Evolve Your Mind - Breaking Free of Illness & Disease

“To evolve is to overcome the conditions in our life by changing something about ourselves.”

I started the last month of 2016 by overextending and did not recover for the entire month.  I was sick on my birthday, on Christmas and New Years, it was a fitting end to a tumultuous and oftentimes painful year.

It was just the impetus I needed to change my mind and I did. I learned my lessons, I healed, I grew in dignity and grace.  I can honestly say I am a different person than I was a year ago.

Now it's time for the evolution, 2017 is the year for a renewed body to go with the renewed mind...

Thinking the way you Feel? Or Feeling the way you Think...

“To change is to think greater than how we feel.”

I’ve been listening to Dr Joe Dispenza who credits his mind for an amazing recovery from a debilitating spine injury.  I like the fact that he brings a scientific perspective to something that I have always known.  The human mind is a powerful thing, powerful enough to shift the forces within our body and outside of it.

He speaks about the cycle of thought and feeling that conditions the body into ingrained habitual responses.  So you feel unwell and you think you’re unwell.  Because you think you’re unwell, well .. you feel unwell. And because you feel unwell...

It seems perfectly reasonable, if your body feels unwell .. well?!?

My walk with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) has brought this cycle powerfully into my awareness.  At the start of this journey I knew I had a powerful mind, I knew I was unbounded, I could handle anything, beat anything.  That was eight years ago.  

In that time I learned not to push through the limitations of my condition because my body would allow me to do it, then it would shut down for days, even weeks. I learned to pander to the disease, because the consequences of doing otherwise were so debilitating. 

Over time I started to feel powerless, and over time my body’s ability to function diminished so I was powerless.  And I felt powerless.  And I was...

I Divorced My Disease

“Personal change takes an intentional act of will, and it usually means that something was making us uncomfortable enough to want to do things differently.”

I have been divorcing my disease.  I have distanced myself from my illness, I dropped out of my support group, and I stopped talking to my friends about my illness.  I bless the wonderful souls I met on the journey who were always there to pick me up, to encourage and to empathize.  But I had to be strong enough to walk away from the support of my illness and stand alone in a place of anticipating and celebrating my wellness. 

I set out to reprogram the thought-feeling cycle.  The moment I come to consciousness in the morning I remind myself that I am healthy and strong.  I take the time to experience that in my head, reveling in the feeling of my body bending and stretching and moving with agility and strength and endurance and grace.

Sometimes as I go about my day, my body presents me with ‘evidence’ that what I am saying is just not true.  But I am undaunted, sometimes when I am overcome by fatigue, when the world starts to spin and the muscles start to fail, if I just remind myself ‘I am healthy and strong’ I experience relief,  I can push through just a little bit more.

And on the days when I’m in bed barely able to lift my head, when pain racks my body and my emotions are all over the place, I soothe myself.  I bless my body for how valiantly it is working to find it’s balance.  I bless myself, I encourage myself, I love myself and I accept that my recovery is a foregone conclusion. On those days almost without exception, regardless of what is happening in my body, I’m still able to be happy and hopeful and at peace. 

I’ve managed to change my mind.

Belief Kills & Belief Cures

“I spent three hours a day, morning, noon, and evening, in self-hypnosis and meditation. I visualized, with the joy of being totally healed, that my spine was fully repaired. I mentally reconstructed my spine, building each segment. I stared at hundreds of pictures of spines to help me perfect my mental imagery. My focused thoughts would help direct the greater intelligence already at work to heal me.”

Dr Joe speaks of studying people across the world who have experienced spontaneous remission from a range of diseases.  He found that they had these four things in common...

        1 - Belief in a higher power

Have you ever considered how what an incredible machine the human body is? 

Years ago when I was carrying my son, I discovered the incredible wonder of human life.  It was so amazing to watch what started out as blob on the ultrasound develop into a tiny embryo with recognizable limbs, then into a baby who could move and yawn and suck it’s thumb and then to see him come out of my body and cry and smile and crawl and walk.

As I have walked with CFS, a mystifying condition that spans neurology, endocrinology, rheumatology, psychology and heaven knows what else, I have come again to recognize the incredible complexity of this vessel that we call our body.

There are so many medical specialties and after the brightest minds go through years of  rigorous training, then come out and ‘practice’ for decades, and there is so much they still do not know about how the human body works.  If the doctors don’t know, who does?

“The power that made the body is the power that heals the body. This intelligence knows how to maintain order among all of the cells, tissues, organs, and systems of the body because it created the body from two individual cells.”

I accept that my body knows. The power the energizes and vivifies the body, the energy that keeps the heart beating and the lungs breathing and the blood circulating,  the same energy that every second of every day keeps so many systems in balance, that energy knows.

