What is Hormesis

Hard to Kill, Easy to Love.

This has been our family’s mantra ever since our daughter passed away. The snapshot version of what it means:

Hard to Kill: In whatever life throws at me each day, I have a choice.
It’s really a reminder that a lot of things will come to try and take you out, but to remember that you are more powerful than those things. That the Holy Spirit that’s in you will dominate anything. It reminds me to focus on what’s right, not wrong. To create more than I complain. To remember that my energy is affecting everything and everyone around me, and to steward that well.

Easy to Love: The only thing that matters, in the end, is our effect on other people. How we loved them, helped them, cared for them. How we took care of the orphans, widows, and poor. How we loved our neighbors as ourselves. How we put others needs above our own, even when we didn’t feel like it. How I made sacrifices for my family and friends, even when it inconvenienced me. How I loved my husband, even when I felt hurt or bitter. How I poured everything I have into my children, even when the house is a continual disaster. I am here to be love. To spread love. To radiate the Love of Yeshua to everyone and everything around. To partner with atmosphere and energy of love so it radiates, heals, and blasts everyone and everything it comes in contact with.

If I can keep that in front of me every day, everything changes.

Hard to Kill and Easy to Love, Literally

That mantra is powerful on a mental/spiritual level, but it can also be a literal fact. There are certain practices you can do every day that literally make you hard to kill. Meaning, making all the systems in your body more resilient to whatever you experience in life.

These practices stimulate cellular rejuvenation, mitochondrial function, and activate the healing systems of your body.

Hormesis – Healthy stress. Things that are bad in high amounts are good in small amounts. Things like sun, exercise, hot, cold, wild plant intake.

These things that damage the cells just slightly result in an upregulation in some of the natural built-in defense mechanisms of those cells – like their antioxidant production and the cell and the body overall becomes more resilient.

Don’t Get Too Comfortable

Our DNA is wired for us to get uncomfortable. To experience hot, cold, no food, bacteria, virus etc.

It makes me wonder if our sterile environments, constant temperature regulation, and whatever makes us comfortable, has made us weak.

What if being cold doesn’t make you sick but actually increases your immunity?

What if being exposed to bacteria and viruses or any toxin didn’t give you sickness, but actually made you immune to them?

What if not eating constantly didn’t make you weak, but actually rejuvenated your body?

Get Back to How Your Body was Designed

In our modern world, we are not doing the hard things our body was designed to do. We are too comfortable. Too safe. And it’s actually harming our body, making us age, and creating inflammation that leads to disease.

I’d like to point out that there are many things we humans do now that our bodies were not designed to do – all of which are causing the crazy epidemic of health imbalances we are seeing today. .  .

• Sit nearly all day long – the body was not designed for that = structural problems
• Being around electrical devices that emit EMFs 24/7 = biological disruptions
• Eating food and taking medication made of chemicals = gut, mind, and immune destruction
• Pooping and giving birth in positions that make the process 100x harder and alter the internal structure of the body = unnecessary complications
• Being connected to media and checking our smartphones every 2 seconds = mental health problems.
• Never walking outside barefoot = biological and energetic imbalances
• Putting man-made chemicals on our hair and skin daily = hormonal and cancer problems
• Being exposed to blue light even after the sun goes down = hormone and circadian rhythm disruption

How to be Hard to Kill

I like being comfortable as much as the next person. Camping stretches me – hunger sucks – and cold showers can pound sand.

However

I realize that being comfortable is not what life is about. What if ‘hard’ isn’t ‘bad’.

Turns out, our bodies were biologically designed to go through hard things, and get stronger because of them.

So if you want to get harder to kill (literally), try out a few of these practices each week:

1. Exercise- a classic example of hormesis. Getting in a good work out burrrnnsss, but it also makes you stronger.
2. Cold showers – read more on the benefits of cold thermogenesis here.
3. Fasting – Read more on anti-aging benefits of fast here
4. Sun Exposure – Not too much, but definitely every day.
5. Saunas – extreme cold and extreme hot make you more resilient.

 Whatever You are Going Through. . .

If I have learned anything in the last year, it’s that stress has actually made me a better person. What I used to think was ‘hard’ doesn’t even make me blink anymore. Tragedies will do that. Pain will do that. I see my life is going in an entirely different (and better) direction after facing some of the biggest pain there is to face- losing a child and a parent. In a year and a half. It’s heart-shattering AND I know I can accomplish so much more in this world because of who it has made me.

I have to remind myself that the only thing that matters is doing what only I was created to do on the earth. Seeking what that is, and going after it with everything I have. Because in the end, that’s what will matter. I just want to hear the words ‘well done my good and faithful servant’. And that purpose is going to require for me to be hard to kill – mentally and physically. So when trials come, I’m working on welcoming them, knowing every season serves a purpose and my only job is to respond the best I know how moment to moment.