Time spent with cats is never wasted.
~ Sigmund Freud
Friday, January 31, 2014
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Your Thoughts...
You create your thoughts,
Your thoughts create your intentions,
and your intentions create your reality.
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
In his book, The Signal & the Noise...
 |
| HARLEQUIN DUCK_by Christoph Belanger_Windlands Smith Rice International Awards "there isn't any more truth in the world than there was before the Internet or the printing press. Most of the data is just noise, as most of the Universe is filled with empty space." From: The Signal & the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — but Some Don't,
by Nate Silver (ISBN 978-1-59420-411-1)
|
Quotes
"It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves."
Edmund Hillary
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sir Edmund Percival Hillary KG ONZ KBE (20 July 1919 – 11 January 2008) was a New Zealand mountaineer, explorer and philanthropist. On 29 May 1953, Hillary and Nepalese Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers confirmed as having reached the summit of Mount Everest. They were part of the ninth British expedition to Everest, led by John Hunt. Hillary was named by Time as one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century.
Hillary became interested in mountaineering while in secondary school, making his first major climb in 1939, reaching the summit of Mount Ollivier. He served in the Royal New Zealand Air Force as a navigator during World War II. Prior to the 1953 Everest expedition, Hillary had been part of the British reconnaissance expedition to the mountain in 1951, as well as an unsuccessful attempt to climb Cho Oyu in 1952. As part of the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition he reached the South Pole overland in 1958. He subsequently reached the North Pole, making him the first person to reach both poles and summit Everest.
Following his ascent of Everest, Hillary devoted most of his life to helping the Sherpa people of Nepal through the Himalayan Trust, which he founded. Through his efforts, many schools and hospitals were built in Nepal.
Hillary became interested in mountaineering while in secondary school, making his first major climb in 1939, reaching the summit of Mount Ollivier. He served in the Royal New Zealand Air Force as a navigator during World War II. Prior to the 1953 Everest expedition, Hillary had been part of the British reconnaissance expedition to the mountain in 1951, as well as an unsuccessful attempt to climb Cho Oyu in 1952. As part of the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition he reached the South Pole overland in 1958. He subsequently reached the North Pole, making him the first person to reach both poles and summit Everest.
Following his ascent of Everest, Hillary devoted most of his life to helping the Sherpa people of Nepal through the Himalayan Trust, which he founded. Through his efforts, many schools and hospitals were built in Nepal.
"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make
you something else is the greatest accomplishment."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States.Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, Nature. Following this ground-breaking work, he gave a speech entitled "The American Scholar" in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. considered to be America's "Intellectual Declaration of Independence".[1]
Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures first, then revised them for print. His first two collections of essays – Essays: First Series and Essays: Second Series, published respectively in 1841 and 1844 – represent the core of his thinking, and include such well-known essays as Self-Reliance, The Over-Soul, Circles, The Poet and Experience. Together with Nature, these essays made the decade from the mid-1830s to the mid-1840s Emerson's most fertile period.
"True life is lived when tiny changes occur."
Leo Tolstoy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Russian: Лев Никола́евич Толсто́й, pronounced [lʲef nʲɪkɐˈlaɪvʲɪt͡ɕ tɐlˈstoj]; 9 September [O.S. 28 August] 1828 – 20 November [O.S. 7 November] 1910), also known as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Tolstoy was a master of realistic fiction and is widely considered one of the world's greatest novelists. He is best known for two long novels, War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877). Tolstoy first achieved literary acclaim in his 20s for his Sevastopol Sketches (1855), based on his experiences in the Crimean War, followed by the publication of a semi-autobiographical trilogy of novels, Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth (1855-1858). His fiction output also includes two additional novels, dozens of short stories, and several famous novellas, including The Death of Ivan Ilych, Family Happiness, and Hadji Murad. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. Tolstoy is equally known for his complicated and paradoxical persona and for his extreme moralistic and ascetic views, which he adopted after a moral crisis and spiritual awakening in the 1870s, after which he also became noted as a moral thinker and social reformer.
His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and anarcho-pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi[1] and Martin Luther King, Jr.[2]
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Friday, January 24, 2014
Andy Rooney's Thoughts on Women Over Forty
As I grow in age, I value women who are over forty most of all. Here are just a few reasons why: A woman over forty will never wake you in the middle of the night to ask, “What are you thinking?” She doesn’t care what you think.
