Yes, you are a life athlete! How do I know this? You’ve committed yourself to growing every day. You look for opportunities to serve, excel, and achieve your intentions and goals. You also have multiple “events” that you participate in every day — your occupation and purpose fulfillment, relationship commitments, home and body maintenance, kids, pets, friends, and loved ones. The energy you put forth keeps them all well-fed and loved. But with all of these chosen events, do you take care of your mind and body like the champion you are? The good news is that, with thoughtful dedication and a winning mindset, you will thrive in your chosen events and make each day a gold medal performance!

Inspired and effective preparation is paramount to succeed in all of your important events and to create and express your divine athletic performance. You can raise the bar in every event in your day by taking the time to outline your intentions and desired outcomes. Take a look at what you have in front of you each day and ask yourself how you'd like to be in that experience. Do you want and need sustained energy? Are some of your events likely to produce stress? How can you keep your mind aligned with spirit, peace, and balance in spite of your challenging environment?

Prepare your mind and body to “win” in each of these areas by living the following principles for success as a life athlete. First, work out every day. Inspired daily exercise will bolster your confidence, stress resiliency, energy, and mental game and outlook. Choose to move first thing in the morning before your events — walk, run, do yoga, do anything that moves you. If you feel that you don’t have enough time in the morning, simply commit to doing at least 10 minutes. Then, move for 10 more minutes mid-day and 10 more minutes at the end of your day to celebrate your daily wellness victory.

Also, eat like a champion. Feed your mind and body with premium fuel. Whole grains, lean proteins, healthy fats, fruits, and vegetables are all sustained energy sources. Always eat in regular intervals and never skip meals. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are critical supports, and your mid-morning and mid-afternoon snacks serve as “aid stations” along your daily marathon. Use them to fuel up, re-balance, and fortify yourself for the next leg of the journey.

Lastly, all elite athletes like yourself use visioning to set the highest intention and ideal outcome. Use your personal power and see yourself performing with grace, power, light, and love. Be on fire with purpose and passion. Enjoy your body, enjoy your life, and celebrate God in you as you relish in every event of your life!

Tune in to QVC for Nature's Code(R) Wellness Thursday, August 27, 2009 from Midnight – 1 a.m., 10 – 11 a.m., 3 – 4 p.m. and 8 – 9 p.m. ET.

—Dr. James Rouse

Optimism is contagious. When you feel optimistic it can “spill” wonderfully over everything that you think and do-when you are around someone who is optimistic, it s a good bet that you will feel more possible in most every area of your life. Optimism is healing, encouraging and a powerful tool to create your day and your life as you would imagine in it in its most glorious expression. Optimism is a mindset that can be created and utilized on demand, on the fly and in concert with every intention you have dedicated yourself to creating-it is a fuel source, a sustaining motivating element that cannot be exhausted or run out of-it is yours to employ, to spread and celebrate-get optimistic now!

Optimism can be thought of as an outlook on life. How can you go about building and using the power of optimism everyday? I am a huge fan of what I call my DOR way to daily greatness and well-being, my Daily Optimism Rituals. There are many possible ways to build optimism for yourself-here are some of the ones that I know work wonders in building a radiant, “empowered me”, as well as an outlook to create an inspired, transformational experience for you and the world around you everyday: Live and express your truth. Choose to ask the question, “am I aligned with my truth” throughout your day. If you are, then acknowledge this with gratitude and grace. If you are off course, simply ask what you can do to be better and more fully aligned and go about getting there with both compassion and conviction.

Be powerful in your faith. Believe fully in your knowing that you are here for to express your highest good. Know that you are blessed and a blessing. You have everything you need to show up in your magnificence and are being asked to do so-right here and right now.

Always come from love. Love and optimism feed each other, when you dedicate yourself to being a lover of life. Seek to make heart-connections with family, friends and strangers alike. Go on a “good finding mission”; go about your day looking for good and courageously sharing and showing it to others-actively look at everything in your life with the goal of seeing where you can add your love.

There is a doorway always open to you to choose to walk thru living your truth, expressing your faith and spreading your love. Dash thru this door optimistically as one who knows that the greatest good goes with you into an eternal day of infinite light and livelihood-so it is and so you are!

