Immunity Inspiring Quotes

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I am not an absolutist or chauvinist whose ways are immune to evolution. My core philosophy is that I might be wrong.
Asaad Almohammad (An Ishmael of Syria)
Don't take anything Personally Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering"
Miguel Ruiz
Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.
Carl Sagan (The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark)
There is a coherence in things, a stability; something... is immune from change and shines out... in the face of the flowing, the fleeting, the spectral, like a ruby.
Virginia Woolf (To the Lighthouse)
Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value the may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder.
Carl Sagan (The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark)
The faerie represent the beauty we don't see, or even choose to ignore. That's why I'll paint them in junkyards, or fluttering around a sleeping wino. No place or person is immune to spirit. Look hard enough, and everything has a story. Everybody is important."- Jilly Coppercorn
Charles de Lint (The Onion Girl (Newford, #8))
A world of fully developed individuals is immune to the cult of collectivism.
Bryant McGill (Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life)
Health is normal. The human body is a self-repairing, self-defending, self-healing marvel. Disease is relatively difficult to induce, considering the body's powerful immune system. However, this complicated and delicate machinery can be damaged if fed the wrong fuel during the formative years. ... Healthy living with nutritional excellence throughout life can slow the decline of aging. It can prevent the years and years of suffering in ill health that is so common today as people get older and become dependent on medical treatments, drugs, and surgery. Nutritional excellence is the only real fountain of youth.
Joel Fuhrman (Disease-Proof Your Child: Feeding Kids Right)
The key is the ability, whether innate or conditioned, to find the other side of the rote, the picayune, the meaningless, the repetitive, the pointlessly complex. To be, in a word, unborable … If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.
David Foster Wallace (The Pale King)
Through depression and many other dark low emotions, our Light dims and our immune system declines along with it. White blood cells are the physical Light of our body. Colors can be used to heal, restore and to uplift us.
Jacqueline Ripstein (The Art of HealingArt: The Keys to Power and Awareness (collectors Edition))
We're all connected to each other. We all breathe the same air into our lungs. None of us are immune to each other's problems, that's why we have to care about each other.
Kelly Yang (New from Here)
Negativity is a debilitating disease. It is a slow and painful way to experience life. It attacks the immune system, creates anxiety, and can lead to loneliness and depression. Finding your inner harmony is the quickest way to alleviate the methodical destruction of this dark energy
Gary Hopkins
At its heart, Codependency is a set of behaviors developed to manage the anxiety that comes when our primary attachments are formed with people who are inconsistent or unavailable in their response to us. Our anxiety-based responses to life can include over-reactivity, image management, unrealistic beliefs about our limits, and attempts to control the reality of others to the point where we lose our boundaries, self-esteem, and even our own reality. Ultimately, Codependency is a chronic stress disease, which can devastate our immune system and lead to systemic and even life-threatening illness.
Mary Crocker Cook (Awakening Hope. A Developmental, Behavioral, Biological Approach to Codependency Treatment.)
Movement is big medicine; it’s the signal to every cell in our bodies that no matter what kind of damage we’ve suffered, we’re ready to rebuild and move away from death and back toward life. Rest too long after an injury and your system powers down, preparing you for a peaceful exit. Fight your way back to your feet, however, and you trigger that magical ON switch that speeds healing hormones to everything you need to get stronger: your bones, brain, organs, ligaments, immune system, even the digestive bacteria in your belly, all get a molecular upgrade from exercise. For
Christopher McDougall (Running with Sherman: How a Rescue Donkey Inspired a Rag-tag Gang of Runners to Enter the Craziest Race in America)
If your positivity immune system is low, any exposure to a person afflicted with negativity can poison your life.
Bryant McGill (Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life)
Negative emotions, like depression or anxiety, have been shown to affect our immune system. Stress impedes wound healing.
Chris Prentiss (Be Who You Want, Have What You Want: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life)
Every day the world subtracts from itself and nothing is immune.
Luanne Castle (Doll God)
The beauty of real peace is that it is immune to the cares of this world.
Delma Pryce (WATCH & PRAY: ARE YOU READY)
Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder.
Carl Sagan (The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark)
You are not immune to or separate from nature's energy and flow. See it, feel it, be it, free it.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
Even teachers are not immune to learning, we are all students in the school of life.
Mwanandeke Kindembo
The only way to become immune to bullshit is to stop believing in it.
Gabbo De La Parra
For the survivors and their testimonies I want to single out from the huge and forbidding archive a volume that deserves permanent currency: Anton Gill’s The Journey Back from Hell. It is an extraordinarily inspiring treasury of voices, and one grounded and marshalled by the author with both flair and decorum. Indeed, these reminiscences, these dramatic monologues, reshape our tentative answer to the unavoidable question: What did you have to have to survive? What you had to have is usually tabulated as follows: luck; the ability to adapt, immediately and radically; a talent for inconspicuousness; solidarity with another individual or with a group; the preservation of decency (“the people who had no tenets to live by—of whatever nature—generally succumbed” no matter how ruthlessly they struggled); the constantly nurtured conviction of innocence (an essential repeatedly emphasised by Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago); immunity to despair; and, again, luck.
Martin Amis (The Zone of Interest: A novel)
Beauty, it seemed to Amineh, did not have to be extraordinary to be cherished. Maybe that was its secret, that it lived in the most common expressions of man and nature. The artisan had discovered it in a block of wood, which he had carved into a scene of a young woman sitting at a window. The locals had created it through the colorful geraniums they placed on small protrusions covering every square meter of their adobe walls. Even the animals were not immune. Who could doubt the starlings’ ecstatic flight around the minarets of the mosque was inspired by the symmetry of that aging structure.
