This week I want to consider the health benefits of incorporating the practice of Stav into your life. I started off talking about the stances and the importance of doing them daily. That is central but there are several other factors to consider and they are summed up in the symbol which can be described variously as the Jarl, healing or health bind-rune pictured below.

The Bjjork/Mann line covers ingestion, digestion and elimination. I will go into more detail on diet later in the week but for now consider that what we eat and drink is essential to our health and well-being. That much is obvious but we also need to consider that not all we consume is appropriate for us. We may be eating an unbalanced diet or even react badly to some foods. Wheat and milk are two examples. Most people can tolerate wheat in their diet but it does tend to strip vitamins and minerals from your system and in many parts of the world lactose intolerance is quite normal. People of Irish extraction are most commonly wheat intolerant and the reason for this is that wheat intolerance causes infertility which tends to breed it out of the population. The Irish lived on potatoes for many generations which meant that women who probably wouldn't have been able to conceive had they been eating wheat were able to and latent wheat intolerance became much more common than in other communities. So if Bjork is concerned with what we eat and drink the Mann rune in this context is about how we react to it and what is good or bad for us.

The Thor/Ur line covers blood, bone and sinew. This includes the skeleton, musculature, cardiovascular system and skin. Assuming that you are eating correctly then the well-being of this aspect of your body is mainly dependent upon proper breathing, correct posture and appropriate exercise. As a minimum doing the stances each day will promote deep and natural breathing, correct the posture and provide gentle yet rigorous stretching of the muscles and sinews. We will look later at how the body renews itself and how much exercise is appropriate. The important thing to remember here is that again this is a balanced relationship between the physical body of physical matter represented by the Thor rune and the energetic or megin body signified by the Ur rune. You can outwardly be in good physical shape but your energy levels can be dangerously low. This line of the bind-rune reminds us of the importance of keeping them in balance.

The Hagl/As line covers licht and myrk galdre, both mean the mind in its conscious/cognitive/rational aspects and its unconscious/intuitive/psychic aspect. This is broadly speaking our emotional and mental health and well-being. The Hagl rune covers what we think about and how we conceive it. This can be as basic as always thinking about life's difficulties and convincing ourselves we will always fail or focusing on the positive and finding solutions to our problems. This is important but we must also be aware of our intuitive awareness of our lives and this is represented by As and we must take full account of this factor too.

Tomorrow I will have a brief look at Stav principles of diet beginning with the importance of a staple food.

Regards,

Graham

www.iceandfire.org.uk