The Book "Dynamic Health"
David Hegarty's book "Dynamic Health" is a practical guide to a healthier and fitter lifestyle.
Be Aware: Using the Dynamic Health Principle may seriously affect your health. According to recent guidelines from the U.S Department of Health and Human Service, moderate exercise, done regularly, provides adults with substantial health benefits. The Dynamic Health Principle, practised regularly, has been shown to get and keep the energy levels high, and the stress levels low. The system is time efficient, convenient, versatile and effective. The Dynamic Health Principle was created and developed in 1973, by David Hegarty, who saw the need for a system that people could practise as they learned. Using ancient and modern techniques, he combined the principles to suit modern day life, Dynamic Health has emerged as a proven and effective way to improve fitness, increase energy, and help keep stress levels in the area where they can be harnessed. After more than 20 years of practical research and development, Hegarty committed the fundamentals to his book, Dynamic Health, now in its second printing. In it he brings to use the education of the mental and physical faculties in the development of personal resources. The system deals with the individual’s needs. It is the way to simply and truly bring into life the qualities, resources and abilities with which we may be endowed. Below are some random passages from ‘Dynamic Health’. If they strike a chord, this may just be the book for you. On the difference between stress and distress: "Stress is a physical reaction. It is not exaggerating to say that it tears people apart, mentally and emotionally. The problems of modern living bring it about. We live in an age of irony: progress is centred around labour-saving and time-saving. Working habits are becoming geared to leisure, so much that there is now an enormous and growing leisure industry. The irony is that while our standard of living is improving, our quality of life is deteriorating. Most of the illnesses prevalent today are directly related to our lifestyle. The speed, the tension, the ever-present imperative, the relentless immediacy of living today are taking their toll on our health. We have not yet adapted to the simmering urgency of today’s society, where the need to be ready for all eventualities keeps us in a constant state of tension. Some tension is fine. You need enough to get you out of bed, perform well enough in work and keep yourself focused on your goals. This could be seen as positive stress. It’s the other one that gets to you – that becomes distress. This is the one that keeps you awake at night, interferes with your digestion, tears your concentration in shreds, blows problems out of proportion, makes your heart race, sunders your relationships, and because you can’t seem to do anything about it, develops in you a self-perpetuating feeling of self-loathing, underpinned by a foundation of ever-increasing guilt. So what can be done? A lot. Stress is a symptom. It is a reaction maybe to fear, anxiety, resentment, worry, guilt – any of the negative emotions which we can experience at any time in our lives. These negative emotions which can have such an effect on you are brought about by any number of circumstances. Some of these circumstances you can change or avoid or overcome; others you can’t. So if you can’t change the circumstance, try the alternative: alter your reaction to it." On the value of practising the techniques: "Remember, we practise worry, fear and anxiety and panic all the time. Not consciously; rather we let them into our minds and hearts and allow them to rampage all over our days. Stress management is a reversal of that unconscious acceptance; it is deciding consciously to use the intelligence you’ve got to reverse the role your mind may have tricked you into playing. The method is simple but, paradoxically, not easy. You’ll find all sorts of excuses not to practise. And practice is vital. No practice – no skill. If you wanted to play the piano, you’d expect to learn and practise scales, finding where the notes are, what they sound like, how they can vary in tone and meaning whether you pound them or stroke them. The skills in this book are a bit simpler than piano scales. They’re accessible any time, all the time, and all you need is the desire to learn them. But most importantly, if you do practise these methods, learn them, use them, bring them into your life, your rewards will be far greater than the trouble you’ll have taken to learn them. You will be amazed at the music you will bring to your own life and the lives of those around you." On Goal Setting: "Whether you want to lose weight, improve your nerves, develop powerful concentration, increase your fitness, make yourself lean and muscular, trim flab off tummy, hips, thighs, develop strength, speed, power, improve your game of golf, soccer, rugby, draughts or your performance in business, make yourself more attractive, to others and to yourself – write it down. See it and then write it down. Articulate it so that there is no doubt in your mind or your heart about it. Write it down so that the words on the paper