After 14 years of using a neti pot on a regular, almost daily basis – I must admit, I am amazed how overlooked this basic bit of personal hygiene is.

Most of us brush our teeth and we usually expect the same of others.  In fact, when someone neglects this important bit of personal cleanliness, the rest of us can be easily turned off.

How about bathing?  What if you knew someone hadn’t showered or bathed in months, years, or worse still, never at all…  How would you feel about getting… um, close to them?

Well, how about our sinuses? Each day we are all breathing the many stow-away particles (read: pollutants) that free float amongst what was once, some pretty fresh air here on planet earth. Today our air is loaded with everything from dust (which is mostly dead skin cells) to heavy metals, from car exhaust to radioactive isoptopes.  These particles are constantly lodging in and congesting our upper respiratory tract, creating an environment for infection and/or being drawn still deeper into our lower respiratory tract (our lungs).  The neti pot gives us the ability to clean our upper respiratory tract, in much the same way that a toothbrush cleans our mouth or a shower washes our skin, before these particles can accumulate or be drawn deeper.

Otherwise, we simply carry this debris around, haphazardly sneezing or blowing it out, or letting it drain back into our throats…  Blah!

Want to see what a truly clean upper respiratory tract feels like?  Try using a neti pot!

After a few days, to a few weeks, of implementing this practice it will become immediately clear why I am recommending it.  My experience has been that you can only truly feel the chronic congestion after you have cleared it.  It is the open, clear, and relaxed sense of breathing; the ability to fully utilize your respiration that makes you conscious of its importance.  In other words, once you have tried it and felt what clean and clear sinus cavities feel like, you won’t want to go back.

As for the technique and specifics, I will let this video explain the rest.

My company SurThrival recently started carrying what we feel are the most beautiful and durable ceramic neti pots available anywhere, and you can get one for yourself right here on our newly designed website (we are pretty excited about this)!  We were sure to get them in several different colors so that you can choose one thats right for you.  These are made right here in the State of Maine (where we are based out of) and I have personally tested them now for almost a decade and a half, so I can honestly tell you they are the best around.  Watch the video above where I compare some of the features against other design-styles.

If your looking to smog proof your sinuses, help to prevent sinus issues in general, and improve your respiratory health, give the neti pot a try.  Better yet, take some time to develop mastery of this skill by making it a regular practice!

My hope is that our community will immediately see the value of this handy little device and add it to the tool-belt of practices and skills that are helping us to thrive in, and adapt to our modern environment.  I promise if you give it just one week of consistent practice, not only will you easily master this skill, but you will have a life long practice that will contribute to your health and personal detoxification strategy.

I have used this strategy, along side others, such as regular sauna use (check out Clearlight Saunas, it is the brand of infrared sauna that I have in my home), a clean whole food diet containing lots of wild foods and herbs, drinking natural spring water, implimenting regular functional exercise, all combined with and tied together with time spent in nature.  The goal is to create a kind of Invincible Health that allows us to thrive in this mad, mad, world!

To your health and adaptation!

ReWild Yourself!

~D

P.S. Though saline water is what people usually put in their neti pots, I have heard of many other solutions.  Quick question:  What is the most exotic thing you have ever put in a neti pot?  Go ahead and leave a comment below, and please…  Don’t be shy

Welcome (or welcome back) and thanks again for stopping by.  My last few videos have been focused on sharing some Sovereign Self-Healthcare strategies that I have been developing and employing for some time now.  It has been really exciting to share these with you all, and for me it feels like a timely message, given the considerable distrust and dissatisfaction so many of us have been feeling for mainstream “medicine” in recent years.

Many of us have taken our diets and nutrition into our own hands, though when it comes to personal health care, few of us have really stepped out and away from the entrenched medical system’s doctor/dentist treatment, and the role we play in it as “patient” (from the Latin meaning “suffering”).

This current video is a 6 part dental health and maintenance strategy that has replaced the role of dentistry in my life.  It has been many years since I have seen a dentist (I was 12 the last time I can remember having an appointment with one), and as it is with so many aspects of living, I have found it far more rewarding to take care of myself, rather than turning my health over to others. Especially those “quacks” – originally a term reserved for dentists who employed mercury amalgam fillings – with less than shiny-white histories (e.g. fluoride, mercury, etc).

The world of “modern medicine”, to include modern dentistry, seems far less interested in our health than it does in furthering its quasi-scientific agendas, human experiemention, and profit driven procedures.  For this reason I will continue to promote Sovereign Self-health Care Strategies here at DanielVitalis.com.

ReWild Yourself! This doesn’t refer to behaving wildly, or  giving up your standards of personal conduct, rather it means “Shed your Domesticator“!

This video is for all of you who celebrate being grown-ups, and are unafraid to raise yourselves up and out of the near ubiquitous neoteny that is now standard in the epi-genome in our “modernized” population.

This video comes on the heels of the last video we released, which details how to make the toothpaste that is used in this dental care strategy.  Please keep in mind that this toothpaste, in addition to providing the mild abrasive qualities we have become accustomed to in our commercially available toothpaste preparations, is designed to pull toxic cations out of the body, and to be an aid in our overall radio-protection strategy (protection from radioactive isotopes).