Nadine Bjursten (Half a Cup of Sand and Sky: A Novel)
Few scientists acquainted with the chemistry of biological systems at the molecular level can avoid being inspired. Evolution has produced chemical compounds exquisitely organized to accomplish the most complicated and delicate of tasks. Many organic chemists viewing crystal structures of enzyme systems or nucleic acids and knowing the marvels of specificity of the immune systems must dream of designing and synthesizing simpler organic compounds that imitate working features of these naturally occurring compounds.
Donald J. Cram
I was exposed to a cut-throat life that spoke a language of hate. The emptiness in my life had more than one million questions. However, I was immune to abandon answers. Although I had one million questions, I received two million answers that were one lie after another.
Charlena E. Jackson (Pinwheels and Dandelions)
I am looking at the clouds and wondering how long the cloud will last in my life. I’ve had so many cloudy days; sadly, I forget how the sun looks and feels. My eyes are sensitive to the daylight, but they are immune to the darkness with just the right kind of light from the stars.
Charlena E. Jackson (Pinwheels and Dandelions)
Movement is big medicine; it’s the signal to every cell in our bodies that no matter what kind of damage we’ve suffered, we’re ready to rebuild and move away from death and back toward life. Rest too long after an injury and your system powers down, preparing you for a peaceful exit. Fight your way back to your feet, however, and you trigger that magical ON switch that speeds healing hormones to everything you need to get stronger: your bones, brain, organs, ligaments, immune system, even the digestive bacteria in your belly, all get a molecular upgrade from exercise.
Christopher McDougall (Running with Sherman: How a Rescue Donkey Inspired a Rag-tag Gang of Runners to Enter the Craziest Race in America)
I am tired of the lifeless tears. I’ve cried so many bitter tears of yesterday because tomorrow has never come. I am immune to salty tears as I drown in an ocean of tears over and over again. When will I be able to come up for air? Sadly, life dunks my head underwater again as I cry while tears are buried beneath my sheets at night.
Charlena E. Jackson (Pinwheels and Dandelions)
Like anyone else, I too have anger in me. However, I try to recall that anger is a destructive emotion. I remind myself that scientists now say that anger is bad for our health; it eats into our immune system. So, anger destroys our peace of mind and our physical health. We shouldn't welcome it or think of it as natural or as a friend.
Dalai Lama XIV
No one has immunity, nor is anyone ever untouched by life. Everyone has a story and every story matters, including you, and your story my darling. It is time to see beneath the superficial layers, to open up our hearts to the vulnerability that being alive naturally brings and to accept that; being human is not a problem to solve but our opportunity to grow and evolve.
Samantha Caroline Lavallee
Grief literally changes and rearranges the cells of our bodies. Our brains rewire, our nerves fire us up and settle us down, and our immune systems do everything they can to protect us from stress. When our loved one dies, our bodies feel it—from the immediate impact to the lasting effects. Grief leaves a visible and invisible impression on our lives, in our lungs, in our brains, and in our hearts. Everyone who has ever grieved is, at least partially, made up of grief.
Shelby Forsythia (Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss)
You were burning in the middle of the worst solar storm our records can remember. (...) Everyone else fled. All your companions and crew left you alone to wrestle with the storm. “You did not blame them. In a moment of crystal insight, you realized that they were cowards beyond mere cowardice: their dependence on their immortality circuits had made it so that they could not even imagine risking their lives. They were all alike in this respect. They did not know they were not brave; they could not even think of dying as possible; how could they think of facing it, unflinching? “You did not flinch. You knew you were going to die; you knew it when the Sophotechs, who are immune to pain and fear, all screamed and failed and vanished. “And you knew, in that moment of approaching death, with all your life laid out like a single image for you to examine in a frozen moment of time, that no one was immortal, not ultimately, not really. The day may be far away, it may be further away than the dying of the sun, or the extinction of the stars, but the day will come when all our noumenal systems fail, our brilliant machines all pass away, and our records of ourselves and memories shall be lost. “If all life is finite, only the grace and virtue with which it is lived matters, not the length. So you decided to stay another moment, and erect magnetic shields, one by one; to discharge interruption masses into the current, to break up the reinforcement patterns in the storm. Not life but honor mattered to you, Helion: so you stayed a moment after that moment, and then another. (...) “You saw the plasma erupting through shield after shield (...) Chaos was attempting to destroy your life’s work, and major sections of the Solar Array were evaporated. Chaos was attempting to destroy your son’s lifework, and since he was aboard that ship, outside the range of any noumenal circuit, it would have destroyed your son as well. “The Array was safe, but you stayed another moment, to try to deflect the stream of particles and shield your son; circuit after circuit failed, and still you stayed, playing the emergency like a raging orchestra. “When the peak of the storm was passed, it was too late for you: you had stayed too long; the flames were coming. But the radio-static cleared long enough for you to have last words with your son, whom you discovered, to your surprise, you loved better than life itself. In your mind, he was the living image of the best thing in you, the ideal you always wanted to achieve. “ ‘Chaos has killed me, son,’ you said. ‘But the victory of unpredictability is hollow. Men imagine, in their pride, that they can predict life’s each event, and govern nature and govern each other with rules of unyielding iron. Not so. There will always be men like you, my son, who will do the things no one else predicts or can control. I tried to tame the sun and failed; no one knows what is at its fiery heart; but you will tame a thousand suns, and spread mankind so wide in space that no one single chance, no flux of chaos, no unexpected misfortune, will ever have power enough to harm us all. For men to be civilized, they must be unlike each other, so that when chaos comes to claim them, no two will use what strategy the other does, and thus, even in the middle of blind chaos, some men, by sheer blind chance, if nothing else, will conquer. “ ‘The way to conquer the chaos which underlies all the illusionary stable things in life, is to be so free, and tolerant, and so much in love with liberty, that chaos itself becomes our ally; we shall become what no one can foresee; and courage and inventiveness will be the names we call our fearless unpredictability…’ “And you vowed to support Phaethon’s effort, and you died in order that his dream might live.
