Phenomenal Insight into the Mind-Body Connection... from an MD!

Just got back from a whirlwind four days in Toronto at the 13th annual Energy Psychology Conference, an event that brings together some incredibly gifted healers from across North America and around the world.

Aside from putting on a workshop on Advanced Bodywork at the conference, I was also privileged to share the stage as one of the three keynote speakers, along with Dr. Gabor Maté and Lynn McTaggart.  While circumstances prevented me from attending Lynn's talk, I did get to Gabor's and it was SUPER. 

(My own keynote was called Hacking Perfection: 7 Secrets for Making Yourself and Your Clients Healthier, Happier and Hardier Than You Ever Thought Possible.  I'll be sharing its contents with you later.  The good news is that it was a big hit.  Now, though, I'd like to focus on Dr. Maté's keynote...)

If you're unfamiliar with the work of Dr. Gabor Maté, you might want to take a look at it - he has some valuable insights for you in the realm of human resilience...

You can watch an interview with him here:

I read one of his books a few years ago, called When the Body Says No!.  It's a great book demonstrating not simply the undeniable link between mind and body, but specifically how repressed emotion manifests as malignancy.  Not great news for a culture that chronically suppresses emotion ;-)

(Note: this is the cover for the US edition.  The Canadian cover differs.)

Dr. Maté made three main points about contemporary Western medicine:

1. It separates the mind from the body

2. It separates the person from his/her environment, including relationships

3. It doesn't recognize the body's innate healing capacity

He went on to say that because we evaluate people by their behavior, appearance and circumstances, we tend to identify our SELF as the combination of these things or, to put it another way, we tend to identify our SELF with our personality.  However, the personality is an "imposter", in his words, and the real task of any true healer is simply to help people to see themselves clearly and accurately.

With many years of experience in the medical field, Dr. Maté asserts that cancers and many other serious illnesses, as well as addictions, are usually attempts to avoid feeling the uncomfortable.  This existential stance of refusing to face uncomfortable emotional energies puts your whole being in a defensive mode; however, the cells of the body cannot be in growth mode and defensive mode at the same time.  The former promotes life, the latter death.

Since our personality is so busy trying to avoid reality, it ends up refusing to see the truth and plunging the whole organism into dysfunction and illness.  The real task of the healer is to hold a space of compassion that will allow the client to face his/her inner world so as to transform it.  All of this, he said, is not particularly easy in a society that blocks healthy aggression and persistently sends us the message that maintaining our relationships requires us to betray our own authenticity.

The title of his address, The Archeology of Silence, underlines how essential it is for the healer to pay attention to and perceive the client's non-verbal communications because they contain vital clues about what's really going on. 

While I don't claim this summary does justice to his presentation, I do believe that all of us can benefit enormously from Dr. Maté's work.  So put this guy on your reading list ;-)

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger 

Summer: the Key to Building Your Personal Resilience (Part 2)

(There's a special breathing exercise for you at the end, but read the whole thing first!)

Last time I talked a bit about how and why to use the summer months to work on certain aspects of your fitness, aspects that are far easier to work on with the higher ambient temperatures. 

(Speaking of higher ambient temperature, the reason I'm inside writing this and not out enjoying the bright sunny day is that the humidex in Ottawa today is 44C / 111F.  "Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun.")

Anyway, I digress.  There are also lots of other ways you can build your personal RESILIENCE most easily at this time of year, so let's take a look at them:


Nutrition:

Switching your diet around to include more freshly grown fruits and vegetables can significantly boost your intake of antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, trace elements and more.  In addition, the energetic or "qi" content of these foods is far superior, giving your immune system a much needed boost.

And including more "cooling" foods in your diet - including most fruits and veggies, as well as cooling herbs like fresh mint (my garden's overrun with the stuff) - will help your metabolism to function most effectively in the hot weather.  Also, these foods require far less energy for your body to digest than do heavier foods like red meat, so you benefit from that as well.

One easy way to include more cooling foods is to make smoothies.  Here's an excellent site for smoothie recipes:

http://www.smoothieweb.com


Cleansing:

Since your body doesn't need to devote a lot of resources to keeping your core temperature warm in the summer, this season is ideal for doing a cleanse.  If you've ever done a cleanse in the winter, on the other hand, and especially one that cut down your food intake, you know firsthand how cold you get without the food you're used to.

Your body also detoxifies naturally during the summer.  Since your skin is a major organ of elimination and you're exposing more of it to the air, and since you're sweating more, toxin removal is much more efficient.  Some of the best cleanses we know of (and that I've used myself) can be found here:


http://www.blessedherbs.com/

http://www.galaxynutrients.com/



Sunshine, Energy and Immunity:

In Chinese medicine, summer corresponds to the high point of Yang energy in the Yin-Yang cycle.  Yang stands for a strong, positive, hot and expanding type of energy, and as the world around you becomes more Yang, so does your body. 

In other words, your body's energy tends to become expansive and radiate outward, whereas in winter the opposite was true, since your body was automatically conserving its energy.  This is actually good news, since it means that in the summer your body automatically recharges your "wei qi", which is the type of qi that forms a barrier around you against harmful pathogens and other intruders.  What can you do to help this process along? 

One way is to make sure you get enough sun exposure.  Yes, there's a ton on information out there about how bad the sun is for you, how it will give you skin cancer, wrinkle your skin and probably fog your i-pod.  Personally, I really don't buy it.  Yes, you should be cautious about sun exposure, but cautious is not paranoid.  Baring your skin to the sun helps replenish your body's vitamin D reserves and you may need those reserves in winter, when sunlight is harder to come by and when you're so bundled up the sun can't get to you anyway.  Here's one expert's take on the whole "sun causes skin cancer" spiel that might interest you:

http://bit.ly/cSwDh9




Emotional Cleansing:

Lots more sunlight has a very positive effect on the human psyche, as we all know from experience.  You can magnify the effect by making a decision to work on positive emotions over the summer: simply decide now to stay in a "headspace" of positive expectation, of gratitude, of generosity and kindness, and you'll see results pretty quickly. 

You can also decide to learn an emotional healing technique over the summer, such as the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) or Be Set Free Fast (BSFF).  You may even get bold enough with these tools to take on some of your inner demons and turf them out ;-)


A Breathing Exercise for You:

(Always get your physician's approval for undertaking physical exercises such as this.  Contraindications include some chronic conditions, cardio-vascular disease, high blood pressure, as well as pregnancy.)

If you'd like to use the summer to detoxify naturally, accumulate more qi, calm your emotions and improve your life in nealy every way, try this:

1. Go for a walk
2. As you walk, pay attention to your breath... watch it come in and go out naturally as you breathe through your nose
3. As you inhale, feel the breath descend to your lower abdomen, a few centimeters / inches below your navel. 
4. As you exhale, just watch the breath exit through your nose
5. After you've done this for a while and gotten used to it, pay attention to the sensations on various areas of your body as you inhale.  Feel energy entering your body at various points and gathering at your lower abdomen
6. As you exhale, feel the energy you've taken in expand from your lower abdomen outward only as far as the surface of your skin

This is a walking meditation from ancient Taoist sources.  It's very relaxing, reintegrates your mind and body and improves your immune system too.  Just don't get so absorbed in it that you forget to watch for traffic!

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger