work, and beautiful! O God, how immortally beautiful! Well, the autopsy went on; the facts were disclosed: He carefully examined lungs, brain, stomach, breasts, heart, uterus—all; and as he laid down the glass he muttered—and I—with the womb in my hand, and the knife between my teeth echoed, from the floor of my soul, his words—" Murdered, by God!

If I could, I certainly would have every male over fifteen witness just such a redemptive and impressive scene; and would take every boy through the wards of a hospital for syphilides. I would have every girl taught the long-forgotten truth that her soul is worth, at least, quite as much as her body; something they little dream of, so ardent is their worship at the shrine of Saint Frivole. Had I been so instruded long years agone, I had escaped very many subsequent mistakes, and consequent misery; but I.

I learned it at last; hence this, and my later books, which I trust will seive as beacons to warn mankind off sunken rocks and reefs long after these hands have returned to primal dust, and the soul that animates them is kneeling at the feet of the Redeeming God. From the earliest historical ages an unnatural custom has prevailed; and its results have been fearful,— sub rosa mainly, for the victims generally grieve, mourn, and die in silence. I refer to the abominable practice of old men marrying young girls. I know that the temptations,—youth and freshness on one side; influence, society, position, money, on the other,—are great indeed; but for all that, it is a something against which that same society ought to turn; and one that God Himself frowns down; for never a marriage among them all produced other fruits than discontent, jealousy, madness and despair.

Campbell, in that odd book "Hermippus, or the Sage's Triumph," lays it down that the old can regain many months or even years of life by consorting and cohabiting with the young. It is, and is not true. If it were possible for two people, one sixty, the other sixteen, to fully and mutually love each other, then the girl would help the man, and the man increase the girl's recuperative power.

But, happily, girls of sixteen can't love sixty, nohow you can fix it. I knew a man in New York State, who literally drove his daughter, a thin, pale, waxen child of sixteen, into a hated marriage of sixty-five or thereabouts. Two years afterwards, a child was buried in the West, and four weeks afterwards the father bore his daughter's body to bury it and his happiness together in one grave on the hillside. Were a man of that age to use means to thus get a daughter of mine, say twenty-live years ago, when I was young, I think there'd have been a third-class funeral in that town; for I regard it as a crime even worse than some sorts of murder; and here are my reasons why: It is safe to say, where occasionally the young girl marries an old man, and good results follow, that such cases are extraordinary, and altogether exceptional to an almost universal rule; because the old man's motive is to prolong his miserable existence at the expense of a fresh young life; and of course his "love!

Happiness is out of the question, and the cases exceedingly rare where they produce anything but misery. Nearly every one will at once see many of the reasons why; but there are some others not quite so self-apparent, and here they are. In marriage and its offices there must be a reciprocal play of electric and magnetic forces; for unless mutual, there's disaster just ahead, and sunken rocks all around, upon which that ship of wedlock is sure, sooner or later, to run aground; and in the wreck that follows some one is sure to be lost—and that some one is a young wife, tired of an old, besotted, worn-out man!

The great disparity of years, magnetism, vitality and life-force between such an ill-starred couple renders it utterly impossible for the young thing to have one single taste or desire in common with the old dotard she calls husband. She cannot absorb, reciprocate or assimilate him, or aught pertaining to him, magnetically, or in any other way; and she even loathes the food he dotes on, and the liquids he consumes to keep his unnatural fever up.

The magnetic auras issuant from them are unlike, and to her repellant, after a time, if not at once. He consumes, absorbs, and assimilates the totality of her vital life, and at length she dies for sheer want of that whereof he robs her. But a still stronger protest is here: Where the disparity is even twenty years it is infinitely far too great.

Ten years' difference is a deal too much, and five the limit, save in the case of bloodless girls and very magnetic men; in which union the female thrives on the fresh vitality of the man. But, even in such cases, she must be blonde, and he the opposite— always ; for if the reverse happens, she's a doomed woman, and he a physical imbecile, in five years' time at the utmost. In the case of ordinary December and May marriages he robs her of life; she gestates horror instead of affection; for in natural marriage souls blend and interfuse more or less perfectly after a time; and those who have lived unhappy lives often find out how well they loved at heart, after death comes tapping at the gate, if not before.