Tune in to QVC for Nature's Code(R) Wellness Thursday, July 9, 2009 from Midnight – 1 a.m., 10 – 11 a.m., 3 – 4 p.m. and 8 – 9 p.m. ET.

Dr. James Rouse

When I was a child my mom would encourage us to be a part of the clean plate club. If you ate everything on your plate you could be a member of this “fulfilled” community, and if you played your cards right qualify on a regular basis for desert. Today in our home we have our own version of a contemporary, healthier and more sustainable clean plate focusing on simple, conscious consumption that results in superior well-being, balanced energy and satisfaction of mind, body and soul.

The table rules are simple; first, clean eating is not a diet, a fad, or quick-fix weight loss program. The roots of clean eating are found in the well researched philosophy of a diet based on whole, unprocessed foods. With this way of eating and life there is movement away of from highly packaged and distant and towards more local and organic. Choose to eat a wide variety of fresh, colorful fruits and vegetables daily. Steer clear of high fructose corn syrup, “fake” no calorie sweeteners, and empty calorie diet sweets. Enjoy the healthy monounsaturated fats from olive oil, nuts and seeds and do your best to consume the healthy polyunsaturated fats from wild fish. Reduce your consumption of saturated fats and avoid trans fats. Build your plate with a healthy balance of lean protein, complex carbohydrates and healthy fats in the proper portion and focus on eating with this approach 5 to 6 small meals per day. Choose to see food as a support for managing your metabolism, your mood, your energy, health and outlook and feed your mind and body nutrient dense, life-giving foods always.

Now, your return on your investment is outstanding and compounding daily in a variety of healthy, life affirming ways; greater overall health and well-being, due to a loss of fat and an increase in metabolically active lean muscle. The plan is best for the environment, eating local and organic, over overly packaged is good common sense sustainability. Lastly, eating clean and healthy honors your body temple, enlightens your energy and Spirit and fortifies you on your journey of being and demonstrating your best. .

Our daily practice of living the Natures Code wellness lifestyle encourages us to clean up our thinking, polish our beliefs and shine the presence-adding the clean eating philosophy can support you in living your message with radiance and radiant well-being. .


Dr.James Rouse

Tune in to QVC for Nature's Code(R) Wellness Friday, June 19, 2009 from 2 – 3 p.m. ET and Thursday, July 9, 2009 from Midnight – 1 a.m., 10 – 11 a.m., 3 – 4 p.m. and 8 – 9 p.m. ET.

Most of us grew up with the phrase, “April showers bring May flowers”. This spring, you can apply the same concept to your life: plant power seeds and design a life landscape. Use this same life-giving source, the infinite power of the one mind, to accomplish your dreams, desires, goals, and intentions. Just plant the seeds to grow your mission, and harvest the joy, abundance, vitality, and love that you came here to know and show.

Utilize this intention to place infinite faith in yourself. This will allow you to plant powerful seeds this month that inspire and delight. Look at your life as a garden where there’s only fresh and fertile soil to use in whatever way you choose. Planting thoughts of peace, energy, well-being, and radiant vitality is your choice. With each thought you plant, do so with the same kind of faith that you would if you were to plant a specific seed — know the exact outcome that you’d expect to see blooming in the future. You need to plant your intentions with that same faith and belief. This will support an inevitably successful outcome.

In the same way that a skilled farmer fertilizes soil to ensure healthy crops, you can till the soil of your life’s mission to plant and grow your own well-being and vitality. The saying, “treat and move your feet” is a call to action for actively supporting the growth and experience of the kind of health that you desire. Building your spiritual confidence is essential to get from seed to harvest. You can get there by doing the daily work of watering, weeding, and believing every moment of every day.

