Remember that breath walking - as with any meditation technique - should not be pursued with a grim determination to 'get it right.' The point is to cultivate openness, relaxation and awareness, which can include awareness of your undisciplined, wandering mind.

If we can make the correct diagnosis, the healing can begin. If we can't, both our personal health and our economy are doomed.

I am not against all forms of high-tech medicine. Drugs and surgeries have a secure place in the treatment of serious health conditions. But modern American medicine treats almost every health condition as if it were an emergency.

We need to accept the seemingly obvious fact that a toxic environment can make people sick and that no amount of medical intervention can protect us. The health care community must become a powerful political lobby for environmental policy and legislation.

I'm still not comfortable recommending that people eat saturated fat with abandon, but it's clear to me that sugar, flour and oxidized seed oils create inflammatory effects in the body that almost certainly bear most of the responsibility for elevating heart disease risk.

As an undergraduate at Harvard in the 1960s, I was fascinated by my visits to psychologist B.F. Skinner's laboratory.

Your body can heal itself. It can do so because it has a healing system. If you are in good health, you will want to know about this system, because it is what keeps you in good health and because you can enhance that condition. If you or people you love are sick, you will want to know about this system, because it is the best hope for recovery.