Tag: stress

Why I Don’t Believe Happiness is a Choice

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I have read a loooooot of New Age and self-help books.  More than enough for one lifetime.  I generally appreciate and agree with the overall sentiments expressed in many of them, especially when it comes to taking responsibility for one’s life and realizing one’s empowerment to improve it in areas from health to spirituality to finances.

But I have to tell you honestly that when such books (or Facebook memes, or inspirational quotes, et al) tell me that happiness is a choice, I tune out.

I don’t believe that one’s decisions have no bearing on that person’s mood, but saying happiness is a choice basically says that happiness is nothing but a choice, and being happy is as simple as making the right choice.

This is, in my view, invalidating, unfair, and a vast oversimplification of human emotions, not to mention powerful barriers various individuals may have toward experiencing happiness, as well as love, joy, and other positive emotions and states of being.

I didn’t like that advice before I found Pranic Healing, but after I learned MCKS’ Pranic Psychotherapy, I realized in a concrete way why whittling down one’s emotions to a choice was an even grosser oversimplification of the complex factors at play.

Let’s take sadness as an example.  It doesn’t matter what the reason is for a person’s sadness, whether it is sensible to you or me.  If a person feels sad, there is a buildup of this type of energy in their system, and it is therefore nearly impossible not to feel it!

In case that statement sounds vague, let me specify that emotional energies are specific and concrete types of energies.  With experience in energy healing, most any healer will come to recognize them when they are working on someone.  First of all, you start to feel the emotion of the other person you are working on.  The healer starts off feeling calm and peaceful and then has moments of being hit with a wave of a certain emotion.  This is the energy coming off the other person as it is being expelled during the healing process.  (In Pranic Healing, we have specific methods for disposing of it so it does not just get absorbed in our systems.)

Next, the healer can simply scan the energies present.  Sadness, when scanned (felt with the hands) has a distinct feeling–it is very heavy.  For a person who can see energy, they will observe that the energy of sadness, while variable based on other emotions present, will generally look like an irregular, clumpy, or asymmetrical cloud of grayish energy.  Positive emotions look and feel completely different.

Once negative emotions have clouded the energy system and gotten stuck in the chakras (energy centers) and meridians, simply choosing a different state of being, while possible, is unrealistic and certainly unfair to expect of someone.  The best hope for most of us is a distraction to get our mind off of our negative emotions and switch to different ones.  However, this is not a long-term solution, as it doesn’t get rid of the negativity (aka negative energy), and only distracts us from it until it just gets stirred up again, as it is bound to do.

The better option by far would be to extract the negative emotional energies from the person’s system.  As I hope you are concluding by now, it is not possible to feel sad without sadness energy in your system.  It is not possible to feel anger without anger energy in your system.  You won’t feel depressed without depression energy in your system.  Or anxiety.  Or anything else.

Most people think that when bad things happen, they feel a negative emotion in response to it.  A much more accurate way to put it for those of us who habitually feel certain things like anger, anxiety, fear, depression, and other emotions, is that certain situations trigger what is already there.  What is already there might have been created or generated decades ago–or last week.  In any case, old emotions have to be released if we are to feel peaceful and go through life without quite a bit of turmoil.

Your options are “letting go,” either subconsciously or consciously (lots of us do this with small things naturally anyway, but it’s pretty hard with big stuff), therapy, Pranic Healing, or another healing technique.

In Pranic Healing, we can pluck the things that we don’t want out with the flick of a hand (or a crystal)!  We can even implant positive energies in their place.  I know this because I have seen it work countless times, on countless people–not to mention myself.

Will the person feel that negativity again?  In other words, is the healing permanent?  Will doing Pranic Healing mean I won’t feel stress anymore?

Habitual, long-term negative emotions are highly likely to be caused by a huge buildup of them over time, or resulting from a traumatic experience that continues to get triggered.  By getting Pranic Healing on those emotions, the person will be substantially or completely healed of them.  They won’t get triggered at the drop of a hat anymore.  And this is huge.  Frankly, most people never even get that relief.

When years of old stuff is cleared away, it is simply far easier to be calm, even when stressful situations arise.  We still feel stress and negative emotions, but as I have said in other posts–it is extremely common for us that we aren’t feeling the stress of that day– rather, the stress of the day stirred up the stress of a couple of decades that has been sitting in our system for years.  So small things FEEL massively stressful!

