Who is the best authority on your health?
May 4, 2009
I would say you are — or you need to become — the best authority on your health. Ultimately we all are our own authority. Even if we place our trust in someone else, we have made the decision to do so. We have come to the conclusion that this is the authority to trust.
Deciding who to listen to when it comes to diet, exercise, treatment choices, etc. can be confusing at best. Currently I have been reading about solutions for chronic back pain. Each book I read enthusiastically promotes its ideas, with lots of impressive testimonials to boot. As I read many of the books, I find myself thinking — oh yes this makes so much sense, this is the final answer. And yet, many of them disagree on even the most fundamental recommendations. Any suggestion, from how the pelvis should be tilted to whether back pain is related to physical abnormalities or stress, will have an opposing view.
I’m finding in my own healing journey that I learn a little bit of value from each book I read and every therapist I see, even if it is what doesn’t make sense for me. Every idea can trigger an insight for me, as I put together what works for me. It’s ultimately my own insights and observations about what works for me that I’ve come to rely on. How many times has a recommendation for health been made by a major authority, only later to be withdrawn as faulty? How many times have you followed a piece of advice simply because it came from an “authority”, only to later realize it wasn’t helpful at all, maybe even quite the opposite of helpful. I feel it’s vital that we view everything in the light of common sense and our own intuition. The best advice comes from what our bodies tell us, our inner knowing and testing things out for ourselves. At the very least, if someone says “always do this”, “never do that”, “eat this”, “don’t eat that”, etc., actively search out the opposing viewpoint and weigh the options for yourself.
Perhaps conflicting viewpoints are most obvious when it comes to diet. You can find an overwhelming number of conflicting theories and recommendations about food. Some say eat only raw food, others say eat only cooked food. Some say a food is wonderful for you that someone else says is toxic to eat. I’ve been very interested in Ayurveda for years. Ayurveda contains an extensive list of what foods are good for what types of people (which is a big improvement over recommending the same foods for everyone as is done in most systems). Many of these recommendations are consistent among Ayurvedic experts, but even there you can find differing viewpoints.
I always get a chuckle when I remember how someone reconciled opposing viewpoints about whether to eat tomatoes and/or potatoes. One vaidya (Ayurvedic physician) said eat potatoes but don’t eat tomatoes. Another said eat tomatoes but don’t eat potatoes. Someone made an amusing remark — my conclusion is that I can eat both tomatoes and potatoes to my heart’s content! Someone else would have avoided both “just in case”. The ultimate test, of course, would be to see how your own body responds to eating both. And always, moderation goes a long way to negate the possibility of eating the wrong thing. “Eat a little of everything” might be the best advice if you are unsure.
To say that we must be our own authority on our health doesn’t mean not to consult experts. But it does mean to ask questions, educate ourselves about what they are recommending, listen to alternative viewpoints, and ultimately make the decision what makes the most sense for us.
Since I feel that I need to be my own authority, I feel it’s important to develop certain skills. I spend time learning about anatomy and how my body works, noticing the sensations and signals my body sends me, observing how my emotions affect my body, and being thoughtful about the choices I make. I spend time clarifying my values and what is important to me. Being my own authority means being willing to rely on my own common sense and intuition in spite of what the outcome will be. There are never any guarantees for outcomes in life, but we can make sure that we make the best decisions possible and that we honor ourselves and our own inner knowing in the process.
What is healing?
June 28, 2007
A yoga teacher once said to me that she didn’t have any interest in healing. She said she was healthy and didn’t feel she needed healing. This was shocking to me. Didn’t everyone have some need for healing? Later, she was one of the people who tested our Everyday Energy Healing CD. She loved it. She enjoyed the experience of giving and receiving a chakra balancing. She wanted to learn more. It was then that it dawned on me that the difference in our interests was a matter of how we used the word healing. For her it was confined to having a physical problem. For me, it was about all of life. It was about coming into greater balance and wholeness.
I continually ask the question — what is healing? At this point, the word has almost lost its meaning, as I see all of life as a process of “becoming whole”. Unless I am using the word in a very narrow way to refer to the healing of an injury or illness, I can’t really say anymore what healing is. This is a very interesting state of affairs for someone who has a website called “Heart of Healing”!
