Happy and Healthy – 6 Simple Steps

I spend a great deal of time thinking about two things: wellness and our thought processes. I also spend a lot of mental energy on what it takes to be Happy and Healthy. Actually, these subjects are really two sides of the same coin and are inseparable. We literally become what we think, and it doesn’t take long to prove the point. In my last post, I talked about my beloved (and nearly dearly departed) vacuum cleaner that I thought was going to have to be taken in for some costly repairs. The mere concept of spending a lot of money to get it running again was making me feel literally sick to my stomach.

But I made a choice, and everything changed: I made the choice not to feel bad. I followed through with this choice by distracting myself with my work, which I happen to enjoy a great deal. When I returned to the disabled machine, I had a fresh perspective that allowed me to find a cheap, simple and ultimately empowering solution.

Thoughts, Energy, and Sympathetic Vibration

Our physical wellness is inextricably linked to the thoughts we allow into our experiences. The thought is the catalyst, the spark for all that we create, both the things that we want and the things we do not want. Thought energy is measurable with modern medical devices. Our thoughts set up a vibration that in turn vibrates our atoms, our cells, and all matter around us in a sympathetic relationship. Have you ever sounded notes with your voice or an instrument into an open piano with the damper pedal depressed? The same notes that are sounded cause the strings to vibrate in the piano at exactly the same frequency without any physical contact between the two. Our thought energy works upon our bodies in the same manner.

The Work of Dr. Masaru Emoto

I thought this concept was a bunch of touchy-feely hocus-pocus at first, I have to admit. It was when I saw the work of a scientist named Masaru Emoto that my mind was turned to the power of our thoughts. Dr. Emoto’s work was comprised of photographs of frozen water crystals. Each drop of water was placed on a microscopic slide to be frozen and then viewed by a microscope. However, prior to freezing, the drop of water would have a slip of paper with a word or a phrase taped to the outside. The person attaching the paper was instructed to direct their thoughts in agreement with the word on the slip of paper. What resulted was nothing short of amazing. You can see a video of these photographs here.

I stared at these images in disbelief for a long time. The implications were enormous, as our human bodies are mostly made up of water. So is the surface of our planet. If thoughts can do this to a drop of water, what are we doing to our bodies when we allow this “toxic” thought to persist?

Dr. Emoto goes on to help us understand how these vibrations relate to relative wellness in our bodies: “In my research of vibrations within the body, I have found that the origin of any disease is a disturbance in the frequency within each cell. We could say that the more harmonious and the more beautiful our body’s symphony is, the healthier both the body and mind should become. Conversely, when discordant vibrations increase, our body and mind will turn negative and finally a disease will become manifest.” [Emoto, Masaru. Water Crystal Healing, pg. viii, Atria Books, New York, 2006.]

The Bio-Electrical Energy Field

Fortunately, the human body is a marvel of bio-electric and biochemical engineering. The measurable bio-electrical field of the body can extend out past the skin, as we take up our own energetic “space” in our world. How far does the field extend? Depending on the health and vitality of the person, this distance can be as little as a few inches, or as much as several feet. Individuals trained in energy healing modalities generally classify the energy into four fields, lying within each other like nesting dolls:

The “nesting doll” energy field of the human body

The first field is the physical field. This field begins at the level of the skin and progresses inward, encompassing all internal structures.

The second field is the mental field. On average, this layer extends out from the skin about six inches.

The third field is the emotional field. This field is highly variable in size, depending upon the emotional state of the individual (If you have ever been at a gathering and noticed when someone new enters the room that appears to have a “cloud over her head”, or that feeling of tension in a room that is described as “so thick you could cut it with a knife”, then you are experiencing the interaction with a large emotional field.) The emotional field in a calm person generally extends from about six inches (beginning where the mental field ends) to twelve inches away from the body.

The fourth field is the spiritual field. It begins where the emotional field ends, and can vary greatly in size as well. (It is this field that inspires people to speak of a “holy” presence of some individuals.)

How do the Energy Fields Work Together?

This elegant system of energetic organization gives us both the means to interact energetically with our world as well as to protect us from unwanted intrusion. What is important to note about this field structure is that an outside stimulus passes through all three of the external layers, damaging each of them before physical damage can be done. What does this mean? Simply put, by the time something negative has impacted our physical being, it has already long been in our awareness at mental, emotional and spiritual levels. In other words, we have been thinking about it, worrying about it, feeling negative about it for some time.

So why was my broken vacuum cleaner able to make me feel so sick so quickly? How do I get back to Happy and Healthy?

Accumulating Patterns of Thought

When a person thinks one thought, out of the blue, the thought has very little power. However, if one thinks the same thought each day, many times a day, for years and years, the little thought becomes a larger pattern. It is as if the little thought is like a tiny blue dot on a white wall. Standing back ten feet, you probably won’t notice the one, tiny blue dot. But if you made a tiny blue dot every day for many years, you would be able to see a pattern of “blueness” developing at a distance.

There is another factor that must be considered when considering the impact of thought: the level of emotion with which the thought is generated. Instead of a tiny, blue dot, let’s imagine that each day we add a single hair to the paintbrush being used to paint the dot. Every day, the dot representing the thought gets a little bigger, and in no time at all, we can clearly see the “blueness” from our distant vantage point.  This is the effect of emotion on our thoughts: each thought is magnified according to the magnitude of our emotions.

It is as if the content of our thoughts are like radio stations. We make choices, and tune in to listen to one channel or another. Sometimes the volume is very low, so the songs are only playing in the background, but when the volume turns up, we can actually feel the pulse of the music in our bodies! It is important to keep in mind that the choice of channel is completely up to each one of us. When we are feeling frustrated, we are choosing that particular feeling at that time and can make another choice whenever we wish. When we feel lonely or sad, this is a choice that can be changed. It lies completely within our power to do so at any given moment.