Once years of negative emotional energies are extracted, our thoughts are free to go in a new, positive direction, and it is extremely easy for them to do so!  This is when it could be fair to say happiness is a choice… But by then it is so easy to feel happy, choosing it would be redundant!

One exception to this: anger toward someone who has hurt you.  Healing this is very difficult until the person forgives the “wrongdoer”.  The energy system holds on tight to this anger and hurt and a healer will have a very hard time extracting it unless the person has either consciously or subconsciously let go of the situation and any anger toward the other.  Even if the healer was able to extract the energies of anger and resentment, the person would re-create them soon enough until they have let the person and situation go.  In this case, you need to do Master Co’s Forgiveness Meditation video.  For difficult or traumatic hurts, you may need to do the exercise for 30-60 days.

After a healing, you may notice in a few days you are feeling that negative emotion again.  Has it “come back”?  No.  There was simply more stuff buried deeper in your system that has come to the surface.  In Pranic Healing, we strongly suggest  follow up sessions until the negative thoughts and emotions are healed.

So while we can say happiness is partly a choice, and refusing to take responsibility for one’s life certainly is, I strongly dislike statements that make it sound like happiness is nothing more than a choice.  I strongly feel we all need much more help in life than hearing we just need to change our mind about our emotions.

 

Information on sessions here

The Monumental Impact of Your Subconscious Stress

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I was so excited to read an article at the gym last week from Shape magazine called How to Melt Iceberg Stress.  I had never heard the term “iceberg stress” before but was more than aware of its existence!

The sub-heading of the article reads, “Some tension is so buried, you don’t even know it’s there. But that kind of stress and anxiety is hurting your health and stealing your happiness.”  You can read their article here.

They’re not exaggerating.  Like an iceberg, this kind of stress is huge but below the surface and hidden.  This type of stress–not the daily or weekly irritations–is what really drags us down–and can even cause serious health problems later in life.

Like background noise, long-term stress, whatever it may be about, eventually goes unnoticed-and therefore unaddressed.  Yet this stress has a powerful effect on our physical health as well as our ability to experience peace, happiness, and even simple relaxation.

Iceberg stress is present for so long, and we are so used to it, that the way we feel with it is our baseline for contentment.  We say and think we feel good only when there is no other stress on top of this baseline.

An example of iceberg stress can be long-held anger.  Just because you haven’t thought of the person you feel anger toward in 6 months does not mean you do not still harbor anger toward them.  You might believe you feel fine when you are actually a bit agitated or unsettled on a constant basis.  You don’t know that letting go of and healing from this anger would allow you a new level of peace and happiness on a day-to-day basis.

This subconscious but still present anger manifests in a very real way in your energy system.  It is, quite literally, negative energy which sits in your energy field–in your aura, and in the related chakras.  In this example, old anger manifests as congested energy in the back solar plexus chakra (among other areas).  The chakra will be clogged with dirty, clumpy, grayish energy.  And this energetic blockage has many negative side effects!

We will feel dragged down–without knowing it.  It will take more for us to feel happy than it would if that old anger wasn’t there.  We might feel agitated most of the time in general, and also get angry more easily than otherwise.  This kind of person will naturally blame their daily angers on the small annoyances of life, but is unaware of the important factor of the long-standing anger already present.  This long-standing anger makes it easy to explode over very little.

Since these blockages hinder the flow of prana, or energy, throughout the system, they eventually hurt our physical health as well.  This is because each chakra is in charge of pumping energy to certain organs as well as throughout the entire body.

Let’s take another example: say someone is a perfectionist.  Naturally, they don’t consider this habitual way of thinking about themselves to be stressful or a cause of stress.  This person’s view is that they simply have a certain standard for their work or whatever they do.  However, perfectionism may easily impact a person by them being subconsciously and constantly hard on themselves: negative thoughts and emotions are created and directed to themselves.

The person is unknowingly blocking much potential inner peace, relaxation, happiness, and possibly self-love.  Negative self-talk and negative emotions directed at oneself will manifest as congestion in multiple energy centers.