Think well of yourself, believe in your powerful body-mind-temple, and actively demonstrate positive thinking by choosing a balanced, healthy diet. Also remember that mindful, inspiring exercise and rejuvenating rest and relaxation is much like watering your consciousness to grow your awareness of your essential truth. Keeping an active, compassionate, and steadfast watch over your thoughts and daily choices is vital to keeping any unwanted, limited, and unhealthy thoughts from growing in your life’s garden of potential. And lastly, choose to actively live your faith in your self, in spirit, and the wellness that you know for you. When you courageously “live as if” by expressing the beauty and power of absolute knowing, you’ll have all the essential life elements of love, energy, and high purpose to grow the life of your dreams.

Dr. James Rouse

Tune in to QVC Nature's Code(R) Wellness Saturday, May 9, 2009 from 11 a.m. – Noon and 10 – 11 p.m. ET and Sunday, May 10, 2009 from 7 – 8 a.m. and 7 – 8 p.m. ET.

Statistics from a recent global stress research study show that increased stress is felt worldwide. A continued or prolonged stress response can rob the body/mind of its ability to regain balance after stress. Continued exposure to stress and the experience of the stress response can cause exhaustion of our adrenal system and create lowered resistance to disease.

The stress response in the body is geared to deal with every day stress. When stress is extreme or unrelenting it can become harmful. Developing a plan to manage stress positively can help to move and balance through stressful life situations. A proactive plan incorporating attitude, belief systems, diet and mind/body fitness can allow for us to react to stress more positively. Allow for resilience and confidence to be part of your plan for managing stress and creating a life of balance, vitality and well being. In dealing with stress, preparation is key!

Healing, reducing stress and living more positively and aligned with your hearts purpose takes courage, a willingness to let go of obsessive self-critiquing and judgment. Begin where you are. Make an honest assessment of your present stressors and your coping mechanisms. Now, define what is possible. Stretch yourself to think new thoughts. Envision new patterns of being. Live the idea of creative confidence. This is possibly more about willingness as opposed to will power. Be on purpose, not so much on outcome. Honor your essence, your authenticity. Celebrate your life in new action, new thoughts, and a celebration of the possible.

Under stress the body can lose valuable stores of important vitamins, minerals, and/or amino acids. Certain foods rich in these nutrients may help to keep your system strong under stress and possibly offset the damage that stress can cause. One thing that you can do is to take a daily multivitamin and mineral to cover your basics. Nutritional deficiencies can show up in a number of ways, so we like the idea of a daily multiple as one part of your preventive medicine strategy.

Complex carbohydrates can help to raise serotonin levels. Under stress our brain uses serotonin. When our stores of serotonin become low due to stress (extended stress) our mood can become affected and become less positive or even accompanied with anxiety and depression.

It is important to avoid missing meals or ingesting too many sugar/refined carbohydrates.

Our bodies are blessed with the ability to be continuously adjusting and readjusting its internal chemistry so it can remain in balance. The fight or flight response disrupts this balance. If we are physically and/or psychologically or spiritually unprepared we can experience this response as very demanding and potentially debilitating.

We haven’t touched here on the variety of other tools available if you are feeling stressed. Research strongly supports integrating meditation, visualization, yoga and biofeedback as potential techniques to help decrease your stress. Be sure to speak to your doctor to determine whether or not you are a candidate for any of these natural therapies.

Tune-in to the Nature’s Code Wellness shows on February 28th at 2 AM, 11 AM and 6 PM EST.

Dr. James Rouse

The word “courage” is derived from French word for heart, “coeur”, and etymologically it means “the ability to stand by ones heart. This month is an especially auspicious time to bring attention to the health of your heart and to choose to serve, celebrate and circulate the vitality and power that “standing” with your heart brings to every aspect of life. If you are looking for an incentive to add more practices to your heart healthy lifestyle the mind-body connection to heart health is direct and compelling and may serve to inspire a conscious movement towards greater giving, “lighter” living and loving every chance we get!

Laughter appears to support heart health by aiding in blood vessel health. Look for “wellness windows” all around your daily life practice; embracing your inner child can initiate “inner jogging”, laugh at yourself, make fun of your fears, learn to play and invite others to play with you-laughter is a gift, give it to yourself and the world around every chance you have. Daring to find and embrace the lighter with laughter is a trust walk that can be most empowering for your spirit and your heart! Laughter is great fuel for optimism.