John C. Wright (The Golden Transcendence (Golden Age, #3))
While some of our deepest wounds come from feeling abandoned by others, it is surprising to see how often we abandon ourselves through the way we view life. It’s natural to perceive through a lens of blame at the moment of emotional impact, but each stage of surrender offers us time and space to regroup and open our viewpoints for our highest evolutionary benefit. It’s okay to feel wronged by people or traumatized by circumstances. This reveals anger as a faithful guardian reminding us how overwhelmed we are by the outcomes at hand. While we will inevitably use each trauma as a catalyst for our deepest growth, such anger informs us when the highest importance is being attentive to our own experiences like a faithful companion. As waves of emotion begin to settle, we may ask ourselves, “Although I feel wronged, what am I going to do about it?” Will we allow experiences of disappointment or even cruelty to inspire our most courageous decisions and willingness to evolve? When viewing others as characters who have wronged us, a moment of personal abandonment occurs. Instead of remaining present to the sheer devastation we feel, a need to align with ego can occur through the blaming of others. While it seems nearly instinctive to see life as the comings and goings of how people treat us, when focused on cultivating our most Divine qualities, pain often confirms how quickly we are shifting from ego to soul. From the soul’s perspective, pain represents the initial steps out of the identity and reference points of an old reality as we make our way into a brand new paradigm of being. The more this process is attempted to be rushed, the more insufferable it becomes. To end the agony of personal abandonment, we enter the first stage of surrender by asking the following question: Am I seeing this moment in a way that helps or hurts me? From the standpoint of ego, life is a play of me versus you or us versus them. But from the soul’s perspective, characters are like instruments that help develop and uncover the melody of our highest vibration. Even when the friction of conflict seems to divide people, as souls we are working together to play out the exact roles to clear, activate, and awaken our true radiance. The more aligned in Source energy we become, the easier each moment of transformation tends to feel. This doesn’t mean we are immune to disappointment, heartbreak, or devastation. Instead, we are keenly aware of how often life is giving us the chance to grow and expand. A willingness to be stretched and re-created into a more refined form is a testament to the fiercely liberated nature of our soul. To the ego, the soul’s willingness to grow under the threat of any circumstance seems foolish, shortsighted, and insane. This is because the ego can only interpret that reality as worry, anticipation, and regret.
Matt Kahn (Everything Is Here to Help You: A Loving Guide to Your Soul's Evolution)
Rest too long after an injury and your system powers down, preparing you for a peaceful exit. Fight your way back to your feet, however, and you trigger that magical ON switch that speeds healing hormones to everything you need to get stronger: your bones, brain, organs, ligaments, immune system, even the digestive bacteria in your belly, all get a molecular upgrade from exercise. For that, you can thank your hunter-gatherer ancestors, who evolved to stay alive by staying on the move. Today, movement-as-medicine is a biological truth for survivors of cancer, surgery, strokes, heart attacks, diabetes, brain injuries, depression, you name it.
Christopher McDougall (Running with Sherman: How a Rescue Donkey Inspired a Rag-tag Gang of Runners to Enter the Craziest Race in America)
It’s hard not to let negative emotions take over and leave their mark, but it seems that our lives depend on it; the reality is that stress kills. When it goes unresolved, stress can lead to chronic disease, causing premature death. The elevation of the stress hormone cortisol lowers immune system functioning, increases blood pressure, and cholesterol, and increases the risk of heart disease, cancer, and various other diseases. However, grief doesn’t last forever, despite how devastating and all-encompassing it can be. With the right help, support, and outlook, recovery will bring the body and mind to a new place of healing. We will never be the same again, but we will be stronger versions of ourselves. It’s important to remember to approach recovery with some level of gratitude for the beauty of life—it’s important to always express, accept, and learn from ourselves.
Lisa Dianne McInnes (The Majewski Curse)
Good friendship, in Buddhism, means considerably more than associating with people that one finds amenable and who share one's interests. It means in effect seeking out wise companions to whom one can look for guidance and instruction. The task of the noble friend is not only to provide companionship in the treading of the way. The truly wise and compassionate friend is one who, with understanding and sympathy of heart, is ready to criticize and admonish, to point out one's faults, to exhort and encourage, perceiving that the final end of such friendship is growth in the Dhamma. The Buddha succinctly expresses the proper response of a disciple to such a good friend in a verse of the Dhammapada: 'If one finds a person who points out one's faults and who reproves one, one should follow such a wise and sagacious counselor as one would a guide to hidden treasure' If we associate closely with those who are addicted to the pursuit of sense pleasures, power, riches and fame, we should not imagine that we will remain immune from those addictions: in time our own minds will gradually incline to these same ends. If we associate closely with those who, while not given up to moral recklessness, live their lives comfortably adjusted to mundane routines, we too will remain stuck in the ruts of the commonplace. If we aspire for the highest — for the peaks of transcendent wisdom and liberation — then we must enter into association with those who represent the highest. Even if we are not so fortunate as to find companions who have already scaled the heights, we can well count ourselves blessed if we cross paths with a few spiritual friends who share our ideals and who make earnest efforts to nurture the noble qualities of the Dhamma in their hearts. When we raise the question how to recognize good friends, how to distinguish good advisors from bad advisors, the Buddha offers us crystal-clear advice. In the Shorter Discourse on a Full-Moon Night (MN 110) he explains the difference between the companionship of the bad person and the companionship of the good person. The bad person chooses as friends and companions those who are without faith, whose conduct is marked by an absence of shame and moral dread, who have no knowledge of spiritual teachings, who are lazy and unmindful, and who are devoid of wisdom. As a consequence of choosing such bad friends as his advisors, the bad person plans and acts for his own harm, for the harm of others, and the harm of both, and he meets with sorrow and misery. In contrast, the Buddha continues, the good person chooses as friends and companions those who have faith, who exhibit a sense of shame and moral dread, who are learned in the Dhamma, energetic in cultivation of the mind, mindful, and possessed of wisdom. Resorting to such good friends, looking to them as mentors and guides, the good person pursues these same qualities as his own ideals and absorbs them into his character. Thus, while drawing ever closer to deliverance himself, he becomes in turn a beacon light for others. Such a one is able to offer those who still wander in the dark an inspiring model to emulate, and a wise friend to turn to for guidance and advice.
