Heal Yourself, Heal the World

Healing involves change and change requires consistently and consciously letting go of the patterns, thoughts and feelings that we are attached to. Simply put, “If you keep doing what you’re doing, you are going to keep getting what you are getting.”

So, how do we change our internal and long-ingrained habits? How do we combat the things which we know do not serve us but that, oddly enough, offer us instant gratification even though they leave us with remorse, guilt, or feelings of failure after the fact?

I offer simply this: Connect and consume the energy from the natural world around you, and this will allow you to internally shift your biological environment and connect more with your own authentic nature, which is not consumed with limiting thoughts and behavioral patterns. We literally reset our thinking by chemically and emotionally “cleaning house”.

We are by-products of what we consume, both physically and emotionally. Toxic thoughts create biological and chemical reactions that illicit toxic changes within the cells of our body.

Similarly, consuming overly processed, chemically enhanced, and nutritionally deficient “food-like” products creates overly taxed, nutritionally depleted, and unhealthy bodies that are nothing but a gateway to inflammation, weight gain, mood swings, illness and disease to list a few. We are all biologically geared to thrive on the nutrients that come from whole and earth-based foods. It goes against logic to think that foods missing nutritional energy will sustain us, and even more so to accept that we can drug ourselves into good health.

It is just as illogical to think that if we hold on to anger, remorse, stress, guilt, fear or emotional hurts that we will thrive. Our bodies hear everything our minds tell it and responds accordingly by mirroring this negativity within our physical bodies.

There is a certain vital energy in nature that allows us to simply feel better when we interact with it. Whether it is hiking in the mountains, swimming in the ocean or simply walking in a park. Somehow, our bodies innately become more peaceful when we are in natural stress-free environments because we crave these primal connections even if we can’t seem to pin-point what it is that allows for this shift to occur almost immediately.

My first suggestion to help shift the mind and allow space for positive thinking and health-geared living is to go to nature. You can make a park visit or a morning stop at the beach part of your daily routine. You can walk in your neighborhood.

My second suggestion is to create an environment that would allow you to access nature in your own home. You can save money on landscaping, grocery bills and leave a much smaller impact on the world by planting and growing herbs, and vegetables in or outside your home. There are great resources online to allow for even the smallest space indoors to work for edible gardens.

If these two suggestions don’t work, I offer you a third option which should be a part of anything you incorporate into your life as it is the most fundamental piece of creating and sustaining health. Add more plants into your diet. Vegetables, legume, fruits, tubers, beans, herbs and whole grains are part of what our bodies have evolved to use as fuel as well as a defense from our exposure to the toxins which are part of our world now. I like to think of it as not eating from a garden, but rather growing a garden within you, as that is truly what you are doing on a cellular level. Imagine the type of energy, and vibrant, positive disposition you would be creating simply by eating the energy you want to create in your life. In supporting this within your own life, simply by example, you will supporting this change in others while leaving a kinder footprint on the earth. It’s a win-win from every angle.

I want to end this with some facts which speak for themselves.

•Studies now show that vegetarians are 40% less likely to die of cancer
• Vegetarians are 10-20 pounds lighter and less likely to suffer from diabetes, high cholesterol, or heart disease than their meat eating equivalents
•Every time we eat factory raised animal products we are consuming steroids, pesticides, antibiotics, and hormones.

I encourage you to consider trying a plant-based diet , even if it’s for the short–term to see if it doesn’t make an impact after 30 days. The real measure of something’s worth has to be felt, so give yourself the gift of letting go of what you know, and allow yourself to feel the changes within.