Don’t Let Your Diagnosis Define You – Untether Your Mind

I have listened to many people talk about their health condition, diagnosis, or injury. I have met a lot of people who have healed, many who have defied their diagnosis to do so. And I have met many who have believed their diagnosis and somehow resigned themselves to it, and it has become their reality.

And what I have learned is this:

The mind is VERY POWERFUL, more powerful than we generally believe. It has a power beyond the accepted paradigm, and can be a phenomenal assistant in healing the physical body.

And belief itself, when fully activated, can unleash the mind’s potential to change reality.

Now, at this early stage of the discussion I want to say one thing: There are no guarantees in this life. You may have a disease and do everything in your power, follow all the best diets, harness your mind, live in total peace and love, and still you may not recover. Or the opposite.

There are no guarantees, because life, death, and everything in between, is shrouded in mystery, and we don’t really understand it at all.

But to blindly accept what comes towards you as ‘the truth,’ or fact, when it comes to your illness, or your life, can imprison you and deny you great opportunities.

Here is a case in point from my life. Some of you may have heard me speak of this incident before. It was when I was diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease in 2005 through tests, and I had an appointment with a chief consultant in the University College Hospital in London to go through it. I had no idea what to expect. 

The consultant was absolutely 100% certain and utterly convincing in his approach to me. He told me I had this ‘major disease’ and I was going to have it for life, I would be on medication for life starting on steroids to ‘get it under control,’ and if nothing else worked I would have to have my bowel (or some of it) removed. He delivered this message as though it was standard procedure and nothing out of the ordinary.

I was bewildered and shocked.

And then I woke up and decided to ask questions about what alternatives I had. “None,” came the reply.

I argued for Ayurveda and Chinese medicine. He laughed both off as useless and even dangerous. He said it had nothing to do with diet. They had no idea what caused it. He was amused by my questions and desire for alternatives, and it was easy to see he was totally convinced he was in the right. He would be, he was a consultant with years of practice who had seen this condition time and time again.

But I had one trick up my sleeve. He had never seen ME before. He had never met anyone quite like me. Even he admitted that. I was alert, aware, inquisitive, and I simply wouldn’t accept ‘as truth’ what he said.

I decided that the only thing I could do was sign myself out of their care and ‘go it alone.’ He thought I was utterly mad and wrong, even irresponsible, but he couldn’t stop me. I remember his withering look that said,

“You will be back.”

I NEVER RETURNED.

I NEVER TOOK ANY MEDICATION.

I NEVER HAD ANY SURGERY.

AFTER A LONG JOURNEY HEALING I NO LONGER HAVE ANY SYMPTOMS AT ALL, FOR YEARS.

Let’s face it, its gone. Healed.

If you do your research, you will find that my story is common. I am not unique. So what is this all about?

I just didn’t believe what he said. But I didn’t just dismiss him and do nothing. I listened to him, I took it all very seriously, and then I chose to take other action. I will not have someone define my reality, not when it comes to something as mysterious as my health. Science is a reliable tool for measuring and testing but it doesn’t define reality. There are too many anomalies when it comes to the body: Miracle healing. Placebo effect. Nocebo effect. Spontaneous healing.
All these things actually happen, and as long as they happen, it means they CAN happen. And as long as they CAN happen we must allow for the possibility.

BUT I return to what I said earlier:

The mind is VERY POWERFUL, more powerful than we generally believe. It has a power beyond the accepted paradigm, and can be a phenomenal assistant in healing the physical body.

And belief itself, when fully activated, can unleash the mind’s potential to change reality.

If you are going to follow your own path, if you really want to harness the power of the mind, you have to work hard, you have to get into your mind’s weaknesses and doubts, the self sabotaging, the erroneous beliefs.

You can’t just dismiss the beliefs of the current arraign with looking for something deeper, wiser or more intelligent to replace them with.

That is where the true journey takes place. That is the spiritual journey. But first you must untether.

I hope this speaks to you. I would love to hear from you about your experience. Comment below and tell me whats going on!

Love Kavi

 

Chronic Illness Brings the Gift of Time

Being ill, even just having symptoms, is not what one would ever choose. It’s not funny to suffer, in fact it can be a nightmare. But here is the thing, when we are talking about chronic illness, not the acute stuff, there can be a lot of time involved. Its not all consistent pain and suffering. There are ups and downs, moments of hope and optimism and then moments of despair and fear, sometimes depression. It can be isolating and a very lonely path.

But you do have a lot of time when not much is really happening. You find yourself not healed, but not at deaths door, neither one nor the other.

Much of chronic illness is a kind of limbo, a strange twilight zone where you can’t get your head on straight but neither can you take it off, so you live in a kind of limbo, waiting, waiting, waiting.

Thats the time to do the work. Thats the time to research, investigate and discover the connections. Its not just about science, its about your intuition, its about taking responsibility for your contribution to the illness, whatever that means to you.
Its a time to inquire within and really have a good look at your life, your values, relationships.
Its a time to reevaluate what works and what doesn’t, its a time to look at your addictions, to your darkness, your shadow. It’s a time to bring all that is unhealed to the table for a healthy clear out.
And it’s a time to dream and rest and send love to yourself.

That is the perfect time.
And, my friend, that kind of activity will release much energy, it will become a healing force for good and may be the catalyst that sparks a transformation within your own life, healing and wellbeing in general.

Only when you meet it consciously and willingly. Not begrudgingly or resentfully. It has to be met and the door opened willingly.
The contents will not be revealed if the door is yanked open with anger or resentment. You will only find more anger and resentment.
But the willing hand opens the door and everything becomes available.
Willingness is one of the golden keys to healing and liberation.
Of course it may bring emotions, thats ok. Thats what its for.
It’s time to deal with those emotions, thats might be what the illness is for.

Illness so often arrives to invite us to attend to things that have not been resolved on the mental or emotional, or even spiritual levels of our life.

My invitation is to use all the time you have  if you are ill. Go beyond the worry and the incessant picking at ‘what’s wrong.’ I know that, I’ve been there many times, and it doesn’t help, it just makes it all worse. Do as much as you can do and then turn towards different things, things that help.

Honestly, illness demands us to show up, warts and all. It doesn’t want the presentable you, it wants the unpresentable you. It wants your crap, your shadow, your pain and anger and hurt, your denial and rage and lack of forgiveness. It wants all that because it needs fuel for the fire of transformation. The more you give it the greater the fire.

And your task is to allow yourself to be consumed by this fire of transformation.

A People’s Revolution of Health

There is an interesting dilemma at work with regards the body that reveals itself when we get ‘ill.’
The simple dilemma points us to an assumption that pervades our modern westernised societies and, to me, is a glaring elephant in the room issue that each of us needs to consider, particularly when we are considering treatment for our issue. Further from that, at some point in a more enlightened future, this assumption that we live by will be viewed as almost primitive by those with wisdom and eyes to see.

OK have I got some interest?

Here is the dilemma. It is very hard to heal the body when we see it as a problem.

We live in a problem system. Everything around us, in all areas of life, that do not comply with the very human rules we have created, is a problem. And our method of dealing with problems is generally to eliminate them, declare war on them and over power them.
BUT THAT IS NOT NATURE’S WAY.

Nature’s law is exquisitely intelligent, unfixed, organic, and seeking to resolve itself into holism. Of course it has problems and things mess up, but always the natural intelligence mechanism is at work. Nature is imbued with what we call holism. It is all about the whole organism, the whole system.
But we have become alienated from this very core understanding of life. We got carried away with science and lost the benefits of nature’s intelligence. We decided we knew better than nature. And it shows. It shows whenever you go to the doctor with anything chronic, with anything mysterious, with anything that is not acute.

The medical system is rooted in suppression.
Nature is rooted in allowing.

And there you have it. The medical system with it’s emphasis on left brain, scientific, rational thinking has so taken over the minds and hearts of practitioners and public alike that we are blind to the possibilities of aligning ourselves with the body intelligence. It is a systemic delusion. I am not against it at all. I am against it’s utter domination of health and its ability to treat even when it doesn’t know whats wrong!

