Keeping Harmony in YOUR Minature Universe

A Health article titled Your Body is a Minature Universe. Here's How to Keep it in Harmony offers the good advice of "the best remedy for calamity is to avert it; the best remedy for sickness is prevention." I then introduces us to the concepts of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). It starts with the concepts that the human body is a microcosm–a miniature representation of the universe.

"TCM is far more profound that just acupuncture and herbs," the article notes. "It has a central concept, namely the dao and qi (pronounced "chee")". This article describes the dao as "the fundamental principle or the cosmic law. It is the rulebook that nature follows–be it the change of seasons, the rising and setting of the sun, or the cycles of life. While qi is the life energy that dynamically moves through everything. Think of the movement of qi as the flow of a river, and dao as the riverbed. Just as the flow of a river follows its natural path, qi flows harmoniously when it follows its cosmic path–the dao." 

Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025–2030 (Eat More Protein)

 The new version of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025-2030 offers a significant change from previous versions.  The core of the new guidelines is to go back to "real food", not "processed and packaged" food.  It encourages a common sense focus on healthy eating rather than a set of "limits" or "maximums."  In this short series of articles, each week will will look at an overview of one of the recommendations.  This is an introduction to these guidelines, you will find the full version of the guidelines online at: https://realfood.gov/#resources.  These articles are sourced from an Epoch Times article: The Science Behind the New Dietary Guidelines. 

Eat More Protein, Especially Animal Protein

Previous protein intake recommendation was 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight.  These guidelines are a minimum, and not an optimum.  This threshold was intended to be the minimum needed to maintain nutrient adequacy.  Previous guidelines suggested the minimum quality fuel rather than the optimal quality fuel.  

🌙 Sleep Is the Key to Healing Your Mind & Body

A post by Light Body Technology, with thanks to Casey Christine

😴 Sleep is not a luxury.  It is biological repair. 

While you rest, your body shifts into rest-and-repair mode — the parasympathetic state where true healing happens. 

When you sleep:

🧠 The brain detoxifies

Your lymphatic system clears waste and inflammatory byproducts that build up during the day.

💛 Hormones rebalance

Cortisol lowers. Growth hormone rises. Blood sugar stabilizes.

🛡️ The immune system strengthens

Your body produces and regulates immune cells while you sleep.

🌿 Tissues repair

Muscles rebuild. Cells regenerate. Inflammation decreases.

🪐 Memory and emotions process

Sleep integrates learning and regulates mood, helping reduce anxiety and depression. 

 

🫩 What Happens When You Don’t Sleep? 

The Surprising History of Tarot Cards

Tarocchi Cards

A news story, The Surprising History of Tarot Cards, relates that tarot cards have carried an aura of mystery for many centuries.  To many they are tools for reflection, storytelling, or spiritual insight.  To others they are simply beautiful art.  To some they are a source of fear or disdain.  But few are aware that tarot's earliest history has nothing to do with divination.  They were simply a card game.

Tarot emerged in northern Italy in the early 15th century at the height of the Renaissance.  Card games were a fashionable diversion among aristocratic courts.  Wealthy families commissioned ornate decks to play a game called tarocchi.  The exact rules have not survived intact it seems that Tarocchi is a trick-taking game a bit like bridge.  Using a special trot deck the game involved bidding for tricks.  Play involves following suit, or trumping, and scoring points.  Players aim to capture high-value cards, particularly the powerful trump cards (The Fool, The World, the Sun, the Moon, The Angel).  Players bid to declare how many tricks or points they think that they can win.  Play typically moves counter-clockwise and players must follow the suit led if possible; if not they can play any other card, including a trump.  The highest trump wins. If no trumps are played, the highest card of the suit led is the winner of the hand.

Born to Be Good: The Science Behind Children’s Inner Moral Code

A news article of the same title suggests that science indicates that even infants recognize helpfulness and hinderance, in essence the ability to discern right from wrong.

A 2025 study showed young children videos of either a robot or a peer grabbing something that wasn’t theirs or refusing to share.  Then they asked “was the behavior right or wrong?”  The children’s verdict was clear.  Stealing and refusing to share were always wrong.  Study authors concluded that “morality is present even in the youngest children–and it is powerful.”