describe the picture in your mind. Don’t ask anyone else whether or not it’s OK or whether they think you could or should do it. Just write it down. You’re not concerned about anyone’s approval or opinion at this stage. This is a decision about something in your life that is no one else’s business. That’s your first step; knowing where you’re going. Once you have done this, you have something to aim for, a goal. If you don’t have a goal, an aim which you will take the necessary steps to get to, you’ve just got a wish." On Posture and Self Development: "The first stage is laying the foundation: This is the development of the basic necessities that make the rest possible. All the skills and abilities you develop in the future will depend for their effectiveness on the knowing, the understanding and the practice of these rudiments. Read that again. Absorb it. You are going to learn skills and you will become so familiar with the rudiments of these skills that you won’t need to think about them. Just as you walk, close your fingers around an object to lift it, open them to drop it, put food in your mouth, lie, sit, stand or any of the other countless things we do automatically during our lives. The things you’re going to do are very simple. In fact you’ve been doing them all your life so far. All you’ll need to do now is get better at them, think about how you’ve been doing them and how you’ll need to do them to get them working for you. Over the years I have seen thousands of people, of all ages, improve their health and their lives simply and effectively by constant application of these simple steps. If you take them, you will greatly enhance the value of everything else you do. If you neglect them, no matter how hard you work, you will diminish, considerably, the worth of your efforts. To learn to use your posture is simple. Remember the three factors involved in reaching your goals: • Knowing what to do • Knowing how to do it • Getting on with it On the value of Breathwork: "But wait a minute! Why do people exercise? Why do doctors recommend activity, a jog or a walk or workout in the gym? Is it because it makes you sweat? Or because it makes your muscles pump? Or because it makes the blood surge around your body and tones up your heart? Yes, it does all these things – and what wonderful things they are – to keep the body well and in good working order. But exercise does something more basic and profound than these things: it makes you pant, breathe more deeply and quickly so that your body becomes drenched in oxygen from the air you breathe. This is your main physiological benefit – improved breathing. And that’s why your doctor wants you to be active. He wants your lungs to work at their optimum capacity. Then, and only then, can the cells of every part of your body benefit. The air you breathe goes into your lungs. The oxygen is collected from the air by the billions of blood cells passing through the lungs. This oxygenated blood is then passed through the heart, which is a muscular pump, and sent around the body. As it circulates, the oxygen in the blood cells burns up the wastes and toxins in your system and converts them into carbon dioxide. This carbon dioxide is then delivered back to the lungs, from where you exhale it. Your next in-breath takes up more fresh air, the circulating blood cells take up the oxygen from this clean air and off they go again to do the same job, all over again. As the build-up of toxins and wastes is fairly constant, we need a lot of oxygen to keep our bodies from becoming congested. This is why exercise is so good for you. When you train, you pant and puff and flood your body with oxygen, cleanse the system and flush out a lot of waste. This process affects every part of our bodies: the muscles, organs, nervous system, brain cells, bones and even the skin." On Feeling Better: "By doing the following breathing exercises, you’ll learn how to get the main benefit of exercise, without sweat, inconvenience or expenditure of time. Nice thought, isn’t it? When you take that little bit of trouble to correct your posture and deepen your breathing, you’ll also be training your system to work for you all the time. Your trained lungs will have an enhancing effect on every activity. This in turn will increase the ease with which you perform your daily activities, which in turn will greatly increase your fitness and sense of wellbeing. And of course this will strengthen your posture, improve your breathing, tone the muscles, help you sleep, relax the system. So what you’re doing at this stage is instigating a basic but effective manoeuvre that will be the beginning of a self-perpetuating beneficial cycle. After a short while, as your technique improves, and with it your fitness and health, the benefits tend to accumulate at a rate which most people quite simply find amazing. You may wonder what the secret is. Wonder on. There is no secret. If you do the simple things, do them well and often, the results will take care of themselves." On Exercise and Exercising: "Your individual workout, especially at the start, may be of a lesser fitness value in itself but if you practise it regularly the cumulative effect