A Holistic Approach to Healing

Chronic diseases and conditions are at epidemic levels. They include heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, cancer, arthritis, depression, anxiety, eating disorders and fibromyalgia. If you get hit be disease, there are holistic steps to take for healing. The holistic steps involve mind-body-spirit techniques to boost your energy, power and immune system. They will then boost your body's capacity to heal itself. These steps will also improve your brain chemistry and brain wave activity to deliver you good mental health. The mind-body and spirit (i.e., the energy body) are all connected and play a role in disease and healing. Disease hits when mind-body-spirit are out of balance and when negativity and stress take root. Healing occurs when they are put back into balance, stress is substantially reduced and negativity is replaced with positive energy.

If you have been diagnosed with a chronic disease or condition, the first holistic step is to set aside the next few months to heal. Focus on one thing - to achieve and maintain an ongoing state of inner peace - peace of mind and peace of spirit, along with an ongoing feeling of joy. Focus on making yourself feel happy and positive. Being happy and positive are important to heal. The exercises in this article will help.

At the same time fill yourself with energy and power. This requires easy, daily meditation, visualization and breathing exercises and prayer from the heart. Spend time in nature. Commune with nature and the Divine through prayer from the heart - ask for healing and have others pray for you as well.

Take the time to de-stress, indulge your self and build up your energy and immune system through daily meditation, visualization and breathing exercises. Do things each day to make yourself smile, laugh and feel peaceful and happy. With respect to depression and mental and emotional disorders, these exercises along with brain wave entrainment music (theta, beta, delta brain wave entrainment with binaural beat) will help improve your brain chemistry and brain wave activity.

While in the healing mode, you need to achieve and maintain balance and eliminate stress. You also need to let go of anger, fear, worry and anxiety. You need to stop ongoing negative thoughts and emotions. You need to avoid negative and toxic people, situations and environments. You need to avoid conflict and drama. All of these things are stressful. Stress will agitate you, throw you off balance and undermine your efforts to achieve and maintain inner peace. Stress will drain your energy and damage your immune system and your body's ability to heal.

Stress damages brain chemistry and brain wave activity. A lot of stress comes from our own thoughts and reactions to negativity. So, we let go of ego, end conflict and drama and move to inner peace. We detach from material desires for now and focus solely on feeling good and happy inside- a feeling that is achieved with inner work.

While in the healing mode, avoid negative, toxic and controlling people. Avoid angry people, people who intimidate, judge or criticize you. Avoid intrusive and co-dependent people. All of these people will agitate you and drain your energy and inner power and put you in stress. They will dominate your thoughts and keep you in a negative frame of mind. In order to heal, you need energy and vitality, peace of mind and peace of spirit and an ongoing state of happiness. If you cannot avoid stressful and negative people altogether, then at least build and maintain strong boundaries with them and do not let them in too close. Do not let them push you around or intimidate you or push you into anger, fear, drama, arguments and conflict... While in the healing mode, ask dependant people to take care of themselves if you can. Otherwise, ask a friend or family member to help.

While in the healing mode, focus on complete relaxation. Bring yourself inner peace and peace of mind. Boost your inner power and energy. This is all done through meditation, prayer, deep breathing exercises and visualization exercises.

To bring inner peace and a peaceful mind, work with holistic healers as well as physicians. These include energy healers such as Reiki practitioners, massage therapists, chiropractors, acupuncturists, nutritionists and others. Learn how to center yourself in your heart. Learn how to live in your heart and senses and be fully present in the moment. Do not live in ongoing, running thoughts. Learn to stop negative thoughts by distracting yourself and substituting happy thoughts or no thoughts for the negative thoughts.

A continuous state of relaxation, inner peace and joy will enable life force energy to flow through you freely. The free flow of life force energy is great medicine. It will boost your immune system.

Turn off the news and turn on peaceful, happy and harmonious music. Surround yourself with beauty and positive and happy people who love you. Spend more time in nature and around art. Learn to totally relax. Get massages. Take soothing salt baths and showers. Have fun. Laugh and smile. Focus on the beauty and positive aspects of life. Focus on nature and people, entertainment and things that make you happy, smile and laugh.

