Empowerment is not just about confidence and speaking up or taking risks. It’s really all-inclusive – relationships, finance/career and health. Integrative empowerment involves spirit, mind and body. One of the reasons we struggle throughout life is that we are taught to compartmentalize ourselves.
There is too often a disconnect between how we really feel and what we do, or what we say. We talk about “pursuit of happiness” yet, when we or others attempt to come from an inner place of authenticity, if it does not fit inside of a narrow little box, there is not uncommonly, shame, guilt or blame heaped upon the one who finds a little courage to venture outside the “accepted” behavior for the group they currently associate with.
Well, I think it’s time to talk about how these dynamic impacts in a negative way everything from your health and aging, to whether or not you die with your joy and happiness locked deep inside of you. Over the many years I spent practicing medicine, I found that the people who were happiest, healthier and had the happier relationships tended to be open-minded, less concerned about what others thought of them and more likely to have a sense of humor or playfulness.
When we think that acting like an “adult” means that we have to be “serious”, or that to be successful we have to “work hard” or that health comes from focusing on avoiding being sick – we disempower ourselves in all of these areas. These are just common myths, common beliefs.
Emotion is something that is in your best interest to get acquainted with and stop fearing. Considering that emotions carries 5,000 times more magnetic energy than thought alone (visit HeartMath.org for more info), it is nothing to play around with and ignore if you want to optimize your health – mentally as well as physically.
Emotions play a major role in the state of your health. For example, hypertension is “life under pressure” or high tension. Stress, which is attributed to be the underlying reason for 75-90% of all primary care visits, is an emotional disease. When you feel stress, you are triggering the fear response in your body and it is typically psychological, as we don’t often have physical threat on a daily basis.
Today it snowed again in Chicago, and I could either whine and complain about it, and feel helpless to change it, or I could intend to find the beauty in it, which is what I consciously choose to do. This is always a choice. The challenge is slowing down enough to become aware of your thought pattern and then reset your default dial.
If you have a habit of focusing on what you do not like, you will raise your risk of all sorts of chronic disease. This is also why I choose not to believe in a “cold and flu season”. What is that? Last I checked there were only four seasons, winter spring, summer and fall. Every since I stopped believing in and expecting a season to catch cold, I very rarely even have one.
Stress is epidemic these days. What is stress? First let me say that stress in general is an emotional “dis-ease”. You are not at ease when you feel stressed out and the reason is based in feelings of overwhelm.
When one is overwhelmed, she or he is not feeling very empowered. Feeling stress then is to feel disempowered. Now this is certainly not something that is in our best interest. When you are stressed, you are feeling threatened and this is a mind/brain response whether the perceived threat is real, meaning physical threat or psychological.
If your life is in danger, the stress response can help you to run faster, fight stronger or, for better or for worse – freeze. Other than physical escape, the response can interfere with your performance.
If you were meeting a deadline, enthusiasm or excitement would serve you better than getting yourself all worked up about last minute preparedness. The main thing to consider about stress is to understand that it is also very dangerous to your health.
Sure, overwhelm is unpleasant, but that is the least of your concern when it comes to stress. Consider the following facts about stress:
Health is not something that can be obtained only by exercising, and certainly wishing and hoping that youth can be maintained by the next great anti-oxidant or energy juice is yet another self-deception. I’m all for these things as supplements to the main ingredient for health on a spirit, mind and body level – emotional health.
When we as a society stop conditioning ourselves to run and hide from feelings and emotions, we will really reform health care. In fact, it can finally move from disease care to real health maintenance. Just look at the word “disease”. You can break it down to “dis – ease, or “not at ease”.
This is the source of most of our disease. Stress is a sensation of overwhelm, and when we live in our heads to the neglect of our hearts and bodies, it’s no wonder heart disease and stiff bodies start to develop over time. It is not age that is doing it; it is the fact that negatively charged emotions that have been repressed over time takes its toll.
These emotions are hiding out in the body at a cellular level for sure and I believe also in the bio-energetic fields of the body. When I started facing my feelings and learning how to change the way I thought about emotions and feelings, I really became empowered to change my life.
Empowerment is not just about confidence and speaking up or taking risks. It’s really all-inclusive – relationships, finance/career and health. Integrative empowerment involves spirit, mind and body. One of the reasons we struggle throughout life is that we are taught to compartmentalize ourselves.
Health is not something that can be obtained only by exercising, and certainly wishing and hoping that youth can be maintained by the next great anti-oxidant or energy juice is yet another self-deception. I’m all for these things as supplements to the main ingredient for health on a spirit, mind and body level – emotional health.