Such antipodes cannot blend, because the girl is peach-downy, supple, gay, lithe and lightsome, but the man lithy, that is, limy, calcareous; and they cannot, will not mingle in any more intimate relations than that of father and daughter. Some people have young souls in old bodies, in which case things are not so bad; but where such soul-youth does not exist, and the parties live in passable harmony, still there's great harm done,—in faic, constructive wificide , and this is the reason why,—a wife is apt to become a mother quicker by an old husband than a young one; because the old man's blood is cooler, his passion slower in culmination; and she is likely to conceive from sheer weariness, and physical and mental inability to guard herself; besides which, she never dreams of danger, or of the female finesses she would put in play against a younger husband.

If ever it is right to prevent conception, I believe it is in exceptional cases like this before us; for his old blood, through his child, courses through her young veins, making her old prematurely; loading her down with the accumulated mental, physical and moral, magnetic and other diseases of all his long run of years. Besides which, his child is born old ;—never knows what babyhood is, or childhood means. It looks, feels, is an oddity; knows no infantile days or pleasures, and is thus, by its own father, robbed and cheated out of its best and most halcyon days.

But that's not the worst of it yet; for the offspring of January is sure to be nearly as calcareous as its father. Its bones are harder, firmer, more solid than is right; its cranium is broader, flatter, thicker, and dense as those of a grown man; and if the young mother escapes forceps-delivery, or a still worse operation, she may consider herself a fortunate woman. May God pity all such, and alas! How often we hear the expression, "She tapped the fountains of his love. Because a portion of each soul becomes incorporate in the other, and the mystical blending—"they twain shall be one"—is complete.

But souls can be tapped without reciprocity, for the young wife's soul is drained from her, either directly as a sponge, by her old husband, or indirectly through the uterine and vaginal diseases sure to be her lot sooner or later; for the fluids of the twain will not, cannot blend, except in so far forth as to innoculate the poor young thing with malignant poison, by which I do not here mean syphilis, but I do mean that worse poison resultant from chemical incompatibility, mental and affectional disgust and repulsion, which leave ulcers and corrosions in their train, with death in the foreground.

Children conceived in May, June, July, August and September, and who, therefore, are born in February, March, April, May, and June, are, unquestionably, better constituted and will live longer, have more character and power than when the double events occur in other months; because nature and weather are more propitious at the start. Conceptions occurring in the morning hours are a myriad degrees better than when that event occurs at other periods. A person's shadow on the wall in a room, by lamp-light, will reveal more of that party's real character than all the phrenology extant, and in its minute phases, too; just as a peculiar smile, observation, movement, or tone of voice will sometimes tell in a second more of a person's real self, than an acquaintance of fifty intimate years would otherwise.

Gender in the human being is a very different thing from gender in the animate kingdoms below the grade of man. In the beasts it means propagation, mainly for food purposes; but in man it stands for, and implies, a great deal more, as will be seen hereinafter. At this point I wish to pick a flaw or two in the reasonings of the popular physiologists and phrenologists of the day, every one of whom urge their moral pleas mainly upon the ground that the marital-functional nuptive rite of the human being is precisely on a par with the creative act of beasts; that is, that God intended it in man as in animals, to be solely and only a propagative function,—that, and nothing more.

It is for generative ends only, and the nervous state precedent to, and succeeding it, is but the natural spur to the God-foreseen result; therefore, say they, the sacred nuptium is permissible only when both parents desire to add one more unit to the great world's population. Now these philosophers either are conscious hypocrites, teaching what they don't believe; else they think us fools, and we know they are.

I have seen a book, of nearly a thousand mortal pages, and that doctrine was the whole gist and burden of its labored and lame argument: It is not true! In those realms, sex is an instinct, a periodical function and appetite. In man, it is a fact of soul; a principle, and a mystical and divine power, altogether superior to the passing furore of beasts that perish and arc known no more; and it means more in his case than it does in all other departments of the sentient world, singly or combined.

I here throw down the gauntlet, and state, boldly and squarely, right in the teeth of all the so-called scientists on earth or under heaven, that the sexive principle, habitude, and instinct in the human is not in very many respects identical with that of the non-human inhabitants of the globe we live on; on the contrary, in us it means, implies, and leads to immeasurably more and deeper things than the average thinker ever dreams of or imagines.

In the organic kingdoms outside of the human, the instinct is blindly obeyed, and self-seeking there, as everywhere else, and not propagation at all, is the all-powerful impelling motive, if motive there be. Bears and horses, cats and fishes, dogs and flies, and every other living thing bearing gender, invariably trouble themselves not at all concerning increase of family, or prolongation of the species, until such increase appears; by which time Nature has brought a new instinct and passion into play. Parallels between man and beasts are not correct or just; for in beasts sexive and parental instincts are separate affairs,—in man they coexist.