Yes, the medical system is in a corner. All it can do is play the short game and keep on suppressing symptoms, like plugging the dam wall when the water is flowing over the top. It can, of course, keep on creating more diseases for their drugs, and keep on scientifically researching for ‘cures’ but its not very useful to the man in the street when he has a simple problem but they just can’t understand why it is happening or how to actually HEAL it.

But they are very good at eradicating symptoms. A system that focuses on eradicating symptoms and not supporting the healing mechanism of the body’s inner intelligence is a reflection of the prevailing consciousness it resides in. The medical system with its emphasis on suppression and short term fix reflects those values in our society. The prevailing mortal of society is suppression of nature, denial of natural intelligence and an almost total disconnect from the very nature that it is!!
Imagine, you are born with a body, and a body is the only way you can experience life, and you trash that body and think of it as worthless and disposable.

Right now in our world we have the same respect for our own bodies as we do for the body we live on, earth. They are reflections of one another, and reveal our utter ignorance and infantile obsession with ourselves. We are being killed by the very ego self that is intended to serve us. Servant became master and life became a Shakespearian tale of trickery, deceit and murder.

And the problem becomes each one of ours when we have even considered this thing called healing. If you think you can have a desire to heal whatever you may be suffering from, and if you imagine you will be supported to explore causes to get to the root of it, you are going to be very disappointed. When you go into the doctors with anything other than acute, genetic, obvious problems, and you carry a thought of healing, you are the embodiment of a clash of cultures and a rift in the fabric of society. You become the rebellious one, the outsider and the renegade. The two systems, it would appear, cannot go exist. Of course they can, but the need for left brain, corporate arrogance to dominate the market means that right brain, natural intelligence, supporting the body to heal is marginalised more and more until it is wiped out altogether.
It doesn’t matter that holistic based medicine works. It only matters that it gets in the way of business and belief. It is at the opposite end of the continuum because it is a threat. It gets results where conventional medicine cannot do anything. It heals some chronic conditions that people have suffered from for years under conventional medicine. It is a danger to the corporate pocket and the entire precarious belief system it is founded on.

It will have to change. This is my view. It cannot sustain itself as a system because it has nowhere to go, and eventually a mass of people will get fed up and turn away from the ‘problem – solution’ system. It will take time and there must be a ground swell of ‘alternative’ people who lead the way. But people are frustrated. I have sat in waiting rooms recently with very ordinary folk, and I can see the frustration in their eyes at being endlessly caught in the prescription trap with nothing actually getting better.

I honestly believe that the medical system is a great mirror for our world. I see the medical world as the epitome of the matrix. I see doctors, consultants and psychiatrists as the custodians of the matrix, the arbiters of what is accepted and normal. Really, I do. Go to any medical surgery in any town on any day of the week. Go to the NHS hospitals full of powerless, confused and sick people (not all! I’m not trying to be rude here, I’m making a point) and just feel how much power the doctor has. They have all the power, but they don’t have the healing tools! Doctors have the power of life or death, but they are dealing with an incomplete deck of cards. They don’t have all the knowledge, they are currently disregarding profound knowledge from other modalities.
Yet they pretend that they are the font of all knowledge.

How did conventional medicine become this monster that seeks to dominate? Surely in essence conventional medicine is a ‘modality,’ like other modalities of ayurveda, chinese medicine, crystal healing, reiki, homeopathy etc etc.

Surely intelligent human beings would pick the right option for the right treatment, and include all possibilities instead of just one, that often does not work?

It is nonsensical and defies any wisdom.

Conventional Medicine is the real quackery.

Yes, I said it. I am beginning to believe more and more that much of modern medicine, certainly when it ends up at the grass roots level, in NHS waiting rooms and health care practice, that actually its a lot of smoke and mirrors, meaning deception. It looks sophisticated and genuine, but when you scratch below the surface its empty of any real holistic understanding and/or results.
For example, yesterday I went to the hospital and waited for 5 hours to see a doctor about my current skin rash. After giving it a good look, observing my blood test results, he pronounced that he didn’t know what it was but it seemed to be seborrhoeic dermatitis?

All that means is a description of what is happening. Its not an explanation of anything!