Bhikkhu Bodhi
Dear One Million and Two Dreams, I never knew my life was precious until a selfless human being saved it. I was so used to being caught in the tides, but the moon always untangled me. The moon has always been here with me, and I am forever grateful. The stars left a trail as I follow it to a selfless soul. The night sky was darker than the deep blue sea, but I was granted a night light from the shooting stars. I made one million and one wishes on dandelions, and one of those millions of wishes came true. The never-ending sky seemed like it was falling on me. However, now the endless skies had been lifted and are filled with unlimited opportunities. My wings were clipped, but they grew back. However, they have been clipped again, and the process will continue until I free myself from my past. I made a million wishes, but none of them were on my side. I was exposed to a cut-throat life that spoke a language of hate. The emptiness in my life had more than one million questions. However, I was immune to abandon answers. Although I had one million questions, I received two million answers that were one lie after another. I walked around with one million and one brown paper bags with words written on them in different shades of ink and a dull pencil lead. I have a heavy rush in my heart because I’ve been fighting for so long, and now I can rest. When I think about it, I do not need a million wishes to come true. I feel my lips curving as they form a smile. Once upon a time, I made a million and two wishes, and two of them came true. I have my brother and Nurse Hope in my life—Ember; how much better can life get than this? So much better.
Charlena E. Jackson (Pinwheels and Dandelions)
Dear Familiar Place, I am lost. I wonder who lives behind my eyes. I guess a lost little child who never grew up. However, I was forced to grow up, but I never had a chance to experience the sweet and playful side of life. I notice that at the moment, it is only me sitting on you—usually, I would have to share you with two or three people. After I leave, you will not be marked until a lonely broken soul will claim you. Just for tonight, they will have something to claim as their own. I wonder who will claim you tonight? I thank you for keeping me warm the best way you could. I am sure you are one of everyone’s best friends. I bet you have a lot of stories to tell. I am looking at the clouds and wondering how long the cloud will last in my life. I’ve had so many cloudy days; sadly, I forget how the sun looks and feels. My eyes are sensitive to the daylight, but they are immune to the darkness with just the right kind of light from the stars. During the day, my mood is cloudy, uncertain, blurred, depressing, and there is so much fog I can’t see the sun, nor do I have a head's up that the rain is coming. I wish just one day my mood could at least be fair skies. I’ll accept cool and fair skies. I mean, at least for once, could my life be fair instead of constantly feeling anxiety and my soul tied in two knots or more? I retraced my thoughts and noticed the wind was blowing. I smile slightly because the leaves are playing with each other as the breeze shows them some unconditional love. I wonder what unconditional love is? In my world, unconditional love is blowing dandelions in the daytime and hugging the stars during the night. I guess that’s all the love I need. Wishing for brighter days.
Charlena E. Jackson (Pinwheels and Dandelions)
An exponent of love is immune to the criticism of a genius, for divine inspiration is superior to glib talk.
Stephan Attia (Divine Emanations: Various Messages III)
Stepping into extreme longevity requires strategy, knowledge, spiritual research, emotional release work, inspired dedication, and determination.
David Wolfe (Longevity Now: A Comprehensive Approach to Healthy Hormones, Detoxification, Super Immunity, Reversing Calcification, and Total Rejuvenation)
Not one person on earth is immune to crime and trauma.
Shahla Khan (Friends With Benefits: Rethinking Friendship, Dating & Violence)
Research shows that allowing ourselves to forgive and forget can be healthy — it reduces pains, headaches, stress, and leads to a strong immune system. So I say: Why continue to hold grudges? We will just put our health in jeopardy, and lessen the number of pages and chapters that we still need to write in our book of life.
Kcat Yarza (KCAT CAN: I have a pen that writes)
Turning things over and over in isolation had led me to a certain point, but I knew that to get any further I'd have to voice some ideas aloud, just to see how they sounded. But I certainly didn't go to Ellie expecting any kind of constructive input on her part. It was more that I'd hit a wall and needed someone to talk around the subject with - like when you come up against a problem that's just immune to normal logic.
Gavin Extence
Case in point: Byrdie, the son growing effortlessly into lifelong boyhood. Still a schoolboy, soon to be an old boy, blithely accepting accidents as privileges—for instance, his natural immunity to HIV. (Byrdie liked studious, upper-class females. They were not exactly high risk.) Byrdie was the phoenix edition of Lee, adapted to the novel environment, and Lee was a useless relic. He had positioned himself all his life as a rebel against a hegemonic order no one was interested in questioning anymore. It had lost its power to crush and all its clumsy weapons that inspired active fear. Its dominance was equal, but separate.
Nell Zink (Mislaid)
When you shut down emotion, you’re also affecting your immune system, your nervous system. So the repression of emotions, which is a survival strategy, then becomes a source of physiological illness later on.