For those of you who are interested in going deeper, I would highly recommend an e-book by my good friend Nadine Artemis called “Successful Self-Dentistry, how to avoid the dentist without ignoring your teeth”. This e-book is very comprehensive, and empowers us to take our dental health into our own hands for a lifetime.

We are now getting ready for Ancestral Ignition, a workshop that myself and some good friends are hosting here at my home in Maine, September 16th – 18th, 2011.  The main focus of this retreat is to share the ancient and ancestral skill of aboriginal friction fire with all of those who attend.  We really believe that stewardship of this ancient fire-craft is valuable for many reasons, not the least of which is the carrying on of what is one of our most ancient and fundamental human technologies.

Our ability to generate and maintain fire is a powerful thing indeed, so it is our intention to pass on not just the skill, but the ethics of stewardship as well.

We also feel privileged to share the basics of fire-craft with our friends and clients because so many of us were never taught how to properly or efficiently build or maintain a fire.  I certainly wasn’t, growing up in the 1980’s American Dream.  In fact, learning to properly construct and burn a fire has meant far more to me than just having another survival skill.  It has connected me with one of the essential practices that makes us human.

This workshop will be fully catered with organic, local food, prepared by Chef Frank Giglio, who is one of my best friends and a truly culinary mentor of mine.

Check out the video below to hear more about Ancestral Ignition, and to see acclaimed botanist, author, and my foraging and aboriginal skills guide and all around friend, Arthur Haines, make a fire with a primitive tool known as the bow drill.

If you are interested in joining us, or learning more about Ancestral Ignition please contact us at info@danielvitalis.com.

As always, we would love to hear from you, so please let us know what you think of this recent post, video upload, and what you would like to see in the future by commenting below.

Your readership is truly appreciated,

~Daniel

Would you like to make your own toothpaste for self-dentistry and detoxification?

The video below is an installment in dental health sovereignty.  It has been working very well for me, and it just might work for you too.

For years I have been looking for the right toothpaste for my home self-dentistry, and have experimented with a great many things.  From “organic” store-bought toothpaste brands, to tooth soaps and powders, and even aboriginal “chew sticks” – Nothing has been the right fit for my self-dentistry needs.

I have now arrived at a strategy that is really working wonders for me, and I feel could really work for you too.  This video is the first part of that strategy, the rest of which I am eager to share with you in full over the next few weeks.

How I arrived at this…

As I began experimenting with tissue detoxification using Zeolites and Clay, it dawned on me that these, when rendered into a fine flour-like powder, have just the right amount of abrasiveness to take the place of the toothpaste I had grown up with.

This video details how you can make your own, and at a very low price at that.  In fact, if you know where to look, you could get everything you would need for making all the toothpaste you would use for the rest of your life for probably under $100!

Best of all, you can swallow this toothpaste, which yields all of the amazing health benefits of these detoxifying earth compounds.  In particular I am referring to zeolites ability to perform cation exchange - CEC or Cation Exchange Capacity is the term used in physics- which is its ability to electrically bind positively charged ions (heavy metals, radio-isotopes, etc) whilst trading out (in exchange) beneficial cations like potassium or calcium.  The toxic cations are then transported out of our bodies, along with the zeolite powder in our bowel movement.  The case with clay is very similar, though the phenomena in this case is referred to as adsorption, which is also an electrical binding, but in this case to the surface of the clay particle and without the accompanying exchange of a cation.

Keep in mind that this practice, consuming clay and other earth compounds, is perhaps one of the oldest of all human behaviors.  It has been practiced around the world and is present in virtually all pre-industrial populations.  Evidence for this has been found in archeological sites that predated our current human form, and anthropological surveys have found that it lives on in societies around the world today.  Actually, it is common to nearly all mammals, and in particular to broad ranging herbivores.  The behavior is termed “geophagy”, and is unquestionably part of the species-specific diet of human beings.  From my perspective, it appears that a diet that lacks the geophagy pattern could not be called a “natural diet” at all, as it would essentially be deficient in these all-important compounds.  Below is a link to one of the best books I have read on the subject.

Most of us were taught to spit our toothpaste out, which, given the host of less-than-beneficial ingredients (particularly fluoride) is pretty sound advice.  With this home-made clay or zeolite toothpaste, the goal is indeed to swallow it, moving it into the intestine where it can go to work mopping up industrial and nuclear debris that has bioaccumulated in our tissues.

When this clay or zeolite consumption is combined with sauna therapy (this dual approach is the subject of my last video), we arrive at a very effective life-long detoxification strategy that really works, and is easy to implement.

This second video is about my August 4th, 11 day tour of Peru, for which I have just a few openings left.

If you are looking for a riveting adventure, are interested in Peruvian shamanism, amazonian biology, visiting Machu Pichu, or just wanting to soak in a rain forest hotspring, this trip might be for you.  We are less than a month away, so if you would like to join us – by us I mean the very amazing and interesting group of people who have assembled for this trip – contact Jeannette at info@rawflora.com, and check out the 11 day 10 night itinerary here.  It is exciting to see who takes the plunge and comes along!