Anxiety is a common side-effect of perfectionism, and this specific kind of energy becomes a block in the throat chakra.  Over time, it can cause the throat chakra to malfunction, as well as block the flow of energy to the organs connected to it.  This congestion can potentially lead to health conditions related to the throat over time.

Stress and tension of any kind inhibits the flow of prana throughout the system.

Ironically and unfortunately, the biggest stress we have is very often the most hidden and subconscious.  And the biggest stress we have is going to be the most likely to cause health problems!

Daily things like getting stuck in traffic, a tiff with a co-worker, an approaching deadline at work, we naturally let go of within 15 minutes of getting home–at most, a couple of weeks.  The negative energy of stress and frustration are released.  What we don’t release within 15 min is the fear of losing one’s job over years of bad economic conditions, the guilt of lying to someone we care about, constant hatred or negativity directed toward others or the world, betrayal, old trauma, and much more.

How can you identify iceberg stress?

One thing to notice about yourself is if you have a hard time being happy even when things are going fine.  If you easily get into a bad mood or just aren’t cheerful even when nothing really happened to cause it–or something really trivial caused it–you most likely have some more deep-seated stress of some kind.  If most of your words are negative, then most of your thoughts are–and your emotions will be too.  Your words can be an indicator of iceberg stress.

Some of the stresses stuck in our energy systems are things we genuinely don’t even care about anymore!  But the congested energy gets stuck in our channels and we feel it anyway!  It causes us irritability, depression, a bad mood,  emotional fatigue, and just takes the fun out of life.

Take time to analyze your habitual thought patterns.  Question every single thought you have for several days.  Is it yours or someone else’s?  Is it something so old you don’t even agree with it or care about it anymore?  Is it a bad habit you picked up?  Is it a repetitive negative mental or emotional loop you need to drop?  Do you have an old grudge?  You lose out on happiness and inner peace every day you hold onto this old stuff.

If you are still not sure what your thoughts are like, do 15 minutes of writing every morning or evening.  Just write every thought that you think down on the paper.  It may surprise you to take this look inside your head.  Don’t over-think it, but just blurt it all out with the pen.  This is always a good way to blow off steam as well.

Stop negative thoughts in their tracks!  Think positive thoughts contrary to them.  The negative thoughts and negative energy will eventually dry up and evaporate from your system.

Much faster and easier though…. You guessed it!!  Pranic Healing can wipe your slate clean in a jiffy.  What would take you a couple of months can probably be done in a session or two.  Imagine what an 8-session package will do to your thoughts, your mood, and your energy level!

You clean your body in the shower every day.  Don’t you think you should clean your mind and emotions even once in a while so you can start fresh??

Sessions with me are available (see Services page), but even better, why not learn to do it yourself?

Pranic Healing Level I is scheduled for February 26-27 in Bellevue!  Taught by Gayle Nelson.

Ultimately, you will want to take Pranic Psychotherapy (for which Level I is a prerequisite).  But Level I will teach you some techniques you can use for stress as well.

Come to a Free Introduction to Pranic Healing!  Find out what Pranic Healing is all about and learn a technique or two before committing to the full weekend class!  The Intro is just two hours.  I have three scheduled at the moment, and you can check this page regularly for updates and additional free introductions as they are scheduled.

The Going-to-Bed Protocol

Originally Published December 2014

If you are like me, falling to sleep at night is not necessarily easy.  I seem to have an active mind, and unfortunately, it doesn’t have an on/off switch.  It used to take me anywhere from 15-60 minutes to fall to sleep.  Lately, I don’t even remember laying in bed the night before when I try to remember it the next day!

The vast majority of the time, there’s nothing in particular on my mind.  It just takes me a certain length of time to relax.  Well, sort of.  That’s how I would always describe it.  However, when I started implementing certain Pranic Healing* techniques, I learned more about sleep and relaxation.  Because when I do anything that heals stress or negative energy, it invariably causes me to fall asleep faster and to sleep better.

Based on my current understanding, you don’t have to have something “on your mind” to be affected by stress energy which is in your (and pretty much everyone’s) system.  So daily practices to heal and maintain your energy system very powerful to help us sleep.  Not to mention the benefits in waking life as well!

First of all, what is “stress energy”?