Gabor Maté
Sleep doesn’t serve one single purpose. It is a complex function and directly related to our health. The multiple functions benefit both our brains and our bodies. Every single brain process and every organ in the body is enhanced by sleep or damaged by the lack of sleep. Within the brain, sleep affects our ability to learn, memorize, and make decisions. It works as an emotional reset so that social and psychological challenges are met with level-headed logic. Sleep provides the opportunity to dream in a world where painful memories are dealt with and future creativity is inspired. While in a sleep state, the body’s immune system is at work to fight cancer, prevent infection, and ward off disease. Sleep balances insulin and circulating glucose to create a metabolic balance. Appetite, weight control, and gut health are all directly tied to adequate sleep levels.
The Growth Digest (Summary & Discussions of Why We Sleep By Matthew Walker, PhD: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams)
When life threw lemons at me I didn't turn them into lemonade I asked, why? After finding out that lemons are good for the immune system and too much sugar is bad for the body I eat the lemons instead.
Dwayne Mulenga Isaac Jr
Southerners have a sense of perspective, a way of finding the humor in even the most painful of experiences. We know that life is too short to be unhappy. Even when we’re lower than lizard spit (as Florida Grits Sandra Presley often says), we find a smile. The best way to know Southern humor is to hear it. The best way to hear it is to come on down South. But please don’t come empty-handed. Bring a joke; get a joke. You know what I mean, Vern? Southerners have always known that laughter is good for you. We’d been laughing at ourselves for many years before research proved that laughter reduces stress, decreases pain, increases energy, inspires creativity, and helps relationships grow. These benefits boost the immune system and strengthen our hearts and lungs. No wonder Southerners are the happiest people around!
Deborah Ford (Grits (Girls Raised in the South) Guide to Life)
With the first rays of dawn coming from a huge orange sun, rising out of the Indian Ocean from the East, the Dominion Monarch passed the Durban bluffs and entered the protected harbor. A police boat escorted the ship in and stood by as it was secured. Everybody crowded close to the railings and looked down onto the concrete dock. From the ship you could see that there were police cars blocking the entry to the wharf area and it became quite apparent that something was amiss. The reason was soon made clear when the loudspeakers announced that before clearing the ship, everyone on board would be required to get a smallpox vaccination or present their international immunization card, to verify that they were in compliance. There had been an outbreak of smallpox and yellow fever throughout Africa especially in the Cape Province and in tribal areas. During the previous year, nearby Northern Rhodesia had reported several thousand cases of these diseases. The police boat lay in wait, until every last one of the passengers was immunized. It took hours, however everyone was happy when the health officials finally came aboard to do the vaccinating. Finally the announcement came that the ship was cleared so that we could go ashore. Not until then did the band strike up and play “God Save the King.
Hank Bracker
When the time is taken to build proper relationships and when leaders choose to put their people before their numbers, when we can actually feel a sense of trust for each other, the oxytocin released in our bodies can reverse many of the negative effects of operating in a high-stress, cortisol-soaked environment. In other words, it’s not the nature of the work we do or the number of hours we work that will help us reduce stress and achieve work-life balance; it’s increased amounts of oxytocin and serotonin. Serotonin boosts our self-confidence and inspires us to help those who work for us and make proud those for whom we work. Oxytocin relieves stress, increases our interest in our work and improves our cognitive abilities, making us better able to solve complex problems. It boosts our immune systems, lowers blood pressure, increases our libido and actually lessens our cravings and addictions. And best of all, it inspires us to work together.
Simon Sinek (Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't)
Religion is an infectious and contagious virus. It can infect everyone if they don’t have immunity provided by pure knowledge and pure wisdom.
Debasish Mridha
Meditation + Mental Strength An emotion is our evolved biology predicting the future impact of a current event. In modern settings, it’s usually exaggerated or wrong. Why is meditation so powerful? Your breath is one of the few places where your autonomic nervous system meets your voluntary nervous system. It’s involuntary, but you can also control it. I think a lot of meditation practices put an emphasis on the breath because it is a gateway into your autonomic nervous system. There are many, many cases in the medical and spiritual literature of people controlling their bodies at levels that should be autonomous. Your mind is such a powerful thing. What’s so unusual about your forebrain sending signals to your hindbrain and your hindbrain routing resources to your entire body? You can do it just by breathing. Relaxed breathing tells your body you’re safe. Then, your forebrain doesn’t need as many resources as it normally does. Now, the extra energy can be sent to your hindbrain, and it can reroute those resources to the rest of your body. I’m not saying you can beat whatever illness you have just because you activated your hindbrain. But you’re devoting most of the energy normally required to care about the external environment to the immune system. I highly recommend listening to the Tim Ferriss’s podcast with Wim Hof. He is a walking miracle. Wim’s nickname is the Ice Man. He holds the world record for the longest time spent in an ice bath and swimming in freezing cold water. I was very inspired by him, not only because he’s capable of super-human physical feats, but because he does it while being incredibly kind and happy—which is not easy to accomplish. He advocates cold exposure, because he believes people are too separate from their natural environment. We’re constantly clothed, fed, and warm. Our bodies have lost touch with the cold. The cold is important because it can activate the immune system. So, he advocates taking long ice baths. Being from the Indian subcontinent, I’m strongly against the idea of ice baths. But Wim inspired me to give cold showers a try. And I did so by using the Wim Hof breathing method. It involves hyperventilating to get more oxygen into your blood, which raises your core temperature. Then, you can go into the shower. The first few cold showers were hilarious because I’d slowly ease myself in, wincing the entire way. I started about four or five months ago. Now, I turn the shower on full-blast, and then I walk right in. I don’t give myself any time to hesitate. As soon as I hear the voice in my head telling me how cold it’s going to be, I know I have to walk in. I learned a very important lesson from this: most of our suffering comes from avoidance. Most of the suffering from a cold shower is the tip-toeing your way in. Once you’re in, you’re in. It’s not suffering. It’s just cold. Your body saying it’s cold is different than your mind saying it’s cold. Acknowledge your body saying it’s cold. Look at it. Deal with it. Accept it, but don’t mentally suffer over it. Taking a cold shower for two minutes isn’t going to kill you. Having a cold shower helps you re-learn that lesson every morning. Now hot showers are just one less thing I need out of life. [2] Meditation is intermittent fasting for the mind. Too much sugar leads to a heavy body, and too many distractions lead to a heavy mind. Time spent undistracted and alone, in self-examination, journaling, meditation, resolves the unresolved and takes us from mentally fat to fit.
