Thought for the Day - Health Issues and My Take On It

Health issues really wake us up to reality. Until then, it is all stuff that happens to other people. My realisation came when I had a health issue some fifteen years ago. That changed my perspective on many things regarding health. Principally - that we need to work on physical, mental and emotional planes for faster healing.

Some of the principles I followed since that experience
1)  Firstly, get over the panic and the fear. It just takes you down a rabbit hole. There are doctors, hospitals and the best of medicine to help you. Even more, you have a great body which has a lot of healing abilities. Trust yourself and the system. 

Stop panicking and breathe.

2) Get a diagnosis done which means you go to a good doctor who finds out whats wrong with you - nothing like allopathy for diagnosis because they have the best diagnostic tools which pretty much tell whats wrong and where.

Allopathy is also the best for emergencies. Surgeries and other such stuff.

Don't reject allopathy because of the fear that they will fleece you. Use it sensibly. Get second opinions, find doctors who you trust. It's still the best option in many cases.

3) For anything that assists long term healing turn to alternate medicine - holistic stuff like ayurveda, homeo, Siddha, Tibetan...what not. They all work for different people. Homeo works wonderfully well for colds and coughs for me, Tibetan they say works brilliantly for cancer and general health, acupuncture they say works well for chronic aches and pains...whatever works for you.

This however is long term and supplementary so I used them all as a supplement to what my doctor said. I also kept him in the loop.

4) We are still at a physical level - but I feel healing must happen at an emotional and a mental level too. I remember that how much ever I followed what the doctor said there was always fear and anxiety and the doctors did not address that. In fact most of them did everything but assure me. 

So I decided to take help to heal my mental and emotional sides.

5) By mental I realised that my thoughts keep running away with the worst scenarios. Dying, long illnesses, what will happen etc. I remember reading (and then doing a workshop) on 'You Can Heal Your Life' by Louise Hay which gave me a mental lifeline. That our thoughts can create illnesses and those thoughts can be reversed by thinking and feeling 'positive affirmations' came as a help from heaven. I used those affirmations like a mantra - writing them, saying them, so I can shut out these negative thoughts.

In fact for those who have a mantra, they can work as well as positive affirmations. In the best case we occupy our mind with something not scary and perhaps slightly hopeful. 

On the other hand I found those little connections she makes to our illnesses, possible thought patterns that led to it and the positive affirmation to replace those very empowering. I f I could create those circumstances, I could uncreate them. And even better, create something I want as well.

For example - my nephew who had a problem with his right wrist, the book says wrist issues are to do with movement and ease - the affirmation to heal then becomes 'I handle all my experiences with wisdom, with love and with ease'. His old pattern might have been to handle experiences with anger, with rigidity and perhaps went hard at life.  

Or my friend who has a slipped disc, the book says 'feeling totally unsupported by Life. Indecisive.' and the affirmation goes 'Life supports all of my thoughts, therefore I love and approve of myself and all is well.

Or another friend who had a stroke which the book says is about - Giving up. Resistance. Rather die than change. Rejection of life.' The affirmation being 'Life is change and i adapt easily to the new. i accept life- past, present and future'.

Or snoring which I know I do - stubborn refusal to let go of old patterns and the affirmation being 'I release all that is unlike love and joy in my mind. I move from the past into the new and fresh and vital.'

I sent my nephew a copy of 'You Can Heal Your Life'. Might just help.

So mentally, keep yourself occupied with good thoughts, replace negative thoughts, cut out free time where such thoughts can pop up.

Read 'You Can Heal Your Life' by Louise Hay if you can.

6) Emotional healing - now here was something I needed spiritual help, from the universe perhaps. The  mental aspect I could do for myself but I needed to tune into the universe also. So I visited whoever had the power to heal me - from a friend's baba who said I would be fine and asked me to eat some curd with salt, to a yoga master Dhyanam Master, to Nithyananda, Patrick to anyone who could connect me to a higher power.

To get over my emotional lows I also found great advice in Norman Cousins book 'Anatomy of an Illness' where he laughed himself out of an autoimmune disease simply because he told himself that being in a good emotional state will heal him faster. He banished all the negative guys, the sad sacks from his room, shifted from the hospital to a hotel room where all he did was watch stuff on television that made him laugh or kept him happy. He cured himself.

I didn't do stuff as drastic as that but I wrote a lot, did not watch depressing stuff, kept sad people away and positive people closer, and tried to stay in as positive a state I could. Of course I read a lot of spiritual books, stuff on death and health, grew comfortable with the idea (so it was not something I was rejecting at all)

In the end, I got to a point where I was feeling like I did something to help myself, where I was accepting of all possibilities (and thereby not creating any resistance to anything - including allopathy or alternative or spiritual healers). I think that aided my healing and finally when we did a biopsy of my kidney, it was found that the damage was containable and we did a course of steroids and that was that.

It definitely made me more grateful for life, for every day I wake up. 

Anyway that's been my story and my experience. Everyone finds their own way of course but thought that if my sharing helps someone feel better, job done. To health and its teachings.