It used to be easy for moguls to flaunt their power. All they had to do was renovate the chalet in St. Moritz, buy the latest Gulfstream (GD) jet, lay off 5,000 employees, or marry a much younger Asian woman. By now, though, they’ve used up all the easy ways to distinguish themselves from the rest of us–which may be why a growing number of America’s most powerful bosses have become vegan. Steve Wynn, Mort Zuckerman, Russell Simmons, and Bill Clinton are now using tempeh to assert their superiority. As are Ford Executive Chairman of the Board Bill Ford (F), Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, venture capitalist Joi Ito, Whole Foods Market (WFMI) Chief Executive Officer John Mackey, and Mike Tyson. Yes, Mike Tyson, a man who once chewed on human ear, is now vegan. His dietary habit isn’t nearly as impressive as that of Alec Baldwin, though, who has found a way to be both vegan and fat at the same time.
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Everyone can align with nature. The sun doesn’t oversleep! It always gets up, always rises. The full moon is always there when it should be and spring always comes after winter. The only way the sun won’t rise, I believe, is if our planet is out of orbit. Otherwise the sun will rise everyday.

The stability of nature gives to everyone psychologically, if we are aware of the feeling that each day is new and fresh. Each day is an opportunity. Each day the sun will rise and each day it will set. Whatever we are doing, for good or for bad, comes to an end everyday, or at least to a pause or recess. In the morning we start again, refreshed and renewed. Or at least, we have the ability to do so.

These cycles start from the daily cycle and move out to larger and larger cycles in different aspects of our life. Then we have this ability to align with and be part of this order. This gives us the stability and the vitality to create our life, to create change or do what we want to do. I think we cannot overestimate how strong that power is. Unfortunately, many times we connect or align more with our individual family experience, which then blocks or interferes with our ability to really align with nature. Recently, excessive focus has been paid to our personal experiences. In other words, making them more significant, rather than looking at nature and then having our perspective changed.

The cycles of nature will support us if we let them!

If we get nervous or angry we influence our health! Happy and unhappy emotions have an effect of either improving or weakening the quality of our blood. The same dynamic exists between emotions and our organs. If we feel calm and peaceful, this nourishes the liver. This is the same kind of energy that creates the liver and returns it to balance. If we feel courage and security, this type of deep energy nourishes our kidneys. On the other hand, if you experience strong fear, that can weaken your kidneys. If you become very angry, the opposite of calm and peaceful, that harms your liver; weakens it. And the more you experience an emotion, the more your organs are damaged by that. The balance works in both directions.

Emotions exist to make balance. Emotions have a natural state. That natural state is something flowing and changing. Healthy emotions are constantly changing. Some days we feel a little bit more up, some days more down, more tense. It changes from day to day and this is a natural state. It is something like the weather, which changes from day to day. We can tell when there is a problem with our emotions when we experience the opposite; when our emotions start to surge; to become too strong, forceful or extreme, or stuck, rigid or one-sided.

There are many ways to read and influence our health.

A major study was just published in the Annals of Internal Medicine from Harvard. In approximately 85,000 women who were followed for 26 years and 45,000 men who were followed for 20 years, researchers found that all-cause mortality rates were increased in both men and women who were eating a low-carbohydrate Atkins diet based on animal protein. Read article

Imagine we found the cure for heart disease or diabetes, but as a society chose to withhold that treatment from those who need it most. Would it be ethical to withhold effective treatments when the result is unnecessary suffering and death that costs our health care system hundreds of billions of dollars a year? Read article

Certain sports are played alone. Certain are played as part of a team. Weight lifting, for example, is usually done alone. Football, on the other hand, must be played as part of a team. It requires team coordination and the results depend on everybody either working or not working together. Team sports are more yang.

Then there is competition, either individual or group. Competition is yang, an expression of energy becoming more and more contracted or condensed. Yin activities are those in which energy moves out to the periphery. The game of solitaire is very yin! Then there are social card games, played with others for fun: those are more balanced. Serious gambling, with direct competition, is by far the most yang. A social card game is more harmonious, played just for fun, either won or lost. It is more yang than solitaire because it requires social interaction.

Any sport you do by yourself is yin and has a yinnizing effect. Anything you do in a group becomes more yang, whatever it is. If you add competition to that, it becomes even more yang.

I hope you choose a good activity for yourself today!