Mind

     Elevating the Mind

   Body

     Energising the Body

"You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read." - Charlie Tremendous Jones.

It is common knowledge that what you think can affect your body. This is known as the mind body connection. Mind-Body philosophy embraces the idea that all illnesses surface from a root cause. And although some of your health challenges may have arisen out of a particular gene pool or are a result of your environment, our minds and emotions are major players in managing physical diseases and imbalances. It is so important to keep your mind alert, positive and elevated by whatever means it takes. For me it has been reading and personal development.

Joan Borysenko PhD discusses how ... “Conditioning is a powerful bridge between the mind and the body ... for the body cannot tell the difference between events that are actual threats to survival and events that are present in thought alone.” So consider feeding your mind information that will empower your body’s experience, not weaken it. This doesn’t mean operating in fantasy land; what it does mean is you can choose to innoculate your body with thoughts and feelings that support it in health and maximise your healing potential. This is how I healed my "dead irreparable brain cells." Belief is a powerful tool. What we believe becomes our reality. I believed I could be healed, and so it was.

Dr Candace Pert, former chief of the Section on Brain Biochemistry at the National Institute of Mental Health (US), pioneered the identification of compounds known as neuropeptides. Endorphins are a type of neuropeptide produced when you laugh or exercise; they’ve been described as the brain’s own morphine. They produce a pleasurable sensation that has been found to directly affect the immune system, the hormonal endocrine system and the entire body.
While emotions have always been considered a byproduct of the mind, they are now also linked to specific chemical processes that take place in the body, not just in the brain. The body shares receptors for these peptides with the many viruses that can enter it, so depending on the peptide load for that particular receptor, the virus may or may not be able to attach, which will then determine whether you get sick or not. This could well explain why some people in your office seem to be sick all the time while others, despite sitting in a “viral fog”, don’t seem to catch anything.

Tips for elevating your mind and liberating your health:

Choose your healthcare professionals so you have confidence in them. When a doctor/healthcare practitioner is perceived as powerful and trustworthy, people get better faster. One study has even shown that doctor reassurance and support raises the threshold of pain tolerance in patients. Find health professionals that support the concept that good health is dependent on a range of factors: genetics, family upbringing, diet, exercise, beliefs, spirituality and social support.

Become involved in the world you live in. The more you know about the world around you, the less scary life is. When you come to understand, control and effectively deal with life, it becomes less stressful. When life becomes less stressful, you experience less harmful loads of neuropeptides that can impact on the health of your body.

Enjoy and learn about your uniqueness. No two people are alike. Each of us experiences a cold or flu in our unique combination of symptoms. Learn to trust how your body operates and be willing to give it what it needs. This might translate into doing things a little differently from family and friends. Make sure you find a healthcare practitioner who respects your body wisdom and is happy to work with it and support it rather than wanting to make you fit some predefined set of symptoms and treatment regimes.

Investigate and explore healing modalities that harness the mind body connection. Yoga, meditation and visualisation are being incorporated into wellness programs more and more. Check local classes and seek medical support that embraces the proven benefits of these activities. When seeking surgery for the removal of my extra rib, I saw two Vascular Surgeons. The first, to me, appeared very negative and gloomy causing me to seek a second opinion. The second was positive and showed me a Yoga magazine to explain Thoracic Outlet Syndrome and told me that if Yoga could heal me, he would be very happy not to have to operate. Remember you have choices.

Develop a diet of healthy thoughts and attitudes. Just as you are educated to eat a balanced diet of proteins, carbohydrates and healthy fats, consider a diet of laughter, forgiveness and love as essential nutrients for the body, too. No one ever died from too much love or forgiveness. My Qi Gong Master, Chunyi Lin from Spring Forest Qi Gong, says "Be a Love Radiator."

Promote placebo. People who think they will get better have a significantly greater recovery rate than those who think they won’t get better. Don’t discount the value of believing a situation can get better and surround yourself with those who are happy to promote that view. I never fell victim to the belief that I could not be healed. I believed with a 100% conviction that I could and would find healing for my brain and blood flow.

Take a daily supplement of gratitude, hope and trust for all you have in your life. As Norman Cousin famously said, “Don’t deny the diagnosis — just defy the verdict that is supposed to go with it.”

Develop a community of friends who will share and support your life with you. One long-term study found people with the least social ties are two to three times more likely to get sick. Isolation and loneliness depress the immune system and can be a major health challenge when you lose a loved one. Sharing experiences and feelings can support the body to deal with what is happening.

"Take care of your body. It's the only place you have to live." - Jim Rohn.