Please let us know what you thought about the video above, and if there are any subjects you would like to see covered in the future.

Until then, please know that your readership is appreciated.

Enjoy the summer sunshine!

~Daniel

Your time here is very appreciated.  The video that accompanies this blog post is a two part strategy breaking down how you can inexpensively and easily begin protecting yourself from the long-lived radio isotopes, which have now become a regular part of our habitat.  This began 65 years ago, and has become particularly disconcerting in the last few months since the damage to the Japanese facility at Fukushima.

I am also including here the two links that I mention in the video.  The first is an amazing visualization that shows all of the nuclear detonations that have happened on Earth since 1946.  Hint…  its over 2000!

The second is a documentary called Trinity, and it shows with nothing less than truly epic footage, the history of these tests. This, if you have time, is a must see!  Very disturbing, but strangely entrancing…  I guess that is the nature of this technology.

The reason I share these videos and information is to demonstrate that the issues with radiation did not begin Fukushima, or even with Chernobyl, but with the “silent” nuclear war that has already happened on Earth.

So what do we do?  This video is about the strategies that I have been employing since the Japan disaster earlier this year.  Knowing what I know now, I wish I had started the day I came into this world.  Regardless, taking actions like these has put me at considerable ease about the radio-isotopes in our environment.  This allows me to operate without fear, but remain in a dominant emotion of confidence.

Also, on another note, my opening evening talk at the Longevity Now Conference last April is now available for purchase in DVD format, in an 18-DVD set which includes the lectures from each of the other health educators who spoke at the Conference!  The DVD set is a compilation of hours, upon hours, of live footage from the weekend long event and includes tons of the latest health information and inspiration.  Click here to see a 15 minute clip of the my main lecture from the event, titled “Habitat, Living the Life of Our Biological Design” which I feel came out wonderfully!  To learn more about this excellent DVD offer or to purchase your copy today, follow this link.

Thats all for now, though I eagerly await your comments, so please let me know what you would like to see future videos on!

Thank You for taking the time.  Keep SurThriving!

~D

And now its more important than ever!

I believe we are standing on the edge of a truly profound event horizon, one that holds within its grasp the seed of the greatest human evolutionary renaissance since our species first emerged into the world some 200,000 years ago.

More than ever before, every choice we make, each and every action we take is leading us onward to thrive or downward to our own demise.

Our environment is changing faster than our minds can keep pace with, and this change is pressuring our biology to adapt at what are now nearly break neck speeds.

Oil in the seas, nuclear fallout spreading across the globe, shortages of food, genetic and degenerative disease, antibiotic resistant infectious agents, mass extinctions, epidemic infertility, genetic modification, electro-smog, etc, ad infinitum.

Can any of us adapt fast enough?  I believe some can, and whats more, that some will.

The question remains, what will separate those who go on to inherit the Earth from those who’s genes will fade into the recess of geologic history.

Those who remain will have to be more than survivors, they will be SurThrivalists.

The SurThriver understands the health challenges inherent in our modern world, and yet chooses to Thrive despite them. He or She has the ability to witness events like those that recently struck Japan, and while maintaining a sense of empathy and compassion, takes the necessary steps to protect themselves, their health, and that of those they love.

The SurThrivalist differs from the Survivalist in that they operate from a place of love and recognition of the inherent bounty of the natural world.  The SurThriver believes in and aligns themselves with Life.  The survivalist too often operates from a place of fear and uncertainty.  Survival is bare minimum, SurThrival is abundant, and even opulent.

Make no mistake, we stand before the greatest evolutionary event our species has ever known.  Now is the time – our time – to seize this opportunity and sail it into the future!

In full honesty, I don’t believe that most of – or even many of – the human beings alive today will carry forth their genetic material into the future.  In fact, it seems to me that the only humans who will be able to inhabit this planet soon will be those who have developed and implemented strategies to thrive in this brave new polluted planetary ecology.  In other words, those who can keep their bodies clean and detoxified, nourished and healthy, no matter what the level of contamination.

What does all this mean?  It seems to be some kind of natural (or perhaps unnatural) selection.

Natural Selection is a simple enough concept.  Those individuals who are more adapted to a particular environment will be healthier and will produce more offspring than those less suited to an environment.  In the environment we now live in, with its extremes of climate, toxic foods, petro-chemicals, pharmaceuticals, polluted air and water, etc, only those who have developed strong, wise, and strategic methods for thriving will be able to carry forth their genetic material and live through this phase of history to populate the new and coming world.

I believe in us, I believe in our ability as a species to make it through even the most challenging times.  We are up against something so much more powerful than any natural disaster, we are up against our selves.  We have created a world so very far outside of the balances of natural law and it is now time that each one of us reestablishes a new equilibrium within ourselves.  It might not be easy, though that doesn’t mean it can’t be exciting – and yes… maybe even fun.