‘Dermatitis’ is a red, itchy, flaky (inflamed) skin complaint; ‘seborrhoeic’ means that the rash affects greasy (sebaceous) skin zones such as the face, scalp and centre of the chest.
So the phrase says, in effect, ‘You have a rash.’
Yeah so?
Why is it there? We don’t know.
What causes it? We don’t know.
What to do about it? We don’t know.

I have noticed this before with so called ‘diseases.’
Ulcerative Colitis sounds very technical but its not. It is means inflammation of the colon, with tendency to ulcers.
Hashimoto’s disease is just the name of the guy who ‘discovered’ it.

What I am saying is that they blind us with science. They are VERY GOOD at describing things. They painstakingly describe a problem but sadly lack any follow through of how to heal it.
And millions of people are duped by this each day.

I say all this completely knowing that many will disagree, and  may want to tell me of all the benefits that conventional medicine brings. And I completely agree. It is incredible at so many things. Truly astonishing. But at other things it is appalling. useless and worse, dangerous. Its not the magic bullet answer to all health issues, that is my argument with the system. There is a big difference. I’m not anti conventional I am simply pro choice.

Here is my current thinking. We need:

A People’s Revolution of Health.

We really need a people’s empowerment  movement for ordinary folk.
We need to learn that we are the doctor of our life, and take the responsibility for that.
We need to remember the old wives tales about healing, and use them.
We need to get Granny’s old healing recipes out and use them regularly.
We need to remember we are part of nature, and part of nature is there to heal us.
We really need to start thinking healthfully in a proactive way.

This is my call to a more integrated holistically based health and wellbeing system that includes the best of all modalities. Its the only sane way forward.

My next book will very likely be on this subject, as I obviously have a lot to say!

Thanks for reading!

I Want To Heal But I’m Scared To Change

No-one ever cured, healed or resolved their illness WITHOUT CHANGING STUFF!!

I used to be cynical and almost arrogant about this subject in the past, but I can tell you I have softened and become much more compassionate and understanding as I’ve aged. I really understand the resistance and fear people have, even though I can clearly see how holding on to the past is so dangerous.

When you have persevered, struggled, battled and surrendered with health, wellbeing, toxic beliefs and hidden traumas, and come out the other side, as I have, you just want to grab everyone and scream,’Come One!! It’s so much better on this side!’

But life is not like that and we each have our own karma, our own life story, our own destiny. At the end of the day love is the only thing that matters. Change IS love. It’s not what we do on the outside, it’s how much love we give and receive that brings us to our real humanity. the rest of it is just icing on the cake.

The post today Is actually one I wrote in 2013 when I was quite feisty and even angry still. I have edited it for today, but I just found it and the point it makes is a good one and worthy of some inquiry.

You see I have met many people, and you may have also (you may even be one of them) who do really want to take charge of their lives, their health, their weight, their dis-ease, their (anything), and they DO want to heal, BUT they don’t want to have to change the things that need changing in order to do it. That means they don’t want to take the external actions, address the internal emotions and beliefs, wounds, traumas, toxic values and relationships necessary to facilitate that healing and transformation.

This was my post (amended):

The conundrum many thousands, indeed millions of people face in all areas of life when meeting difficulty goes something like this;
“Yes, I really want to (heal my illness, get fit, find the perfect partner, become rich, be happy) BUT I don’t want to have to change myself too much. The subtext reads, ‘I don’t want to change my thoughts, I don’t want to resolve my rage, fear and pain. I can’t face the truth. I don’t want to utterly transform myself until I am no longer the person I was, and I certainly don’t want to change my habits’.

‘No, I want all the good bits to happen, but since I still, deep down inside, believe that nothing that happens to me has anything to do with me and I’ve just been cursed by bad luck, I just want someone to wave a magic wand and make everything turn out alright.’

Enter the Medical Profession stage left, and shuffling right behind them the Pharmaceutical Industry.

If you imagine that you can get to where you want to go, particularly if you want to heal illness, WITHOUT CHANGING FUNDAMENTAL ASPECTS of your thinking, emotions and behaviour, permanently (and I might say, for the better) then you are going to be very frustrated and feel really stuck for a long time.