In a study published in Psychosomatic Medicine, participants who were classified as optimists were half as likely to develop heart disease than those who were defined as pessimists. If you are looking to boost your outlook and your heart health than consider the practice of seeing the world and your place in it as conspiring for your greater good, actively affirming this greater good with your actions, with prayer and meditation.

More meditation if you wish to please your mind, “heart” and spirit. You can increase the healthy heart benefits of your meditation practice by combining it with yoga; according to Yale University, the combination of yoga and meditation practiced at least 3x per week may help to lower the risk for heart disease and high blood pressure. When stress “urges” small thinking and living-you can choose to interrupt a well worn pattern of constriction and narrow-mindedness with mindful movement and breathing as it can be “opening” for new thought as well as your blood vessels which in turn may be helpful in finding peace and balance. High blood pressure often accompanies the morning and evening commute, if you are looking for a way to share the ride with your higher self than simply focus on breathing from your belly rather than your chest, as this will promote the reduction of unhealthy stress hormones and the lowering of your blood pressure too.

Feed your heart by giving and receiving love. The heart benefits with the healing values of love, intimacy, community, compassion, forgiveness, kindness and service. Making the commitment to be unselfish with your love and courageously expressing your hearts energy with enthusiastic passion may be one of the most loving self serving acts that we can commit-as expressing love benefits both giver and receiver and can help both to live a longer, healthier and more fulfilled life-if want to heal the world? Express love and live courageously!


Tune-in for Nature’s Code Wellness Shows on February 13th at Midnight, 9 AM, 2PM, 7PM EST.

Dr. James Rouse

Resolve to evolve this year. January can set forth the inspiration as well as the energy for reviving our intentions and raising our actions. The New Year can sweep us up in the excitement of newness and possibility. Even so, many of us fall into the “resolution trap” of over-committing and in a few weeks (or days) we wind up feeling like we have failed to change -- our diets, our body, and our lives. We can find ourselves back where we started, looking for a lifeline to resurrect our faith in the year to come. We can connect with a lifeline right now and revive our belief in our ability to make this year your best ever.

Success is much more readily achieved in regards to making positive changes with our self care and our health when we do two things: treat and see the changes as a lifestyle and break it down into simple and practical pieces to express and experience every day. Consider a lifestyle of balance encompassing four areas that support each other: mind/mindset, fitness, diet/nourishment and rest and renewal.

Having new thoughts and an affirmative mindset allows for all things that you desire now and in the future to be realized. Open to the idea that eating healthier, creating and enjoying time to exercise and experiencing a life of balance and fulfillment is not about gathering more will power or trying to find more sustained motivation. Instead consider willingness over will power and inspiration over motivation. Willingness is about opening your mind and allowing the innate good and well-being to flow through you as you. Inspiration is a sustainable energy from within, whereas motivation most often comes from without. We tend to look outside of ourselves to be or keep being motivated and that outer dependency is non sustainable at best. When we are inspired we are moved from a place of full faith and knowing. We are on fire with divine purpose.

Fitness and regular exercise goals are some of the most popular and potentially most challenging intentions that are set each January. Many perceived roadblocks tend to interfere with successful execution of these goals; time, boredom and fear may be some of them. You can move through each of those roadblocks by embracing fitness and exercise as an integral part of your usual daily activities. Here’s how: Look at your day and your many activities as opportunities to move. In the morning when you are about to get out of bed take a few minutes and stretch from bed or next to your bed when you get up. While brushing your teeth you can perform modified squats in front of the sink. While waiting for your coffee to brew or your tea water to boil give your chest, shoulders and triceps some affirmative attention by doing some modified upright push ups from the counter-top. Bust a yoga move and hold it with zeal for few seconds in a cubicle, office hallway and or parking garage -- it’s all good! Take the furthest parking spot from the entrance and “seize” the stairs with enthusiasm. Moving from this new fitness paradigm allows for overcoming the time, boredom and hopefully fear roadblocks as you can create what feels right to you anytime, anyhow and any way!

