Meditation is one of the best energetic tools for self healing, as it allows us access to the  inner beauty that lies in the depths of all of us, that is the source of the most potent healing energy. It is the experience of these inner qualities of peace, love, happiness, purity and truth that begins to heal us at a profound level and as it does so it works from the centre to the outside.

It is the conscious practice of incorporating these qualities into my life through the thoughts I habitually think, the words I speak and the things I do, that creates a balance once again.

From experience in the use of traditional acupuncture, it can be seen that there is a direct connection between, for instance the emotion of anger and disturbances in the pathways of energy of the liver and gall bladder meridians.

These in turn have an affect on our ability to plan and to make wise decisions and judgements. If there is anger these abilities are impaired and wrong or snap decisions are made on impulse rather than reasoning. Anger can give rise to symptoms such as high blood pressure, stroke or severe migraines.

The liver and gall bladder meridians have a powerful connection with ligaments and tendons and so there may be signs such as varying severity of muscle pain and spasm, back problems or inflammation of muscle and tissue. Remember the tight hunched shoulders we experience when we get wound up?

The core quality that is the antidote to anger is peace.  In order to ‘see’ and plan, make good decisions and carry them out we need inner peace – no turmoil. When we are peaceful, we are easy on ourselves, more tolerant and light. Everything can flow smoothly and easily including our emotions, blood circulation and digestion.

It is interesting, and helpful to know which core qualities are antidotes to our negative emotional states because they will begin to heal us in a very profound and noticeable way. They are the source of our healing energy.

How can we access them and direct their flow?

The key to this is the power of our own thoughts and the method of access is meditation. This word ‘meditation’ has the same root as ‘medication’ and means to heal the self from inside. It is in moments of stillness that we can do this most effectively.

The power of our thoughts can never be under-estimated. It is awesome! Thoughts are like seeds that we plant in the fertile soil of our minds. If well tended, they will take root and grow. For this reason we need to be careful what kind of thoughts we nurture in the nursery of our minds! If they are positive, peaceful and harmonious, then the magic of the mind begins to produce harmonious situations and everything seems to happen as if a fairy has waved a magic wand. 

If my thoughts are habitually negative, complaining or angry then it is as if there is some mischievous devil at work. Nothing seems to go right; there is one catastrophe after another and problems arise. I can never really relax as I am wondering what else is going to go wrong.

Think and it shall be so! It is our inner world of thoughts and feelings that create our outer world. Most people stay focussed on what is happening in the outside world, but the wise will look inwards and create an inner world of harmony based on our core qualities and their outer life will reflect this.

I am sure you have met people who always seem ‘lucky’ without having to put in a lot of effort. Lady Luck is on their side and everything always turns out well for them. And yet, there are others who seem to be blighted by bad luck. The answer lies in their thought patterns and processes. We can transform our lives by understanding the Law at work here. The Law is that my thoughts are the cause and outer conditions are the effect. As you sow, so you will reap.

Instead of trying to work to change the effect, if we change our minds and reprogram our subconscious then we can transform our lives. This is the magic of thought. By this means we can change poverty into abundance, illness into health, fear into confidence.

If I believe myself to be an ill person, I am powerfully programming my subconscious to create this state. If I go to sleep at night with thoughts of being healthy and strong my subconscious will believe me and start to bring it about. If I go to sleep feeling miserable, I will wake up feeling…. you guessed it – miserable. Take charge of your thoughts. You are their master.

Meditation is the key to self-transformation. Through the right kind of meditation we come to experience the healing power of our pure qualities and feel them bringing lightness and balance to both our bodies and our lives.

How do we stay healthy?

“You remain healthy by maintaining a diet of pure feelings, good wishes and positive thoughts.” Bapdada.

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Our Identity Crisis

At the centre of my spirit there is a pure and powerful core of unimaginable beauty filled with innate goodness, natural peace, happiness, love and truth. We catch glimpses of them but they are elusive.

Although I long to be happy, healthy and prosperous I have forgotten how to access the treasure store that is within me, where all of these lie waiting discovery. No, we look outside and seem to be on an eternal quest to find happiness through outer relationships and distractions. It is when I forget who I am as a spiritual being and think myself to be physical, that the patterns of disease begin to take shape.