      2 - My thoughts and reactions to my life created my disease

“Motivated as they were by serious illnesses both physical and mental, the people I interviewed realized that in thinking new thoughts, they had to go all the way. To become a changed person, they would have to rethink themselves into a new life”

Dr Joe speaks of meta-cognition, the ability to observe yourself, to understand your own thoughts, make inferences and identify a plan of action.  This is probably the most important step on the healing journey. 

Almost a year ago I wrote a book “EmbracingProsperity By Changing Your Mind”. I’ve tried for many years to write, I have many unfinished manuscripts in progress yet this book flowed through me in six days.  I knew it was inspired.  I did not know then that it was a roadmap.. for me.

“To begin changing their attitudes, these individuals began to pay constant attention to their thoughts. In particular, they made a conscious effort to observe their automatic thought processes, especially the harmful ones.”

Changing my mind has not been an easy process, it’s not a process that will ever complete.  But it was a necessary evolution.  I had to recognize how my habitual thought patterns and responses were generating and regenerating patterns of stress in my body, emotions and circumstances.

I had to let go of victimhood in order to embrace my personal power. I had to stop judging myself and others so harshly.  I had to release anger and embrace forgiveness.  I had to develop grace, I had to live grace.

     3 - The choice to be happy

“If you are consuming large amounts of energy in response to stress, there is nothing left over for rebuilding, repairing and restoring”.

Some years ago I did some tests and the doctor said that my cortisol levels were through the roof.  I had been living in a state of negative excitation for years and my body was beginning to fail.  High blood pressure, atherosclerosis, diabetes and on and on.  It is said that 75% of patients who show up in an Emergency Room show up with stress related conditions.

Medical literature speaks about the ‘stress cascade’, from the secretion of the stress hormones cortisol, adrenaline and noradrenaline, to the response of the pituitary which tells the body systems to slow down so that your energy can be directed toward the perceived threat. To the  adrenal fatigue, you’re exhausted, your metabolism slows, your body triggers cravings, so you consume lots of carbs, which then starts a blood sugar cascade, then your liver and kidneys start to become stressed, then your heart and before you know it you’re in your doctor’s office wondering why you feel like death warmed over.

And a really simple way to break this cycle is to be happy.  Scientists have proven that if you simply choose to smile, even if you don’t feel like it, you trigger the release of hormones that support happiness.  Dr Joe references scientific experiments that show that joy actually activates & deactivates specific genes in our bodies.  Science also has proven that joy activates chemical responses in our bodies which not only produce ‘feel good’ chemicals such as oxytocin and dopamine, but also neutralize the deadly cortisol cascade.

Being happy is essential to the maintenance of vibrant health and well-being.  I am learning to be happy no matter what.

     4 - Persistence and Repetition

“Nerve cells that fire together, wire together.  Conscious thoughts, repeated often enough, become unconscious thinking.”

Neuroscience tells us that if you fire the same neural circuits over and over they become more enriched and enhanced and sprout new connections. Over time these stronger connections become your default pathway, your ‘learned’ response.  The advice to ‘fake it ‘til you make it’ is not just flippant social commentary, it is based on scientific fact.

“I’m not going to get up until I feel like a different person”

The people who have managed to transform their lives in meaningful ways, have discovered in their journey that persistence was key.  Dr Joe says that in his recovery he did a daily practice of visualizing the regeneration of his spine, sometimes it would take two to three hours but he refused to stop until he felt he had pictured it fully.  Within weeks his spine was healed.

If you want to create radical change in your life you have to think and act in new ways, you have to be persistent, you have to be consistent, you have to hold fast to your vision, you have to prioritize your goal and you have to back it with your words and actions every day, for as many days as it takes.

I am Healthy & Strong,  It Is Done!

“Within a short time, all the physical symptoms associated with her illness disappeared. Sheila had healed herself of a debilitating disease. More important, she had also freed herself from the chains of her self-imprisonment.”

In divorcing my disease, by quitting my support group, by choosing to stop talking about my illness, by focusing on my wellness I was actually removing myself from the environment that would trigger the old responses, allowing my new thoughts to craft new responses and to reinforce these in my brain and my body. 

By choosing to deal with my personal legacy of pain, by healing childhood wounds, by letting go of negative emotions I was creating the atmosphere for my wellbeing, my prosperity to grow and flourish.

And my choosing to master my own mind, I was unlocking the door.

I did not know that that was what I was doing, I was simply walking as I was lead.  You see this is a spiritual journey for me and it is proving to be an incredible unfolding.

“I just knew I was better, I don’t know how I knew I just did. I knew I was changed”

Many people share their journey after they have overcome but I choose to share my journey as I walk through it.  Because I believe the outcome is already determined.

Author’s note

This post is inspired by the work of Dr Joe Dispenza, all quotes in this article are from his work, including his book “Evolve Your Brain – The Science Of Changing Your Mind”.

If you liked this post I would be so appreciative if you would spread the word and like my author page on Facebook. 

I bless you, I bless your journey and I am so happy to be a part of it.  May this be the year that you begin to change your life by changing your mind.