Eric Jorgenson (The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness)
Invigorating Cold A cold shower might not sound like self-care at first, but it is! Cold showers awaken all your senses, which benefits your mind and body. The banya, an old Russian tradition, involves alternating between hot steam and ice-cold water. The jolt to your system is said to increase your immune response, reducing sickness in your body. Hop in a cold shower today. While the chilliness is activating your nervous system, tell yourself, I am alive and present and ready to face this day! Follow up with a comforting warm lotion and harness the energy to tackle what lies ahead.
Dr. Zoe Shaw (A Year of Self-Care: Daily Practices and Inspiration for Caring for Yourself (A Year of Daily Reflections))
When stuck in bad anxiety, this activation can trigger a host of feelings: nervousness, fear, discomfort, pain—the negative emotions that pull down our moods, distract us, and make us withdraw and isolate ourselves. On the other side of these negative emotions are the wonderful, uplifting positive emotions: joy, love, humor, excitement, curiosity, wonder, gratitude, serenity, inspiration—the list goes on and on. These positive feelings drive our connection to ourselves and others; they ward off illness and keep us healthy by strengthening our immune system; they reward enjoyment and pleasurable behaviors so that we will continue to seek them out.
Wendy Suzuki (Good Anxiety: Harnessing the Power of the Most Misunderstood Emotion)
Why Consider Fasting? Dom has discussed the idea of a therapeutic “purge fast” with his colleague Dr. Thomas Seyfried of Boston College. Per Dom: “If you don’t have cancer and you do a therapeutic fast 1 to 3 times per year, you could purge any precancerous cells that may be living in your body.” If you’re over the age of 40, cancer is one of the four types of diseases (see Dr. Peter Attia on page 59) that will kill you with 80% certainty, so this seems like smart insurance. There is also evidence to suggest—skipping the scientific detail—that fasts of 3 days or longer can effectively “reboot” your immune system via stem cell–based regeneration. Dom suggests a 5-day fast 2 to 3 times per year. Dom has done 7-day fasts before, while lecturing at the University of South Florida. On day 7, he went into class with his glucose between 35 and 45 mg/dL, and his ketones around 5 mmol. Then, before breaking the fast, he went to the gym and deadlifted 500 pounds for 10 reps, followed by 1 rep of 585 pounds. Dom was inspired to do his first 7-day fast by George Cahill, a researcher at Harvard Medical School, who’d conducted a fascinating study published in 1970* wherein he fasted people for 40 days.
Timothy Ferriss (Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers)
The act of practicing silence helps lower blood pressure and boosts the body’s immune system and brain chemistry. And it creates space for us to hear—and ultimately calm—the chatter in our brains.
Lisa Haisha
Choosing what to eat according to the different seasons is a way to listen to the body, to heal it naturally, to strength your immunity, and to minimize the chance of the body becoming imbalanced because of seasonal changes. The key difference between western medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine is that western medicine is used to cure diseases, whereas TCM focuses more on preventing sickness from starting.
Tracy Huang (Healthy Eating: Traditional Chinese Medicine-Inspired Healthy Eating Guides for All Four Seasons plus 240+ recipes to Restore Health, Beauty, and Mind)
If your child shares a feeling—with words (“I feel sad”) or an expression (crying, angry look on his face)—respond with acknowledgment, validation, and permission to feel. And if your child asks a question that you know has a tough answer, maybe start your response by saying, “That’s such an important question. I am going to tell you the answer. It might feel hard to hear, but as we talk, I’m right here with you.” In those moments, you might want to collect yourself before answering. “That’s a great question and I want to give you a great answer. I need some time to get back to you—but I absolutely will because answering your questions is so important.” The key here is to go back to your child with a response when you’re ready, even if your child doesn’t bring it up again. If you don’t, your child will be left with more fear, because he’ll be alone with the feelings and knowledge that inspired him to ask the question in the first place. Finally, remember: it’s okay to cry. Label your feelings as your own and remind your child that you’re still their strong parent who is here for them, even when your own feelings are pretty big. Because none of us is immune to emotion. Showing our children that we feel the tough stuff, that we struggle with it and still get through, is truly the best lesson you can give them.
