The Empowered Lifestyle

You know, sometimes I think it's just so funny how all of sudden my emails will all start to flow in and focus on one same concern or issue even though they are from people who have never met one another or who are not tied together in any way except seeking their own empowerment through the advice I offer. Obviously, when an event happens that impacts the collective consciousness, like, say, a 9-11, then, well, it makes sense to see a series of mails that give voice to a communal concern. But, lately, in my in-box there has been an overwhelming propensity of missives that seem to share the same focus as they all appear to highlight the heart. More specifically, heart disease. Or heart attacks. Healthy hearts and how to get one. Hearts, hearts and more hearts.

Now, if I spend some time wondering why, during these last few weeks, I would get so much mail centered around the one specific ailment, well, obviously I think about what's going down on Wall Street and the aftershocks and effects that are seriously influencing and impacting all of our psyches if not our actual retirement funds, college tuition accounts or even the very job that puts food on the table.

I hear from some of my editors about the layoffs at the magazines and same sort of news from the local paper too. My friends and some of my family members have lost loads in this market and the mail that I get from anyone involved with real estate could fill the inside of a small house.

The continued concerns attached to the current credit crunch stretches across the cities and reaches in the very breadbasket of this country and, so, it's almost no wonder that people's hearts are hurting.

So, today, I want to offer some short advice for anyone who has a heart ailment and for those that thankfully don't. No matter what, we've been forever told that music soothes the savage beast and can bring a symphony of stillness to a restless soul. Better than that though are studies that have been being conducted for years in regards to what specific music can bring health and healing to an overtaxed and stressed out heart. That's right, it's now been proven that musical scores that can approximate the rhythm of a resting heart (seventy beats per minute) can slow a heart that's beating too quickly as well as also being able to IMMEDIATELY quell high anxiety and, get this, even improve blood circulation.

Bach's The Brandenburg Concertos, No. 4,Second Movement should be uploaded to any Ipod that belongs to someone looking to find a healthy heart. The Mother Goose Suite, first movement, by Ravel will do same. Venus, The Bringer of Peace (The Planets) by Horst and, then, back to Bach again wtih his Orchestral Suite, No. 2. This music has miraculous effects. Miraculous.

So, the next time you turn on the tv, or open a newspaper or just stop to get a cup of coffee at the Starbucks down on Water and Wall, and you start to get the heebie jeebies, turn that jumpy knee, toe tapping stress into something productive and, then, no sweatin' to the oldies will be the healthy, happy, harmonious order of the day. Ahhhh, Bach.....he does a heart good.