Wouldn’t you rather focus on the causes of your problems, instead of the symptoms?
Lifestyle Medicine, Wellbeing / Wellness:
Mind-Body and Heart & Soul
From The American College of Lifestyle Medicine comes this noteworthy reminder:
“Lifestyle medicine treats the root cause of chronic disease, not just the symptoms. It reflects the reality of what a huge body of scientific evidence has taught us: Food is powerful medicine! Exercise is powerful medicine! Mind-body health is powerful medicine! [emphases mine] And these medicines are free or inexpensive and with only positive side-effects!
David Ferriss, MD, MPH” http://www.lifestylemedicine.org/board-of-directors
And from another MD, Marissa Fernandez-Kiemele, “…our whole wellbeing is what makes us healthy. Our social life, our physical life, our spiritual life, [emphasis mine] all of that is impacted. Lifestyle medicine really encompasses the whole person.” http://www.wwmedgroup.com/providers/name/marissa-fernandez-kiemele/
Your lifestyle is your business. You will consider making different lifestyle choices when your pain or your concern outstrip your denial. When you have become willing to think
about your need to change, you are starting momentum. When you begin making baby steps, you have shifted into real preparation for real change. Setting clear goals and strategies and acting from those strategies delivers real results to your wellbeing / wellness.
That is the real purpose of your mind: to serve the growth of the wellbeing of all of who you are. All of who you are includes your body, your mind, your heart and your soul. When you embrace all of who you are, including your unique, treasured beliefs about your soul, your rewards will be more considerable. You may not even believe there is such a thing as a soul. Maybe there is simply the source of your body and your mind and your emotions that you return to, as ashes to ashes, dust to dust. [Even for me, as teacher and student of the Science of the Soul, that is quite literally true.] Whatever your beliefs, there is a binding of your consciousness to your body, your mind and your emotions. A good question to ask, in the context of your pursuit of your own happiness, is this: what more can I do to achieve more wellbeing, to increase my personal, inter-personal and existential successes in this lifetime?
Consider your realities at the levels of your body, your mind and your emotions. Stressors in the modern world have an increasingly dramatic effect on your body. Blood pressure goes up, cortisol is produced (weakening the immune system), sleep can be negatively affected, cognition can become impaired, and risk of heart attack can increase. dujs.dartmouth.edu/2011/02/the-physiology-of-stress-cortisol-and-the-hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal-axis/#.WPTUN1Pytn0.
The most commonly noted relievers of stress all are included in the average prescription in the world of lifestyle medicine: get physically active, eat a healthy diet, meditate, laugh more, avoid unhealthy habits, connect with others, and get enough sleep, to name a few [emphasis mine]. http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/stress-management/in-depth/stress-relievers/art-20047257?pg=1 Meditation is becoming more understood and more embraced as people are coming to understand one very important principle: meditation does NOT require the mind to be “still.” Real meditation simply gives your monkey mind an opportunity to focus on something other than the endless creation of the endless thought streams that it is actually designed to create. There is much more to that story, and that is for another day.
Your concerns in your world today are what matter. Today, you are reminded that there is “a huge body of scientific evidence [which] has taught us: Food is powerful medicine!” Today, you are reminded that “mind-body health is powerful medicine.” Today, you are asked to consider this: what goals, what strategies, what tactics will best serve you to increase your wellbeing and your wellness, starting today? And, also consider this: it is critical to your whole person wellbeing that you begin to engage in “soul immunity.” What that means is that in the face of the world being not only a stressful place, we are increasingly being called to be aware of what is scary in the world. Unpredictable, unstable world leaders are making headlines, from all over the world. There seems to be ample cause for concern about the threat of global nuclear war. What is the remedy? Consider this: “soul immunity” can literally reverse the infectious and easily spread influence of fear. This is a movement that will have to start personally and spread collectively.
It is the internal landscape of consciousness that will be the terrain for that movement. Your consciousness and my consciousness can create the remedy, personally, interpersonally and collectively for the success of the wellbeing for each and every one of us on this planet. We need to build it now.