I become engrossed in the roles I play and try to seek fulfilment through them, but it is only temporary. Who am I? This reminds me of a letter once sent to me which began -

“Mrs. Helen Wall – Chairman, Chief Executive, Managing Director, Finance Director, I.T. Manager, Marketing Director, Transport Manager, Project Manager, Company Secretary, Advertising Manager, Personal Assistant, Receptionist, Tea Lady, and Office Cleaner!”

Which role am I, or none of them? Who is the real me behind these roles? If we just check through an average day in our own lives, we see that we wear many hats and play many roles.

Activity and doing more and more obsess us, but is it bringing us happiness? We are too action orientated. We fill our lives with ceaseless activity, always on the ‘go’. Some of us find it hard to relax because we are so wound up for action. If we sit down, we feel guilty and look around or think about all the outstanding jobs that always seem to be waiting in the wings. We are in perpetual motion. This is where our lives become very unbalanced.

Our most valuable moments can be when we are still. It is then that we are conserving and accumulating energy. We may even receive insights from our inner wisdom when the mind is quiet. It is at such times that we can connect with our most powerful resources of healing energy.

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What Is The Connection Between

Body And Soul?

One of the very first holistic health realities I need to get to grips with is  understanding who I am. As human beings there are two aspects to us. These are that I am a spiritual being living inside this physical body. It is through the vehicle of this body that I am able to express myself and it is through the 5 senses of the body – seeing, hearing, smelling, touching and tasting that I receive information about the world around me.

Although soul and body are two distinct energies, they are intimately linked. It is when I become confused as to which I am, that the vital life force (chi), the natural energy of my being, becomes disturbed and distorted and results in illness.

This chi energy flows through subtle channels or meridians which form a network throughout the body, similar but different to the networks of nerves and blood vessels. These meridians are like a connecting interface between I, the spiritual being and the body. When I am happy and healthy in spirit and mind, then the chi flows smoothly and its quality is good and this communicates wellbeing to my body. The body mirrors my internal state.

The desperate need of our times is to live deeply from the understanding that I am the living energy that drives the body and that I am not the vehicle of the body. This is a major mistake we have all unwittingly made that has paved the way for a lot of our suffering and problems.

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Discover The Reality Of Disease

‘Dis-ease’ meaning lack of ease or harmonious functioning. Behind the many signs/ symptoms of disease lies a state where order degenerates into some degree of chaos or malfunction. In extreme cases, the natural balance of constructive and destructive forces has been lost and communication between the parts breaks down. Peace and order are replaced by a condition akin to war.

The ancient Chinese have recognised for thousands of years that there are 3 main causes of imbalance and disease that undermine our health.

EXTERNAL - wind, cold, heat, humidity, dryness, damp, fire
INTERNAL - anger, fear, over-excitement, anxiety, grief, worry and other constitutional weaknesses.
MISCELLANEOUS - trauma, poisoning, accident, chemical injury, radiation, infectious diseases, etc.

Our health in the 21st. century is being undermined, on the one hand by poor nutrition from over-processed and junk foods, together with environmental pollution and on the other hand, by negative, emotional and mental states, especially if intense or sustained over a long period of time. Increasingly, it is these internal causes that are playing a large part in creating disease patterns.

We can look at illness in a negative way where we experience it as suffering and may even ask “Why is this happening to me?”. Or we can look at it as a gift and an opportunity to discover things about myself.

Our bodies can be our wisest teachers. They speak to us through their symptoms giving us a message that we need to change. This may mean changes in lifestyle, diet, mental outlook or finding the roots of distressing emotional states and letting go of old negative patterns.

“All disease originates in the mind. Nothing appears on the body unless there is a mental pattern corresponding to it.”

(Dr. Joseph Murphy – “The Power of your Subconscious Mind”)

Here are just give three examples of ways in which our bodies send us messages.

• Stiff joints restrict our freedom of movement and possibly indicate that we have become rigid and inflexible in our thinking or attitude towards something or someone. We may have a critical or judgemental outlook or we are holding onto old patterns or bottling up our feelings. If there is inflammation as well this may indicate anger, irritation or frustration. What is working me up or making me hot? Is it that I need to be more forgiving or accepting?