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Einstein.

But boy do we try!

Let’s just turn our attention to healing illness. The current pathology that drives sick people to go cap in hand, uninformed and desperate, to the doctors, consultants and other professionals, is a monumental societal sickness itself.
And for lifestyle, emotions, beliefs and habits NEVER to be addressed by these professionals sets up the powerless victim mentality that plays into the hands of the greedy corporate monsters who simply do not care about healing or cures but only about profit and perpetuation. BUT THIS IS THE RUB.

No-one ever cured, healed or resolved their illness WITHOUT CHANGING STUFF!!
The collusion between doctor and patient around this is laughable, if it wasn’t so sad. Doctor and patient both consciously or unconsciously talk about diabetes, heart disease, cancer, inflammation and the treatment of it, but very rarely do they have the genuine conversation about what habits, thoughts, emotions, foods, drinks, or relationships are contributing to said problem.

We have got to get a grip on this catastrophic nightmare of stupidity we are suffering from. How people can create their sickness (as I did), trot off to the surgery expecting a miracle and never address what THEY actually did to create the sickness in the first place is beyond me!

We are Powerful beyond measure.
We are the creators of our lives and our experiences.
We are vast electrical bio-computers with access to the divine.
We stand in our own way.
We are capable of anything, from healing our illness to creating our illness.
Whatever we believe, truly believe deep inside, we will do.
We can live from our magnificence or we can live from our smallness and victim hood. It’s our choice. It is up to us to inform each other of that choice.

Fear. Fear is the great big Elephant in the room for most people. Fear is the foot on the brake of desire and the invitation of evolution. Fear is a necessary evil. It serves great purpose in protecting us from danger in acute situations, but when it becomes a chronic condition it plays an inflammatory role. There is a connection between acute fear and acute inflammation and chronic fear and chronic inflammation.
One of the problems is that we cannot distinguish between healthy fear and unhealthy fear. Between fear that serves us and fear that limits and diminishes us.
Thats a big problem.
Fear easily makes us stuck. Being stuck makes us vulnerable to authority. Fear makes us undermine our own authority.

You are going to have to get to grips with fear to make the changes demanded of you. 
The good news is that most fear is an illusion. You can only know this when you have been through the ‘veil of fear.’

 

Change is the greatest constant. We think we can stay the same. We like what we are, or we are afraid of changing. But we are changing anyway, as is everything around us.

The truth is that when we embrace the hidden gifts that life offers us, whether through illness, relationship, or money, we find new and unexplored areas of ourselves, new vistas, new inner countries to explore. And we change and grow into deeper and wiser human beings. Refusing to change is like refusing to grow up, hanging on to childhood when it’s obvious it’s over. When we embrace the transitions life offers us ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN, but it is always enriching.
And society grows richer because of it.
Embrace whatever life is throwing at you, it’s your gift, even when it’s real tough.

Thank you for reading.

 

 

 

The Doorway of Illness – Unfolding Your Myth

The Doorway of Illness – Unfolding Your Myth.

From ‘The Power of Illness to Change Your Life.’ 

A message to those who are ill.

You are the key holder. Only you can unlock the mysterious door that reveals the path. It is a mystical path, an archetypal path, a karmic path. It does not follow logic.

Each one of us carries their own unique answer, held within each individuals unique pattern of disease, symptoms, karma, personal and collective history etc. 

Although there are things in common with others, because we share so much with other people, yet still this path of illness is utterly unique. It is tailor made for you, by you.

The people who heal, and by heal I mean transform to bigger, more self loving, bolder and more glorious versions of themselves, whether they fix their body or not, those people have all found something within themselves that changed them. Every person I have heard talk about deep healing talked about the spiritual, psychological and emotional elements. Because at the final count it is not about diet or supplements. That is a part of it, and a very important part. But it is not the defining part.

The crucial part, and the part that fascinates me, is the spiritual and psychological aspect of it. Harnessing this power, our liberated energy, changes something within us, and has the potential to bring about great change on all levels of being.

The trick is not to look for the magic bullet, but to be able to dive inside yourself to such a depth that you unlock the door of your unconscious and allow your demons and ghosts to fly out and dissolve. You unlock them and liberate them.