When we experience a negative emotion, it changes the energy, or prana, flowing through our system.  Rather than flowing freely and uninhibited, delivering necessary life force to our energy centers and organs, it is altered to a clumped and even sticky state so it does not flow as freely.  Severely congested energy blocks important meridians and chakras which are critical for delivering prana which keeps us alive.

I use the term “stress energy” to encompass the energies created when we experience any negative emotion: depression, anger, resentment, sadness, frustration, anxiety, fear, trauma, and all the others.

When these negative energies are stuck in our system, it is much harder, if not impossible, (depending on severity) to relax.  Naturally, our ability to relax affects our ability to fall asleep!

The rather tricky thing about these negative energies is that they can be caused by something that happened an hour ago or 25 years ago.  If they are not released and let go, either by changing one’s mind about the situation, therapy, Pranic Healing, or another technique, they are likely to remain in our bodies, keeping us unsettled even if we haven’t thought of the event or situation for a long time.  This is why it can be confusing–we think, well, life is going fine, and I am not upset about anything right now.  Therefore negative emotional energies are not impacting me or causing any hardship.  Yet they are so powerful, they can cause even severe physical ailments after enough years of not being released!

Based on this principle of releasing stress energy to help us fall asleep, and of course also feel more relaxed when we are awake, here are my tips for a great night’s sleep.  Now, if you have sleep difficulties due to a health condition, these tips might still help, but be sure to consult your naturopathic doctor for help as well.

Exercise:  I know, BOR-ING!  Well, the thing is, it works.  Exercise helps us sleep for many reasons, but my favorite on is that when we exercise, it powerfully pushes dirty energy of all varieties out of our systems, from mental/emotional stuff to more physicalized buildup.  Doesn’t your mind feel quiet after a long sweaty workout?

Salt Bath with Lavender:  A couple of hours or less before bed, soak in a bath with 2-3 pounds of salt (table salt!) and 15 drops of lavender oil for a maximum of 20 minutes.  Lavender oil has lots of lavender prana which is especially good at disintegrating negative mental/emotional energies.

Cut Cords Right Before Bed:  You can see my video on this here (http://www.bodyspirithealth.com/blog/Video-How-to-De-Stress-in-Seconds).  Cords are energetic tubes of varying widths connecting you to what’s going on in your life.  Negative cords carry negative energy back and forth and cause you to stay connected to things and events causing you stress.  By cutting these cords (whether before bed or any other time), you disconnect from these situations and people and notice you stop thinking about the situation or just feel more detached about it.  This is instantly calming.

Imagine that these lines or tubes are connected to your body and extending out perpendicularly.  Grab them all in a bundle like you are holding a bunch of ropes in your fist with one hand.  Pull slightly and with the other hand, make a chopping motion to cut them.  Many people feel immediately lighter when doing this!  If you want to be really thorough, you can do each chakra (see Miracles Through Pranic Healing by Master Choa Kok Sui for an illustration of where the chakras are).  Or you can also do the bundle technique plus cut cords just on your solar plexus area in addition, which is where we frequently connect to stressful issues.

Get some Pranic Healing:  It works wonders!

Meditate:  Doing Master Choa’s Meditation on Twin Hearts is incredibly powerful and effective at flushing out stress energy.  That is one of the primary things it was designed to do, in fact.  If you do this meditation for 7 days in a row and don’t sleep better, I will seriously eat my hat.  (Just don’t do it right before bed because it is also energizing.  Start two hours before bed or more.)  Do a shorter version for free here and even see an animation of what is happening to your energy system while you do it!  (http://www.pranichealing.com/meditation-twin-hearts)

Say Your Prayers:  Truly, there is a reason to pray right before bed.  When you express gratitude, you are changing your mindset to one of calmness and happiness.  When you ask for healing, you are furthering this process of letting go before going to sleep and releasing unwanted thoughts and emotions.  If you had a clairvoyant look at someone praying, especially praying for healing, you would see brilliant light descending through the top of their head.  Negative cords would be dissolving, negative grayish energies would be disintegrating and be expelleing out of the person’s system.  The aura becomes bigger and brighter.  Not unlike what happens when you receive a Pranic Healing treatment!