Taking care of our physical body is an important element in caring of our whole selves. It is important to listen to our bodies when they talk to us. Pain is a signifier that something needs your attention. When the immune system is compromised it's best to give it a boost as soon as possible.

My body was trying to tell me for years that there was something seriously wrong with me. But I was always of the thinking that when an obstacle came along, it was time for me to kick into action and overcome it at any cost thus making me a better person. It wasn't until my daughter's wellbeing came into question, that I decided to stop working for her. It was only then that my body had the opportunity to really let me know that my problems were serious. Even though medical doctors were saying nothing was wrong with me; I was just over stressed and out of balance, it wasn't until I stopped working that my body had a chance to send me the messages/symptoms to alert me and my doctor to investigate further.

Along my journal to wellness, here are some of the things I learned that made the biggest difference to my healing:

1. Drink more water – regardless that others may think it a fallacy, drinking the right amount of clean water is essential to maintaining our health. We need to drink 30-35ml of water per kg of body weight, per day. For example, if you weigh 55kg, then you should drink approximately 1.7 -1.9 litres of water per day. To calculate for yourself, take your weight and divide it by 30.  This gives you how many litres you should be drinking.  The easiest way I learnt to increase my water from 1 glass a day to 2 litres a day, was to drink 3 tall glasses within the first hourof waking. That equates to 1 litre then you only have 1 litre to drink for the remainder of the day. This practice also makes it easier to avoid the waterfall effect, going to the toilet too often. Make it a practice, it works.

2. Avoid Diuretics - avoid drinking diuretics, that is, drinks that dehydrate you, such as tea, coffee, soft drinks, energy drinks and alchohol. Drink herbal teas instead. Also don't have hot baths or showers; these dehydrate you also.

3. Detox your Body - De-toxing is a process of eliminating toxins from the body and cleansing your system. This process gives your body a new lease of life and results in better sleep, waking up fresher and more energised and generally puts the bounce back into your life. I personally used a salt water flush for colon cleansing. Enemas and colonics only remove waste from the colon. A Salt Water Flush on the other hand, removes waste, including gas, from the small intestine. Also, the high quality salt used in a Salt Water flush can act as a healing agent as it works to normalize the pH throughout your entire GI tract. A healthy intestinal pH reduces the amount of bad bacteria, pathogens, viruses, and fungi that create all kinds of digestive issues. Salt Water Flushes can provide tremendous relief from digestive irritability, gas, bloating, cramping, etc. This is especially true when you do a Salt Water Flush regularly, or in scheduled sequences. It's also cheap, quick, and easy which makes it practical and doable for the average person.  http://www.yogitrition.com/salt-water-flush-for-colon-cleansing/

4. Eat natural foods – you are what you eat! Poor choice of foods (fuel) equals poor performance. Eliminate processed foods from your diet and replace them with natural foods, such as fruits and vegetables. Try to eat more raw, water rich foods. Buy organic. Go Paleo. We healed my husband's Meniere's Disease by converting to the Paleo Diet and my daughter's acne cleared up. The basic rules are: Eat unlimited amounts of saturated fats like coconut oil and butter or clarified butter. Eat generous amounts of animal protein. This includes red meat, poultry, pork, eggs, organs (liver, kidney, heart…), wild caught fish and shellfish. Preferably choose pasture-raised and grass-fed meat coming from a local, environmentally conscious farms. Eat good amounts of fresh or frozen vegetables either cooked or raw and served with fat. Eat low to moderate amounts of fruits and nuts. Try to eat mostly fruits low in sugar and high in antioxidants like berries as well as nuts high in omega-3, low in omega-6 and low in total polyunsaturated fat like macadamia nuts. Consider cutting off fruits and nuts altogether if you have an autoimmune disease, digestive problem or are trying to lose weight faster. Cut out all cereal grains and legumes from your diet. Cut out all vegetable, hydrogenated and partly-hydrogenated oils including, but not limited to, margarines, soybean oil, corn oil, crisco, peanut oil, canola oil, safflower oil and sunflower oil. Eliminate sugar, soft drinks, all packaged products and juices (including fruit juices). Eliminate dairy products other than butter and maybe heavy cream. Recipes are free on the net and are delicious.

