Laying a Good Foundation for Health
by Paula Muran

In the western medicine world we have lost touch with the basic concept of true healing. We substitute a band-aid for a cure and wonder why we don’t feel better. People get ill for many reasons.  Each diseased state tells us that we are ignoring some part of self, and change is necessary.  While many factors contribute to healing, and it happens on many levels, all require attention throughout the entire healing practice.  Ignoring the body-mind (emotions and thoughts) would not provide adequate and long-term good health.

We can no longer look at one body part and heal it without incorporating other systems. For example if our toenails are infected with fungus, it is ineffective to treat only the tips of the toes: rather, we must look at the circulatory system and spleen, along with eating habits for the final cure.  Physical symptoms like headaches, swollen glands, sneezing and colds, including more serious diseases like cancer, communicate that there is a disturbance in the emotional fabric of our being.  Negative emotions like fear, guilt, doubt and worry stop the normal flow of energy.  These emotions undermine us, and over the course of our lives cause unexplained and crippling diseases that end up controlling us. 

The physical body falls apart because we fall apart emotionally.  Recent scientific studies have shown that emotions sabotage everything—from simple success to kidney failure.  When we don’t care for the “whole self,” the physical body simply mirrors those effects.  Over the course of time, emotions like fear, anger and confusion take their toll.  Repressed anger diminishes the functions of the liver. Hopelessness and despair play havoc with the gall bladder.  Long-standing negative emotional beliefs deteriorate the entire physical being.  A constant string of repetitive negative words weaken and actually exhaust the physical body. For true and long lasting healing to take effect we must look at the emotional/mental and physical bodies.  

To heal we must feel.  We must identify the root emotional cause of the disease. This process lays down a new foundation for good health and begins with a new attitude about being healthy.  The holistic changes listed in this article provide a strong foundation for wellness not another band-aid for something else to pop-up later.  The majority of healing must come from the emotions because the emotions regulate the flow of energy in the physical body. Any negative emotion causes us to stay stuck in a false perception about our self.

Emotions like joy, happiness, compassion, gratitude and awareness create the foundation on which we build our life of wellness. Emotions like anger, fear, confusion and unworthiness limit us causing weakness in the physical body.  Both the positive and negative make us a whole person. Anger is often the impetus of motivation to accomplish goals.  Fear plays havoc with relationships, careers, success and finances and has the exact opposite effect.  Confusion on the other hand, keeps whirling thoughts spinning, creating a cloud of chaos around us and we become imbalanced and ungrounded.  Head colds for instance, are a direct result of emotional confusion. Happiness and joy are contagious and elevate everything we do. But why is it that joy is often the least experienced while fear, anger, confusion and unworthiness dominate?

How do we identify negative emotions?  The easiest way to identify negative and fear patterns is to see them in family members and friends.  Examine other people’s behaviors. Notice all the things you like about them and all the things you don’t like especially the things that make you angry, envious or jealous.  The people around you are actually reflections of you. What you see in another person that bothers you or angers you is a part of yourself that has not yet been loved and healed.  Begin by criticizing your dearest friends. By doing this practice of looking at the faults of friends and family you get in touch with the parts of you that are out of balance and seek healing.  Now be completely honest. This simple exercise offers you an opportunity to look deeply at your own emotional concerns and patterns. Once you locate personal limitation it’s time for change.  

Emotional patterns are created when you place a judgment upon an experience.  Usually we live a life on auto-pilot and are unaware that a pattern is being created.  To change we must recreate a similar situation.  In situations notice what the pattern. The subconscious is not logical.  Stay calm, make no judgment—simply feel the energy.  For example, let’s take anger because anger is one of the most profound emotions and is easily felt.  Imagine yourself in an angry situation, now stay completely present, and deeply feel the anger—allow the anger to race all through your body.   Feel this red hot energy—really feel it.  Don’t stop it, don’t judge it—simply feel it.  Now, instead of judging the anger, love the feeling that anger produces. Anger can be motivation.  It can be passionate.  To change the negative charge that anger usually produces, begin to embrace and love the feeling of anger, instead of repelling it.

Allow yourself to feel anger without stopping the energy.  Now begin to dialogue with the anger.  Yes, that is correct, strike up a conversation with anger.  Ask it questions like, “What are you teaching me?” or “Why am I so angry all the time?”  Permit the answers to come into your conscious mind.  As they do, you realize what the true issue is.  Sometimes in that moment of realization the anger pattern can release. And other times it might take a few more conversations with the anger to release the pattern.  Either way, the method, allows the energy constriction caused by the anger to release.  Any stored energy begins to flow giving the physical body a chance to heal.

Even though true healing begins in the emotional body the physical body must be strong enough to support the emotional body. Certainly you can imagine how difficult it would be to determine the emotional issue with a severe headache or sore throat.  Are you really concerned with the emotional issue with a runny nose?  Strengthen the physical body first with organic foods, and easily digestible supplementation.  I recommend liquids or sublingual supplements rather than pills.  Green drinks are especially nourishing and healing to the body because they change the acidic PH, the cause of most illness, to a more alkaline PH, giving the physical body an opportunity to heal.

A bad diet is the number one contributor to disease. Processed foods are poison to the digestive tract.  A good mix of vegetables, proteins, carbohydrates and fruit is important to healing the body. If at all possible eat organic food or foods grown in community gardens or the backyard.  Know where your fruits and vegetables come from.  The longer the travel time to the stomach the less nutrient-rich the fruits or vegetables are.

Pesticides, coloring additives and other chemicals in food cause sinus problems, allergies, constipation, diarrhea, diverticulitis, malnutrition and hyper-type symptoms to occur.  Acid reflux disease and heartburn are common symptoms of improper digestion causing an irritant in the stomach and upper digestive tract. Candida, a friendly bacterium oftentimes becomes a nuisance growing wildly causing organs and systems to literally shutdown.  The most common foods that cause allergies are corn, wheat and dairy.  Making simple changes means a lot to the physical body.

Supplements:  We are a pill-popping society and proud of it.  Supplementation is important because food chemicals, pesticides and a hurried lifestyle play havoc, slowing the natural digestive juices.  Assimilating foods properly becomes difficult.   An overdose of natural supplements can also cause a list of new symptoms to occur.  If you are taking more than five different supplements, you are taking too many. I prefer liquids like Emergen-C or Buried Treasures for minerals and vitamin-C.  I highly recommend Green-Magma and other green drinks. If you don’t feel immediate results from the supplements, they are not working.  Herbs sitting on a natural grocers’ shelf have little potency.  

Water:   Only 5% of the American population gets sufficient water each day.  Diet drinks, high corn-syrup drinks and coffee do not count towards proper hydration; in fact many of those drinks cause gastrointestinal inflammation, kidney and liver problems and an acidic environment.  To properly hydrate we need to drink at least half of our body weight in purified water by the ounce each day. For example if you weight 150 lbs. you need 75 ounces of purified water daily.

Exercise:  The number one killer today is a stagnant lymph system caused by a lack of exercise.  Take a walk around the block or yoga, chi-kung or Pilate’s class.

Remember, natural remedies including dietary changes take a little longer to see results, than just popping a pill.  However, these changes are permanent. To turn disease around takes time and should include alternative healing, organic diets, pure water, natural supplements and exercise.  Wellness of the whole body provides accurate good health for the entire being.

© 2008 Paula Muran. All rights reserved.