In beasts the offspring and parents become disunited at maturity; in the human, the practical relationship lasts not only to the gates of the grave, but leaps the barriers of death, and flourishes in the far-off heaven; and will till the universe grows old, and Time himself topples with hoary age.

We are gravely told that animals obey the impulse once a year, or season, as the case may be; that man ought to go and do likewise; but we won't; nor will these self-same philosophers,—I'm sure of that! They obey the instinct; it is the spur to propagation; but the beast, just like man up to a given point, risks all for the spur, and cares nothing for subsequent consequences, but leaves them for nature to attend to; and she does it like the kind, dear old mother that she is! In the average human, the spur is all that's cared for at the time; albeit consequences are foreseen, and due provisions made; for we marry and mate,—beasts only mate, and marriage is unknown to them.

Not one human couple in fifty millions propagate on purpose, for as a rule it is impossible; not so with beasts; for one hour seals the origin of the progenal result; and men mark the periods, and know to a day when to look for the new animal; but we can only guess the time when our eyes shall gladden at the sight of the new soul God sends to cheer and bless us. We are all accidents! To apply rules to man applicable to animals alone, is an insult to the human race. Stirpiculture, or the rearing of better children, will never succeed upon agricultural, stock-farm, or barnyard principles.

True, nature requires a rich soil to produce high grades of fruit, whether human or other sorts; but in the former she requires the richest of fertilizers, and its name is love. Give her that, and she'll make your eyes glisten at the beauty of the work she does; deprive her of it, and crab apples are the result; and a human crab is the gnarliest and most bitter fruit in all God's garden. In the lower kingdoms nature does her best to produce a superior grade of body.

In the human world she works wholly to produce a loftier order of soul in its triplicate divisions,—intellect, imagination, emotion; and is never satisfied until success fairly crowns her efforts. A handsomer race, physically. I never saw than the modern Greek; nor such a perfect race of scamps; for your Romaic rascal can discount all others on the earth, if we except these of New York and Boston, who are lords paramount in all sorts of villany, from the picking of a pocket to stealing a railway.

Simply because his imagination has rendered the other woman's charms live thousand times more important than they actually are, and yet they are sufficient to enable him to draw disparaging estimates between solid wife and fleeting mistress. New fire, strange blood, has inspired him with fresh passion, and he don't care for the old wife, in presence of the new harlot; and so he abuses one, and lavishes all he has on the other. But you just wait a bit; we'll see how it works in the end,—and so will he; and happily, too, if it be not too late. Three weeks' experience with a mistress will cure almost any man of that sort of weakness, if he have not, by that time, buried his wife's love in a grave ten thousand resurrectionless fathoms deep!

He did not know that the strange, new, exciting magnetism meant death to his home-love, desolation to his hearth-stone, isolation to his heart, and ruin to his happiness; yet it did and does, and eternally will, because it is scortatory, malign, fiery, and while it effectually displaces and kills home-love, it fails to satisfy; and its end is bitter ashes.

In a weak moment, many a man, fired with sudden and electric fire, has fallen into passion's dreadful snare, and for a moment of delirious joy has bartered off a whole life of happiness; for when once one indulges in stolen fruit, which may be sweet, but is never so good as that which grows on one's own trees, the habit becomes fixed, and "just once" lands him—or her—neck-deep in perdition! His talk—or hers—ought to be not "Just once;" but, "It's all very fine, sir or madam—but it won't pay, and—I'll see you in— well , you can guess where—first.

As already said herein, marriage—by which term hereinafter, whenever and wherever printed in italic letters, I mean the nuptive union of the sexes; and it is only really nuptive when love is the prompter; otherwise it is a desecration and worse than beastly profanation—is productive of an entire series of effects and results aside from the perpetuatory or propagative one wherein man and animals are alike, and therein only; for in them sex distinctions are, of course, merely bodily, while in the human it involves and embraces the entire vast domain of both body, soul, and the interwoven spirit.

In the non-human races the marriage office ceases when the germ is lodged; but in the human being its offices only begin at that point; for its results continue, whether the rite be propagative or no, not only through an arc or chord of fleeting time; but they, the results, stretch away into and through the infinite and eternal spaces, and probably cease not, but endure forever and forever. If there is one thing more certain, after death, than another, it is that every immortal man and woman of us is bound and doomed to have all love and lust escapades universally known.