• Coughing is a way of clearing the throat or lungs of some irritation. Do I need to let go of something? Coughing may be an expression of grief. Or am I being asked to accept something I do not want to?

• Athlete’s Foot This is a itching and sore fungal infection between the toes. What is its message? Am I walking in the right direction in my life? Is something or someone getting under my skin?

(Read “Your Body Speaks Your Mind” by Debbie Shapiro)

Illness has a habit of stopping us in our tracks. We may have to take time off from work. It often forces us to take stock of our lives. It gives us timeout to be quiet and go within, to rest and retreat from the hurly-burly of busy lives. In the enforced rest it can make us re-evaluate what we are doing.

It is nature’s wise and wonderful way of pulling us up sharp and saying “ Hey! Where are you going?” She will put us on our backs for a day or two or however long it takes us to figure it out. We are forced to be quiet and look within for answers. It is only then, that we ever allow our inner wisdom to have a say and guide us as to what we need to change, so that we recover and learn the salutary lesson inherent in the illness. Even then, it is only if we are ready to listen.

A common cold and its associated symptoms are a wonderful way for the body to rid itself of toxic build-up in the tissues, whether from dietary intake or negative emotions. But what do we do? We go for the painkillers and the antibiotics to be rid of the inconvenient symptoms as fast as possible! If we have a temperature we want to bring it down as soon as we can so we can carry on with our lives. And we are missing the message completely.

When we suppress minor ailments we are preventing the body detoxifying itself and so we are storing up problems for ourselves in the future. The fire of the fever would have burnt out the infection and internal rubbish. If we had not taken the antibiotics we would not be weakening our immune system that is intended to protect us most of the time, if we keep it strong.

The unheard message that we need to change will call us to listen in a more forceful way through an illness that has gone deeper, if we ignore it.

I am not advocating that we should not take medication, only that we should use it wisely to assist rather than suppress.

“Disease occurs when consciousness is unable to purify itself through the release of these lower frequencies. ” Inner Focus School.

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A well accepted definition of holistic health is a state of wholeness and balance between the soul and the body.

As the World Health Organisation defines health, it is:

“A state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease.”

When we are healthy in the fullest sense, there is a natural and dynamic flow of life energy through our entire being on the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual levels. There is movement and an easy transition between different emotions and feelings.

It is when we become stuck in an emotion that our life force (chi) begins to stagnate and we resist change and transformation. We are no longer flowing and easy with life.

Our life force is a subtle and vital energy that flows through pathways called meridians and acts like an interface of exchanging energies between the energy of the soul and that of the body. This is affected by our internal state and its emotions, as well as by our external environment.

When there is harmony, all parts are united together for the benefit of the whole. Each part affects every other part, contributing its energy and purpose to the wellbeing of the whole.

When there is real health, we are able to live fully in the present, neither in the past nor the future, but in the ‘now’.  We are able to adjust and adapt to changing situations and yet remain stable. Like riding the waves of life, we can respond positively while making constructive choices, seeing every situation as an opportunity for growth. We have respect for ourselves, our bodies, others around us and for the universe. Our choices are made accordingly. There is the feeling that we are a valuable part of the continuum of life.

It is important to be aware that there are three principles at work in life, which are those of creation, sustenance and destruction and that each of these is valuable and necessary to the integrity of life. We are born, we live and we die. Health is about maintaining a balance between the duality of construction and destruction.

It is amazing just how healthy we generally remain. Nature has an enormous capacity to return to a balanced state and will do all it can to maintain it. Physically, our bodies are continually repairing themselves. We take it for granted that cuts, bruises, sprains, colds and infections will be taken care of, and they usually are. Even when we experience temporary anxiety, fear, and worry or anger we cope and overcome these.

To experience ourselves to be whole and healthy we need tune into the requirements, not only of the body but also of the soul. We need to know ourselves very well and to be deeply connected to the inner beauty that lies at our core.  Then we are able to express our highest potential through a body that serves us as a finely tuned instrument, for which we have deep respect.

Healing is the journey towards this state of wholeness of body and soul and is one definition of holistic health.

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