If a woman over forty doesn’t want to watch the game, she doesn’t sit around whining about it. She does something she wants to do. And, it’s usually something more interesting.
A woman over forty knows herself well enough to be assured in who she is, what she is, what she wants and from whom. Few women past the age of forty give a hoot what you might think about her or what she’s doing.
Women over forty are dignified. They seldom have a screaming match with you at the opera or in the middle of an expensive restaurant. Of course, if you deserve it, they won’t hesitate to shoot you, if they think they can get away with it.
Older women are generous with praise, often undeserved. They know what it’s like to be unappreciated.
A woman over forty has the self-assurance to introduce you to her women friends. A younger woman with a man will often ignore even her best friend because she doesn’t trust the guy with other women. Women over forty couldn’t care less if you’re attracted to her friends because she knows her friends won’t betray her.
Women get psychic as they age. You never have to confess your sins to a woman over forty. They always know.
A woman over forty looks good wearing bright red lipstick. This is not true of younger women. Once you get past a wrinkle or two, a woman over forty is far sexier than her younger counterpart.
A woman over forty knows herself well enough to be assured in who she is, what she is, what she wants and from whom. Few women past the age of forty give a hoot what you might think about her or what she’s doing.
Women over forty are dignified. They seldom have a screaming match with you at the opera or in the middle of an expensive restaurant. Of course, if you deserve it, they won’t hesitate to shoot you, if they think they can get away with it.
Older women are generous with praise, often undeserved. They know what it’s like to be unappreciated.
A woman over forty has the self-assurance to introduce you to her women friends. A younger woman with a man will often ignore even her best friend because she doesn’t trust the guy with other women. Women over forty couldn’t care less if you’re attracted to her friends because she knows her friends won’t betray her.
Women get psychic as they age. You never have to confess your sins to a woman over forty. They always know.
A woman over forty looks good wearing bright red lipstick. This is not true of younger women. Once you get past a wrinkle or two, a woman over forty is far sexier than her younger counterpart.
Older women are forthright and honest. They’ll tell you right off if you are a jerk, if you are acting like one! You don’t ever have to wonder where you stand with her.
Yes, we praise women over forty for a multitude of reasons. Unfortunately, it’s not reciprocal. For every stunning, smart, well-coiffed hot woman of forty-plus, there is a bald, paunchy relic in yellow pants making a fool of himself with some twenty-two-year-old waitress.
Ladies, I apologize.
For all those men who say, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free,” here’s an update for you. Now 80 percent of women are against marriage, why? Because women realize it’s not worth buying an entire pig, just to get a little sausage.
Yes, we praise women over forty for a multitude of reasons. Unfortunately, it’s not reciprocal. For every stunning, smart, well-coiffed hot woman of forty-plus, there is a bald, paunchy relic in yellow pants making a fool of himself with some twenty-two-year-old waitress.
Ladies, I apologize.
For all those men who say, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free,” here’s an update for you. Now 80 percent of women are against marriage, why? Because women realize it’s not worth buying an entire pig, just to get a little sausage.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Andrew Aitken "Andy" Rooney (January 14, 1919 – November 4, 2011) was an American radio and television writer. He was most notable for his weekly broadcast "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney," a part of the CBS News program 60 Minutes from 1978 to 2011. His final regular appearance on 60 Minutes aired October 2, 2011. He died one month later, on November 4, 2011, at age 92.
Thursday, January 23, 2014
"...Everything else is inconvenience."
 |
| Ceremonial Eagle by Sue Wise |
“If you break your neck,
if you have nothing to eat,
if your house is on fire,
then you got a problem.
Everything else is inconvenience.”
~ Robert Fulghum
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
Robert Lee Fulghum (born June 4, 1937) is an American author, primarily of short essays.
He came to prominence in the US when his first collection, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (1988), stayed on the New York Times bestseller lists for nearly two years. Throughout this collection, subtitled "Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things," Fulghum expounds his down-home philosophy of seeing the world through the eyes of a child.
There are currently more than 16 million copies of his books in print, published in 27 languages in 103 countries. His prose style is very simple and direct, and finds life-affirming maxims in such mundane matters as zoos, leaf-raking, and dusting.
He lives in Seattle, Washington, Moab, Utah, and on the Greek island of Crete, but grew up in Waco, Texas.
http://www.robertfulghum.com/
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
A Lesson in Stress Management
A Psychologist walked around a room while teaching Stress
Management to an audience.
