Intentions for Health
As each New Year arrives, we hear the message of “resolutions.” Here are the top 10 New Year’s resolutions in America: 1) Spend more time with family and friends, 2) Physical Fitness and Exercise, 3) Lose weight, 4) Quit smoking, 5) Enjoy life more, 6) Quit drinking, 7) Get out of debt, 8) Learn something new, 9) Help others, and 10) Get organized. I’d like to suggest a few more: 11) Find or develop a sense of purpose, 12) Improve diet and nutrition, 13) Improve quality of work in alignment with one’s talents, and 14) Deepen spiritual connection.
Look at all the categories and under each category write down your goal. Phrase your intentions in a positive way. Rather than desiring to “get out of debt ” (which is a desire to have less of a negative), aspire to the goal, namely “Earn more money.” As you write down your goals, don’t be inhibited, and don’t think that because you wrote something down that you now have to implement every thing you would like to improve.
In the realm of health, here are some things you might require:
1) An annual checkup to rule out major disease, 2) Optimal health, wellness, and longevity, 3) Symptom relief, 4) Improve energy, and 5) Help with a chronic health problem.
For long-standing problems, identify if the issue is A) Structural (requiring chiropractic treatment, massage, or physical therapy), B) Psychiatric, or C) Metabolic/Nutritional. If your issue can be solved by chiropractic adjustment, focus there. Don’t do too many things at once, and don’t give yourself an arbitrary, short deadline in which to attain your goals. Be open to new ways of approaching a problem. Allow yourself to think outside the box. If the way you’ve looked for solutions has not worked, consider that the solution may exist outside your current belief system, or it may be something you just have not heard of yet.
Looking at that list of things you want to change, you’ll see some that look challenging, while others will have an easy solution. Start with the easy ones. Then take things at your own speed. It is important to establish healthy new habits. If you have wanted to start going to the gym, but instead have taken no steps in that direction, set simple goals. Start by going for walks, and make the walks easy enough and short enough that you can easily begin and succeed.
With change, we are always dealing with inertia, Sir Isaac Newton’s first law, which states that, “Objects in motion tend to stay in motion. Objects at rest tend to stay at rest.” If you don’t exercise, you have to break that inertia. Whether you decide to take half hour walks every day or go to the gym four times a week, start building a new habit. Once you are settled into your daily walk, it will stay on automatic pilot, and from there you can increase your activity level, if you choose to do so. Once you have succeeded making a change in one aspect of life, there is a carry-over effect. That one change, no matter how small, will affect the rest of your life.
Setting Intention
You’ve taken the time to review all life’s arenas. You’ve decided on some things that will be easy to change as well as some things that seem more challenging. Many of us are running habitual mental patterns such as: “It’s impossible for me to change that.” “I’ve tried a lot of things. Nothing works.” “I have an incurable problem.” These are the conscious patterns. Beneath that are unconscious patterns, such as: “I don’t deserve (health, happiness, money).” “My problem is due to what so-and-so did to me.” As many people lie in bed about to fall asleep, they are consumed by worry, blame, judgment, and criticism. They are often thinking about what went wrong that day. Become conscious of those thought patterns. Go to sleep with the image and feeling of what you truly want to bring into your life. Then sleep will reinforce your goal and intention.
Affirmations
1. Clearly define your goal. Write down as many details about it as possible.
2. Use affirmations starting with, “I am,” such as, “I am prosperous.” “I am happy.” “I am beautiful.” “I am healthy.” Once the inner change has taken place, it is vastly easier for the goal to come to you. When you say, “I wish I was happy,” happiness resides in the future somewhere. When you say, “I am happy,” you bring the future into the present. Your subconscious mind will throw an array of negative thoughts at you to negate what you are affirming. Your optimal healing benefits greatly from this approach.
3. Feel the desired goal in your body. If you obtained that goal, how would you feel emotionally? What sensations would you feel in your body? You can learn to experience the joy of obtaining the goal before it arrives, and you can experience the emotions” as if you already have attained the goal. It is important to feel the goal, the dream at a physical level. Without doing that, the goal will only be mental, and will be harder to attain.
In steps two and three you are firing up your intention. You are creating an inner state of abundance. Until you can “own” that dream clearly in your imagination, it is very unlikely to manifest in your life. If you can’t see it in your mind, you can’t see it outside yourself. As Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” Allow the power of your imagination to grow and do not let others’ ideas of what you are capable of deter you. Do not share your dream with anyone who is not in complete alignment with what you intend to bring into your life.
4. Sweet Dreams. In the five or ten minutes between being wide awake and being asleep, begin to set your intention. Focus on having your desire now. Visualize that goal as already existing in your life. In this way, you’ll fall asleep with a clear intention, and that goal will incubate all night long. If you lie in bed worrying or dwelling on the negative, you lose a big opportunity for manifestation, namely the eight or so hours of sleep.
5. Release. Don’t tell God or Universe how they need to deliver the prize. Let go. Be open, so that the Universe can bring the goal to you. It usually will not come to you in the way you see it coming. First focus on “being.” “Doing” will follow.
Live Long, Die Short
Almost everyone has health choices they are making. Some are in great shape and aspire to optimal health, wellness, and longevity. My goal is to help people live long and die short! (a long healthy life, and a short final illness). Others are looking for relief from a troublesome symptom, and still others are dealing with debilitating chronic illness.
In looking for help for a health problem, do your research, decide on the treatment modality you believe can best help, and then decide on a specific clinician. Once you meet a new clinician or healthcare professional, you may still have questions about the particular clinician and his approach to your problem. Ask questions, and then decide if s/he is the right one for you. In order for healing to take place at the highest level, it is important to develop trust in the clinician and in the healing modality. Trust leads to faith in the healing process. Perhaps you’ll want to think about the initial session for a few days.
I believe that in whatever we do, if we can approach things at close to a 90–100% level, we are much more likely to reach our goal than if we have one foot in the treatment process and one foot out.
Ideally, before you have chosen the modality and the clinician, you’ve spent some time clarifying goals and firing up your intention as described earlier. You are ready to move into the present moment, for you have already affirmed at a deep level what your intentions are. You will, in fact, have set the healing process in motion before you first meet a clinician. You’ve moved beyond blame and judgment, and can use the tools of manifestation as part and parcel of your healing journey.
David Gersten, M.D. practices Nutritional Medicine and Integrative Psychiatry out of his Encinitas office and can be reached at 760-633-3063. Please feel free to access information about holistic health, amino acids, and nutritional therapy at www.aminoacidpower.com and mind-body techniques at www.imagerynet.com.