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 Sleep Affects High Blood Pressure

How Sleep Affects High Blood Pressure

Did you know that by just slightly changing the way you sleep, you can drop your blood pressure a whopping 15 points? How is that possible? The secret lies in the results of a 20-study review involving 225,000 subjects published this year in the journal Sleep...
High Blood Pressure – Did We Get It All Wrong?

High Blood Pressure – Did We Get It All Wrong?

More evidence is emerging that highlights a common but critical mistake people make when tracking their blood pressure. The mistake even causes patients and their doctors to miss a key indicator for stroke risk. Because it’s not the high blood pressure that is the...
Dementia Caused by this Popular Supplement

Dementia Caused by this Popular Supplement

Vitamin and mineral supplements can be great and are often highly recommended by doctors as well as those of us focused on alternative health. But sometimes supplements can do more harm than good. That is the case with one of the most commonly recommended supplements...
3 Mistakes When Measuring Blood Pressure

3 Mistakes When Measuring Blood Pressure

Practice doesn’t necessarily make perfect, and this is especially true when taking blood pressure. Many people don’t realize that WHEN and WHERE you take your blood pressure is as important as HOW. This can lead to misdiagnosis where people who don’t actually have...