As she raised a glass
of water, everyone expected they'd be asked the "Half empty or Half
full" question.
Instead, with a smile
on her face, she inquired:
"How heavy is
this glass of water?"
Answers called out
ranged from 8 oz. to 20 oz.
She replied,
"The absolute weight doesn't matter.
It depends on how
long I hold it.
If I hold it for a
minute,
it's not a problem.
If I hold it for an
hour,
I'll have an ache in
my arm.
If I hold it for a
day,
my arm will feel numb
and paralyzed.
In each case,
the weight of the
glass doesn't change,
But, the longer I hold it,
the heavier it
becomes.
She continued,
"The Stresses
and Worries in Life , are like that Glass of Water...
Think about them for
a while and nothing happens.
Think about them a
bit longer and they begin to hurt.
And if you think about
them all day long,
you will feel
paralyzed –
incapable of doing anything....!!!"
Remember to put the
Glass Down
Death Changes Everything!
Death changes everything! Time changes nothing....
I still miss the sound of your voice, the stories
of your life and just being in your presence.
So No, time changes nothing, I miss you
as much today as I did the day you died.
I just miss you !
I still miss the sound of your voice, the stories
of your life and just being in your presence.
So No, time changes nothing, I miss you
as much today as I did the day you died.
I just miss you !
Monday, January 20, 2014
10 Things Happy And Successful People Never Say
 |
| Buckeye Butterfly |
http://www.lifehack.org/
Have you ever thought about how your attitude may be affecting your outlook on life? A good way to start making progress in your life and your goals is by becoming more positive about life.
Here are 10 things that happy and successful people never say.
1. “It’s impossible to do that.”
Believing that what you want to do is impossible is something that happy and successful people never do. You should be looking for how to make your dream or goal a reality. If you have faith, then it can be done.
2. “I’m not in control of what I do.”
Many people who feel that they can’t reach their goals believe that their goal is unattainable because other people are in control of whether or not they can be successful. However, you should not think this way and you should do what needs to be done in order to feel like you are in control of your destiny.
3. “I’ll have time later to reach that goal.”
Many people might think that they can just put their goals/dreams off to the side and attempt to reach them later. However, don’t always think that you will have time. Before you know it, life will flash before your eyes and you will probably wish that you would have tried earlier.
There’s no better time than now.
4. “I’m afraid of failure.”
If you never attempt your goals because you are afraid to fail, then you have already failed. Failure may be in the back of your mind, but it should never stop you from attempting to reach for your goal.
5. “There’s no point.”
If you have been working really hard to reach your goals, then at some point during the process you may start feeling overwhelmed. You might think that there’s no point. However, people who are happy and successful persevere through less-motivating times and work to reach their goals.
6. “It’s too late.”
You might think that you are too late to reach a goal because of your age or something else that has happened in your life. However, don’t let something stop you just because you wish that you would have done it earlier.
7. “I’m tired.”
In order to reach your goals, it will probably take a lot of work. If everything was easy in life, then you would probably never truly enjoy reaching a goal because it really wouldn’t be a goal.
8. “I don’t want to do any extra work.”
If you want to reach your goals and be happy and successful with your life, then you will most likely have to put in extra work to reach your goals. If everything was easy and no extra work was needed, then it probably wouldn’t be much of a goal. You will most likely have to put the extra hours in and really work hard in order to get what you want in life.
9. “No one will help me.”
A happy and successful person won’t wait for others to help them to reach their goals in life. They will take action and will either do things themselves or know who to look for in order to get help.
10. “I don’t know what to do.”
Sometimes when you create a new goal for yourself, you might think that you don’t even know where to start. You may be completely scared to even start your goal because sometimes it can be a lot to think about. However, you can’t let this very early step in reaching your goals stop you from even starting your goals. You will need to make a realistic plan for how you will reach your goal.
Sunday, January 19, 2014
Child Animal Whisperers
Posted: 01/16/2014 1:59 pm EST | Updated: 01/17/2014 5:28 pm ES
Need a pick-me-up? These photos of children interacting with animals are guaranteed to give you warm and fuzzy feelings. Taken by Russian photographer and mother Elena Shumilova, the gorgeous pictures show Shumilova's sons, Yaroslav and Vanya, on the family farm. Yaroslav, 5, and Vanya, 2, clearly have an amazing bond with the family's pet rabbits, ducks, cats and dogs, reports Metro.