Becky Kennedy (Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be)
Communication: How we exchange information with others Narrative: How we tell others about who we are and what we do Structure: How we design our organizations and processes Technology: How we apply machinery, equipment, resources, and know-how Diversity: How we leverage a range of perspectives and abilities Bias: How the assumptions we have about the world influence us Action: How we overcome inertia or resistance to drive our response Timing: How when we act affects the effectiveness of our response Adaptability: How we respond to changing risks and environments Leadership: How we direct and inspire the overall Risk Immune System
Stanley McChrystal (Risk: A User's Guide)
In James’s time, smallpox was sometimes called the Speckled Monster. Throughout recorded history, it killed ten percent of the population. As a youngster, before being variolated (intentionally infected with smallpox as a preventative measure), Edward Jenner was “prepared” by being starved, purged, and bled, and afterward he was locked in a stable with other ailing boys until the disease had run its course. All in all, it was an experience he would never forget—one that later inspired him to experiment and discover that immunization with cowpox prevented smallpox. In 1801, after he pioneered vaccination, Jenner issued a pamphlet that ended with these words: “…the annihilation of the Small Pox, the most dreadful scourge of the human species, must be the final result of this practice.” Unfortunately, almost 180 years went by before his prophecy came to pass. In Juliana, James was too optimistic in hoping smallpox vaccinations would soon be made compulsory. England didn’t pass such a law until 1853, and the World Health Organization (WHO) didn’t launch its campaign to conquer smallpox until 1967. At that time, there were fifteen million cases of smallpox each year. The WHO’s plan was to vaccinate everyone everywhere. Teams of vaccinators traveled the world to the remotest of communities. The last documented case of smallpox occurred just eight years later, in 1975. After an anxious period of watching for new cases, in 1980 the WHO formally declared, “Smallpox is Dead!” Jenner’s dream had come true: The most feared disease of all time had been eradicated.
Lauren Royal (Juliana (Regency Chase Brides, #2))
No one is immune from encountering a bad day; we would not have a means of labeling good days if we did not also have bad days to offer sufficient contrast.
Jay D'Cee
God can give you anything, but not make you immune to temptation and be patient in life. This is where freedom of choice, free will, comes into play.
Mwanandeke Kindembo
If you operate from these life positive things like joy, bliss, love, even the chemicals and hormones your body secretes strengthens your immune system. There are tons of researches to prove this.
Paramahamsa Nithyananda
If you want to be like me I will help you, knowing that we are alike. If you want to be different, I will wait until you change your mind’ – ‘A Course in Miracles’ quotes Jesus as saying – courtesy ‘Inspiration’ by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer Beyond all these, these are challenging times. Mental health needs as much focus as physical health. Immunity, social distancing, vaccination, et al. When will we take responsibility for our mental wellness? #RegalAt60, #Beyond IKIGAI Coaching, mentoring, and healing at regalunlimited
Regal Unlimited
An alternative to coddling one’s body with products that mimic the effects of exercise is to try non-physically active forms of suffering. This kind of “no pain, no gain” philosophy has inspired a dizzying array of self-inflicted hardships thought to ward off aging (an added benefit is their aura of virtue). Hoping to live longer, people take cold showers, restrict their caloric intake, endure long periods without eating, shun carbohydrates, burn their digestive tracts with spicy food, and more.53 Some of these strategies are downright questionable, and, with the exception of intermittent fasting, none is yet supported by solid evidence as a way to extend human longevity.54 Why is regular physical activity the best way to delay senescence and extend life? Recall that according to the costly repair hypothesis, organisms with restricted energy supplies (just about everyone until recently) must allocate limited calories toward either reproducing, moving, or taking care of their bodies, but natural selection ultimately cares only about reproduction. Consequently, our bodies evolved to spend as little energy as possible on costly maintenance and repair tasks. So while physical activities trigger cycles of damage and restoration, selection favors individuals who allocate enough but not too much energy to producing antioxidants, ramping up the immune system, enlarging and repairing muscles, mending bones, and so on. The challenge is to maintain and repair any damage from physical activity just enough and in the right place and the right time.
Daniel E. Lieberman (Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding)
when lion roars everything freezes.make your presence felt
Ikechukwu Joseph (Divine Immunity: You are Protected in Christ (Covenant Right Series Book 1))
Play generates optimism and inspires us to seek out novelty. It gives the immune system a bounce, fosters empathy, and promotes a sense of belonging and community. Each of these play by-products are indices of personal health, and their shortage can lead to health problems and personal fragility.
Karen Amster-Young (The 52 Weeks: Two Women and Their Quest to Get Unstuck, with Stories and Ideas to Jumpstart Your Year of Discovery)
The benefits of playfulness may not be immediately noticeable, but they are undeniable. Here are five ways I see playfulness abetting ministry: 1. Freshness. When one does so many of the same things over and over again, I don’t care what those things are, boredom can set in. Ministry is not immune to this. The only way to remain fresh for the long haul is to be intentional about learning new things in familiar tasks. An experimental disposition is at the heart of playfulness. Playfulness primes us to be alert and creative, ever open to novelty and new growth. 2. Dexterity. Playfulness resists rigidness. In a spirit of play, we are more open to the Spirit’s play of reforming and transforming—making all things new. 3. Resilience. No one is immune to a broken spirit and a broken heart. Yet, as we become more accustomed to living energized and inspired, we are less likely to have regular extended periods of feeling down. 4. Boldness. Fear keeps us aiming low in ministry or not aiming at all. The unsung antidote for fear is curiosity. Become interested in that which you fear, and suddenly, fear is melted away. Playfulness is a way to cultivate and satisfy curiosity. 5. Contagiousness. To be playful is to be lighthearted. Light is warming and attractive. As we let our lights shine bright in the spirit of ministry as holy play—exploration, creation, and celebration—chances are, we will spend less time searching for members and more time wondering where all of these people came from.
