6 steps to Self Healing

Take a moment and check in with yourself. How is your body feeling right in this moment? If you’re generally healthy, check in for subtle symptoms. Is your neck feeling tense? Does your lower back ache? Do you have a headache? Are you exhausted — again? Or perhaps you’re battling a more serious health diagnosis and you’re experiencing symptoms from your health condition.

Whether you’re experiencing the nuisance of a minor physical symptom, the more concerning stress of a serious health condition, or simple curiosity about how you might maximise your vitality and longevity.

The Body Knows How To Heal Itself

Your body is beautifully equipped with natural self-repair mechanisms that are under the influence of thoughts, feelings and beliefs that originate in your mind. It knows how to kill cancer cells, fix broken proteins, slow aging, eliminate toxins, fight infections, get rid of foreign bodies, and otherwise keep you healthy. Things go awry and disease manifests when these self-repair mechanisms fail to function properly.

But here’s the kicker. Your nervous system has two operating systems, the “fight-or-flight” stress response dominated by the sympathetic nervous system and the relaxation response run by the parasympathetic nervous system. Only when your nervous system is in a relaxation response do your body’s self-repair mechanisms function!

The stress response is there to protect you in case a tiger chases you. But these days, we’re pretty safe from tigers, and yet our stress responses get triggered, on average, over 50 times per day. How? The amygdala in your lizard brains perceives negative thoughts, beliefs, and feelings, such as financial fears, relationship worries, work stress, loneliness, or pessimism, as threats equally scary as a tiger. Then BOOM. The scaredy-cat amygdala goes on red alert, and when this happens, our bodies can’t repair themselves. No wonder we get sick!

6 Simple Steps To Activate Your Body’s Self-Repair Mechanisms

You don’t have to be at the mercy of your stress responses. You can be proactive about activating your body’s natural self-healing. Try these scientifically-proven steps as a health prevention strategy or as treatment for any health condition you might be battling.

Step 1: Believe You Can Heal Yourself

Don’t believe that positive belief can cure the body? Think again! The medical establishment has been proving that the mind can cure the body for over 50 years. They call it “the placebo effect,” and it has been proven to cause resolution of symptoms, and real physiological change, in 18-80% of the patients in clinical trials who are treated with nothing more than sugar pills, saline injections, or fake surgeries.

As long as you believe your condition is “incurable” or “chronic,” it will be. Don’t believe your health condition could possibly resolve? Check out the Spontaneous Remission Project, a compilation of over 3,500 case studies proving that spontaneous remission has been reported for just about every illness out there, Stage 4 cancers, HIV, diabetes, high blood pressure, thyroid disease, autoimmune diseases, even an untreated gunshot wound to the head!

Reading through all these case studies can be like a paradigm shift. It’s kind of like the story of the 4-minute mile. Exercise physiologists used to think the body was physiologically incapable of running a mile in less than 4 minutes, and so no athlete ever did it. Then in 1954, Roger Bannister ran a mile in three minutes and fifty-nine seconds. Once that limiting belief was shattered, virtually every athlete that competes in a world-class event has run the mile in under four minutes. Today’s world-record time for the mile is 3:43:15, more than 15 seconds under 4 minutes.

What if your belief that the body can’t heal itself is like the 4-minute mile? 

Scientific data proves that once you believe healing is possible, it can be. So what do you believe?

Step 2: Find The Right Support

To say that you can heal yourself is sort of a misnomer because the scientific data proves that, equally essential to positive belief is the nurturing care of a true healer, someone optimistic who shares your positive belief, includes you in true partnership, respects your intuition, cares for your wellbeing, and ensures you that you won’t be alone on your self-healing journey.

Do you have the right healers on your health care team, amongst your family or friends?

Step Three: Listen To Your Body & Your Intuition

Nobody knows your body better than you, not even a doctor. Doctors may know the arteries of the leg or the anatomy of your organs better than you, but you know what’s best for your own body better than anyone else. 

So listen to your intuition and trust what it tells you.