The more work you do on yourself the better. And by work I mean stuff that actively involves you. Not just things that are done ‘to you.’ I mean work that draws out your voice, your emotional wounds, your hiding places, your rage, your ancestral pain, the family stuff you keep hidden even from yourself. I mean the dark stuff man. Massage is great but it doesn’t get into the swamp.

And if you are sick there is something in the swamp.

Your crazy job is to head into the swamp and see whats up. I know you think you didn’t sign up for this, but actually you did. Thats why its here in your life. In the swamp is your power and strength. Hidden behind the ghouls and ghosts of your life.

Sounds real heavy? To the ego mind, to the self protecting part of us, its scary of course. The part that hides in there is saying,’Don’t go in there, its real scary!,’ But you know what? If you want to know the truth, if you want to get to the root of things, if you are sick of being ruled by some invisible demons who hang out in a swamp, you are not going to listen to some ridiculous voice that says its scary.’

Its warrior time.

Being a warrior is not what it sounds like. Sometimes its the ferocious sword wielding saviour of mankind but mostly its just a little person who takes one step in front of the next, shaking but determined to keep going. The warrior does not deny fear but takes it with them. Sure they are scared, who wouldn’t be? But it doesn’t stop them. The purpose is more important than allowing anything to stop them. Thats the way it is with the swamp.

Over the years I have met parts of myself that I found hideous. I discovered indescribably pain and torment. I have railed and screamed, been blindingly furious and wept like the ocean. I have let pain out of my body that I had no idea was there. Until you open the door you just don’t know whats in the room. It all served my healing, and served my personal psychological transformation.

And thats why I say, YOU are the key holder. The lock is within, the swamp is within, the answers are within, the freedom is within, and the power is within. It is always an archetypal, mythological path, and as such it has all the elements of a warriors myth. 

Your job is to awaken that myth within yourself.

is within, the answers are within, the freedom is within, and the power is within. It is always an archetypal, mythological path, and as such it has all the elements of a warriors myth. Your job is to awaken that myth within yourself.

A fan of Ayurveda

Lord of Ayurveda,Dhanvantari (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

An update of my long journey with health and Ayurveda, Raw Food, exercise and the emotional journey therein.
Some of you know how long and how seriously ill I was back there. Many of you do not. And I come across now as someone who has lots of energy, passion, enthusiasm and vitality. And even Health!
But it really hasn’t always been that way.  I would say the last 10 years (I’m now 54) have been hard core tough. The journey of a Ninja…Persistence, trust and commitment have been the name of the game, and a willingness to travel to unknown places within.
But the reason I’m writing today is to shout the praises of Ayurveda from the rooftops.
It was my Ayurvedic Doctors who revealed the depth of my toxicity in 2003 and urged me to take immediate action to cleanse. That resulted in 3 Panchakarma detox experiences in Mumbai, India.
That shook me up. My life to that point had ravaged my body, organs, energy and overall health badly. Panchakarma stirred up and loosened what was within. It revealed terrible intestinal problems that manifested as what the doctors and professionals called Ulcerative Colitis. I called it deep Cleansing.  I had been gutted, literally.
That was in about 2005. The first 4 years were dreadful, blood and guts kind of stuff….Weak, immune system blown to pieces, scared, unable to digest, I mean real bad. But slowly slowly I have stayed on the path, NEVER taken any medication. NEVER! Even though I was at the gates of Hell I decided I didn’t want to go down that path. Luckily it never got so painful that I had to…

And all the time I have been accompanied by Ayurveda. When I went Raw I left Ayurveda for a while as I found it too opposed to Raw Food. But now I have found the balance within I have reconnected with it..

And today I had another pulse check and I have progressed even further towards core well being. I am delighted!!

You see Health and Well being are not created in a moment, or a day, or even a year. Neither is illness. It’s created by the things we do over and over and over again. And that of course applies to our emotions and our thoughts. It is so important to remember this when we are buying some new product that we think has the answer only to stop taking it after a month as it’s too expensive and we can’t see the results ( I know because I do exactly this!!)