Kirk Byron Jones (Fulfilled: Living and Leading with Unusual Wisdom, Peace, and Joy)
No one is immune from crisis...Let your self feel, step back...access. Then take control
Darlene Dawne
We live in times where news and social media takes the place of human thought. Something more positive than what we have been hearing has to come out. There has to be a way to inspire people other than with fear and hatred and race baiting. We have to find the path that brings us together and extinguish the monumental bigotry and evil that flows across our country like a virus. If we don't do something soon none of us will be immune to it
Levon Peter Poe
A psychiatrist on the Baader-Meinhof gang: „They seek salvation in a paranoia that blinds them to reality, because they believe everything that surrounds them is an evil machination”. On this point they are not blind. Man cannot, however, look upon the underlying evil and thus cannot escape the punishment of total blindness and corruption meted out to all except inspired seers, and especially those athletes who have overcome evil and been immunized before approaching the vision. For Arjuna the sight of God in his terrifying aspect is cathartic; he remains a warrior and a righteous man. For a Baader, a glimpse behind the veil produces mental upheaval.
Ceronetti
The emotional states associated with the heart include some that every life would benefit from: Empathy, which makes us feel what someone else is feeling Compassion, which motivates us to extend lovingkindness Forgiveness, which wipes the slate clean of old grievances and wounding Sacrifice, which allows us to put someone else’s good above our own Devotion, which inspires reverence for higher values None of these states is a term in cardiology, yet they have medical consequences
Deepak Chopra (The Healing Self: Supercharge your immune system and stay well for life)
In 1964 following a very stressful trip to Russia, [Cousins] was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis (a degenerative disease causing the breakdown of collagen), which left him in almost constant pain and motivated his doctor to say he would die within a few months. He disagreed and reasoned that if stress had somehow contributed to his illness (he was not sick before the trip to Russia), then positive emotions should help him feel better. With his doctors’ consent, he checked himself out of the hospital and into a hotel across the street and began taking extremely high doses of vitamin C while exposing himself to a continuous stream of humorous films and similar “laughing matters.” He later claimed that 10 minutes of belly rippling laughter would give him two hours of pain-free sleep, when nothing else, not even morphine, could help him. His condition steadily improved and he slowly regained the use of his limbs. Within six months he was back on his feet, and within two years he was able to return to his full-time job at the Saturday Review. His story baffled the scientific community and inspired a number of research projects.
Deepak Chopra (The Healing Self: Supercharge your immune system and stay well for life)
People don’t just watch the horrible news happening around the world. They take it in like food. They feed themselves with all the pain and suffering, because they think digesting it this way will somehow make them more immune to it.
Sean Patrick Brennan (The Angel's Guide to Taking Human Form)
All scientists, regardless of discipline, need to be prepared to confront the broadest consequences of our work—but we need to communicate its more detailed aspects as well. I was reminded of this at a recent lunch I attended with some of Silicon Valley’s greatest technology gurus. One of them said, “Give me ten to twenty million dollars and a team of smart people, and we can solve virtually any engineering challenge.” This person obviously knew a thing or two about solving technological problems—a long string of successes attested to that—but ironically, such an approach would not have produced the CRISPR-based gene-editing technology, which was inspired by curiosity-driven research into natural phenomena. The technology we ended up creating did not take anywhere near ten to twenty million dollars to develop, but it did require a thorough understanding of the chemistry and biology of bacterial adaptive immunity, a topic that may seem wholly unrelated to gene editing. This is but one example of the importance of fundamental research—the pursuit of science for the sake of understanding our natural world—and its relevance to developing new technologies. Nature, after all, has had a lot more time than humans to conduct experiments! If there’s one overarching point I hope you will take away from this book, it’s that humans need to keep exploring the world around us through open-ended scientific research. The wonders of penicillin would never have been discovered had Alexander Fleming not been conducting simple experiments with Staphylococci bacteria. Recombinant DNA research—the foundation for modern molecular biology—became possible only with the isolation of DNA-cutting and DNA-copying enzymes from gut- and heat-loving bacteria. Rapid DNA sequencing required experiments on the remarkable properties of bacteria from hot springs. And my colleagues and I would never have created a powerful gene-editing tool if we hadn’t tackled the much more fundamental question of how bacteria fight off viral infections.
Jennifer A. Doudna (A Crack In Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution)
Nobody is immune to life's nonsense. Some of the people you admire most have been through the same things you have.
Steve Maraboli
restless, devouring mind that leaped from enthusiasm to enthusiasm.. . . He was immune to conventional patterns of thinking, preferring to rely on his intuition.
Bruce Nussbaum (Creative Intelligence: Harnessing the Power to Create, Connect, and Inspire)
It you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.
David Foster Wallace
Get immunized against ill conceived perceptions. It's contagious.
Maisie Aletha Smikle
We each share in innumerable physical and emotional experiences. Our like-kind responses to the external world connect every person together whoever walked this earth. Who has not seen death tap dancing amongst the shagged icicles of a winter wonderland? Who has not heard their hearts petals welcome the bloom of springtime’s opalescence? Who has not experienced the calm of leaves rusting beneath their feet or felt befallen with an overwhelming sense of regeneration after slathered in baptismal wetness by an unexpected rainstorm? Who has not drunk in the smoky smells of leaves burning in October, hunted solace in the singeing embrace of a campfire on a cold winter night, or sought to escape from summers burning blanket of oppression by dunking their overheated stovetop into a mountain stream of clear water? Who has not felt the cold kiss of winter or experienced the melted butter feeling of crawling into bed after a day of hard work? Who is exempt from the punch of hunger in their gut or immune from the enraged screams of an unquenchable thirst? Who has not broken out in a frisson of Goosebumps when passing the graveyard on an ill-omened evening and experienced the electric sensation of ghostly fingernails running down the tapered stem of their spine? Who has not fallen in love at first sight? Who has not danced on the edge of a cliff, stared into the gloom, and asked themselves what if they slipped over the lip? Who has not experienced the existential vertigo, the anxiety of dizziness that freedom brings whenever a human being standing in solitude navigates amongst the tension between the finite and infinite and contemplates the possibility or of the divine shaping reality?
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)