We are destined to meet all with whom we have been carnally intimate in any degree, from that of pure and gentle love, to the horror and violence of inhuman rape. Every carnal association affects us, leaves its mark on us and the other; and some there be who will be astonished that their whole career was turned on earth in consequence of such or such an act—fact; and that defeat followed them in after life by reason of the invisible presence of some wronged victims, married or not.

Nor is this all, for every escapade mingles magnetisms more or less; and a man in New York in may feel the life going out of him day by day, himself not even suspecting that a dozen or more women in as many different parts of the earth, or even from the spaces, are at that instant thinking of him, yearning for him, voluntarily or not, and are drawing out his soul just as easily and surely as he drew their life through honeyed lips ten, twenty, or thirty years before; wherefore libertinism and cyprianism are attended with strange penalties.

In the truly human being—the non-savage and non-barbaric specimens of the races— marriage never degrades the parties either in their own or each other's eyes; but it purifies the heart and soul, uplifts them to the Father, is really Pulchritudinem Divitiis Conjunctam , as it ever should be, that is, Beauty and Divinity joined as one; it therefore becomes in this mystic light, instantly, the holiest and most effective of all possible prayers, hence the most potent and tremendous energy and agency in the entire material and hyperphysical universe. Let me tell you, reader, how and why this is so.

But before I do itv just look at Jugurtha, Attila, Nero and the Bonapartes, with scores of other scourges of God and the human world,—called into being in an instant of time to lash the earth to agony,—a prayer of evil-guild, silently, but effectively uttered at the instant of their descent into the matrices that thereafter gave them to the world. Is not this sufficient to prove the truth of what I call a most effective prayer? Turn the page and behold a Christ, St.

John, Buddha, Confucius, and see the results of peaceful prayer uttered silently too, exactly as in the other case or cases. But there are other proofs: That the creative function is the highest force in us, as it is in and of the Deity, admits of no denial; for it ought to be, if it is not, a perfectly self-evident proposition, axiomatic in its nature, and therefore requiring no attempt toward its demonstration; for it is palpably clear that two principles are interwoven and reciprocally acting and reacting upon each other everywhere and in all things in the universe whereof we know.

These principles are male and female, and both alike are manifestations or modes of the superlative and ineffable Master-Potency, Power, Energy, or over-lapping, subtending, underlying, crowning essence of the universal realm, call it by whatever name you will; and it, the bisexive energy, displayed all around, demonstrates itself to be the Imperial Force of all that is.

To it all things are subsidiary. To it all things bow, bend, acknowledge the peremptory sway of, and without which the All that is would become a blank and starless void, as terrible as eternal Night itself: God is supposed to be a dual being; so is man; but Deity is dual in a double sense; that is to say, God is positively male, and positively female; while also, as in man, all the masculine or electric attributes of God are pervaded by the magnetic feminine principle.

We all know that the better side of man is the she or mother side; and that from it spring all the major elements of both his greatness and his goodness; and we admire an intellectual giant, while we adore a loving man; because from his love, not his intellect, arises all of goodness, inspiration, aspiration, generosity of soul which characterizes him. We are pleased with the Platos, but we worship the Christs.

It is the softer side of soul that generates moral or any other real grandeur, and makes great deeds possible to man; for it is that alone which has power to transmute man the savage into man the incarnate demi-god. All sentient and non-sentient being is more or less pervaded, according to capacity, with what I may call the male and female aura or effluence of the great Supreme, the unknown and unknowable Deity; and all these incarnations of the original Life, save only the human, are distinctively and radically either wholly male or female.

True, there are among the lower types and forms of organic life, a few seeming exceptions, as the so-called hermaphrodites; but, in reality, such are apparent only; for examination in the light of modern science proves all such organisms to be a union of the two principles in a single body, and not a fusion, by any means; and that the male side fecundates the other.

But a human, canine, equine, bovine, or any other bisexed being is an utterly impossible thing, all those affirming to the contrary notwithstanding. There are and have been malformations claimed to be proofs of dual gender, but they were really one or the other.

