Your body is a living, dynamic organism that is constantly doing the work of repairing and rebuilding.
Your mind, body and spirit are always seeking to thrive.
Your body knows what to do, and that’s the key to understanding self-healing.
There was a time when I thought that I could do everything that was needed to heal myself. I have a chronic condition that I have wanted to heal for many decades.
I thought I could care for my body and care for my frame of mind, my mindset, think positive thoughts, ask for what I needed, do what I thought I knew how to do and I would heal. But I discovered that there's more to it than that.
In her book, “Mind Over Medicine, Scientific Proof that You Can Heal Yourself”, author Lissa Rankin MD, states of her research: “the data suggests that your body can heal itself, but it does so much more effectively when the process is facilitated by the right kinds of healers who support the body’s self-healing process. These may include doctors and nurses, but they may also include therapists, acupuncturists, energy healers, naturopaths, shamans, and many other modalities of healing practitioners.”
Throughout history, ancient cultures understood the power of the body to heal itself, but somewhere in modern times we became reliant on others to know what’s best for our body and to heal it. This of course never happens. Instead we rely on the management of symptoms with medications in the most part.
Anxiety for example, is a prevalent condition today. Anxiety is typically treated with medication so that productivity is not interrupted, enabling you to work, or perform your role as a parent, but anxiety doesn’t go away when the symptoms are managed with medications. Instead, the source of that anxiety is buried deeper into our subconscious so that we don't have to look at it so often.
Untreated anxiety will do what every other condition does if left unresolved. It will lead to physical disease in your body. Your body can heal your anxiety condition (or any other condition) but here’s a sample of what it needs to accomplish that task.
WHAT YOUR BODY NEEDS TO ENABLE SELF-HEALING
Your diet, and exercise need to be appropriate for your age, weight and occupation.
The air you breathe and the water you drink need to be of a good quality.
An understanding of your biology to know where anxiety (or any other emotion) is residing in your body, and how to release it from that place is essential to healing.
The story that created the disturbance needs to be available to your conscious mind so that you can make sense of it, observe it and release it.
Other events, circumstances and situations that have compounded the disturbance need to be available to your conscious mind so that all the threads are brought together for release.
Environmental factors that contribute to the condition need to be brought to the attention of your conscious mind so that you can become aware of what is helpful or harmful.
Your organs and glands, bones and all other body parts need to be positioned well in your body to perform their functions. An example might be that the spleen and stomach contribute the energy of “thinking” and “synthesising information and life”. When that energy is disturbed because perhaps the organs themselves have been skewed or dysfunctional for some reason, we see “worry” become a dominant emotion.
Awareness of the natural consciousness of each body component, and the ability to discern when that consciousness has been disturbed. Did you know that each body part has it’s own awareness of its role in the body? This we refer to as the body consciousness or body psychology.
A positive outlook and a contented disposition – the “feel good” vibration needs to be your default emotion. Your default emotion is the one that you mostly experience. Your long held and ill-serving beliefs can be interfering with your ability to achieve the “feel good" healing vibration.
The desire to seek and find solutions to support and sustain your health and well-being.
All of the above taken into consideration create the most important requirement for the body to heal itself - the environment that supports our body's impulse to thrive.
An optimal environment creates a calming influence by reducing the stresses on the central nervous system and in particular the amygdala region of the brain. This seems to have a marked effect on the ability of the body to heal itself.
THE VAGAL NERVE RESPONSE
Add to that, research suggests that in Western cultures, the tone of the vagus nerve which feeds all the organs of the body and is responsible for the parasympathetic nervous response, or calming response, is way too low to do it’s job effectively. This means that the body, including the internal organs, is almost always in a state of increased agitation, the sympathetic nervous response, or the fight or flight response, aka the stress response.
Studies have found many health problems related to stress. Stress seems to worsen or increase the risk of conditions like obesity, heart disease, Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, depression, gastrointestinal problems, and asthma.
"People who have high vagus nerve activation in a resting state, we have found, are prone to feeling emotions that promote altruism—compassion, gratitude, love and happiness." - Scientific America
By calming the nervous system we are in turn calming the endocrine system responsible for the hormones pumped into our body, the immune system responsible for recognising and dealing with invaders and malformed cells, the digestive system responsible for the intake of nutrients into our body, the circulatory system responsible for the circulation of the all important oxygen and nutrients to every cell in our body, and many, many more processes.
By providing a thriving environment for all the body’s processes we are assisting our body in its self-healing journey.