will be far superior and will be with you always, enhancing your daily living long after the cult follower has dropped off and lost his few hard-gained benefits. The first few exercises you will need to do are gentle stretches and warm-ups. These are to get the blood circulating, the lungs and the heart working, and the joints and the muscles ready for your session. Relax and enjoy them. Don’t worry about whether you’re using the right style or if you’ve got the figure that you want right now. These will come. Just do what you feel you can, in comfort, without placing any strain anywhere. Getting used to doing exercises is a bit like swimming or playing a musical instrument. You practise for a while and sometimes you feel you’re not getting anywhere. Then you do a particular exercise, movement or stroke one day and you find that your mind and body have learned it without your noticing. So whatever you do, don’t let the dissatisfaction factor throw you off because you can’t do everything as you want or haven’t achieved the results you had dreamed of overnight. There are problems to be overcome in everything, and there are sticking points in most people’s programmes: a level at which you’ve arrived and from where you find it hard to move. More often than not it’s just your body taking a break and acclimatising itself to its new level on all systems, before it goes on to its next stage in conditioning. Fitness levels come in stages and you just have to accept this. Don’t let yourself be fooled into thinking that you must go out and double or treble your effort because you can’t run a marathon or do a hundred push-ups. The criterion of your progress is how you feel, whether the exercise and diet are affecting your life beneficially on the whole and whether you honestly think you’re getting more from your life than before you started. As regards exercise gear, anything warm and loose will do. Tracksuits are ideal but if you don’t have one, wear old trousers, shorts, slacks, leotard and a top – anything you like so long as you’re comfortable. You can even stay in your street clothes if you wish. This will be fine for beginners because you’re probably not even going to work up a sweat. So don’t worry about being sweaty." On the Value of being able to relax: "Relaxation is fundamental to good health. It is a relatively simple thing to establish an effective relaxation system in our lives. If we don’t take this step, stress, tension, worry and fear can fill our days, creeping in unnoticed till they pervade destructively every part of our lives. In recent years, stress has been recognised for the insidious evil that it is. Many of us have suffered from it, unaware of what it was till someone gave it a name. Then we looked and said, ‘Yes, that’s me. I’m the tired one. I’m the fatigued one. I’m the one who feels run down and out of sorts. Can’t sleep at night, can’t work at day. I don’t feel ill but can’t say I’m well. There are things I want to do. Places I want to go. Levels I want to reach. And I know I’ve got the capability. I know I can do it. I know the potential is within me. I’ve done things before. I can do them again.’ ‘One day. Some day. Not to day. Maybe tomorrow? Or the day after? Some day! Soon.’ Sound familiar? Fear, worry, stress are barriers to action. They wound people, tear them apart and leave them floundering, aimless. Worry and anxiety don’t just affect our minds; we worry too in our hearts, our brains, our guts. Fear and worry, one American surgeon said, can be noted in the very cells, tissues and organs of the body. And we really know this. We know the tight feeling in the gut when anxiety sinks in. We know the knots of tension that can build and tighten the shoulders till they grip like a vice round the neck and sear in blinding pain through the head. It wasn’t for nothing that expressions such as ‘It’s a pain in the neck’ – or ‘This is one real headache’ came about. The physical discomfort that stress brings is well catalogued and experienced by everyone from the school student doing difficult homework to the top financier running a multi-million-pound business. The homemaker, the accountant, the road worker, the farmer, people in all walks of life experience stress. Indeed the walk of life in which you find yourself is largely irrelevant. Once anxiety sets in, its toll is as debilitating for one person as it is for the next." On the magic of diet: "You can read books and articles forever and end up little the wiser about what to do. So what’s important at this stage is to learn a few principles, a few basic facts about yourself and about food. Don’t switch off because someone once blinded you with science and made it all sound very deep and difficult. There are simple facts about food which anyone of average intelligence can understand. Know these and you’ll be able to determine whether you’re going to be fit or fat, well or unwell." "Give the cells of each body part what they need and you’ll have healthy tissue in each part, and your body, your mind and emotions will function more efficiently as a whole. It can be as simple as that, so don’t complicate it. Eat the right foods, and not too much, and you’ll be supplying