Don't Blame It On The Sunshine...

Blame it on the boogie
As a child, we used to lay in the sun for hours. We all got terribly sunburnt and melanoma was not on anyone's radar...simply because there was not much of it around. Why has this changed? And why is it that we have more "sun smarts" advertising, more sunscreen, more awareness and still the cases of melanoma continue to rise? Perhaps we have not yet publicly identified the true cause. For me, I don't blame it on the sunshine, I blame it on insufficient sunshine (of small regular doses), not enough live fruit and vegetables, wearing sunglasses, our emotional state and the chemicals we put IN ourselves and ON ourselves (including sunscreen!!).

What's obvious

I tend to look at what is obvious, what feels true, and what makes sense. And two thing are clear to me: (1) staying out of the sun, the very thing that gives life to living things on this planet, does not makes sense...(2) putting a petrolchemically based sunscreen on my body that harms more than it serves me, does not makes sense (although i am sure it makes someone a lot of cents...wink).

What some professionals say
Dr Michael F. Holick, a professor of dermatology, physiology, medicine and biophysics at the Boston University of Medicine, and Dr Edward Giovannucci of Harvard University in Boston, say in a nutshell that without sunshine on our skin, we do not produce vitamin D, a vitamin crucial to help ward off the inflammation of cardiovascular disease, type 1 diabetes, certain cancers, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoporosis, and hypertension. According to these doctors, too much sun is not a good thing and the risk of skin cancer still remains a reality, but, on the other side of the coin, little to no sun can have detrimental effects as well.

Do your own research folks. Find out what the 'experts' who DON'T benefit from cancer or product sales say about sunshine. Make sure you keep your bullshit meter handy just in case.

What about Vitamin D Suppliments?
To me it does not makes sense to take a synthetic, single-component suppliment full of toxic fillers, enclosed in a plastic like casing, into my body when it is as simple as getting out into the sun.

What else is the sun good for?
The more you research, the more you realise the sun does far, far more than just give the body vitamin D. The UV rays enter our skin and eyes (the UV monitors) and stimulate a gazillion processes in the body that support life. Producing vitamin D is just one of them.

Do you remember the movie "City of Angels" with Meg Ryan and Nicholas Cage? Remember the scene when all the angels were standing on the beach watching the sun come up? Do you know why they did this and why many cultures watch the sun as it comes up and goes down? They are sun gazing. When you stare into the sun (yes, right into the centre of it) when it first comes up of a morning and when it last goes down at night, amazing things happen. The morning gaze will stimulate your brain and power up that amazing processor you have at your disposal. The evening sun sets you up for amazing dream states. Both activities are safe to do as long as the sun is no higher off the horizon than the height of your fist held out toward it. If you have never done this start with 13 second increments until you are used to it. Happy gazing folks.

How much sun is too much?
Our skin has an amazing feedback mechanism. It will start to tingle, get a little irritated and even a little pink as soon as it has had enough sun. If you put sunscreen on, which prevents this natural feedback to inform you, not to mention the toxic chemicals being absorbed into the skin, you won't know when enough is enough.

If you have always worn sunscreen and you wish to get out in the sun now without it (yay...clapping loudly), do it in small regular doses. Listen to your body and cover up with a hat and long sleeve shirt once you have had enough. Every one has different skin and a different climate so use your own wisdom and determine how much is enough. I prefer to under do it rather than over do it.

No Sunglasses....why?
The eyes inform the body of what UV is coming into the body and initiates chemical processes that commence changes, healing, generating energy, etc., etc. If you wear sunglasses you change the messages to the brain regarding the level of UV entering the body. Could this be one of the cause of skin cancer.....what makes sense to you? I took my sunglasses off about 10 years ago and it took me two weeks to be able to go outside without squinting. Now I don't notice. Some folks will worry about wrinkles around their eyes...well, that becomes part of your choice making. For me, my wrinkles express my experiences in life and the many smiles I have enjoyed.

No sunscreen...why?

Imagine each pore of your skin is an open mouth ready to eat whatever lands on it. Well, this is what our skin does, it absorbs whatever we put on our skin, no questions asked. I no longer put on my skin anything I am not willing to eat. Sunscreen is toxic....simple! Read the labels and look up each one of the (often petrochemical) chemicals it contains. Or even better, ask for the Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) on this product. That will scare you.

Miss Sammi, my lilly white girl, loves the sun.
Our daughter, Sammi, is 8 years old and if you have seen the photos on this site you will see she has blonde hair and fair skin. Since she was born we have taken her out into the sun for very small regular doses of those glorious energy producing rays. We never allowed her to get too much. Slow and steady does it. Every moment we could, we would whip off her clothes and let her run around nudie to catch the sun knowing the health benefits were amazing.

At the end of last summer I was down at the beach with Sammi and a couple of her friends. The other children had sunscreen on. Sammi had nothing but her cossie bottoms. The kids played in the sun and around the rocks whilst splashing around in shallow water. After about two hours I felt my skin saying 'enough'....so we decided to head home. As we were dressing to leave I noticed the other children had very red areas where the sunscreen was missed. And yet when we got home Sammi and I had only a very slight tinge of pink....we both felt great. i suspect the other children have had sunscreen on them since they were little. There bodies are not able to process or handle full spectrum sun and so burn quickly.

In closing...
There is nothing like the energy from the sun. And when done consciously, with small regular doses and a high respect for it's power to burn, you can receive vasts amounts of healing and energy giving rays from our glorious sun.