“If you can imagine the happiest, healthiest version of yourself, how would you describe this?
Now this may seem a little ‘airy-fairy’ but before you glaze over, I challenge you to read on 🙂
Since it’s Easter time, and we’re heading towards the end of the first quarter of 2017, I want to leave you with this one powerful question for you to consider. Perhaps it can marinate in your mind over the Easter break.
Is the word ‘HAPPY’ really something that resonates with you?
Or do you feel the word ‘HAPPY’ is just another over-used (at nauseaum) term, to describe a fantasy state, that you’ve never been able to put your finger on.
Do we really want to be happy? I’ve noticed in conversations in my clinic and certainly from hearing from other practitioners and their experiences, that many of us feel like there’s something missing at the very core of our lives and we can’t quiet work out what it is. It might not even be anything tangible, it’s more a ‘feeling’ or a deeper level awareness… a phantom like ‘fulfillment’ that we never seem to reach, but eventually we hope to find.
Hard to pinpoint right?
This very psychological notion, that has become so much apart of our psyche, is the truth for many, especially during this day and age when materialism, stress and the unconscious ‘go-go-go’ which has taken over the way we live. It has taken over from the very essence of how ‘we feel.’
And the over riding trend resulting from this ‘phantom feeling of lack’ are mental health issues such as chronic anxiety and depression, plus a large number of other mental health issues, but these are the two most common ones.
The anxiety I’m talking about is not just feeling anxious about catching a plane for example. It’s that persistent underlying anxiety, which follows many people in what ever they do, ready to raise it’s opportunistic head and make their life a struggle!
Depression is one huge epidemic, which is rising like smoke through our entire population and the cloud of depression is affecting so many people, young and old.
On a more positive note, I heard someone refer to depression as neither a disease, nor a chemical imbalance. Rather a psychological ‘syndrome’ whereby our body and mind is trying to tell us to STOP and take notice. In this state the body and mind are out of balance and really we should be grateful that our amazing body communicates to us in this way.
Instead we must ask ourselves, are there nutritional, environmental or spiritual issues that we haven’t addressed for ourselves? All of these things can send inflammation up to our brain.
In the world of holistic medicine we believe that (nutritional, environmental and spiritual issues) are the 3 top causes of depression in our world today. There’s always a cause. If we look hard enough within, we can find why we have this ‘downer’ in our system (and it doesn’t have to be a life sentence either.) For example it could be a case of unknown raging wheat or dairy allergy, creating inflammation in the gut and then this is sent up to our brain.
Although sometimes necessary to save lives, antidepressant medications will never fix the cause. Antidepressants are like turning down the volume on a child truly crying about something. Usually we need to hear the child’s problem first, so that we can fix it don’t we?
There’s actually data showing that when we sit and imagine what we want for our self, it becomes more likely. This is Quantum physics. This visualization if you like, could help us to discover this phantom ‘feeling of unease’ and help us find that missing piece in ourselves. For most people, it’s not about feeling ecstatically happy every day, it’s about feeling gratitude.
Gratitude may seem like a buzz word, and for good reason as this ‘feeling’ that we can train our brains to relish in, actually alleviates depression, and if we practice it every day, and be consistent with it, can be our antidote for depression, anxiety and other mental health issues.
Gratitude is like a feeling of expansiveness, where we begin to marvel at the wonder of it all. We’re never going to move into that feeling of lack, victimization, frustration and hopelessness when we feel gratitude.
So play with the idea of this question on your Easter break and just see… maybe you can’t image quiet yet what is truly possible for you?
But thinking this way, lets your ‘deepest self’ feel heard and this can go along way in connecting and balancing our body and mind, so that we begin to heal our health as we need to and feel that sense of peace and well being that we’ve been chasing forever!
“If you can imagine the happiest, healthiest version of yourself, how would you describe that?
Wishing you a lovely Easter xo
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