When I first started the work I called Heart of Healing, I was very focused on making things better. I certainly haven’t lost my interest in better physical, psychological and spiritual health, but what I’ve discovered to be the most healing is the growing acceptance of life just as it is. An intensive focus on healing can result in the kind of goal orientation that makes it impossible to relax and enjoy what you have right now. I haven’t in any way abandoned my focus on health and healing — it’s a way of life for me, but I have been learning to let go of the outcome of my efforts. This kind of acceptance, for me, has become the ultimate meaning of healing.
Do our thoughts make us sick?
May 7, 2007
It’s a very popular idea in some circles that we create our reality with our thoughts. I’d like to investigate that idea and see if it really holds up in our common experience. In particular, I’d like to see how it relates to our health, or lack thereof.
If I look at my own life, I see plenty of examples where thinking did not make it so. Years ago I when I got pregnant I held the idea firmly in my mind that I was going to have a model pregnancy. Everything about the pregnancy and birth was going to be perfect. I simply wouldn’t allow any thoughts to the contrary to take root. What happened couldn’t have been further from my imaginings. I ended up with a very rare disease of pregnancy and almost lost my life. I contrast that with the fact that I tend to be a bit of a hypochondriac and have imagined myself with all sorts of diseases that I’ve never gotten. If thoughts came true, I wouldn’t be here writing this newsletter! One final example concerns my mother. She had a long held belief that she would not live to an old age. She was unwavering in this conviction, and yet she lived to be 93.
Take a look at your own life and see if there’s any evidence that you thought yourself into illnesses you’ve had. Chances are there are times when your thoughts corresponded with what happened and other times when they didn’t. I’ve seen people become fearful when a “negative” thought appears and quickly replace it with a positive affirmation. This seems like such a struggle to me and I don’t think that changing the content of our thoughts makes a difference to our health.
I do feel, however, that emotions affect our health. Chemical correlates to emotional states such as fear have been clearly demonstrated. All we have to do is tune into our own bodies to be aware of the powerful impact of emotions. My sense is that the emotions that accompany our thoughts are what can affect us, and it is our emotional states that we need to address. To simply try to replace negative with positive thoughts is too superficial an approach.
What do you think? What has your experience been?
On emotional healing — moods vs. emotions
April 13, 2007
An essential key to emotional healing, or any healing, is the ability to experience our emotions fully. Seems like that should be simple, but it’s not. We’re incredibly complex beings whose past conditioning often makes the experience of emotions complicated. From the point of view of energy medicine, emotions are a form of energy and energy needs to flow freely for health. When emotional energy is moving unobstructed, an emotion will be felt with clarity and intensity and will be short-lived.
What happens when the emotions cannot be experienced in this way? My sense is that not only would the obstructed energy impact the body, but we would also experience it subjectively in the form of “moods”. For example, I feel that depression can sometimes be accounted for by the inability to feel sadness and grief fully. The energy that would have been felt as sadness accumulates when it is repressed and is then experienced as depression. In this model, sadness would be a primary human emotion and depression would be a mood.
I first began to think in terms of moods and emotions when I attended a workshop several years ago with a physician who studied with David Berenson, MD. Berenson trained as a psychiatrist and family therapist and has spent many years developing what he calls the “Map of Emotions”. He distinguishes between true human feelings and moods which are thoughts permeated with feeling. The Map of Emotions details which emotions are the foundation for which moods and names the various moods and emotions we experience in great detail. The essence of the workshop was that healing requires that we be able to experience the pure emotion all the way through in order to allow the moods to be resolved. We worked with a simple process in pairs to allow this to happen.
I haven’t been able to find anything in writing about Berenson’s work and certainly don’t feel I can represent his thinking. The distinction between moods and emotions, however, has stuck with me.
It can be very useful to learn to distinguish emotions and moods in ourselves. The mood can be resolved by locating the raw emotion within it. If moods are “thoughts permeated with feeling”, we can disentangle the feeling from the thought by bringing our awareness to the feeling. Simply experiencing the feeling all the way allows it to move through and the mood can be resolved.
Moods extend in time and they color our perceptions and evaluation of things. Mental involvement with the emotion keeps the energy from being released. The key to a healthy emotional life is the ability to allow the emotions to be experienced freely. To do this, we need to let the mind take a back seat and trust the natural flow of life as it expresses itself in emotion.
(I’ve created a guided meditation on my Meditation Oasis podcast called “Emotional Ease” which is designed to help the emotions to flow freely. You can hear it at iTunes or by following this link.)