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 How many times has a recommendation for health been made by a major authority, only later to be withdrawn as faulty?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.
Listen to your body for balance and health
January 27, 2009
Listening to your body’s messages is essential to maintaining balance and good health. Our fast pace of life, coupled with the constant stimulation of being wired to everything through TV, radios, cell phones and so on, creates an overload on the nervous system. In all the busyness and noise, we lose connection with the most fundamental “signals” of life — the valuable information that comes to us through bodily sensations and emotions. We need to learn to pay attention to what is happening in our bodies.
I remember once giving a stress management seminar to a busy staff and spending at least half an hour talking about the need to visit the bathroom when nature calls. Almost everyone admitted to feeling too busy to stop what they were doing to go to the bathroom, take a drink of water, stretch their bodies. Sometimes people were so absorbed in what they were doing that they didn’t even notice the signals of hunger and thirst. When they were aware of them, they couldn’t tear themselves away from what they were doing to take the necessary break. Some even felt guilty about taking the time away from their desk.
How often do you ignore basic needs? Do you rest when you are tired? Do you get as much sleep as you need? Do you eat when you are hungry, and stop eating when you’ve had enough? Do you drink when you are thirsty? Do you even notice? Our bodies tell us what they need to be balanced. Our job is to listen.
We can go a lot further than paying attention to these most basic needs. The need for sleep can be a “loud” signal from the body, but we can start to notice “softer” cues that our bodies give us as well. As we increase the awareness of our body’s signals, we get a lot of valuable information about how to keep it in balance.
The more we can perceive about what is going on in our bodies and emotions, the better. If you start to notice more subtle messages from your body, you can become aware of an imbalance before it manifests in a disease. You can notice when you begin to get tired and take a meditation break or a catnap. You can feel discomfort in your body before it screams in pain from a repetitive motion injury. You can notice things early and nip problems in the bud.
Of course, awareness is only the first step. Once you are aware of what your body is telling you, you need to follow through the action to bring it in balance. It can be difficult to form this habit. You may feel you don’t have the time, but in the long run a little time and attention here and there to care for your body can help avoid spending a lot of time having to heal something, not to mention avoiding unnecessary pain.
We created the Body Awareness Meditation specifically to help develop awareness of the body’s signals. It helps you to slow down tune in to your body, so that you can be sensitive to your body’s needs. Even beyond that, it is relaxing and grounding. Listening to the body isn’t just a way to avoid future pain. Much of life’s pleasure comes through the body. The sense of connection with the body is satisfying and worth cultivating for its own sake. Start paying attention to your body. It will thank you for it!
The secrets of self-healing
January 12, 2009
The body is a wonderful, self-healing mechanism. Our emotions and psychology also have powerful self-healing abilities. Take sleep, for example. As we sleep, not only is the body being refreshed and rejuvenated, but all sorts of things are being worked out in our minds and psyches as we sleep. The question is, how can we take advantage of the body’s ability to self-heal? What can be do to support it? Doing this is the essence of self-healing.
I’ve already written about Seven Essentials of Self-Healing. Today’s post is the first in a series in which I’ll go into detail about each of the essentials, or as I am now calling them “secrets”. Of course, I’m calling them secrets here to get your attention, but also because they fit an intriguing definition of secret “known or shared only by the initiated”. The initiation required is a kind of self-initiation. These aren’t secrets that are kept hidden by a master who will impart them to you when you meet the proper requirements. Rather, they are insights available when you pay attention to yourself, to your own inner master. And that master is your own intuition.
As you become aware of these “secrets”, they will seem quite obvious and make complete sense. In fact, you may find yourself saying “oh I knew that all along”. You may have heard some of these secrets many times over, but you haven’t really heard the secret, nor do you really know it, until you’ve discovered it as real for yourself. In fact, the first of the seven secrets is self-awareness. Self-awareness comes from paying attention. When we begin to pay attention to what is actually happening in our bodies, minds and emotions, a huge opportunity for self-healing opens up.
I’ll leave you with that thought. One of the most important steps you can take to promote self-healing is to pay attention to yourself — what is going on with your body, your emotions, your thoughts. More on that soon!
How do you sense “energy”?
February 18, 2007
It no longer makes any sense to me to ask “do you sense energy”. It seems quite clear to me that everyone senses energy — everyone has “subtle sense perception”. Our daily exchanges with others don’t just occur through the spoken word and gestures, but are also “energetic” exchanges. We are simply not trained to recognize, ackowledge and name this in our (Western) culture.
I recently had a phone call from a woman who sees that people are somehow affected by her hands as she works as a hairdresser. Her perception that something is happening on the level of energy has become undeniable and she felt prompted to explore this experience. At the same time, she was apprehensive about it. There is a reluctance to acknowledge this experience and even more reluctance to share it with others. If we acknowledge it to ourselves, we are opening up to a whole new way of perceiving life, to a whole new understanding of what “reality” is. If we share our perceptions, we run the risk of being considered crazy or flakey. And yet opening up to the existence of that which lies beyond the reach of the five senses gives us not only a greatly enriched experience of life and living, but can provide us with useful information and abilities.
How many people can honestly say they’ve never felt someone staring at them from across the room? How many can say they haven’t felt someone approaching them from behind even though they don’t hear them? We feel these things but we ignore the implications of these perceptions. How would you explain them? What actually is happening?
The tendency to ignore what we actually perceive is what causes us to take so long to embrace the latest understandings of physics, as well as the value of many alternative healing approaches such as energy healing. It’s what causes us to ignore one of the most valuable resources we have — our own intuition.
As I explore the field of energy healing more and more, including developing more of my own subtle sense perception, I realize that what I now experience with such clarity and certainty is something I had always experienced. It had always been there in the background, but I had learned to ignore it. When I’ve taught inroductory energy healing classes, it was never a matter of teaching anyone how to do anything. It was always about holding a space for them to acknowledge and own what they were already experiencing.
So, how do you sense energy? Do you see it, hear it, feel it? Is it simply a “knowingness”? Do you have a sense of what others are feeling or thinking? Energy can be experienced in so many different ways. The skeptical part of you that asks “am I making this up?” is useful in keeping an overactive imagination in check, but it’s usually working overtime. My rule of thumb in my classes is “if you sense something, it’s real”. Then the task is to understand what it is and how it can be useful.