If you don’t know about Ayurveda find out. Raw Food is not the only game in town. Chinese medicine is great. But Ayurveda, particularly the way our good friends practice it, is exceptional and very deep. If you are in the UK, South East, get in touch if you want their number. In fact here is their website.

Deep Gratitude to these guys and to the Rishi’s who brought Ayuveda to the world many many years ago. Wisdom teachers of the most extraordinary kind.

Related articles

• Benefits of Panchakarma Highlighted by AUM Ayurveda Practitioner (biomedreports.com)
• Ayurveda for Detox (omtimes.com)

Symptom chasing or Health building?

After many years of being pretty seriously ill and spending much of that time terrified at each new real or apparent symptom that appeared (and disappeared) I feel in a privileged position to discuss this topic.

It’s a subject that actually affects the Natural Health world more than one might imagine for as you might see by the time you’ve read this, symptom chasing is just as common in the natural healing modalities as it is in the allopathic world.
Symptom chasing. What is it? It is as it sounds, it’s an action taken in response to the appearance of a bodily action that is out of the norm. Things like swelling, burning, aching, bruising, discolouration etc etc can be symptoms. These are the kind
of things that, in the allopathic world, take us off to the doctors. We have learned to take these markers as indications of some deeper issue and we want to find out what that issue is so we can do something about it.
OR DO WE?
From my observations what many of us actually want is just for the symptom to go away. We will quite happily settle for that and put off any decision about health for a more suitable time. In fact in our culture we take absence of symptoms to be a measure of health!
I’m not talking about a broken leg or a burn or something that actually needs treatment, I’m talking about something that points to deeper and more chronic HEALTH problems.

Last year I went for ongoing treatment to an amazing Chinese Doctor. First time I went to see him I told him all my symptoms and he patiently listened and nodded. And then for the next 6 months, each week, I would try and tell him the latest symptom
that had appeared or disappeared, hoping that he would give me some herbs or at least tell me everything was going to be alright. But all he ever did was say ‘yes yes yes’ and completely ignore my plaintive cries. When I eventually asked him why he didn’t want to hear how things were going he was blunt. Pleasant but blunt.
‘We are building health. Healthy body, healthy mind, no disease, no symptoms’. That’s what he said, and when I persisted he laughed at what he saw as my neurotic obsession with my symptoms. He saw my obsessing with them as a trap for my mind. A very unhealthy trap. Most of the problem, he said, was in my mind.
So I began to dwell on what he said, and I began to see it was true.
The two things are very different.
And yes of course I’m not talking about being a fool and ignoring things or pretending that everything’s ok when its not. I’m talking about a mature look at how we are relating to our health. If we want health, we have to build health. Health does not happen by chasing symptoms away. We are badly trained by conventional medicine which still suggests that we can deal with our symptoms without addressing our lifestyle habits, and we know what a disaster that way of thinking is!

And the bottom line here is that even the natural health world is out to make a buck. It’s a business that wants to sell product. It may be healthier than the pharmaceutical medicine but it may well not create health so don’t be under any illusion.
The best approach may be this: decide now what state of health you want to be in a year from today. Investigate what its going to take to get you there, focusing on diet, exercise and emotions. If you can, have some tests that tell you where you are at right now. At least test your ph levels to see how acidic your blood is. Take notice of how your body is and what its telling you, and began to develop a bio feedback relationship with it, using it as a guide. Learn to become pro-active with how it feels, not just in a reactive way, but in all ways, taking notice when it feels good, energized, tired or painful. Get into your body and really feel how it responds to your emotional state. Your body is a profound mirror of your emotional state, and many times what we take to be a physical symptom is actually an indicator of a stuck emotion.
So let me be clear. I am not saying don’t respond to your symptoms. Of course if you need pain relief or something to help then you are going to take it..BUT do not take this to be  anything to do with creating health. I will say it again.You don’t create health by removing symptoms.
And you can end up like a dog chasing it’s tail or a mad animal running here and there to get the latest uprising in the body…STOP...
Be like the Master Chinese Healer. Focus on the creation of health, even if you have symptoms, particularly if you have symptoms. It will stand you in good stead further down the road.

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