Creative Health Tip February 22 2010 Intuition

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So much is written about intuitive healing these days; you can buy dozens of books telling you how good and effective it is, and visit intuitive healers who will tell you what you need to do to be healthy. What I find humorous (and somewhat sad) about all this is that you are told you must consult someone else's intuition when it is your own you should be cultivating and listening to!

The following is a true and somewhat scary story, but it illustrates the importance of listening to your intuition for your good health and wellbeing. This incident occurred about a year ago to the friend of my friend.

My friend's friend – I'll call her Mary – experienced the accumulation of fluid in her body. She had what was thought to be a seizure and was taken to the hospital where the doctor wanted to perform a CAT scan. At first, Mary refused to recline on the bed of the machine. She had very strong feelings that if she did, she would die. She told the doctor this, and argued with him for almost an hour before he finally convinced her that she was in the hospital, she would be safe. Against her intuition, Mary reclined on the bed of the machine and immediately died. Luckily, the doctor was able to revive her, and she is presently recovering from her illness.

Your experiences with intuition may not be as dramatic as Mary's but they are every bit as important if you are to live in harmony which cultivates happiness which creates health in the physical world.

Knowledge of yourself is not something you must be taught, it is something you can sense. Mary didn't study medical books to learn that she would be in danger if she reclined on the bed of the CAT scan machine. Her intuition told her, and it was right on; she knew her life would be jeopardized if she reclined on the bed, but she was talked out of listening to that intuitive inner voice and almost paid a dire consequence.

The more you learn, academically speaking, the more you become separate from inner knowledge. In fact, you are often taught that intuition is false and unreliable, a teaching to which I think Mary in the hospital would most vehemently disagree! Your most important lessons come from observing nature, both inner and outer, and living in harmony with yourself and all that surrounds you.

When calm and connected, your mind works for the health of your body, not to mention seeking harmony with your surroundings, through the process of intuition, knowledge of nature and natural process without instruction.

Your emotions manifest in the physical world, and for good or ill, your ongoing emotional state will eventually be reflected in your physical body. In order to be physically healthy, you must first cultivate mental and spiritual calmness and harmony and one way to do that is to listen to your intuition. It will always steer you down the path that leads to health and wellness.

Creative Health Tip February 15 2010 Affirmations

Today's Creative Health Tip is about Affirmations

An affirmation is a positive statement that you repeat when you want to create a certain thing or a certain condition in you life. If your life has been chaotic lately you might say an affirmation like "I live in perfect balance and harmony."

I've discovered that people either love or hate affirmations depending on how well the method has worked for them. If you repeat "I live in perfect balance and harmony" fifty times a day, and your life has changed for the better, you no doubt will be enthusiastic about the technique. If you still feel trapped in the depths of chaos, you probably aren't going to be a real fan of affirmations.

I have discovered that there is a key to the use of affirmations that you must have before they will work for you: Belief. You must believe that the statement made in your affirmation is attainable.

The repetition process of using an affirmation is supposed to help change your belief. For example, if all your romantic relationships have ended badly and you feel unlovable, repeating "I am lovable and attract only the right people into relationships" is supposed to change your belief from unlovable to lovable.

It isn't always that easy, though. We all have beliefs about ourselves that may be hidden. Rooting out these conflicting beliefs is a process that may need to be done before affirmations, as the practice stands now, will work for you.

However, the method can be tweaked in such a way that it may work for you even if you have a hidden belief that conflicts with your statement. I learned this from Tiffanie, a young woman whom I consider to be a spiritual daughter of mine.

Instead of finding or creating an affirmation statement that says "I can . . . :" or "I Have . . ." or "I (followed by the verb of your choice)," change it around so that it starts with a positive feeling for the thing or condition you want to create.

Say, "I am grateful and thankful now that I . . ." and then add your affirmative statement. For example, for changing the way you feel about yourself and your relationships, you would say "I am grateful and thankful now that I am lovable and attract only the right people into relationships."

