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 ED Destroys Your Career

How ED Destroys Your Career

We usually think of ED as a bedroom problem. It has definitely been the final blow to many relationships. But a new study in the International Journal of Clinical Practice now shows that it is a major problem for your career as well. A research team composed of...
These Blood Pressure Drugs Double Cancer Risk

These Blood Pressure Drugs Double Cancer Risk

One of the most prescribed high blood pressure medications has been proven to more than double your risk of a specific type of cancer. This is according to a new study from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, recently published in JAMA Internal Medicine....
Snoring Causes This Deadly Disease

Snoring Causes This Deadly Disease

Snoring (and, even more seriously, sleep apnea) is not just an innocent annoyance. When you snore, you don’t breathe properly, and your blood oxygen level goes down. And according to a new study, published in the European Respiratory Journal, this can cause the one...
A Healthy Habit Indicates High Blood Pressure

A Healthy Habit Indicates High Blood Pressure

High blood pressure is usually blamed on unhealthy lifestyle choices, such as bad diet and lack of exercise. But a new study, from Dr. Nobuo Sasaki and colleagues at Hiroshima University, reveals a healthy habit that people with high blood pressure tend to have. The...
New Vertigo Type Discovered (and cure)

New Vertigo Type Discovered (and cure)

Vertigo is an extremely common disorder and is actually surprisingly easy to treat. But if you have visited numerous doctors throughout years of misery and your vertigo remains untreated, a new study by researchers from Technical University Munich, published in the...