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 maximize your vitality and longevity, I’m psyched to share with you
something they never taught me in medical school.
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. As I teach in my new
book Mind
Over Medicine: Scientific Proof That You Can Heal Yourself,
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. We 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!
For
my skeptical physician mind, reading through all these case studies was 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? For
some mind-blowing stories about how positive belief can radically affect your
health, watch my TEDx talk Is There
Scientific Proof That You Can Heal Yourself?.
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?
Step
Three: Listen To Your Body & Your Intuition
Nobody
knows your body better than you, not even a doctor. We 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. When my literary agent
first read Mind Over Medicine, she said, “Lissa,
before I read this book, I honestly thought my body was none of my business.
Now I know better.”
Yes!
Your body is indeed your business. 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? For
more ideas about what might lie at the root of your illness, check out TEDx
talk The Shocking Truth About Your Health.
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.
Ready To Heal Yourself?
Are
you motivated to put each of these steps into action? Will you do what it takes
to reduce stress responses in your body and increase relaxation responses so
your body can repair itself?
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