Best 120 quotes of Andrew Weil on MyQuotes

A beautiful bouquet or a long-lasting flowering plant is a traditional gift for women, but I have recommended that both men and women keep fresh flowers in the home for their beauty, fragrance, and the lift they give our spirits.

Alternative models are neither right nor wrong, just more or less useful in allowing us to operate in the world and discover more and better options for solving problems.

American businesses are struggling to pay outrageous, exploitive insurance bills for their employees, hampering our ability to compete globally.

Among other things, neuroplasticity means that emotions such as happiness and compassion can be cultivated in much the same way that a person can learn through repetition to play golf and basketball or master a musical instrument, and that such practice changes the activity and physical aspects of specific brain areas.

Another aspect of the psychedelic vision for me that has been very profound, is the sense that every-thing is alive or at that at least, there is no distinction between what we call living and non-living.

Another very common use, in all cultures, of psychoactive substances is to give people transcendent experiences. To allow them to transcend their human and ego boundaries to feel greater contact with the supernatural, or with the spiritual, or with the divine, however they phrase it in their terms.

Any drug can be used successfully, no matter how bad it's reputation, and any drug can be abused, no matter how accepted it is. There are no good or bad rugs; there are only good and bad relationships with drugs.

As an American, you have a right to good health care that is effective, accessible, and affordable, that serves you from infancy through old age, that allows you to go to practitioners and facilities of your choosing, and that offers a broad range of therapeutic options.

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

As any doctor can tell you, the most crucial step toward healing is having the right diagnosis. If the disease is precisely identified, a good resolution is far more likely. Conversely, a bad diagnosis usually means a bad outcome, no matter how skilled the physician.

As a physician, I recommend nutritious hemp seeds and oil to anyone interested in maintaining a healthy diet. Everyone will benefit when American farmers can grow this amazing crop once again.

At the very center of our being is rhythmic movement, a cyclic expansion and contraction that is both in our body and outside it, that is both in our mind and in our body, that is both in our consciousness and not in it.

By keeping my hand in that, it's the way I keep learning. The main way you learn in medicine is by practicing and working with patients.

Citizens must pressure the American Hospital Association, the American Public Health Association, the Centers for Disease Control and other relevant governmental agencies to make greening our hospitals and medical centers a top priority so that they themselves don't create even more illness.

Clearly, America's dysfunctional food culture must bear some of the blame for our excess pounds, but it's likely our walking-averse lifestyles contribute as well.

Conscious breath control is a useful tool for achieving a relaxed, clear state of mind.

Dietary fat, whether saturated or not, is not a cause of obesity, heart disease or any other chronic disease of civilization.

Dreaming is a phenomenon of purely individual consciousness, and consequently impossible to thoroughly deconstruct by a community of researchers. But dreaming matters.

Drugs don't have spiritual potential, human beings have spiritual potential. And it may be that we need techniques to move us in that direction, and the use of psychoactive drugs clearly is one path that has helped many people.

Each day as I travel through downtown Tucson, I am amazed at how quickly the most ancient of human behaviors have changed. For as long as there have been Homo sapiens - roughly 200,000 years - people have filled their lives principally with two activities: talking directly with other people, and doing physical things.

Even low-calorie diets and vigorous exercise fail to work in the long term for at least some people.

Everyone prefers some foods over others, but some adults take this tendency to an extreme. These people tend to prefer the kinds of bland food they may have enjoyed as children - such as plain or buttered pasta, macaroni and cheese, cheese pizza, French fries and grilled cheese sandwiches - and to restrict their eating to just a few dishes.

Fear and greed are potent motivators. When both of these forces push in the same direction, virtually no human being can resist.

Fitting a walk into a busy life can be challenging, so I suggest walking rather driving to work or to run errands as often as you can - in other words, think of walking as alternative transportation.

Following an anti-inflammato ry diet can help counteract the chronic inflammation that is a root cause of many serious diseases, including those that become more frequent as people age. It is a way of selecting and preparing foods based on science that can help people achieve and maintain optimum health over their lifetime.

For many in the modern world, carving out time for both traditional seated meditation and exercise has become close to impossible.

Gardening is not trivial. If you believe that it is, closely examine why you feel that way. You may discover that this attitude has been forced upon you by mass media and the crass culture it creates and maintains. The fact is, gardening is just the opposite - it is, or should be, a central, basic expression of human life.

Genuine happiness comes from within, and often it comes in spontaneous feelings of joy.

Get people back into the kitchen and combat the trend toward processed food and fast food.

Giving gifts to others is a fundamental activity, as old as humanity itself. Yet in the modern, complex world, the particulars of gift-giving can be extraordinarily challenging.

Happiness is a skill. It requires effort and time.

Healing is making whole, restoring a state of perfection and balance that has been lost.

Health is wholeness and balance, an inner resilience that allows you to meet the demands of living without being overwhelmed.

Health is wholeness--wholeness in its most profound sense, with nothing left out and everything in just the right order to manifest the mystery of balance. Far from being simply the absence of disease, health is a dynamic and harmonious equilibrium of all the elements and forces making up and surrounding a human being.

Human beings and plants have co-evolved for millions of years, so it makes perfect sense that our complex bodies would be adapted to absorb needed, beneficial compounds from complex plants and ignore the rest.

Human beings have survived for millennia because most of us make good decisions about our health most of the time.

Human bodies are designed for regular physical activity. The sedentary nature of much of modern life probably plays a significant role in the epidemic incidence of depression today. Many studies show that depressed patients who stick to a regimen of aerobic exercise improve as much as those treated with medication.

I am a particular fan of integrative exercise - that is, exercise that occurs in the course of doing some productive activity such as gardening, bicycling to work, doing home improvement projects and so on.

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.

I believe that it may be normal, healthy, and even productive to experience mild to moderate depression from time to time as part of the variable emotional spectrum, either as an appropriate response to situations or as a way of turning inward and mentally chewing over problems to find solutions.

I do not claim to have attained optimum emotional well-being. Actually, I think that may be a lifetime goal. For me it’s an ongoing process that requires awareness, knowledge, and practice. I do know what good emotional health feels like, and that motivates me to keep at the practice.

I don't get money from the vitamins that I make. My after tax profits go to a foundation that supports integrative medicine.

I don't think you can live without stress; I think the human life is stressful, and it probably always has been, although the forms of stress may change from culture to culture, and from time to time.

I expect that essential oils may some day prove a vital weapon in the fight against strains of antibiotic-resi stant bacteria.

If I had to limit my advice on healthier living to just one tip, it would be simply to learn how to breathe correctly.

I find that low protein diets often contribute to improvement in patients with immune system problems ... In fact, it would be hard to become deficient in protein in our country even if you tried.

If the only way you could read an email was to run a mile first, the urge would quickly die. Human beings constantly do subconscious effort/reward calculations. Tapping a screen is the easiest of physical tasks.

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

If you have difficulty sleeping or are not getting enough sleep or sleep of good quality, you need to learn the basics of sleep hygiene, make appropriate changes, and possibly consult a sleep expert.

I have argued for years that we do not have a health care system in America. We have a disease-management system - one that depends on ruinously expensive drugs and surgeries that treat health conditions after they manifest rather than giving our citizens simple diet, lifestyle and therapeutic tools to keep them healthy.