Below man, while the sexes are distinct, in him, as a principle, not a physical fact, they for the first time fuse and blend, at least on this, and probably upon every other soul-bearing world in the eternal vaults of space. It is this blending of sex in soul that makes us what we are; for were we not half mother, our father's influence upon us would drive the world to chaos in a year; and all that is really excellent in us is the capacity to love and grow; and nothing is capable of love but man.

There is a curious proof of the soundness of the foregoing statement, yet it seems to have escaped the notice of the scientist: I allude to the notorious fact that some womb-bearers, wives and mothers too, are females only physically; while spiritually, mentally, morally, psychically, and in every other way but one, they were and are wholly hard, cold, masculine beings, living contradictions of the statements their forms and functions declare to the world.

On the other hand, many who wear the Phallic sign of gender are no more men in soul, than is the little romping lass of five brief summers a full-grown, full-blown woman. Such people are human monstrosities, and were born wrong. If you ask me why and how, listen, and the story shall be fully, fairly, yet briefly told: If a human monad, or "zoosperm," from the left side of the father, encounters a ripe ovum from the left side of the mother, that fact determines the gender.

It will be male. Now accidents and inversions, aversions and perversions, occur in all departments of nature, but none so glaring and positive as are encountered among human beings; and the missexing of them is one of the most common forms of malconstruction; for it frequently happens that a female zoosperm, which is the living monad, or soul-germ, supplied by the male parent, and clothed in flesh by the mother, is unable to reach a corresponding female ovum, and is compelled to be expurgated, or enter one from the wrong ovarium; in which case the body of the child will be of one gender, its soul and spirit of the opposite one.

In a normally peopled world such monstrosities, which now abound all about us, could not possibly be coaxed, drawn or forced into existence as a human incarnation; and it is utterly impossible for such to appear at all upon the world's stage, if parents wholly, or even partially, love each other; and when such miscreations are seen, it is proof stronger than holy writ that love did not rule in the hour of their generation.

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Now I have affirmed as a truth that true human sex is primarily of soul, and secondarily of body; hence it follows that the post-mortem state of such mixed beings is not a permanent duration of their condition here; for gradually the true sex of the individual asserts its native force and power the physical, or rather hyper-physical being is gradually toned down or up to his or her true condition; the malformation begins to lessen by slow degrees, its signs to disappear, and then they assume either the perfected states of man, or that of woman; their angularities are worn away, and the beings who on earth belied the story of their true gender become as other normal beings are; the memory of what they once were fades away, and they take rank among the truly human.

The philosophers of my day were generally blind to, or oblivious of, the fact that the greatest degree of human excellence in offspring can never be attained, even though the parents are physically perfect; but that a wife every way inferior except in love, loving and being loved, will give the world such children as will prove themselves, indeed, truly great, and grandly good. The strongest force, mental power, and creative energy in the domains of science, art, philosophy, and literature everywhere, is invariably manifested by those who have the most loved and loving mother in them—people whose feminine or magnetic side entirely balances, or slightly overweighs the electric or masculine moiety of their being.

He is everywhere most welcomely greeted, caressed and influential, who is most magnetic, or female,—not in the effeminate sense, but in the glowing, radiant heartfulness of his nature,—is one who has not the most intellect, but most gentleness, love, affection, combined with it.

Take the real or ideal Nazarene, per example , who perished for loving mankind in his 49th year [ see Bunsen ]; or, going back of his alleged times, leap the chasmal years to the Bo-Tree man, and scores of others equally good, if not so famous; and whenever you find a great soul in a male body, depend upon it he is more than half mother; for it is the woman side of such people that gives them power, genius, mental pith, and enables them to write their names in adamantine letters upon the grand facade of the universal human temple!

It is equally true, that those are the most glorious and glorified of the other gender, who were, or are, not the most electric, masculine and intellectual, but the most tender, pure, loving and feminine in all respects. But you say, "We women are not perfect yet. We want perfect offspring! Some of us have not just such husbands as we wish. We are too pure to sully our souls, no matter how great the temptation may be.

We prefer to abide in marriage as we have found it. Some children, the results of such marriage, are not what we would have them; therefore, pray tell us how to improve upon them hereafter. The answer is simple, the method easy. Never run the risk of conception, except you be mentally and physically prepared,—not for it —but to utterly banish everything but the pure desire of your soul to give him all the love then—at the marriage—that you can, and wish, will, pray, desire, decree, that the result, if such there be, may be modelled after your soul's loftiest ideal.