Inner peace leads to peace of mind and peace of mind leads to inner peace. Breathing techniques help. Breathe into your heart in light meditation and focus only on your breath. Breathe in through your nose and hold your breath for a few seconds and then breathe out through your mouth. Visualize that you are breathing in healing energy and breathing out all negativity. Draw in visualized white light in meditation. Pray from your heart, meditate in your heart and do positive affirmations.

Forgive your self and others in your heart and let go of past wrongs. This is done through prayer, meditation and visualization. Through visualization, cut energy cords that keep you attached to the negative and painful past and negative and toxic people. Through visualization, purge the painful past. Let go of it. This will help you achieve inner peace and peace of mind. Purge all negativity inside you - all anger and fear and fill yourself with visualized white light through your heart. Visualize it as unconditional love that feels peaceful inside. Fill up with white light through deep breathing exercises and visualization.

Negative thoughts keep us in a state of stress. So, use your brain solely for thoughts about work, errands, hobbies and positive people and events. Then turn off your thoughts and shift into your heart and live in the moment and in your senses at all other times. Be mindful of your thoughts and who and what you are thinking about and move from negative to positive and from unhappy to happy.

Detach from obsessive desires. Obsessive attachment causes inner stress and agitation. Let go of rigid and negative beliefs and open your heart and mind. Adopt only one belief while in the healing mode- you love your self and your life and you want to enjoy your life, free of disease. But, focus on cultivating a feeling of inner peace, happiness and vitality instead of focusing on the disease.

As mentioned above, live in your heart or body center and not in your thoughts. Thoughts tend to go negative especially when one has negative or rigid beliefs. So, be mindful of your thoughts ad shift from negative to positive thoughts and images. Negative thoughts are stressful. Negative thoughts burn a lot of energy. Move from negative to positive and unhappy to happy thoughts and images as soon as you can.

It is important to quickly de-stress when hit with anger, anxiety, self pity or guilt. These negative and painful emotions will drain your energy and vitality. This is done through deep breathing exercises. Then detach from and purge these negative and painful emotions and related thoughts. This is done through visualization, meditation and prayer.

When hit by negative and painful emotions and thoughts, close your eyes and take some deep and slow breaths and focus solely on your breath. Let go of all else. Concentrate solely on breathing until you become peaceful inside. As you develop peace of mind and peace of spirit and let go of negative and rigid beliefs and open your mind and heart, your thoughts will be more positive. Be mindful of your thoughts. If they go negative, switch to positive thoughts (happy thoughts, thoughts about positive people and situations). Otherwise, get rid of thoughts altogether and just be fully present in the moment in your heart and senses. Your energy and vitality will improve. Negative thoughts will devour one's energy.

Do visualizations to purge the negative and painful past and related images. Focus on memories that make you feel happy and substitute positive memories for negative memories. Do this to prevent the negative and painful past from continuing to dominate your conscious and unconscious mind and infect your beliefs and thoughts.

Focus on being positive, peaceful and happy. Do not focus on your disease. Focus on your blessings, health and vitality. Express gratitude for your blessings. Do not focus on what you lack. Find ways to enjoy the moments of life. Smile, laugh and dance. Treat your self with kindness and shut off the critical, judgmental and negative inner voice. This is done through meditation, visualization and positive affirmations.

Build up your energy in your solar plexus. Do this by breathing in and drawing in visualized white light into your solar plexus or drawing earth energy into your solar plexus. Feel that energy build up like a mass of burning energy in your solar plexus and hold it there. You can draw and breathe in energy through your applied and focused will and intent. This energy will help boost your immune system.