Not in touch with your intuition? Then listen to your body, which is one vehicle your intuition uses to speak to you. If you have a physical sensation in your body, pain, tightness, nausea, clenching, dizziness, ask your body what it is trying to communicate to you. Then listen up! This is the voice of your inner wisdom and it will always lead you directly to your true north.

Step Four: Diagnose The Root Causes Of Your Illness

Your doctor may give you one kind of diagnosis, migraines or irritable bowel syndrome or breast cancer, for example. But the kind of diagnosis I’m talking about gets at the root of what might have triggered stress responses in your body and deactivated your body’s self-healing mechanisms, thereby making your body vulnerable to illness.

What aspects of your life are activating your stress responses? What relaxation response, inducing activities, like meditation, creative expression, laughter, engaging in work you love, massage, yoga, or playing with animals, have you been neglecting?

Illness is often a wake up call, forcing us to get down and dirty with what’s really true in our lives. We can either play the victim or we can use illness as an opportunity to awaken.

If you’re struggling with a physical issue, what might lie at the root of it? 

Step Five: Write The Prescription For Yourself

This won’t be the kind of prescription you fill at a pharmacy, though it certainly may include elements of Western medicine. It’s more of a self-guided action plan intended to make your body ripe for optimal health and full recovery.

So ask yourself, “What does my body need in order to heal?” Your Prescription may include diet changes, an exercise regimen, and a conventional medical treatment plan. But it may also include getting out of a toxic relationship, quitting a soul-sucking job, adding a meditation practice, taking steps to get out of debt, or following a passion.

Be as specific as you can. Then muster up the courage to put your plan into action!

Step Six: Surrender Attachment To Outcomes

What if you’ve adopted a positive attitude, found the right healer, tapped into your intuition and your body, diagnosed the root cause of your health condition, written The Prescription for yourself and put it into action, but you’re still sick? Are you doing something wrong? Is it your fault you’re still sick?

Absolutely not, and any talk of guilt, blame, or shame for someone on a healing journey only activates more stress responses and harms the body.

So what’s the deal? This is where the art of surrender comes in. Some patients do everything “right” and spontaneous remission happens. But others are the proverbial choir, and they’re still sick. Why does this happen? Honestly, I don’t know. The only real answer is a spiritual one. Perhaps our souls come here on this earth to learn lessons, and illness can be a spiritual practice, a way to learn our life lessons and a part of our soul’s destiny.

What I can say is that if you’ve followed the 6 steps, you’ve done everything within your power to make your body ripe for miracles, and the rest is out of your hands. So take a deep breath, trust The Universe, surrender attachment to any particular health outcome, and let any health condition you face be an opportunity for spiritual awakening.

A little bit of sunshine

We all know that vegetation needs sunshine to grow and that sunshine melts the snow to fill our rivers and lakes with necessary water. Sunshine also warms us and the world so that life is possible. But over the past few years we have been warned of the dangers of sunshine to our health.

Recognizing that over exposure to the sun will cause damage to our skin and cause skin cancer, studies are now suggesting that regular exposure to the sun’s rays actually improves health. As little as 15 to 20 minutes of sunshine twice a week can make a difference.

What does Sunshine Do?

Sunshine stimulates the production of serotonin which promotes a good mental outlook and fights Seasonal Affective Disorder. It also stimulates the pineal gland which produces melatonin. Melatonin is one of the chemicals that operates our bodies clocks and helps with sleep function. Ninety percent of our vitamin D comes from exposure to the sun.

Vitamin D

We can get vitamin D from food, but not enough for optimal health which is why supplementing our intake is necessary. What does vitamin D do for our bodies? Most recent studies suggest that since vitamin D helps to lower blood cholesterol levels it is a factor in fighting heart disease. Vitamin D is necessary for strong bones and teeth as it aids in the absorption of calcium. It also helps prevent certain cancers including lung, prostate, and maybe even certain skin cancers.

