Christian Goodman

Author at Blue Heron Health News

Hi, I'm Christian Goodman.

I was born in Iceland in 1973 and trained as a therapist. Early in my career I learned something I've never been able to unlearn: most of what shows up in the body starts in the mind, the breath, and the tension we carry without realizing it.

I learned it on myself the hard way.

A few years into my practice, my own blood pressure climbed to 185/129. I was the alternative health expert who couldn't fix his own health. I was eating well. I was exercising. I was taking every supplement on the shelf. And I was terrified — not of dying exactly, but of leaving my wife and children without me. I felt like the carpenter who couldn't build his own house.

What finally pointed me toward an answer wasn't another supplement or another specialist. It was a quiet line of research out of Harvard Medical School — Dr. Herbert Benson's work on how a handful of simple mind/body exercises can reset the brain's blood pressure control center.

The first time I sat down and did them, something in my chest unclenched that I hadn't realized was clenched. I'd been bracing against my own body for years. I refined what I learned over the following months into a daily practice I could teach other people.

Snoring was the other one.

I snored my whole life. As a married man, my wife and I ended up in separate bedrooms — and the resentment that grew in that silence nearly ended our marriage. The breakthrough came one morning over breakfast. My wife — a classical singer turned voice teacher — was listening to me describe my latest dead end when she stopped and said, "That's what I teach my students every day." The very exercises she used to open up her singers' breathing passages were the ones I'd been searching for.

That's how most of my work has been born — in a kitchen, in a marriage, in a quiet moment with someone I love.

Today I've written 13 programs covering everything from blood pressure to vertigo to insomnia to migraines. At the heart of most of them is the same conviction that started me on this path: that the body, given simple tools and a little attention each day, has a remarkable capacity to restore its own balance.

If any of this sounds familiar — the frustration, the shame, the feeling that you've tried everything the normal way and are quietly running out of options — then I wrote these programs for you. I'll take you by the hand and walk you, gently, toward something that feels a little easier.

Warm regards,
Christian


Articles by Christian Goodman
How Snoring Causes Blindness (weird but true)

How Snoring Causes Blindness (weird but true)

In recent years, snoring and sleep apnea have been linked to many serious health problems, such as high blood pressure, obesity, heart attacks, and strokes. But blindness—that’s something new. A study just published in BMJ Open describes exactly how snoring and, even...
This Tea Lowers Blood Pressure and Helps You Sleep

This Tea Lowers Blood Pressure and Helps You Sleep

“You might benefit from a diuretic for blood pressure and a sedative for anxiety,” your doctor says. However, instead of being happy with these “remedies,” you’re frustrated that they are limited to conventional drugs and nothing else. The good news is there’s a...
Dementia Caused By Popular Supplement

Dementia Caused By Popular Supplement

Vitamin and mineral supplements can be great and are often highly regarded alternative health treatments recommended by doctors. Sometimes supplements can do more harm than good. This, according to a research team from University of Gothenburg, is true for one of the...
This Herb Lowers Blood Pressure by 12 Points

This Herb Lowers Blood Pressure by 12 Points

High blood pressure is a disease that affects 25% of the world’s population. Despite its shockingly high statistics, researchers at the University of Adelaide say that it can be controlled with a simple, cheap herb that grows almost everywhere in the world. This is a...
Blood Pressure & Sleep Apnea—Weird Gut Connection

Blood Pressure & Sleep Apnea—Weird Gut Connection

Researchers have long known that high blood pressure is a risk factor for sleep apnea. They don’t know, however, why some people with high blood pressure develop sleep apnea and others do not. A new study in the Journal of Clinical Hypertension answers this puzzling...