Taken by Russian photographer and mother Elena Shumilova, the gorgeous pictures show Shumilova's sons, Yaroslav and Vanya, on the family farm. Yaroslav, 5, and Vanya, 2, clearly have an amazing bond with the family's pet rabbits, ducks, cats and dogs, reports Metro.
Shumilova, who only took up photography in 2012, said the images were her attempts to record these amazing relationships in their natural habitat, according to the Yahoo! Shine blog.
The photographer's striking use of light is apparent throughout her work, at times bathing the scenes in a dreamlike glow. Natural light gives "emotional depth to the image," Shumilova told Yahoo! "I get inspired mainly by desire to express something I feel, though I usually cannot tell exactly what it is."
May, 2013
May, 2013
June, 2013
May, 2013
December, 2012
October, 2013
May, 2013
November, 2013
January 19, 2014
Need a pick-me-up? These photos of children interacting with animals are guaranteed to give you warm and fuzzy feelings. Taken by Russian photographer and mother Elena Shumilova, the gorgeous pictures show Shumilova's sons, Yaroslav and Vanya, on the family farm. Yaroslav, 5, and Vanya, 2, clearly have an amazing bond with the family's pet rabbits, ducks, cats and dogs, reports Metro.
Taken by Russian photographer and mother Elena Shumilova, the gorgeous pictures show Shumilova's sons, Yaroslav and Vanya, on the family farm. Yaroslav, 5, and Vanya, 2, clearly have an amazing bond with the family's pet rabbits, ducks, cats and dogs, reports Metro.
Shumilova, who only took up photography in 2012, said the images were her attempts to record these amazing relationships in their natural habitat, according to the Yahoo! Shine blog.
The photographer's striking use of light is apparent throughout her work, at times bathing the scenes in a dreamlike glow. Natural light gives "emotional depth to the image," Shumilova told Yahoo! "I get inspired mainly by desire to express something I feel, though I usually cannot tell exactly what it is."
May, 2013
May, 2013
June, 2013
May, 2013
December, 2012
October, 2013
May, 2013
November, 2013
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Brené Brown: How to Live with Uncertainty
If you don't have all the answers, learn to live in the question.
I'm currently trying to make some changes in my career—and travel a lot less—so I can spend more time with my family and explore new creative endeavors. I have no idea how this will work—and I hate that! Which means I'm now compulsively polling my friends: What do you think? Is this crazy? But there's a fine line between asking for suggestions and desperately grasping for answers nobody else can offer.
Uncertainty makes us feel vulnerable, so we try to escape it any way we can. Sometimes we even settle for misinformation or bad news over not knowing. Have you ever ended up in an Internet rabbit hole of terror while waiting for test results?
Yet it really is possible to thrive amid uncertainty. It's not about getting advice you can trust; it's about faith and self-trust—believing that whatever happens, you'll find a way through it. Without uncertainty, we'd never start a business or risk loving someone new. There are no guarantees when we step into the unknown. But these periods of discomfort can give rise to life's most important adventures.
The Dare
Pay attention to what makes you feel better (and worse).
The unknown can bring out the worst in us. When I'm deep in uncertainty about work, I can get impatient and snappy with the people who mean the most to me—and that feels terrible. I've learned that sleep, exercise and eating healthy make me more patient and calm.
Create an emotional clearing.
Fear tends to drown out our intuition, so it's essential to carve out moments of quiet—time for meditation, prayer or just a long walk—to reconnect with our gut. I'm still learning to meditate (and it's not going well), but you can bet that when I have a big talk coming up, I'm out walking near my house, rain or shine, listening for the sound of my inner voice.
Get support.
Instead of begging everyone in your address book for answers, ask one or two loved ones to remind you that it's normal to feel vulnerable when you're in a period of change. As my husband often tells me, "It's supposed to suck right now. Go walk!" Uncertainty is a necessary part of getting where we want to go.
Brené Brown, PhD, the author of Daring Greatly, researches vulnerability, shame and courage at the
On the Importance of Appreciating Animals
by Arianna Huffington
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington
Posted: 01/13/2014 10:36 pm
Cross-posted from TheDodo.com.