It is important to build up the physical body too. Stress, toxins and negativity deplete the nutrient in one's body. One's energy and immune system require a lot of nutrition, especially given the level of stress and negativity in society. To help build up your physical body: (i) eat a high nutrient diet (mostly fresh vegetables and fruit), (ii) take mega vitamins and supplements including vitamin A, B (B-6 and B-12 and Folic Acid and Niacin especially), C, D and E, (iii) take antixoidants ( CoQ10, green tea and green tea extract), fish oil, adatogens ( such as cordyceps, reishi and shitaki mushrooms) and asrtagulus and anti inflammatory supplements such as fish oil and (iv) take trace minerals and amino acid supplements. Also, exercise daily. Walk a few miles each day. Stretch and stand and sit straight without slouching so your energy flows freely through you. Breathe deeply and take in plenty of oxygen. Hydrate yourself with a lot of filtered water and breathe more deeply. Get sunshine and let the sun shine on your face at least fifteen minutes a day. Whenever you can, take your shoes off and absorb earth energy through your feet. All of these things will help boost your energy and get healing life energy to flow freely through you.

Here are some meditation/visualization exercises for healing.

White light meditation

Sit comfortably or lie down. Close your eyes and focus on your breath. Get relaxed. Visualize a bright white sun where your heart is. Visualize that this bright white sun radiates bright white light in your entire body and head. Visualize that the white light fills up your entire body and head and creates an intact white aura all around you. The goal is to achieve and maintain peace of mind and peace of spirit and to raise your vibrations. Clasp your hands together and visualize this white light goes out three to six inches to a foot from you. Now hold the visualized white light there with the intention of raising your vibrations. Visualized white light cleanses and heals the energy body and raises one's vibrations.

Green and blue light meditation

Sit comfortably close your eyes and focus on your breath. Get relaxed. Visualize a bright green and then light blue sun where your heart is. Visualize that this inner sun radiates bright green and then bright light blue light in your entire body and head. Visualize that these colors - green and light blue- fill up your entire body and head and create an intact color aura around you. Green is for healing depression. Light blue is for healing anxiety. If you have trouble visualizing the colors green and light blue, then look at the colors and then close your eyes and imagine them. Look at grass and trees for green and the sky and water for light blue.

Deep breathing exercises

Sit comfortably or lie down. Get relaxed. Breathe deeply through your nose into your heart. Hold your breath there for five seconds then breathe out through your mouth. Focus only on your breaths as any thoughts that come in drift away. Visualize that you are breathing in bright white light as pure unconditional love on the in breaths and exhaling all negativity as black smoke on the out breaths. Let go of all negativity. Fill yourself with inner peace.

Centering

Center yourself in the middle of your heart and the middle of your forehead and stand or sit straight. Shift your energy and consciousness with focus to your heart and middle of your forehead. To center yourself, visualize a big white sun where your heart is located. Close your eyes and put your hand over your heart and shift your consciousness and energy to that spot. Alternatively, visualize an orb of white light above your head and below your feet and visualize that a beam of white light shoots out from the orbs and the light beams meet at the center of your body. With respect to centering in the middle of your forehead, put your fingers on your forehead and shift your energy and consciousness there. Center and focus. To fortify your ability to center and focus, look at an object or symbol. Then close your eyes and visualize an image of that object or symbol in the middle of your forehead. Focus on this image. When thoughts come into your head, focus on the image in the internal screen in the middle of your forehead. Negative thoughts and a negative inner voice come from the sides and back of the head. Be mindful of negative thoughts and a negative inner voice. When they come, switch to positive thoughts and images, positive affirmations, deep breathing exercises, centering yourself and staying focused in the moment. Live in the moment and your senses and not in your thoughts. Thoughts tend to always go negative when we live in them. Stop angry thoughts about the painful past or worried thoughts about the future especially. Just Be.

Chakra cleansing, healing, balancing and alignment

Close your eyes and sit comfortably or lie down. Focus on each of the major seven chakra points, one at the time and visualize that you bathe them in white light. Then visualize each of the chakra colors one at a time with your eyes closed. YouTube has good chakra cleansing, healing, balancing and alignment meditation videos.

