I can’t promise perfect health any more than I could promise a life without problems. That’s not what life seems to be about. Instead, I am offering you another way to look at your health, and your life, that takes you out of helpless victim mode and reminds you that you are in charge.
We really ought to stop thinking of illness as an enemy, and start thinking of it instead as a messenger.
A few years ago I had dinner with a man who three years previously had been dying of AIDS and now was well. What was his secret? Simply this. Rather than fight the illness or regard it as something that had inexplicably entered his life as an invader, he fully accepted it as a message from life itself. He accepted it as something that was part of the pattern of this life, something that had a right to be there. Taking this idea seriously, he examined his life, made the changes the disease suggested, and at some point, apparently, the disease was no longer needed, and went away.
Conditions I Deal With In My Life
All right, let’s move on to specifics. Here is a list of a few of the conditions I deal with in my life, followed by a list of some of the tools that have helped. I know this it is “all about me,” and I apologize, but this is what I know first-hand. I put it here assuming that you will read it with an eye toward finding whatever may be here for you.
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1. Asthma
2. Eye problems
3. Blood sugar
4. Heart problems
5. Etcetera
Beyond these problems I have the usual irritations we all have. Nothing really worth mentioning, because none is life-threatening or even particularly serious. So let us turn to an examination of various remedies I have found, some of which you may wish to explore.
A List of the Things That Have Helped Me
Here I list the things that have helped me, listing only those things of which I have personal experience. What I omit (conscious breathing, for instance) may easily be of equal or greater importance to you. Finding them is your business. Take this as a reminder to search.
1. Access Upstairs
I’d put this one first and foremost. A mighty big advantage. For instance, I have had to learn to overcome depression of spirit. The easiest, most effective way to do it is to remember that we are more than our physical bodies—and the way to keep that real to ourselves is to maintain access Upstairs.
To adequately discuss talking to “the Guys Upstairs” would bring us a long way from the topic at hand. To put it in a nutshell: over the years I have developed access to an internal source of guidance. I don’t “hear voices,” or go into trance. The process is more like getting into a highly receptive state and saying whatever comes to mind. For all I know, it may be simply a means of bypassing the limitations of the conscious mind and tapping into deeper resources. It seems to be a natural human ability, available to all who trouble to develop it. I know dozens, if not scores, of people who do it equally routinely.
2. Attention
I have found that I can help my body readjust itself simply by paying attention to it. For instance, sometimes, when I remember to, I scan my body before rising. If I find this or that muscle aching. I move my attention to that place and it changes, it adjusts, apparently just because I have my attention on it. This “working from the inside”—though too simple to say, almost—really has the core of something important.
Slowly, over time, I have been listening, and moderating. I read of someone who learned to ask the body what it really wanted, as opposed to what we assumed that it wanted, from habit and what we might call manufactured appetite. I do that, when I remember to do it, and when I am not deafened by an internal clamoring for something like bread or potatoes.
3. Awareness hands (a tool of visualization)
Visualizing your energy body as a copy of your physical body, use that body’s “awareness hands.” Try using them to massage some part of the body that aches. I sometimes use them in the third eye area, trying to stimulate mental or psychic activity. Think of them as a way of visualizing exactly the result you want. In other words, if you want a given muscle to relax, visualize your energy hands, your awareness hands, smoothing it out. Experiment!
4. Control panel (a tool of visualization)
This is a big one, for me. I first heard of the concept at a conference. Someone asked legendary psychic Ingo Swann how we go about changing things we wanted to change about ourselves. “Just go to your control panel,” he said in essence, “and change it.” In other words, visualize a control panel; visualize a particular control within it, and move it to whatever setting you want it to be at. This simple, elegant visualization gives you an effective visual way to convey your desires to your unconscious mind.
Whatever you want to change, try changing it from the control panel. If you have a physical problem, visualize the switch for that problem and move it. Set it to zero if you can. If you can’t, get it lower anyway, and repeatedly go back to lower it more. Monitor your life, lest massive changes happen and you not even notice!
Does this sound too easy? All I can say is, try it. It’s your life, and you get to choose from within whatever situation you find yourself in. It is true, the situation may be set up at birth, and may change seemingly in response to external events. Your mental, emotional, and physical filters may obstruct response to your changing pre-set positions. But this is one of those cases where perseverance is all. Determine what you want to be, and continually, consistently make the same choices, and you will get there.
5. Diet
Diet is an easy way of removing obstacles on the body end of the body-mind polarity that determines our health. As one example, I substituted coconut milk for cow’s milk, and my health improved markedly. I still eat cheese and other dairy products, but the elimination of cow’s milk has made a big difference. You may find that some experimentation in diet pays big dividends. (Just don’t go off the deep end. We weren’t created to be slaves to fad diets.)