Five Wise Laws for Your Contemplation

1. Murphy’s Law – The more you fear something the more likely it is to happen.

2. Kidlin’s Law –  If you write down your problem clearly and specifically you have solved half of it.

3. Gilbert’s Law – When you take on a task, finding the best way to achieve the desired result is always your responsibility.

4. Wilson’s Law – If you prioritize intelligence and knowledge, wealth and success will always follow.

5. Law of Attraction – The more that you focus on your desires the more they will gravitate to you.

Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025–2030 (Eat Real Foods)

The new version of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025-2030 offers a significant change from previous versions.  The core of the new guidelines is to go back to "real food", not "processed and packaged" food. It encourages a commonsense focus on healthy eating rather than a set of "limits" or "maximums."  In this short series of articles, each week will will look at an overview of one of the recommendations.  This is an introduction to these guidelines, you will find the full version of the guidelines online at:  https://realfood.gov/#resources

These articles are sourced from an Epoch Times article: The Science Behind the New Dietary Guidelines. 

Eat Real Foods, Avoid Highly Processed Foods

The new focus on eating whole foods rather than highly processed foods is common sense.  Many of our nutrients that are essential for physical life, such as antioxidants and vitamins, are found in whole foods, but there are also numerous unknown nutrients in whole food.  A quick request from AI shows that just recently discovered substances such as Vitamin A5, Queosine, Leucine, Trimethylglycine, and Betaine are just a few.  Eating Whole Foods helps ensure that people don't miss out on essential nutrients.

Michaelangelo’s “Creation of God”

The Creation of Adam (c. 1511–1512) is a section of the fresco painted by Michelangelo for the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. The image is widely reknown and recognized.  What almost everyone has missed is the hidden message that Michelangelo inserted: a human brain associated  with the figure of God.

A Brief Review of Philosophy in an Art Review of One Painting

This 25 minute YouTube instructs about the Renaissance painter Raphael’s painting School of Athens painted in the Pope’s Library in the 1500s.  In reviewing the painting and its subject it presents a very nice summary of the schools of thought in philosophy.  It is interesting knowledge.

 

The Stress of “Getting Things Done”

Some of us internalize stress. We hold onto it in certain portions of our bodies. Some hold stress in their chest, their heart region. Some in their upper back, their neck and shoulders. Some in their bowels. It seems that for every chakra system there is someone, somewhere, using the nerve plexuses that are associated with chakras as a "stress holding center."

When stressful events/tasks in life feel overwhelming we are accumulating chaotic stress rather than orderly productivity. When things feel busy or chaotically mentally noisy, we make productivity lists to restore order, which is calming. Productivity procedures are not merely just to “get more done.” We do it because it is stress relieving. 

The pull toward productivity lists, plans, and routines comes from something a little more inherent: a need for things to feel contained. When things feel unsteady, and you still have everything floating around in your head, your brain (and your nervous system) never really gets to switch off to let go of the stress.

Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025–2030 (Introduction)

The new version of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025-2030 offers a significant change from previous versions.  The core of the new guidelines is to go back to "real food", not "processed and packaged" food.  It encourages a commonsense focus on healthy eating rather than a set of "limits" or "maximums."  In this short series of articles, each week we will look at an overview of one of the recommendations.  This is an introduction to these guidelines, you will find the full version of the guidelines online at: https://realfood.gov/#resources.  These articles are sourced from an Epoch Times article: The Science Behind the New Dietary Guidelines. 

Introduction

The new version of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans marks the most significant change to the government's recommendations for our diet since 1980.  The Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025-2030 makes some significant changes.  For example it now encourages people to eat more proteins, and specifically animal proteins, encouraging fat and oils that have long been shunned, and putting a clear focus on eating real, whole foods, rather than highly processed foods.

Open Your Eyes and a World Appears

These quotes are excerpted from the essay How to Have a “Don’t-Know Mind” by Michael Pollan.  I encourage you to read the full article if you desire to mentally experience one man’s retreat into the quiet of New Mexico and the insights that he gained.  This particular short article is but a brief excerpt of some of the wisdom that he encountered.

Below are direct quotes from the essay except where bracketed, which indicates [my own editorial insertion]. Emphasis is my own addition.

My quest to understand consciousness took me to a cave in New Mexico and then deep into the cosmos….