Getting and staying healthy is a lifelong cultivation
My heart wish is that you, everyone, be healthy and healed.
After more than forty years in the healing arts and medicine, I have some things to say. So I retired from clinic and started to teach.
Getting and staying healthy is a lifelong cultivation. I would like to plunge in with some key points, since many of you who read this will be carried away on the digital winds, clicking onward before going deeper.
1. State of mind is the single most important factor in health, and illness. The body responds chemically to every thought and feeling.
2. Illness is, above all, an invitation to wake up and change.
3. True healing requires time, energy, and a very clear intention to heal.
4. What you believe can kill you. Changing what you believe can save your life.
5. Life and nature always flow naturally. Harmonizing with that flow is fundamental to health and healing.
There is much more, but these are the seeds. Everyone focuses on the perfect diet, the right supplements or the best workout. That stuff is important, too, but it is secondary.
Please know that society is not going to support you much on your path towards health. If you want to stay vital and alive, you are, in a sense, swimming against the flow. Our culture supports frenzy, not calm and regeneration. Our culture supports junk food, not simple nourishing food. We will need a clear intention and a clear plan if we do not want to get carried away on the tide that has brought us the real epidemics of diabetes, heart attacks, cancer, depression, suicide and more.
Borrowing a phrase from ancient China, I say we are working here in the "Palace of Health". I talk about specific areas I consider very important in this Palace. These are:
LearningState of Mind
Breathing
Movement
Diet
Being in Nature
Human contact
Sleep
The first step? Place your attention on health and start learning how to navigate. Since there are so many different and conflicting ideas about health floating around these days, this navigation may not be as simple as it sounds. I am empowering you to find your own true path to health and healing. Everyone brings to the Palace of Health their own unique perspective. Everyone's perspective is respected and valued. In the Palace of health the group empowers and supports you, the individual, to find your own true path to health.
The high points of my career in healing are always when someone gets benefit. An amazing benefit for me has been a sort of backstage pass into other peoples' lives. Meeting so many people and hearing so many heartfelt stories has deepened me from a relatively self-absorbed and uncaring young man to someone who has compassion for others, and in the end, also for myself.
Here is the feast. It took me a long time to get it ready. And if it's not to your taste, move on. Keeping looking for a way to heal. Stay steady as she goes, and you will find your way. Every raindrop follows a different course, returning to the ocean.
With a wish that all be healthy and happy,
Michael