6. Ear-candling
Now, here’s one that really sounds wacko, yet works. You need to find someone who knows what they’re doing. The practitioner positions, at the edge of your ear canal, a funnel made of beeswax, and sets it on fire! The heat of the fire melts hardened ear wax and draws it up where it deposits on the funnel. Sounds crazy as hell, but it works like a charm.
7. Exercise
I admit it, I’m not much for exercise. Walking and canoeing are about the only forms of exercise I thoroughly approve of. Nonetheless, it is obvious that these bodies were made to be used, and function best when they receive the kind of maintenance provided, for example, by the lymph system, which exercise assists. Do as I say, not as I do.
8. Fasting
The first time that I heard my brother describing the benefits he derived from occasional fasting, perhaps twenty-five years ago, something went “click” and I knew I’d have to try that. Sometimes I fasted looking for mental clarity, other times for weight loss, usually for both. Both these results I usually got, but in both cases the results are fleeting unless backed up by a change in physical or mental life-style.
9. Medical massage
This is a powerful tool, removing problems from the physical end of the mind-body connection. Find a really good medical massage therapist. We’re not talking about relaxation here, but correction of physical problems that express—and contribute to—mental and emotional problems. This has been perhaps the most important non-emergency professional technique I have benefited from.
10. Meditation
Although I primarily use The Waters of Life and Health meditation to clear physical and energetic blockages, it occurred to me one day to try it as a way of clearing the sources of emotional problems with others. You might try that.
11. Resonant energy balloon (a tool of visualization)
This is one of those infinitely useful Monroe Institute tools that harness the conscious mind with the subconscious. Visualize yourself creating a balloon of energy around yourself, and give it whatever properties you prefer. It is a tool of visualization, and so you might think of it as a way to manifest magic (via the subconscious mind).
I once suggested to an allergy-ridden friend that she pop a continuing resonant energy balloon against the ill effects of any food. What is it, after all, but a comprehensible sign to the subconscious mind to be on the alert? Experiment.
12. Rest
When I get sick (assuming it is not asthma, which makes obtaining rest almost impossible) my preferred remedy is not medicine but water, warmth, and rest. In other words, I drink water and go to bed and try to stay there till my body recovers. If you’ve never tried this, you may be amazed how well it works, and how surely.
13. Ritual
Ritual can be used to recollect us to ourselves. For example, here is a simple ritual that could change your life. Breathe, consciously, five minutes a day or so, at a fixed time. Another example. Trying to get a handle on eating more consciously? Create a ritual—perhaps merely saying a grace—before eating.
14. Water
Like rest,simple and easy to overlook, because nobody is making any money on it. Buy a filtering device, filter your water and keep it in the refrigerator and drink from it, rather than from the tap, unless you are in a rural area with good water. Most of our body is water. Water smooths all bodily functions. It helps process toxins released by exercise, it helps you ground new states of being, and it just generally assists the body to function smoothly. You can’t buy anything to equal it.
15. Vitamins and minerals
A friend who is an ENT doctor told me that most of his asthmatic patients are low on magnesium and D3. Ever since he told me that, I have made a point of taking one of each in the morning, and it does seem to help.
You may find that your body needs more of a certain vitamin or mineral than it gets naturally. Consider being tested for those needs. Not a magic bullet, but it’s always worthwhile to remember to work from both ends of the body-mind connection.
16. Yoga
We often store negativity in the body, hiding it from the mind, or rather averting our gaze. But negative energy is a fact of life like positive energy. You can’t have one without having both. The trick is to bring yourself into balance, recognizing that light and dark are both part of one whole. Instead of trying to make reality one-sided, which it can never be, instead of denying or rejecting the negative, absorb and release it. Yoga is a good way to learn to do this.
©2014 by Frank DeMarco. All Rights Reserved.
Reprinted with permission. Publisher: Rainbow Ridge Books.
Article Source:
Imagine Yourself Well: A Practical Guide to Using Visualization to Improve Your Health and Your Life
by Frank DeMarco.
Click here for more info and/or to order this book.
About the Author
Frank DeMarco was co-founder of Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc., and for 16 years was Chief Editor. He is the author of five non-fiction books (Muddy Tracks; Chasing Smallwood, The Sphere and the Hologram; The Cosmic Internet; and Afterlife Conversations with Hemingway), and two novels (Messenger: A Sequel to Lost Horizon, and Babe in the Woods).
Listen to an interview with Frank DeMarco: Connecting With the Other Side