the various cells which go to make up your body with the materials which will help maintain them in good condition. Your body has its own miraculous way of sorting out and distributing the right materials to the appropriate places. Nature is a great organiser." "The pace of life today has a lot to do with our modern diet. Everything is done in a rush. Meals are no exception. We eat in a hurry because we have to be here, there and everywhere else at the same time. Most people today eat on the run. It’s reflected in our language; we ‘grab’ a sandwich, ‘gulp’ a cup of tea, ‘take a snack’ en route to somewhere. We’ve lost the habit of sitting and eating because we need to or want to. Working breakfasts are commonplace. And God help us, there are even power breakfasts now. How would you like that? Not only do you have to work at your breakfast but you must exhibit power as well!" "There are people who would say, ‘Oh, I see, so it’s just diet ’n’ excercise.’ Yes, both of these regimes are used but it’s a bit more than that. It’s a matter of attitude. Some people might approach the whole thing with an attitude that has all the life of a brick wall. Written on their faces, spoken silently with their hunched shoulders and hung head, is the declaration of defeat. ‘I know this won’t work,’ is written in their demeanour. And of course they’re right. It won’t. Like the team who wonder in the changing room how much they’re going to be beaten by, their only concern is how badly they will fail. A peculiar thing is this. I’ve seen people who’ve approached the course in this manner. Their attitude predicted failure. For various reasons, failure had been their constant experience. They had become accustomed to it, even comfortable in it. Having a goal, an aim, an ambition involved risk; risk of failure, fear of rejection, fear of ridicule, fear of change, and worst of all, fear of success. Not a few people feel they’re unworthy of their dream. You’ve heard the saying, ‘It’s too good to be true’, all too often uttered by misguided people who believe that success in any undertaking, financial, physical, spiritual, is not compatible with reality. Our negative conditioning is so forceful that there is a fear of success and a guilt about attaining it. Watch this. Think about it. If this applies to you, no matter how hard you strive, how cleverly you operate, no matter what refinement of intelligence you bring to your efforts, you’ll still do things to sabotage your attempts. We’re back to the point at the beginning of the book: know, see, feel, dream about what you want to be and to feel. This is your life. Provided you’re not transgressing the laws or rights of others, you can do what you want with your life. It’s no one else’s business. Again, this is why it is important to keep your aims to yourself and to imbue your own mind with them. Particularly at this time when they’re new, shaky, not altogether clear and very vulnerable. Don’t expose them to malicious attack or to ridicule. Let them settle. Let them become clear in your mind. Develop them till they are unshakeable objectives, a very part of your life. Then, unlike the case of the person hypnotised by failure, your subconscious will have you activating the opportunities to achieve the images in your mind." ----------------- Customers have given very positive feedback, as have many of the newspapers : WHAT THE PAPERS SAY The Sunday Business Post "A lot of people come and go in the fitness industry, because it's relatively new. But someone who is more enthusiastic than he was over 30 years ago, is David Hegarty. That's just one of the reasons I admire him. He's a purist, as well as being one of the longest established. He knows what it's all about, and conducts his business with integrity. David Hegarty is what the fitness industry is all about." The Sunday Independent "The secret of good health is much simpler than you think… Hegarty’s no-nonsense approach is a breath of fresh air…. no mystery to good health… people tell him they never thought it could be so simple… no gimmicks… plain-speaking advice… anyone who follows will see a difference... guaranteed." The Daily Star "At long last, a book full of sense... begins with the easiest of exercises - standing straight. David takes a very different approach. The diagrams he uses are great for explaining. These are matters that will interest people who work indoors and are subject to heaters and air conditioners. For the benfit of those who have never exercised, he begins slowly. Hegarty tackles the issue of diet... adds practical advice... so easy, it doesn't even feel like a chore." The Sunday World "This is a less painful method of getting fit and improving your physical and mental health - reduce stress, improve concentration and bestow a sense of well being... no hard exercise, no loud music, no impossible diets - you can turn your body into a trim fit unit... can even be practised in your car, in the office or on the bus..." Pick up your copy of "Dynamic Health" at our Online Shop |  ONLINE SHOP ”The most sensible programme of exercises for mind and body that I’ve come across”
Catherine Dowling, founder member and spokesperson of FICTA |