This year open to the idea of moving away from weight LOSS and move towards vitality GAIN. When you put your attention on your intention to feel great, to have sustained energy and clarity you will be more naturally drawn to choosing foods that support that intention. Healthy weight release and successful weight management will be a side effect. Add whole, unprocessed foods to your every day eating plan. Choose foods that support your desired experience of vitality including a wide variety of colorful vegetables rich in life giving antioxidants, lean proteins that are low in saturated fats and heart healthy fats from nuts, seeds and wild fish. Keep your metabolic fires burning by being mindful with meal planning and not meal skipping. This will naturally support you in steering clear of portion distortion. Embrace the true definition of the word diet which is way of life and eat to live-(not live to eat.)

You can bring your cycle of balance full circle with your intention to experience both rest and renewal each and every day. Respect and honor the art of rest by turning off the news, closing the newspaper and anything else that encourages fear or feelings of separateness. Design evening rituals that allow for gracefully moving from “doing” to “being” through Spirited reading and reflection, writing in your gratitude journal. Appreciate the many blessings that you experienced this day and the knowing of the many more to come this year.

Dr. James Rouse

Many of us have rituals in our lives. They may include reading stories and tucking our kids in at night; shared meals; laying our clothes out to wear for the following day; taking a bath with candles; brewing a favorite cup of tea or coffee. Rituals are an integral part of life and throughout history people from all over the world have created and celebrated rituals. Have you created any wellness rituals in your daily routine? If not, there’s no time like the present to plug into wellness.

Wellness rituals may include waking up early and lighting a candle to meditate for 20 minutes. They may also include setting aside one or two days a week that you go to the grocery store to shop for organic produce. Your wellness ritual may begin with a cup of hot water with lemon squeezed in or perhaps a cup of green tea. Whatever it may be, wellness rituals are an integral part of creating lasting health and harmony in your life.

Wellness rituals work like “preventative medicine” or as solutions to a stress filled life. They can serve as a starting point or launching pad for those times when life gets ahead of you and you loose yourself amidst your “to do” list. One of our personal favorite rituals begins every New Year when we create our goal cards for the following year. We create an affirmation card that states specifically our individual health goals, wealth goals, relationship goals and very importantly gives gratitude for the realization of all of these goals as if they were already realized in the present. We believe that as soon as our thoughts are put down on paper or said aloud, the universe conspires to make them real! We shrink the card down to a size that will fit in a purse or pocket, laminate it, and read it at least 3 times a day, every single day of the year. This is one of our most important wellness rituals.

Here is an example of the ritual James has set for himself and is yours for the borrowing: Each day I rise before 5 am. I take time to be still and just sit for at least 15 minutes. After, I sit at my desk, write in my journal and set an intention and goals for the day. I follow this time with yoga. Next, I’ll make myself a little energy shake before I begin my weight training and cardiovascular exercise. By 7 in the morning I have more energy than most people have after 3 cups of coffee. Why? Because for years now I have engaged in this ritual. I know it works for me and helps start my day on a positive note. What’s in my smoothie? Usually water, a teaspoon of l-glutamine powder, a scoop of protein powder and a scoop of greens.

Here are some other ideas that you may use for creating wellness in your life: - Commit to no television during mealtime and from dinner until bed. Use the time to read to your kids or if you don’t have children, read at least one chapter from an inspiring/motivational book. - Draw yourself a warm bath (or head out to the hot tub) and soak for 15 to twenty minutes (add essential oils like lavender or rose if desired). Follow with a quick cold shower, through on your pajamas and get ready for a great night’s sleep. - Begin your day with a cup of warm/hot water with ½ lemon squeezed in it and drink it all before you begin breakfast. This is a nice time to write in your journal. - Take your dog for a walk (or your baby for a stroll) just after waking up, after you get home from work or after dinner. You will both benefit! - Try a new fruit or vegetable every week. - Pick one night a week to browse new healthy recipes. - Connect with a friend and choose one day a week that you both can commit to exploring a new hike around town.

Have fun designing your wellness rituals. Be creative. Get the entire family involved. We are constantly creating new rituals in my family. Whether we are singing grace before dinner or taking a family hot tub before bed, I know that these rituals nourish me in mind, body, and spirit.


Dr. James Rouse