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

Insomnia Linked to Cardiovascular Disease

While it’s well known that insomnia can lead to impaired concentration and memory, few studies have examined the long-term effects of sleepless nights on overall health. In one of the first, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, researchers...

Medications Raise Erectile Dysfunction Risk

Habitually downing fistfuls of medications –no matter what type—significantly increases one’s risk of developing erectile dysfunction, according to a study of more than 30 thousand men. The study found that men taking 10 or more medications per day were twice as...

Eating More May Promote Weight Loss

Sticking to three square meals may actually promote obesity, a new study published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association found this week. In this study, scientists investigated the number of times people ate per day and linked eating frequency with body...

Kiwi Combats High Blood Pressure

Forget an apple a day: according to Oslo University Hospital scientists, kiwi is the fruit that has the largest impact on high blood pressure levels. In this study, a group of 100 men and women were asked to eat 3 servings of apple or kiwi per day for 8 weeks. At the...