*** The 1-2-3-4 of Overcoming Addiction, Obesity and Disease

Can you imagine a world without addiction, obesity and disease? If so, you may also wonder why, with our advanced medical systems, we are unable to improve the relative number of people suffering from these conditions.

In this short article, I will overview what may be the world’s simplest, most powerful cure for addiction, obesity and other eating disorders, and disease. This knowledge will offer you seeds of wisdom. Yet like any seed, the environment for sprouting, growth and maturation ultimately determines form, function, survivability and wellbeing. I offer you the seed of the 1-2-3-4 tree of life. You are free to decide whether or not to create the environment to grow the tree of freedom from addiction, obesity and disease.

During my 25-year career as a Holistic Health Practitioner, I have come to understand that addiction, obesity and diseases are not conditions that can be “treated”. The very nature of the word “treatment” implies that someone else will render service for you - that they will fix you. If I tell you that I’ll treat you to dinner and a movie, naturally, you will assume that I’m paying for dinner and the movie!

The challenge we all face now in a society that has turned disease into BIG business is that treatment comes at a cost. If the medical professional does indeed deliver a cure, they lose the customer. If the physician delivers a “cure” without the patient's full participation as an equal partner in the process, co-dependency emerges. Because the function of an ego is to ensure a distinct individuality, to the degree that we are cured in the sense I describe above, the ego seeks to defend against that cure. As I’ve said, the ego is all about independence, which means you can’t heal or complete the development of a healthy ego until you discover your own medicine. Truthfully, the path all egos take to find the right medicine and create an authentic cure is the path of Love.

1 LOVE
In my experience working with addictions of all types, I have discovered that there is a common theme that emerges for people in an attempt to find safe love. For example, when an addict is over-eating or under-eating foods, over or under-exercising, or disrupting their ability to live life without drugs, it is VERY common that such behavior offers the addict a sense of unconditional love or freedom. The addict doesn’t have to apologize or harbor any expectations from his drug of choice other than it will satisfy a burning need within—whether it is a cigarette, a bottle of booze,or the compulsion to run one’s self into a high! An addict feels a psychological comfort through his or her drug or behavior of choice and as a consequence feels the safety that this form of love takes. Each such form of love offers levity for a while, but too much exposure will eventually burn you.

People suffering the torment of addiction, eating disorders and diseases have typically not learned how to love themselves because most often, their “love mentors” mixed pain with their love. Yet, since love is as vital to our growth and development as water is to plants and animals, we naturally seek ways to create it for ourselves. Without wise guidance and support it is very easy to find ways of loving ourselves that alter our internal biochemistry such that the love is not only short-lived, it comes with a rebound.

My first intention with all my students, clients and patients is to help them find safe love—a love where attraction does not breed repulsion. This is typically found in doing something bigger than we perceive ourselves to be. To raise healthy children that can care for themselves and contribute to society is a worthy legacy. To create products or a company that offers a needed service to others is a worthy legacy. To write a book or produce a documentary or movie that brings education, awareness or good entertainment to people is a worthy legacy. A legacy doesn’t bite back to the very degree that it is truly a legacy. Your legacy is your Love in action and this Love is the very levity needed to lift the addict off the bottom, to motivate a change in eating behavior, or to be willing to balance oneself so that the internal environment is resistant to disease.

2 Forces to BALANCE
I teach my clients and students that Love is like a code. Decoded, Love looks like this:

L = Desire = positive polarity = yin = the female force
O = Zero = neutral polarity = without condition
Ve = Will = negative polarity = yang = the male force.

Here we see that what attracts us to the opposite sex is the polarity of Love. All the elements in the periodic table have atomic weight and charge, or polarity. Chemistry is based on laws of attraction and repulsion. This is what it means when we have chemistry in relationships. Good chemistry draws you in and bad chemistry repulses you. When the charge we carry in relationship to ourselves and others is in balance, life flows smoothly. This result is vibrant health.

In my 1~2~3~4 for overcoming Addictions, Obesity and Disease program, I guide each individual through a careful self-assessment that helps them see clearly where their female/desire/yin and male/will/yang energies have become imbalanced and destructive. Once we identify the root of such imbalances, it is time to make choices.

3 CHOICES
Life can’t exist without relationships, for life itself is the expression of Spirit. Spirit is the movement of life-force created by the polarities of yin and yang. Since Spirit itself is the expression of the cyclic relationship of yin becoming yang, and yang becoming yin, we can only know life as relationships. For example, we have relationships with earth, water, fire and air, and we come into life by way of a parental relationship.

That said, the way in which we participate in any relationship comes by way of choices. You can choose to eat good food, or garbage food. You can choose to exercise, or not. In general, the choices we all have are:

1. The Optimal: Optimal choices are always the ones that produce the best outcome for everyone involved.

2. The Suboptimal: Suboptimal choices often produce what we want, but create friction in relationships with others. They are still useful choices because they produce life experience, which is necessary if we are to evolve.

3. Indifference: Indifference is essentially choosing to do nothing. Doing nothing is typically the worst choice we can make because it halts evolution. It is like hitting the pause button on your DVD player—everything stops.

Overcoming addictions, eating disorders or diseases is all about choices. Once we’ve found our Love, our dream, we have levity. With levity, we are willing to balance ourselves so that we can complete our legacy. Our desire to fulfill our legacy is what makes us willing to move past the unhealthy safe love behind our addictions and to consider others in relationships. This is how we decide what is, and what is not, an optimal choice.

4 DOCTORS
In the 1~2~3~4 program I divide the major functional categories of the life process into four domains, which I identify as the 4 doctors. They are:

1. Dr. Quiet: Dr. Quiet is the chief physician and oversees the realm of rest, sleep and introspection. Dr. Quiet is the chief anabolic (tissue building) physician and without adequate attention to your needs for Dr. Quiet, you are highly unlikely to cultivate positive health or wellbeing.

2. Dr. Diet: is second in charge when it comes to the anabolic or healing processes that support life. Dr. Diet’s chief message is that you are what you eat. Only when your food optimally supports life can you truly be alive.

3. Dr. Happiness: Dr. Happiness oversees your motivation and energy use. Until you have a good relationship with Dr. Happiness, you can’t know what happiness is or what it looks and feels like. When people don’t clearly define what happiness is for themselves, they spend their life looking without knowing what they are looking for. In the 1~2~3~4 program, we get clear on what your core values are so that you can channel your energy into what you want. This is essential to both supporting your legacy, and finding it!

4. Dr. Movement: Spirit is the domain of Dr. Movement. Without Spirit, nothing moves. Since life is movement, you must learn to understand how much physical, emotional, mental and spiritual movement serves you. This is delineated when you identify and live by your core values. Your core values state your desires, while Dr. Movement expresses your will.

These Four Doctors are part of us. We've simply forgotten how to hear them. All we need do is learn to hear them and their advice in our daily lives and we aren't far from wellbeing.

1-2-3-4 Together
The 1-2-34 system is simple at heart. Identify your Love, know what you truly need to balance in your life, recognize what choices need to be made, and listen to your Four Doctors. Once you have levity by following your Love, you can overcome your gravity - your challenge. Learning how to take consult with Your 4 Doctors will give you the tools you need for self-empowerment, for freedom from addiction, eating disorders and disease.