So why don’t we make the change more quickly?

The Seductive Nature of Victimhood

Our feelings are not random meanderings. We choose them at each moment. When we accept this, we come into awareness of a very deep truth about ourselves and our world: we are amazing, powerful beings. We are capable of utter desolation and complete bliss and the full spectrum in between. We are the artists creating the canvases of our lives with an infinite palette of emotions, feelings, and experiences. At some points in our lives, this truth is exhilarating and liberating, but at other times, this knowledge of our own power to control our emotional experience is overwhelming. We do what is necessary to step away from that awesome knowledge – we cast ourselves into the role of the victim.

We construct our victimhood in many ways. One of the most prevalent is to place the blame for one’s feelings on someone or something outside of one’s self. “Everyone screws me over.” “I feel this way because of my parents.” “Bad things always happen to me.” And it’s true – bad things DO happen. Parents DO make mistakes in raising children. People DO hurt one another. Victimhood is less about what things happen to us than it is about how we react to the circumstances of our life. Again, we have choices…

Jocelyn’s Story

Jocelyn was in her teens when we first met. She was bright and smart, but she also carried a deep secret: sexual abuse. It was difficult to trust boys, and later, men, as she navigated the deep waters of dating and relationships. She struggled to heal from her abuse and suffered from depression and an eating disorder.

She finally went to a therapist when she was in college, and began to take control of her emotional radio stations. I remember vividly a conversation with her after about four months of therapy when she told me that she had decided that she wasn’t going to let the man who abused her rob her of her hopes for a happy life with a loving partner. She focused her thoughts solely on what she wanted to find in a companion, and left her past behind her completely, without looking back. Single-minded in her goal, she began dating with a new optimism. She met many interesting men and has been in a long-term relationship for nearly five years at this point. It was that simple – she was ready to feel differently. She wanted to call the shots in her emotional well-being.

Why do we resist making the choice to feel Happy and Healthy?

Now that’s a complicated question…

Perhaps it has something to do with familiarity. If we are familiar with a certain sequence of emotional reactions, there is comfort in knowing what to expect. If we start breaking familiar patterns, what happens next becomes “the unknown”. Even joy and prosperity seem scary if you have no idea what these things look like in your life! So, changing the channel away from the familiar, sad songs to something new and groundbreaking is going to be a scary venture at first.

Speaking as a wellness advocate, choosing a positive mindset is the single best choice you can make for your overall health. There are many benefits. You can feel some of them almost immediately: drop in blood pressure, lessening of the production of stress hormones, the release of muscle tension. I have had clients who have undergone this channel-changing shift report reductions in chronic pain and lessening of symptoms of chronic conditions, including depression and anxiety.

I make this sound easy, don’t I?

Happy and Healthy – 6 Simple Steps

I know it isn’t, because I am working on this shift right this very moment. It takes daily commitment to feel better and be healthier to keep me going on my self-created “happiness” regimen. When things in life go wrong (and they always do), I have to work even harder to remind myself that I want to feel healthy and positive, NO MATTER WHAT. So here are my 6 Simple Steps that keep me moving toward my Happy and Healthy goals:

1. Gratitude. Each morning, I write down in my journal ten things for which I am grateful. I then email this list to a close friend, who serves as my accountability partner. He won’t nag me if I miss a day, but I know that he loves me and would want to know what’s up with me if I fell off the wagon for more than a few days.

2. Exercise. Just do it. Really. (Read my “Confessions of a Couch Potato” post.) Choose something that you like. Mix it up – do different things. Even if you only get 15 minutes of exercise, it’s better than none. Exercise helps to open up the chemical stream in your body for the feel-better chemicals (endorphins). It also helps with the next two recommendations.

3. Meditation. Prayer, yoga breathing… whatever. Do it only for a minute if you aren’t used to it, and work your way up from there. Completely new to meditation? Check out these great apps to get you started. Keep this in mind, though: prayer is when you are doing the TALKING; meditation is when you are doing the LISTENING. Make sure you take time to listen. Even if you don’t believe in a God, there is wisdom locked in the silence between your breaths. Exercise will help you to relax into this state more deeply.

4. Sleep. Get enough. Go to bed early if you are waking up tired. Grab a nap if you can. Sleep is the body’s time to repair itself. Exercise will help you to fall asleep faster and sleep more deeply.

5. Inspiration. Get fired up about something. Read biographies of people who you admire. Listen to amazing music. Go to the art museum or browse pictures of beautiful places online. Let yourself dream about how good life can be. Let the feeling well up inside you until…

6. Create. Whatever your medium is, do it. And it doesn’t have to be “good”. Keep a journal. Make a quilt. Paint a mural. Bake a cake. Plan a garden. Build a chair. Write a blog…

I can personally attest to the success of these methods. My life is richer and more deeply blessed than ever before. I know that it is because I am making the moment-to-moment choice to choose joy over cynicism. I’m choosing happiness over sorrow and abundance over lack mentality. I wish you every blessing and hope that you will join me on this journey.

Clear your Space – Recharge your Self – Direct your Life

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Christina Laberge

Owner at Wellspring Energyworks

Liturgical Fabric Artist, Composer, Reiki Master Teacher, Space Clearing Consultant, Energetic Better Living Coach - Christina Laberge is living abundantly in the Boston area with her wife, Kelly, her two cats (Tam-Tam and Rosie) and one very cranky parrot (Daisy). She loves choral music, creating fabric art, travel, and riding on the back of a very large Harley motorcycle.

Latest posts by Christina Laberge (see all)

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