Always, always pray for healing when you pray!  In Pranic Healing, we ask for Diving guidance, Divine love, Diving healing, and Divine protection, among other things–but these are the essentials.

Try This Trick:  I tried this a few nights ago and have done it every time I go to sleep since.  I was absolutely amazed at the effectiveness.  Of course, I thought, I don’t have anxiety, and I’m not really stressed about anything.  But if there’s anything Pranic Healers love, it’s experiments.  This is what I did, while I was lying in bed.  I asked God (or the Supreme Being, or the Divine Mother/Father, however you like to say it):

Thank you for healing my crown chakra from all stress, tension, and anxiety.

Thank you for healing my forehead chakra from all stress, tension, and anxiety.

I did it for all the upper chakras (most significant in mental/emotional stress  compared to the lower chakras).

It felt like my body was melting!  I was fast asleep in no time, and it was soooooo relaxing.

If you want to try it, here are the chakras/areas I listed.  You can pair some up to make it a little faster:

Crown/Forehead

Ajna (located between the eyebrows)

Throat and Back of the neck

Back Heart

Front and Back Solar Plexus

If this is a mouthful for you, just say,

To the Divine Supreme God,

Thank you for healing all the energy centers in my head area from all stress, tension, and anxiety.

Thank you for healing my throat and neck areas from all stress, tension, and anxiety.

Thank you for healing my back and chest areas from all stress, tension, and anxiety.

I hope some of these work for you!  There is really nothing more delicious than a fantastic night’s sleep!

I don’t want to be a one-person experiment–let me know how it goes!  I can tell you I notice a massive difference in the way I sleep when I slack on exercising and meditation.  It snaps me back into my habits quick!

Blessings of Rest,

Meghan

When Life Hands You… Something Else

Originally Published March 04, 2013

I come across advice for those of us who are busy, stressed out, tired or worn out, and under the weather.  Once in a while more serious “transitions” as they are often called may be addressed.  Let me be honest… the advice is kinda weak.  And the tips are just not that powerful.

Losing a loved one–or a job–isn’t a “transition.”  It’s Hell with a capital “H.”  Having the last kid leave the house isn’t a “big change,” it’s the end of an era.  A life-threatening diagnosis isn’t a “challenge,” it’s entering an alternate universe.

I don’t have every answer in this blog post, but I have a little something more.  I have a few techniques that do work if one has the optimism to try.

First and foremost, what we are going through is emotions.  Hard to believe, but:  It’s not the “problem” that we’re dealing with.  We’re dealing with our reaction to it, and that’s the part that hurts.

Even being broke doesn’t cause you physical pain unless you are literally out of house and home, bearing the elements.  What you are, 99% of the time, suffering is the resulting emotion from the shock of what has happened.  Now, I’m not belittling that in the least.  Emotions HURT.  I say this only to clarify what we are dealing with, not to diminish the difficulty of it.

So–what do you do?

First, you have to make the decision TO do something about it.  To not let your own emotions beat the daylights out of you with you at their complete mercy.  Even this can be hard when we are wallowing.  We’ve all been there.  But if you can get that far, the rest isn’t too difficult.  And by the way, a little wallowing won’t hurt.  We all have to lick our wounds from time to time.  Or maybe for you it’s to throw a breakable item against the brick fireplace.  Indulge, but just a little.  There’s a point after which we aren’t releasing negativity anymore, but making more of it, and it is then counterproductive.

Next, keep taking care of yourself on a physical level.  At LEAST as well as you were beforehand, and preferably better.  This is the time where we tend to say, “oh, forget it!” and let ourselves eat anything, skimp on sleep, or whatever it is for you.  The good practices we already had in place can go out the window.  So to begin with, don’t tell yourself that “nothing matters anymore” so you might as well not bother.  It’s easy to feel that way, but it’s not the case.  It still matters, you are still worth the best care in the world, and the small things you do affecting your physical body DO add up and make a difference.  They are tied in with how you feel emotionally as well.  When your physical body gets sluggish and blocked, your emotions don’t move through you as they should, and you will get more frequently stuck in negativity.