Melting the hard shell around the heart (heart chakra)

Traumas and stress often cause a hard energetic shell to form around the heart (or heart chakra). To more effectively draw in chi energy/positive energy/love, we must melt the hard shell around the heart. In meditation, close your eyes and visualize a hard gray shell around your heart. Visualize a white light orb above or in front of you. Visualize that this white light orb shoots out laser beams that blast the hard gray shell around your heart. Visualize the hard shell melt and your heart become pink, open, soft and vital.

Higher self and inner child meditation/visualizations:

In meditation visualize a pure white angel that looks just like you (but is happy, peaceful and full of love and white light). See an energy cord connect you to that angel from your heart. Visualize that angel (your higher self) now merge with you. Visualize you as a child playing and having fun. Now visualize that you hug that child and tell him or her that he or she is safe and to just have fun. Take a pillow and visualize that pillow is you as a child and hug it. Tell the inner child you love him or her. Now, become the loving inner parent to our inner child. Indulge your inner child everyday by allowing yourself to have fun and do things that make you happy.

Meditation/visualizations to get rid of negativity:

Here is an exercise to get rid of stored anger, fear, anxiety and painful and negative memories: visualize the image of the painful event from the past or the image that worries you about the future. Close your eyes and visualize this image in a glass ball that hovers a few feet in front of you. Put your hands on this visualized ball and push it with force deep into the ground. Hear and feel the energy cords that attach you to the image snap and fall away. Do this over and over until the image no longer has an energetic grip on you and all related anger and fear melt away. As you push the ball deep into the ground say the following to yourself: "Into the ground, into the core go away, melt away, gone." In deep meditation, visualize positive scenes that make you feel happy. Focus on scenes from nature and celebrations.

Cutting energy cords

The ego spins out energy attachments to people, things, substances and beliefs to fill the void inside us. These energy attachments lead to unbalanced thoughts, obsessions, ruminations, lusts and addictions. As we heal the void inside us (through energy body cleansing and healing), and as we build up the white light within, we will not spin out these energy cords very much. In order to substantially reduce ruminations, obsessions, lusts and addictions and establish balance, it is important to cut energy cords - especially energy cords with negative and toxic people and painful memories. Likewise, it is important to let go of anger and hate and fear. To heal, it is important to detach from and let go of emotional pain. So, to cut energy cords, do the following: Sit down and close your eyes. Visualize the energy cords that attach you to people, things, substances, ideas and beliefs that cause unbalanced or obsessive thoughts. Visualize them as cords connected to your heart and torso. With your weak hand visualize that you grab the cords. Then with your strong hand visualize that you cut them and sever them from you with a visualized knife or scissors. Visualize that they fall away.

Grounding

Grounding and centering are important to do to fully focus your mind and to be in the moment. You can find the centering exercises in this article above. With respect to grounding, do the following. Sit comfortably with your eyes closed and your feet firmly planted on the ground. Take off your shoes. Visualize that roots or laser beams shoot out from your feet and into the earth. Visualize that they anchor you firmly to the earth. Visualize that you draw the energy of the earth in through the soles of your feet and up your body.

Visualization for energy and power

Sit comfortably with your eyes closed and your feet firmly planted on the ground. Clasp your hands together. Visualize and will the energy from the earth come up the soles of your feet, up your legs and accumulate as a molten mass of energy in your solar plexus. Hold that energy there. Alternatively, visualize a bright white sun in the middle of your solar plexus or an orb of white light in front of you that shoots white light in you. Visualize this white light accumulate like a molten mass of energy in your solar plexus. Hold the energy in your solar plexus for awhile.

By: Michael E. Goldberg, Reiki Master

You can learn specific techniques to reduce stress and boost your energy and immune system in the book The Road to Healing, Good Health and Wellness, available at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com and Kindle.

Michael E. Goldberg is a Reiki Master and Life coach and Author of The Road to Healing, Good Health and Wellness (available on Amazon.com, Kindle and Barnes and Noble.com), The End of Mood Disorders (available on amazon.com and barnes and noble.com) and The Road to Happiness, available for free at http://www.theroad2happiness.com/ and the Facebook Page entitled The Road to Happiness.

Original article