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Improved Health Through Honoring Our Feelings
Extensive scientific research in the field
Psychoneuroimmunology has successfully proven that fun and laughter
are dramatically potent healing techniques. Your quest for improved
health lies in recognizing your body–mind connection, meaning
that you already have the capability to enjoy optimal health. The
miraculous benefits are two-fold: become conscious of more happiness
in your life while you experience relief from physical ailments
and discomfort.
I was researching for my dissertation
topic, "Laughter, Enthusiasm and Joy as Healing Modalities,"
when I first became aware of a new word that didn’t exactly
roll off my tongue. It wasn’t in the dictionary, and it’s
still not recognized by the thesaurus program on my computer. During
a personal interview with the late Norman Cousins in his office
at UCLA, I soon learned its meaning. Psychoneuroimmunology
is the study of the direct correlation between stress and the functioning
of the physical body, including the immune system. Since it is easy
to understand how powerful emotions can be referred to as stressors,
the next obvious step is to correlate feelings and health. Norman
Cousins was one of the first that introduced living proof that laughter
and a joyful heart, as well as anger and fear, influence our health.
I am grateful for the contribution he made to my project and for
the exceptional opportunity of interacting with him about the subject
and his process. He was instrumental in a task force to probe the
field of psychoneuroimmunology, and helped to provide the scientific
evidence that indeed the positive emotions – love, hope, faith,
purpose, determination, and will to live – all have physiological
significance. And when employed as healing techniques, they will
result in improved health, as he revealed to me in an interview.
The body-mind connection principle
acquired more respect and validity thanks to research by Dr. Candace
Pert, Adjunct Professor of Physiology of Biophysics at Georgetown
University Medical School. Although the traditional concept associating
the location of the mind with the brain is still prevalent, scientific
research has rapidly created a new paradigm revealing evidence that
the mind is actually traveling throughout the body in the form of
the immune system. When we feel happy and experience fun and laughter,
our immune cells feel happy and we enjoy optimal health. When we
feel sad, depressed, or angry, the immune cells take on that emotion
as well. Cells have intelligence. To quote Dr. Deepak Chopra, "Every
cell in the body has a mind. Every cell creates messenger chemicals.
These chemicals are secreted in response to feelings, emotions,
beliefs, and intentions. Whenever we have a feeling, it’s
happening throughout the body – at the same instant in time."
I encourage you to read any one of his incredibly thought-provoking
books.
For more scientific proof Dr. Theresa
Dale, naturopath and creator of the Neuro-physical Reprogramming
(NPR) protocol, states: "When we resist an emotion and/or
feeling, the resistance itself creates an electromagnetic charge
of energy which stores on a cellular level in the organ or gland
that correlates to the particular emotions. Over time, as the pattern
of resistance continues, this charged energetic pattern creates
even more and more of a burden on the particular organ or gland
where it is stored."
After becoming licensed by Dr.
Dale at her California state-approved school, and completing the
basic and advanced training of the Holistic Health Practitioner
Courses, I use NPR as a healing technique in my private practice
of transpersonal psychology. Efficiently and easily, emotions, beliefs
and identities stored in the organs or glands from childhood, are
released permanently on a cellular level. This is done through employing
the principle of the five-element theory of acupuncture, kinesiology,
or muscle testing (brain communication to the muscles via neurons
called propioceptors), Neuro-emotional remedies (high potency, organ-specific,
and homeopathic), and sound.
The body is a remarkable lie detector.
It simply provides the information that takes us to the next step
of exploring the core issue and its base cause. This is no band-aid.
It works – and fast. In less that one hour, an individual can retrieve
knowledge that could free him/her from a lifetime of imprisonment.
One case history after another verifies the research that the cell
retains the energy of the resisted feeling. These feelings don’t
go away, even if we do everything in our power to ignore, deny,
and stuff them. The bottom line is that a resisted emotion persists
and, due to the body–mind connection, resisted emotion affects
our health.
"Every time we express ourselves,
we lose a little more emotional clutter," says Dr. Jacob Lieberman,
author of Take Off Your Glasses and See. Dr. Lieberman correlates
resisted feelings and traumatic events with vision problems. "Every
person I have worked with has been able to uncover some kind of
major emotional stress in the 1-2 year period before their
vision first deteriorated... It’s much harder to see clearly
when we aren’t expressing our feelings clearly." His
book is a validation of the importance of liberating resisted
emotion and feeling fully, what we feel, when we feel it.
If we embrace the project of cleaning
out the garbage, excess baggage, or whatever you want to call it,
we will eventually be present enough to stay current and communicate
what is so in that moment, rather than through our filters and "stuff".
It doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Like cleaning out the
garage, when we throw away the old junk, hopefully we become more
aware of each piece we place on a shelf to prevent further accumulation.
The same holds true with the incompletions that keeps us stuck and
sabotage our dreams. Once we honor our feelings – our hurts, angers,
fears, inadequacies, guilts, etc. – we can keep current. This requires
our honesty and total responsibility in each moment. No matter how
much we plaster on that ole’ smile and boast about our P.M.A.
(positive mental attitude) those unfulfilled situations seem to
somehow creep into our lives. We have to do the work, then create
the life we prefer in each moment of now.
Thanks to Neuro-physical Reprogramming,
it doesn’t have to be a long, arduous ordeal of weekly visits
to the "shrink" that eventually shrink our wallet. (By
the way, I refer to myself as a "stretch", rather than
a "shrink".) With the arrival of the 21st Century,
we feel the rapid pace in our lives and society. Why shouldn’t
the counseling process also be accelerated? When each one of us
commits to the unfolding of our potential, releasing forever the
victim/self-pity identity, our life experience becomes a most amazing
and miraculous adventure. Our family begins to reflect our inner
harmony and peace, our community becomes united through support
and kindness, our nation reflects a people honoring our oneness,
our Mother Earth is respected and loved as the giver of life, and
the universe is recognized as the source of intelligence – the macrocosm
of the microcosm called a living cell.
It’s an awesome time to be
living on the planet. It’s a time of unlimited possibility,
and using the power of our free will, we can experience the power
linked with this state. A study was once done with people in their
nineties and over. What would they have done differently? They would
have made more decisions and taken more risks. Are you living your
life in safety, as the turtle does, in his shell, or are you daring
to stick your neck out and take risks? What are you waiting for?
Start today by peeling away the false identities and layers of whom
you think you are and discover who you truly are. If the research
from Norman Cousins’ task force is right, tap into your source
of joy, express your compassion, allow the opportunity to be of
service to others, and be the person your dog thinks you are.
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