You can tell a
lot about people from their screensavers. Mine is a picture of gazelles: They
are my role models. They run and flee when there is a danger -- say, a leopard
or a lion approaching -- but as soon as the danger passes, they stop and go
back to grazing peacefully without a care in the world. But human beings cannot
distinguish between real dangers and imagined ones. As Mark Williams, a
clinical psychology professor at Oxford
I've had
gazelles -- and lots of other animals, actually -- on my mind lately, because I
just finished putting the final touches on a book about the Third Metric and about
what makes life worth living. And in the course of researching and writing it,
I arrived at a deeper understanding of all that animals can teach us. That's
why I'm delighted at the arrival of The Dodo to lead the conversation on all
the ways animals are deserving of our respect and compassion, at a time when
the public is more interested than ever before in understanding and empathizing
with animals.
While my two
daughters were still in middle school, they brought into our home a Maltese,
who we named Oliver Pistachio Huffington -- Ollie to his friends. Having a pet
reinforced one of my core beliefs -- that one purpose of life is to expand the
boundaries of our love, to widen the circle of our concern, to open up rather
than shut down, expand rather than contract. And every week brings more stories
and science about the amazing ways in which pets open our hearts and enhance
our lives. Allen McConnell, professor of psychology at Miami University
In another
study involving 97 pet owners, some in the group were made to feel rejected
socially (sounds like high school all over again). Afterwards, some in the
study were asked to write about their best friends, while others wrote about
their pets. What the researchers found was that thinking about a pet provided
the same power to recover from the negative feelings of rejection as thinking
about a best friend.
Like spouses
and close friends, pets can become "included in the self," the core
of our being that forms our perspective. McConnell says "they become as
much a part of the self as many family members." His conclusion? Pets are
often "friends with benefits" and our health and happiness improve in
meaningful ways from pet ownership.
But the
benefits of pets go beyond the everyday. "Pets offer an unconditional love
that can be very helpful to people with depression," said Ian Cook,
psychiatrist and director of UCLA's Depression Research and Clinic Program. For
those suffering from depression, pet ownership can be an invaluable source of
healing.
The role of
animals, and especially dogs, as roving ambassadors of goodwill can be seen
most clearly in their role as therapy dogs. After the tragic massacre in Newtown , Conn. , in
December 2012, therapy dogs from all over the country were brought in to help
the community, and especially the children of Sandy Hook Elementary
School Newtown
Another young girl and a therapy dog developed an
especially moving bond. At a Christmas party for Sandy
Hook children just after the shooting, 9-year-old Emma Wishneski
happened upon a therapy dog named Jeffrey, whose nickname is the
"Positively Peaceful Pit Bull." Jeffrey was rescued from a New York City shelter by Milford , Conn.
Animals help us
be better humans. Quite often, they show us how to be our best selves. Always
in the moment, sticking their noses into everything (literally), they see a
world that we take for granted, one we're usually just hurriedly passing
through on our way to lives we never quite reach.
The Dodo would
not be launching if not for Izzie Lerer, its co-founder and editor-at-large.
Izzie is wrapping up her doctoral studies in philosophy at Columbia
This Blogger's Books from http://www.amazon.com/ http://www.amazon.com/
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
The Value of...
 |
| A Star Formation Courtesy of Hubble Space Telescope |
To realize The value of ten years: Ask a newly Divorced couple.
To realize The value of four years: Ask a graduate.
To realize The value of one year: Ask a student who Has failed a final exam.
To realize The value of nine months: Ask a mother who gave birth to a stillborn.
To realize The value of one month: Ask a mother Who has given birth to A premature baby.
To realize The value of one week: Ask an editor of a weekly newspaper.
To realize The value of one minute: Ask a person Who has missed the train, bus or plane.
To realize The value of one second: Ask a person Who has survived an accident.
Time waits for no one. Treasure every moment you have. You will treasure it even more when You can share it with someone special. To realize the value of a friend or family member: LOSE ONE.
The origin of this letter is unknown, But it brings good luck to everyone who passes it on. Remember.... Hold on tight to the ones you love!!!!
Dr. Phil: 9 Inspiring Rules to Live By
 |
| Morning Shower_Swan by Paul Keates |
Dr. Phil: 9 Inspiring Rules to Live By
Everybody has a personal truth. A personal truth is what you believe about yourself when nobody's listening and nobody's watching.”
— Dr. Phil
“A strong sense of self is the foundation of personal power. If you define yourself by what someone else thinks, you've already lost the battle. Assert the right to be who you want to be.”
