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
A Hidden Clue to High Blood Pressure in Men

A Hidden Clue to High Blood Pressure in Men

A new Italian study has shown how focusing on a rather unconventional body measurement may help men to anticipate high blood pressure risks. And it’s probably not the body part you think it is. The researchers looked at data on nearly 3,000 men who had sought...
These Berries Fix Your Blood Pressure!

These Berries Fix Your Blood Pressure!

In old movies, Roman emperors always seemed to be reclining on a long couch, so that some servant could feed them these delicious little fruits, one by one. Back in the day, the Romans knew a thing or two about building straight roads, aqueducts, indoor plumbing, and...
Can You Blame Your Parents for Your Sleep Apnea?

Can You Blame Your Parents for Your Sleep Apnea?

Sleep apnea is a destructive disorder that causes daytime sleepiness, dementia, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and even early death. Given its severity, it is important to know how much it’s preventable through behavior change and how much of it is already in our...
High Blood Pressure? Eat this Vegetable

High Blood Pressure? Eat this Vegetable

Researchers from the Wageningen University in the Netherlands have spent 10 years looking at the diets of 20,000 men and women. They paid a lot of attention to the fruits and vegetables that these people are the most of, so you can bet they know what’s good for you!...