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

Casual Exercise Fights Blood Pressure

Those that feel they need to run a marathon to lower their blood pressure can relax with some good news from researchers at Louisiana University. In a new study, the scientists discovered that moderate, low-impact exercise like walking and riding on a stationary bike...

Three Types of Diets to Cure Everything

Whether you’re fighting high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, arthritis, trying to lose weight or anything else health wise, your diet is going to play an essential role.   In fact, many of the above diseases (and more) can be reversed with diet alone....

Lowering Blood Pressure Extends Lifespan

All of the exercising, stress relief and dietary restrictions that come from trying to lower blood pressure may tack on years at the end of your life, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. In their study of nearly 5000...

Garlic Powerful Weapon Against Blood Pressure

It’s commonly known that high doses of garlic can repel a first date’s chances of a kiss, but new research out of Australia’s University of Adelaide found that it may keep blood pressure away too. In this study, scientist pooled together the results of 11 large...