Food-wise, when you are down, it is critical to get enough vitamin D in the form of a supplement (you need D3) or sun exposure.  This is crucial for simply functioning of regular feel-good chemicals we are all entitled to to begin with.  Then omega-3’s fats are critical as well.  Whether you are a fish oil, krill oil, flaxseed, hemp seed, or chia seed person, get plenty.  They affect your mood as well.  Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables and toss out sugar (destroyer of stable mood).

Next, you have to exercise.  You just have to.  Movement is necessary for processing.  Don’t you feel like your mind just got scrubbed clean after you have worn out your body exercising?  That’s because, energetically, you just flushed out a bunch of garbage.

Emotions and thoughts exist physically.  Or metaphysically if you want to get particular.  They exist in energetic form and are visible to anyone who can see energy.  Negative thoughts and emotions appear gray and clumpy.  Positive thoughts and emotions are different colors that flow through the body smoothly.  As you would guess, clumps of dense energy block the healthy flow of all kinds of energy in the body and cause problems.  When we exercise, be blast open previously blocked channels.  Negative thoughts and emotions–dirty energy–are powerfully flushed out of the body.  You feel refreshed –you just took an energy shower!  If you don’t move your body, it’s hard for your mind and emotions to move as well.

You can also flush out negative emotions by talking about them, and counseling and friends and family are, of course, great things.  But this takes longer and is more sporadic.  Better to get sweating every day or nearly every day and be guaranteed a good cleansing regularly.

Next is meditation.  Meditation is also effective at flushing out negative emotions and bringing in positive and calming ones.  Remember, emotions exist as energy.  When you meditate, you let go of negative energies and receive positive ones.  You get in touch with the essence of who you are, the soul, and so at least temporarily do not identify with your body, mind, and emotions.  This makes it possible to let them go.

Master Choa Kok Sui’s Meditation on Twin Hearts could be the most effective in existence at this because it is designed to flush out any and all kinds of negative energies and flood the body with positive, healing, and spiritual ones.  Meditation is a must all the time, but never more than now.  As the book Conversations with God says, “Now is the time to go to your God space more than ever.”

In addition, stay active.  Make plans for the week.  Make at least some of them with other people so you can talk about and think about things besides your problems.  Of course, this get-together can be for moral support too.  But it’s just as helpful if it’s to get your mind off things.  Changing gears is a breath of fresh air and will bring you relief.  You may feel like curling up on the couch for a couple of months or more, but this will vastly prolong the difficulties.  Even if you have to drag yourself out the door, get out and be even a little social once or twice a week.  More, if you can and want to.  Make a goal of planning something concrete at least twice a week, and schedule in advance so you know you’re covered.  It’s not the time to hole up alone, except in small doses.

If it’s appropriate for you, get some professional help such as counseling, other therapies, and Pranic Healing.  These can help us get past our sticking points and bring us insight.

Lastly, realize there are cycles in life.  Yes, this speech.  Perhaps overstated, but true:  This too shall pass.  Absolutely nothing lasts forever.  If things are going fantastic in your life right now, it will pass.  And if everything’s in the gutter, it will pass as well.  It’s a phase, and you only have to get through this tough time for a finite period.  Then, the skies will clear and life will feel relatively easy again.  This isn’t your “new life.”  It is a temporary thing lasting, on average, perhaps a period of months.

When things get good again, sow the kinds of seeds you will want to reap later.  This is called karmic or energetic investment.  Give to those in need: of money, love, time, help, and more.  When the wheel turns again, the universe provides readily in your time of need as your energetic gifts come back many times over.  Karma is just the process of what we put out boomeranging back at us.

Warmest wishes and blessings through good times and bad,

Meghan

The Colds Season: Causes You Didn’t Know About and Solutions You’ve Never Heard

Originally Published January 18, 2012

This won’t be another article about hand-washing.  I think that one’s pretty obvious, not to mention given an abundance of print space elsewhere.  🙂

I hope to give you some extra tips you haven’t already heard that you can easily and swiftly apply yourselves at home.  It is most important to jump on a cold quickly because colds are really easy to heal when you just start to feel it coming on, but are likely to require much more effort once they’ve gotten going.