5. Exercise – Sometimes exercising is not that easy. Sometimes the body puts up resistance. Just as you try to start something, your back goes, or your knees hurt - it seems impossible. What I found was simple exercises that built your core from within first building strength internally. Having done all of points 1-4 first is essential. Then, through Heidi, I found Dorn Therapy Exercises to build my core. Look them up on the net or visit me. Once my core was built, I was able to go walking for an hour or more. Now I've progressed to Peak 8. This is how it's done: Warm up for three minutes. Exercise as hard and fast as you can for 30 seconds. You should be gasping for breath and feel like you couldn't possibly go on another few seconds. Recover for 90 seconds, still moving, but at a slower decreased pace. Repeat the high intensity exercise and recovery 7 more times. Most people experience: decrease in body fat, improved muscle tone, firmer skin and reduced wrinkles, increase in energy and sexual desire, improved athletic speed and performance, ability to achieve your fitness goals much faster.

6. Have Fun! Play, Laugh! – life is for living, create a menu of different things that you love to do – ranging from simple things like sit in the garden and read a book through to your favourite days/nights out with friends and family and, of course, holidays. Plan these fun things into your work/life every week. Research suggests if you have a close friend who lives within 5 minutes of you, your happiness rises. So stay connected.

   Heart

     Engaging the Heart

   Soul

     Enriching the Soul

"The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched, they must be felt with the heart.” - Helen Keller.

Protect the heart. Every word you utter, every emotion you feel, enters directly into your heart. As I said previously, my Qi Gong Master, Chunyi Lin from Springforest Qi Gong says "Be a Love Radiator". The heart is such an amazing organ. The heart pumps the blood that keeps us alive. The heart is our emotional centre. Whether we aware of it or not, the heart is truly a key player in every aspect of our lives. Research by the Heart Math Institute and others has found that the heart is "a highly complex, self-organised information processing centre with its own functional 'brain' that communicates with and influences the cranial brain. These influences profoundly affect brain function and most of the body's major organs, and ultimately determine the quality of life." Gandhi said, “Love is the most powerful force the world possesses.”

Through our heart we feel our emotions. Emotions are the root cause of almost every injury and illness. Anger, fear, unworthiness and other emotions get ‘stuffed’ into the body, and over time these limiting emotions weaken the physical body creating stiffness, aches, pain and general discomfort, which eventually can cause more serious conditions like tumors and cancer. Head colds for instance, are a direct result of emotional confusion while a toxic liver motivates anger.

In the allopathic and 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 is telling us that we are ignoring some part of self and change is necessary. While many factors contribute to healing ignoring the mental, emotional or spiritual bodies would not provide adequate and long-term good health. I most certanly learnt this by prolonging investigations into my symptoms and by eventually gaining control of my emotions so as not to affect my body physically. I have learnt that emotions are the foundation on which we build our life. Get control of them and you get control of your life. Once I changed my thoughts, I changed my life. And you can too.

“You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.” - Woodrow T. Wilson

Phone: 0411 703 109

"Every moment and every event of every person's life on earth plants something in their soul." - Thomas Merton. 

There is no scientific definition or explanation for the soul. It has been said, however, to be known for the following:

• Saving us from impending danger through intuition

• Healing illness through 'Divine Intervention'

• Storing good and bad karma from all lifetimes

• Giving us soul wisdom, making certain people appear more evolved or enlightened

• Guiding us through life experiences that serve to teach us in some way.

Until you experience it, Divine Interventions and inituition can seem like an abstract concept that only gurus can achieve. It's really not that way at all. I found in my journey, that once you have an awakening or experience enlightenment in some form, your intuition and Universal messages are heightened. The more you become aware and opened to it, Universal messages, synchronicities, your intuition, so called "coincidences" occur on a much more frequent basis.

What exactly is intuition? I believe it is how our soul communicates with us. It is an essential part of balancing the body, mind and soul because it guides us to do things that are in our best interests. What I've learnt is that when I listen to my intuition, I receive Universal messages more frequently and I am guided through life with more ease and grace. Before hearing the voice of my soul, life was unnecessarily difficult and confusing. One effective way to strengthen intuition is to be guided by what makes you feel good. It sounds impossibly simple but the soul communicates by triggering emotions - good or bad. When we are going in the right direction according to our soul's plan, we are happy and content. When we are not doing something that is in our 'highest good' (that is, when the soul 'approves') life is a struggle and doesn't feel good at all. Without intuition, we struggle to find harmony in our body, mind and soul.

I truly believe that my illness was a Divine Intervention. I also believe meeting my spiritual and healing mentors Heidi Hirschy, Kylie Webster and Ronelle Coburn were Divine Interventions. I am now following my soul's purpose and I am learning to balance, mind, body, heart, soul and life. May your life become ever richer and fuller as you move with greater purpose, focus, and intention through each of your days.  If you feel inclined, join me.