— Dr. Phil
“A successful reinvention doesn't happen when you hate the person you are. It happens when you love yourself enough to believe that you can do better and deserve better.”
— Dr. Phil
“The universe rewards action. Successful people take action toward a known outcome. You can't think about it. You have to do it—and you don't do it for a week or a month. You do it until. Until you get what you want.”
— Dr. Phil
“The major difference between a dream and a goal is a timeline for progress, coupled with accountability.”
— Dr. Phil
“We generate the results in life we believe we deserve.”
— Dr. Phil
“Happiness isn't a one-size fits-all proposition. You must define what it looks like for you and then make a conscious effort to access whatever gets you to your unique definition of joy.”
— Dr. Phil
“If there isn't something in your life that makes you wake up curious and excited to start the day, you will never be a powerful person. Passion is what fuels the jet engine propelling you toward a meaningful existence.”
— Dr. Phil
“You're going to live either the life chosen or the life assigned. I want you to live the life chosen.”
— Dr. Phil
Read more: http://www.oprah.com/quote/Dr-Phil-Words-to-Live-By-Life?list_id=47385#ixzz2pjIPAT8A
Monday, January 6, 2014
What The Ancient Maya Can Teach Us About Living Well
What The Ancient Maya Can Teach Us About Living Well
Posted: 01/03/2014 8:55 am EST
In the modern world -- when technological advances and information overload have left many of us with a desire to get back to basics -- the need for ancient wisdom may be more important than ever before.
Ancient health and healing secrets are making something of a resurgence, and for good reason. The ancient Greeks asked the big questions about what it means to live a good life, and some of their theories on ethics and happiness have been backed by modern science. Thousands of years ago, Indian sages developed a system for stilling the thoughts that's now practiced across America. The early Maya civilizations, too, developed healing systems that have influenced holistic healthcare to this day.
The Maya civilization thrived for six centuries through areas that are now Yucatan, Quintana Roo, Campeche, Tabasco, and Chiapas are in Mexico, as well as parts of Belize, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala before collapsing mysteriously around 900 AD. The Mesoamerican civilization -- advanced in its art, architecture and mathematics -- may not have survived, but many of their secrets to good health, healing and living well are still alive to this day.
Here are eight things the Maya can teach us about living well.
They ate chia seeds.
Chia -- derived from the Mayan word for strength -- was a dietary staple of the ancient Aztecs and Mayas, and one that kept them healthy and energized. In addition to eating the seeds regularly, the Maya also used them in religious ceremonies.
The superfood is high in protein and fiber, and it's loaded with healthy omega-3 fatty acids, which are essential for maintaining good cognitive function and may even play a role in preventing cancer.
The body and soul were treated as one.
For the Maya, health was all about balance -- and disease, on the other hand, was seen as the manifestation of imbalance. To cure these imbalances, the Maya incorporated plants and herbs, their own forms of massage and acupuncture, hydrotherapy and prayer into their healing procedures.
The holistic healing tradition of the Maya was a medico-religious one, meaning that they treated both ailments of the body and of the spirit, and recognized their interconnection. The Maya healers sought primarily to balance the flow of ch’ulel, or life-force, in the body, making Maya medicine very similar to traditional Chinese medicine which also seeks to direct the body's life-force (qi). For the Maya, this ch'ulel (which forms the first principle of Maya medicine) is a sign of the interconnection of body and soul, which forms the second of the six principles.
"Ch'ulel represented that everything was linked and unified," wrote Bonnie Bley in The Ancient Maya and their City of Tulum. "The physical and spiritual worlds were at opposite ends of a continuum surrounded by medicine which aided the spirits in the healing process."
Clearly, they were on the right track: An extensive body of research has suggested that emotional health can have a significant impact on physical health.
Healers were central to the culture.
In the Maya civilizations, the healer, or h’men, played a central role in the community. They possessed an extensive knowledge of the healing remedies, and used them to restore the individual in ill health to a state of equilibrium. The indigenous healing tradition has been passed down orally for many generations and the descendentants of some Maya healers still practice to this day, largely in the Yucatan region of Mexico.
The healers played an important role in the community, particularly in the Yucatan and Campeche cultures.