Keep up this all the time of gestation if possible, and the operation of the law just revealed will convince you and the world that nothing equal to it ever fell from human lips or pen. Please recall the incident of myself and the little fairy. Well, that is worth worlds to you, for suppose that, instead of wishing, willing, desiring, decreeing perfect offspring, you exert it to redeem your husband, to kindle up his love for you, for home, for his own fire-side.

But perhaps you care little or naught for all that; still you want health, beauty, strength and long life, all of which are achievable by the same magic means; else in such moments—during power absence—all these are lost, and another nail driven home into your coffin. Obey this grand law, follow out this splendid rule, and ere long you will find that your power will perceptibly augment, most assuredly be felt, and before you are well aware of it will work such a redemptive change as shall bathe your house in pearly glory.

This principle will win him from all others, and kindle love where all was cheerless, wintry blasts before. I know it, have seen it tried, and am confident that she who persistently tries cannot by any possibility fail! Of course the same power can be used by husbands. It is simply substituting active soul-will, love, for indifference, passive body and sufferance; but, as sure as death, here is the starting point of a divine life! There may be those who can find happiness therein.

I never could, and do not want to make the experiment. My reasons will be seen further on in this work; but before we come to that, I wish at this point once for all to say that I believe in free speech, and wide-spread agitation of all questions, social and sexual included; but while I champion the right , I by no means espouse the cause of those champions, for I must abide by the laves of my own individuality, and it is my firm belief that love-variety in any shape is injurious to soul and body, and that the highest point of human power can only be reached by those who are amatively true to each other; for purity alone is the price of power, the secret of soul-might, and it is the coin accepted at God's exchange for such glories as he keeps especially for true and earnest souls.

I write these lines here because at this moment a paper lies, in two senses, before me, which distinctly says that I am an advocate of certain opinions which my entire life has been spent in confuting—as witness every book I have ever written, every speech I have ever spoken. Having put this on record, I now drop all that matter,—both the falsehoods and the falsifiers, forever and forevermore, as being beneath either notice or contempt.

The demand for novelty, "variety," or change in love matters, is not a part of my being, and only foiled zealots—feminine—and worse things in male shape, ever started such malignant slanders against me,—human perverts of both genders, who, failing to induce me to pervert certain knowledge and powers to their base ends and systems, sought to injure me by the meanest and most contemptible of all possible scandal.

But I laughed at the cyprians, and snapped my fingers at the rogues in grain. I am only capable of one love at one time, but that time to me fastens its further end to the eternities just ahead of us all. Temporary attractions departed with my dead years, thank Heaven, and their fruitage was ever bitter, bitter. So true is the statement concerning the vastly greater and superior relative value of the Feminine Principle, that even in the present lubricious age, when woman is almost everywhere wrongly rated, badly educated, and worse placed than she should be, there is still, deep down in the hearts of most, even the coarsest men, a measure of gallant respect, which occasionally gleams forth in noble deeds, and brave championage of the sex, in such guise as to give great hope for fuller and better things by and by.

The chivalry of all ages has not only proved feal to her and acknowledged its dependence upon her smile and frown, boldly fighting for her right or wrong, then, in the foretime, just as now; but has taken especial pains to celebrate individual women and the universal sex; and this worship of the second, if not the primal element of nature, has been carried further, and been more general, than the modern reader might imagine.

For instance, who among those who peruse this essay would believe, save on most indubitable evidence, that the very flower of one, nay, two of the leading nations of the world this day do homage to the emblem of Womanhood? Yet, nevertheless, such is the fact; for the noblest regalia, the highest honor won and worn by Britain's proudest men, is to be acknowledged to be worthy of wearing the royal insignia of the Garter; while the Fleur-de-lis of France, meaning something precisely similar, has been the boast of her noblest for centuries.

Now what does that same Garter mean? Is there any one so uninformed as to imagine for a moment that it signifies the mere string worn about the leg to keep nice stockings from dragging about fair heels? If so, here let that absurd notion be rectified, for the emblem signifies no such puerile nonsense at all.

The motto of the order, Princely and Imperial, is in these days written Honi soit qui mal y pense , translated to mean—to the uninitiated, outside world—"Evil to him who evil thinks," which, in a certain sense, is true and correct, for it does mean that , but not at all in the manner that people generally think it does. It has no reference to general evil whatever, but it expressly means evil of a certain and peculiar kind; for it so happens that the real first word is not Honi but Yoni , and that means nothing more nor less than the feminine organs of generation, coupled with their periodic functions.

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