The reason this works is this: if you are feeling negative about yourself and believe that your relationships always end badly, when you say your simple affirmation of "I am lovable and attract only the right people into relationships," your core belief (that you are not lovable, which came from the feelings generated by your previous experiences of relationships ending badly) is going to respond with a sarcastic, "yeah, right."

It's all about feelings; and feelings create beliefs! At some time in your life, you have felt thankful and grateful for something, and you know how good that feels. Instead of repeating that simple affirmation of "I am lovable. . .," put your energy into recreating and re-experiencing feeling grateful and thankful, and aim those feelings at the change you invite into your life, "I am grateful and thankful now that I am lovable. . ." the good feelings will override the negative belief and replace it with a positive one, and manifest the condition you are trying to create with your affirmation!

Have a great week!

Creative Health Tip February 8 2010 Breathing to enhance your mood

Today's tip comes under the heading of incredibly powerful but almost too simple to be true practices. Did you know you could change your mood by changing your breathing?

No doubt you already know that you tend to breathe shallowly when you are stressed, and that deep breathing will help you feel less stressed, more energized and relaxed both physically and mentally.

Here is a quick and easy way to help transform your mood from depressed, fearful or angry to happy and grateful.

The right hemisphere of the brain shows the most activity when you are feeling anger, fear, or depression. When you are feeling happiness and appreciation, this most often appears as left hemisphere brain activity.

Breathing through one nostril activates the opposite side of the brain: breathing through the left nostril activates the right hemisphere of the brain, and breathing through the right nostril activates the left hemisphere.

The next time you are feeling negative emotions like anger, fear, or resentment, and you want to improve your mood to one of happiness, and gratitude (which, of course, will improve your health!), close off your left nostril and inhale through only the right nostril to activate the left brain hemisphere associated with those positive emotions. By activating the left side of the brain, you activate positive emotions and feelings, too! You may enhance the practice by imagining that you are inhaling joy, appreciation, or love with each breath you take in.

You may exhale either through your nose or your mouth, but be careful to inhale only thorough the right nostril for eight to ten breaths. I suggest that you not imagine you are exhaling the anger or depression you are transforming because that will only bring your attention back to it. Don't even think of what you are trying to transform or release, just pay attention to the joy and love you are bringing in.

After eight to ten breaths through the right nostril, release the closed nostril and take a couple balancing breaths, inhaling through both nostrils and exhaling through the mouth.

Consider one cycle of this practice to be eight to ten right-nostril breaths followed by two or three balancing breaths. It may take a few cycles to change your mood, but if you stay with it for at least five minutes, I guarantee you will see improvement, and you'll certainly feel better for it!

Creative Health Tip February 1 2010 Listen to your body

I have a question for you today. Are you running on autopilot or are you paying attention?

The reason I ask is because very frequently, because we all live busy lives, we don't pay attention to what we're doing for ourselves.

We're busy doing our jobs, or we're busy taking care of our family, and we just let ourselves disappear in the shuffle. That, however, is when illness creeps in.

So, you need to pay attention to yourself. Here's a great way to do that:

When you go to bed at night, or at some time during the day if you have twenty minutes that you can sit and put your feet up and relax, I want you to check in with your body. Listen to your body!

Start at your feet, or start at your head, and go right up the whole body, check in, feel how you're feet are feeling, feel how your ankles are feeling, feel how your calves and shins are feeling, check in with your knees and see how they're doing.

"Hey, knees, how's it going? You feeling OK today?"

When you find a spot that is not feeling OK, it's achy, it's tense, it hurts, it's in pain, here's the trick: Give it love.

Do you remember when you were a little kid, or when you had little children, and somebody got hurt, they got a "boo-boo" and they went to mommy, and mommy kissed it and made it all better? The reason it got all better is because mommy gave it love.

You can to that for yourself! If you feel a tension, a pain, and ache, or anything, just stop and give it love. I will bet you that if you do this every day for the next three weeks, you will notice a huge difference (improvement!) in how you're feeling.