The indigenous healer is, in many cases, a traditional authority or community leader, and in general is recognized as a servant of the community," write Hernán García, Antonio Sierra and Gilberto Balam in Wind In The Blood: Mayan Healing And Chinese Medicine. "To the present day these healers are essential to their communities. The recognition they receive, despite changing social conditions, allows them to continue exercising their medical practice."
They ate chocolate. Lots of it.
As long as 2,600 years ago, the Maya may have been regularly consuming chocolate. Archeologists found residue of chocolate on an ancient teapot, and now believe that the Maya were drinking chocolate for up to 1,000 years earlier than was previously thought. The Maya incorporated the ancient superfood cacao into their diet regularly -- some say they consumed cacao at every meal -- to maintain good health.
"It was the beverage of everyday people and also the food of the rulers and gods," Jonathan Haas, curator of the "Chocolate" exhibition at the Field Museum in Chicago, told National Geographic. "In fact, the scientific name for the cacao tree is Theobroma cacao -- 'food of the gods.'"
It may have played a significant role in their good health. Cacao and cocoa products are packed with flavanols, an antioxidant shown to benefit heart and brain health, which is also found in red wine, berries and teas. Cocoa is high in magnesium, a mineral that's important for many bodily processes, and is also rich in calcium, iron, copper, zinc and potassium, not to mention loaded with fiber.
They believed in living by natural cycles.
A strong belief in natural cycles of birth and death helped to bring meaning and structure to Maya lives, and formed the basis of their religious beliefs.
"The Maya believed deeply in the cyclical nature of life –- nothing was ever 'born' and nothing ever 'died' -– and this belief inspired their view of the gods and the cosmos," according to the Ancient History Encyclopedia.
The many rituals and ceremonies of the Maya were generally tied to these cycles, which were embodied by the Maya maize god. According to Maya myths, the maize god was decapitated at the time of harvest and reborn at the beginning of the growing season. The myth of the maize god helped them to explain the changing of the seasons and the annual return of maize, their most important crop.
“The Mesoamerican worldview was constantly in motion, in cycles of birth and death, termination and regeneration," anthropologists William Duncan and Charles Hofling wrote in a paper published in Ancient Mesoamerica in 2011. "Everything that came to be needed to be animated or ensouled, and would eventually be terminated.”
Spiritual belief like the kind that the Maya lived by comes with a number of possible health benefits, including lower stress levels, improved mental health and maybe even increased longevity.
They were one of the earliest cultures to keep pets.
In the Archaic period, the Maya domesticated dogs and turkeys to coexist with them as pets. In parts of Guatamala populated by the Maya, archeologists found turkey fossils with clipped wings, suggesting that they were kept in captivity. While the turkeys may have been bred for food, dogs were often used as companions, according to archeologist and Maya researcher Robert Sharer.
The health benefits of animal companions are many: Pet ownership has been linked to decreased blood pressure and cholesterol levels, as well as boosts in mood and decreased loneliness. Having a dog in the house has even been shown to improve children's health, reducing their risk of developing the common cold.
They had sophisticated plumbing.
Recent research suggests that the ancient Maya likely had sophisticated enough plumbing to provide them with running water, fountains and toilets. While it was previously thought that the ability to generate water pressure came when the Spaniards conquered the area, scientists found that the Maya center in Chiapas, Mexico had an elaborate system of managing water.
But these plumbing systems weren't purely functional: Being surrounded by water may have boosted their well-being. Living near a body of water has been linked with increased health and well-being, and for thousands of years, the healing power of water has been harnessed through hydrotherapy.
"I actually think that the creation of water pressure at Palenque was a sign of wealth," Pennsylvania State University archaeologist Kirk French told LiveScience. "It was definitely not necessary. They had water everywhere. The Maya of Palenque were never more than 150 meters (492 feet) from a source of water. Water pressure technology would have been useful through the display of power and knowledge, similar to how priests and shamans used astronomical events."
Their family ties were strong.
In the Maya culture, family was important. It wasn't so much about the clan or kinship as it was about the household, which could be either single or multiple family units. The multiple-family household is a part of the cultural tradition, some scholars have suggested.
"Within historical multiple-family households are nuclear families linked by a wide variety of kinship ties -- parents and sons, parents and daughters, two or three brothers or sisters, cousins, and maternal or paternal uncles and aunts," cultural anthropologist Richard Wilk wrote.
Strong family and community ties have been linked with increased well-being and boosted immunity, as well as enhanced longevity.
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