First off, I strongly suggest thinking through a little bit about how and why you get colds.  This will be different for different people.  Often times, there is a connection between a stressful event happening in your life, lack of sleep for prolonged periods, lack of exercise or meditation, eating unhealthy food or too much sugar/junk food, going without fresh air for a long time, anger or other negative emotions coming up, and coming down with something.  All these things lower our energy significantly.  When this lowered energy persists, our defenses are down and our immune systems are weakened.  There can be some delay between an unhappy event and a physical reaction in the body such as a cold of several days or a week, perhaps more, so we have to pay close attention and connect the dots.

It is important to realize difficult things happen in our lives that we brush off without realizing or admitting the impact they are having on us.  We have to acknowledge that, yes, that experience really upset me.  And there IS an energetic response to that that will affect your health.  Stress and any negative emotion block, congest, and lower our energy or prana in the body.  Without the right amount of energy flowing properly, our bodies cannot function normally.  So these small and large upsets affect our health.  When we realize this, we can start to understand how our lives, habits, emotions, and events affect us.  This gives us the power to be one step ahead of the game and prevent small as well as big health challenges.

I know you are thinking of being exposed to another person who is sick as a primary reason for getting sick.  I don’t feel this quite counts because we really are exposed to germs practically all the time.  It is easy to blame it on the sick kids we were around or the airport we were in, but with a strong immune system and a high level of energy, this additional exposure does not make a big difference.  I am now into my fourth winter at my other part-time job where at least three times a year, some bug goes around and at least half the staff gets it and has to call in sick.  I have yet to catch anything from work.  What causes us to catch them is our own immune systems and energy levels.

Aside from noticing and taking care of stress and negative emotions, we have to manage our day-to-day energy as well.  I know people who don’t stop until there is nothing left.  They have an admirable inner drive to work hard and help others, but we simply can’t help others or be at our best at work when we’re running on an empty tank.  It also opens us right up for colds, flu, and worse.  Don’t max yourself out.  It’s kind of like how we know to “eat till your stomach is no more than 75% full.”  You can keep eating, but it’s not good for you, and it’s gonna hurt.  So go until your energy is 50% depleted, not 95%.  Learn to “quit while you’re ahead” and not feel bad about it!  This is a habit and takes practice.

I personally haven’t been sick for quite some time (knock on wood)–aside from right now!    It can be fairly predictable for me.  My own learning has inspired what I call the Triumvirate of Health (see previous blog) which includes:

1.  Exercise

2.  Healthy Diet

3.  Meditation

When I do all these things consistently, I feel almost invincible.  My mood is up, my physical energy is up, my sleep is high quality, and even unexpected situations are dealt with smoothly.  When one or more of these fall to the wayside, there goes the quality sleep, there goes the good mood, and there goes the usually-endless energy.  So that’s kind of what happened with me.

Another intriguing theory behind colds, fevers, and flu that I feel is worth mentioning is that they are actually just the body detoxing.  You haven’t necessarily “caught” anything.  If you have ever been on a detox such as a juice fast, you know that the symptoms, whether from reading about it or experiencing it, are cold- and flu-like in nature.  I learned this idea from Matt Monarch, co-owner of www.therawfoodworld.com.  He puts out a fantastic, educational newsletter.

It may be that rather than having a viral or bacterial infection, our bodies have decided now is the time to unload some extra toxins (or, energetically, flush out a bunch of dirty energy).  The process of flushing something out means it leaves your tissues–or chakras–and circulates through the bloodstream or energy body before being expelled through the proper channels.  These include the bowels, lungs, skin, etc.  During this circulation process, the crud is moving through us and makes us feel yucky.  This causes us to feel low-energy, fuzzy-headed, etc.  We also eject toxins through mucus which in the form of a runny nose or cough.

While most of us run to the drug store for the nearest dose of relief, this greatly hampers the process your body is trying to undergo.  Remember, the number one source of toxicity is prescription and non-prescription drugs.  If you are stopping this flow of discharging toxins and dirty energy, your body will only hold onto it for later.  You are increasing your chances of getting sick again, and missing a chance to get healthier than you were before.

What can rapidly accelerate this process instead is something Matt Monarch is openly an enormous fan of, and that is colon hydrotherapy or an enema.  Our bowels are, of course, a main place for elimination of waste and toxins.  Virtually all of us have a clogged colon.  This is caused by over-eating, not chewing our food properly, consuming pasteurized dairy, consuming meat, not consuming enough fiber, and not consuming enough raw foods which have live digestive enzymes in them, helping to better digest our food.  By cleaning the colon, you immediately allow your body to rapidly get rid of significantly more waste, and this has been shown anecdotally to clear up fevers and minor illnesses in MINUTES.  Pretty amazing.