Sufficient vitamin D also regulates the immune system One study saw a 70% reduction of colds in 3 years in participants given vitamin D supplements. Vitamin D may even help slow down the aging process. A study showed that the biological markers, called telomeres, were longer (a sign of being biologically younger and healthier) in participants with higher levels of vitamin D.

Miracle Cure?

No, sunshine is not a miracle cure-all. It is an important part of a healthy lifestyle. Like all activities, taking in the sun must be done in moderation. The best way to absorb it is without sunscreen so limit your exposure to short periods of time. The body takes in the sun’s goodness through any exposed skin area. The body can only store vitamin D for 60 days so regular exposure is called for.

Dance yourself fit

Some of you already know that I am a bit of a dancer.. Salsa to be precise. But over the last few months due to injury and now illness, I have been unable to get up and boogie. I really miss it, so this article is as much for me as it is for you... maybe it will motivate us to get into the groove.

Get ready to hit the dance floor! Dancing is a whole-body workout that's actually fun.

It's good for your heart, it makes you stronger, and it will help with balance and coordination.

A 30-minute dance class burns between 130 and 250 calories, about the same as jogging.

Your dance teacher will lead you through a series of choreographed steps. The focus might be on the footwork, but the series of leaps, turns, shimmies, and cha-chas engage the entire body.

With dance-inspired workouts ranging from ballroom and latin to ballet and hip hop and club dance classes, you’ll never be bored!

The intensity depends on the type of dance you choose. Fast-moving dance styles like hip hop and salsa are more intense than slower dances like the tango or waltz. All of them will use your whole body and will challenge your brain as you learn the choreography and form.

Areas It Targets

Core: Depending on the type of dance you choose, some of the steps/moves will engage the core muscles.

Arms: Although most dances focus on your lower body, you're also using your arms.

Legs: The choreography will have you doing moves that work your lower body, including your quads and hamstrings.

Glutes: Hip hop dancing and ballet include moves that engage the glutes.

Back: Dance uses your core muscles, including those in your back.

Flexibility: Most dance classes and dance-inspired workouts include moves that improve flexibility.

Aerobic: Dancing raises your heart rate. The more up-tempo the dance style, the better it is for your heart.

Strength: You won't be lifting weights, but your body weight counts, helping to build muscle strength.

Low-Impact: Dancing can be a high-or low-impact workout depending on the style of dancing.

What Else Should I Know?

Cost: Free if you already know how, or the cost of classes if you want lessons at a studio or club.

Good for beginners? There are dance classes aimed at beginners. If you're just starting out, give yourself time to learn the moves. It doesn't happen overnight, but it will happen eventually! I can vouch for this :)

Outdoors:  Most dance classes are taught in studios. Although I used to have classes outdoors in the summer.

At home: You can dance anywhere. Depends how shy you are.

Equipment required? It depends. Some classes will require specific shoes; for others (like hip hop) all you need are trainers.

As a massage and physical therapist and sports trainer and dancer.. I can attest that...

Depending on the style, you can improve your heart health, joint mobility, strength, balance/coordination, and an overall sense of well-being, making dance good for most everyone. If you can't afford classes, try a dance workout DVD or follow an online video at home.

If you have a medical condition such as diabetes or high blood pressure, take note on how you feel before, during, and after dancing. If you're not feeling right or it takes more than a few minutes to get back to "normal," check with your doctor before continuing.

Is It Good for Me If I Have a Health Condition?

Dancing is a fantastic activity if you have medical conditions such as heart disease, high cholesterol, or diabetes.

Dancing more intensely, for a longer time, is more of a workout for your heart. You can choose the dance style and intensity level that meets your needs. Your doctor can let you know what's OK.

If you have an injury, let it heal before you start dancing. If you have other physical limitations, you may have more options than you think. Integrated, or inclusive dance, introduced in the 1960s, is for people with physical and mental limitations. There are dance companies that include dancers in wheelchairs, for instance.

Dancing is a great way to keep fit during pregnancy, especially if you were a dancer before getting pregnant. Be careful with your balance and stress to your back. Do pelvic floor exercises like and core activities to improve your abs, low back, and hip strength as a complement to your dance training.