Other ways to facilitate rather than hamper your body’s natural detoxification process is to eat very lightly (most of us have decreased appetite when we are sick, and I believe this one reason why).  Fresh juices, salad, light soup, and smoothies are great.  Go easy on bread, dairy, and meat or cut them out until you feel better.  Say no to sweets for the time being.  Of course, drink lots of water.

So I feel those are the two main causes of colds

1.  Lowered defense system from lack of healthy habits, stress, and over-working

2.  Toxic buildup the body is trying to get rid of.

When you know what lowers your body’s defense systems and tends to allow infection in, you can act preemptively against illness before you get it!  Let’s say that a really busy week at work tends to allow a cold to come in.  When you know such a week is coming up, or even when one sneaks up on you, take extra good care of yourself.  Eat super-healthy, get as much sleep as you possibly can, and implement a relaxation routine in the evenings after you get home such as a warm bath and soothing music.  Meditation can be a life-safer in these situations as well.  As always, I recommend Master Choa’s Meditation on Twin Hearts because of it’s powerful cleansing and energizing effects.  Doing this regularly would be an extremely powerful tool to use against getting sick, no matter what time of year.  Yes, some of these things take time and effort, but getting sick eats up your time quite a bit more, and it’s not half as fun as some pampering!

When a stressful interaction happens between you and another person, take the time to process it and acknowledge it.  Do what it takes to feel better whether it’s talking to a friend, having a counseling session, doing some meditation, or writing about it.  Take care of your feelings sooner rather than later, or they can come back to bite you in the form of a nasty cold–or much worse.  More illness, disease, and pain than you can ever imagine is caused by negative emotional buildup over years and years, and simply letting it out is more powerful than any amount of hand-washing one can do–in my humble opinion!

Energetically, there are a few things you can do to greatly assist healing as well. First, take a salt bath.  This has to be regular table salt to have the energy effect you want.  Salt water draws out dirty energy from your body and breaks it down.  Soak in this water for 20-25 minutes, not longer.  You will need 2-4 pounds of salt, so stock up at Costco with one of their 24-pound bags.  Daily is best.

Next, a short visualization exercise has worked for me several times.  I actually read this in a book by Eckhart Tolle.  It’s very simple.  Sit or lay down and imagine a powerful waterfall of white, sparkling light pouring over the top of your head and into your entire body, down to your feet.  Make it as vivid as you can, and try to imagine this for 3-5 minutes.  Picture every cell bathed in white light.  This literally does bring additional prana into your body which you need in times of low energy or sickness.  If it seems like the energy is stuck or dark in some places, imagine the dark spots coming out and being flushed and filled with the fresh, clean prana.

Please, get enough sleep.  I can’t emphasize this enough.  It’s very hard to convince people to do this.  It’s very hard to convince people that they might need more sleep than they think they do.  Our bodies get trained by alarm clocks very quickly, and just because you wake up on Saturdays at 6am feeling alert does not mean you got all the sleep you needed.  It means your body has been trained.  It takes un-training to be able to sleep in again after so many years of alarm clocks.  Take a nap, for heaven’s sake.  When you get home from work, just lay down even if you don’t think you’re tired (heck, even if you’re not sick!).  Chances are, you’ll doze off and feel great when you wake up.  We are a culture of chronically sleep-deprived people, and we cannot expect our immune systems to function properly under such conditions.

Get outside and get some fresh air into your house.  We are taught to be afraid of cold air and cold weather, but we are warm-blooded animals, and our bodies keep our optimal temperature very well in colder conditions.  I feel that part of the reason we get sick in the winter more is not from lower temperatures but because we are indoors so much, in stagnant air that has not moved and has had the opportunity to house bacteria and germs.  In the summer with windows open, our indoor air is exchanged for fresh air on a constant basis.  So open your windows for an hour or two at a time whenever possible, and get outside and get fresh air and fresh air prana into your lungs.  It will do wonders.

Here’s to a healthy 2012!