It Is Never Too Late
So how can we nurture ourselves, and nudge the complex of
epigenetic switches in our bodies to make us as healthy and happy as possible? If you are like me, you did not learn much about self nurturing when you were growing up. By the time I reached thirtyeight years of age, I was running a big publishing company and taking good care of my employees and clients, as well as my wife and children.
There was only one person I was not taking good care of, and that was me. I had frequent respiratory ailments, and my back ached every day. My joints went out of alignment easily, and I suffered from gout. Some days I was in agony, and I could not move in any direction without screaming involuntarily from the severe pain. I
battled depression, addiction, and insomnia. I had time for everyone else, but no time for me. When I tried to take some time for myself, there was always someone else’s need to attend to.
Now, in my fifties, I take much better care of myself, and I feel vibrantly healthy. As well as diet and exercise, I pay great attention to emotional health. When I have an upset, I resolve it as fast as possible. And I have a daily routine that supports a peaceful and serene state, despite a busy schedule of lectures and consulting. It took a lot of effort to retrain myself in the art of self-nurture.
Here are the concrete steps you can take to create an emotional
“love nest” for yourself. These are all practical methods to help you handle stress, create inner peace, and release the emotional charge of traumatic events. Best of all, most of them are free, and easy
to learn:
• Meditation
• Prayer
• Optimism
• A positive attitude
• Energy medicine
• Energy psychology
• Positive beliefs
• Positive visualizations
• Acts of kindness
• Love
• Nurturing
• Spirituality
By “energy medicine,” I mean methods such as Reiki, Donna
Eden’s energy medicine, Quantum Touch, Therapeutic Touch, and other methods that alter the body’s electromagnetic state. A full list appears in the book Soul Medicine.
By “energy psychology,” I mean methods such as Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), Thought Field Therapy (TFT), Tapas
Acupressure Technique (TAT), and other similar therapies that release the emotional charge of traumatic events. In my book The Genie in Your Genes, I provide a full explanation of how energy psychology works, and how to use some of the most popular methods.
The key to epigenetic health is releasing as much as possible of the unhealthy programming we received as children, and then releasing stresses that occur in present time right after they occur.
Try this simple experiment from energy psychology to see how easy it is. Think of a recent incident that deeply upset you. Give it a number from 0 to 10, with 0 being complete peace, and 10 being the most extreme upset possible. Write down your number. Now cross your hands over your heart, and take three deep breaths. Tap on the center of your chest with one hand ten to fifteen times. Take another breath. Now think about the incident again, and write down your
number. Most people report a big drop in the intensity of their feelings after doing this fast and simple exercise to release emotional charge. Rather than storing all that emotion in your body, you’re letting it go. Do this whenever you have a big emotional reaction and you start to create a life in which you aren’t being the neglectful rat
mother to yourself! Clean up enough of your real-time emotional reactivity and you can then work on your childhood deficits with the aid of a good coach or psychotherapist.That’s the kind of work I do now, much of it with veterans of the
wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. We teach EFT to soldiers suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). After they learn to release the intense emotional energy of their combat experiences, many of them apply these methods to their personal lives.
This is part of the Iraq Vets Stress Project (www.StressProject.org), which connects coaches who are teaching EFT with veterans suffering from PTSD. In witnessing the powerful positive changes in the veterans’ lives after EFT, I am awed and humbled to see the difference that self-nurturing makes.
I’ve also tried this with elite athletes. Helping healthy people release emotional memories enhances their performance. I performed a rigorous type of scientific experiment called a randomized controlled trial (RCT) with the men’s and women’s basketball teams at Oregon State University. We split them into two groups. One received EFT and the other received a placebo treatment, a fake intervention. Before and after treatment, we tested how high they could jump, and how many free throws they could accurately deliver into the basket. Although both groups performed about the same beforehand, their performances afterward were very different. The group that received EFT scored an astonishing 38 percent better at free throws than the group that got the fake intervention!
I teach EFT to groups through an organization called EFT Power
Training and we’re seeing major changes in the stress levels of executive groups, sports teams, professional organizations, and other collections of people who learn EFT. When you release your stress, you perform better at any task, no matter whether you’re hitting a business sales target, putting a golf ball on the green, doing surgery,
or coaching a client. As your stress level goes down, all your body’s biological resources become available for cell repair, combating the
effects of aging, and filling you with lightness and energy.
The bottom line is that you are not living a life script programmed into your DNA at conception and out of your control ever since. You have it in your power to change the on-off switches
in many of your genes. In fact, you’re doing this every day already, through your emotions and your lifestyle. As you learn the skills of self-nurturing, you consciously select responses that support a long and healthy life. You can increase your physical energy, sharpen your intellectual powers, boost your spiritual practice, and live a life brimming with optimistic promise at any age. So love yourself, and
choose the best life possible!
So how can we nurture ourselves, and nudge the complex of
epigenetic switches in our bodies to make us as healthy and happy as possible? If you are like me, you did not learn much about self nurturing when you were growing up. By the time I reached thirtyeight years of age, I was running a big publishing company and taking good care of my employees and clients, as well as my wife and children.
There was only one person I was not taking good care of, and that was me. I had frequent respiratory ailments, and my back ached every day. My joints went out of alignment easily, and I suffered from gout. Some days I was in agony, and I could not move in any direction without screaming involuntarily from the severe pain. I
battled depression, addiction, and insomnia. I had time for everyone else, but no time for me. When I tried to take some time for myself, there was always someone else’s need to attend to.
Now, in my fifties, I take much better care of myself, and I feel vibrantly healthy. As well as diet and exercise, I pay great attention to emotional health. When I have an upset, I resolve it as fast as possible. And I have a daily routine that supports a peaceful and serene state, despite a busy schedule of lectures and consulting. It took a lot of effort to retrain myself in the art of self-nurture.
Here are the concrete steps you can take to create an emotional
“love nest” for yourself. These are all practical methods to help you handle stress, create inner peace, and release the emotional charge of traumatic events. Best of all, most of them are free, and easy
to learn:
• Meditation
• Prayer
• Optimism
• A positive attitude
• Energy medicine
• Energy psychology
• Positive beliefs
• Positive visualizations
• Acts of kindness
• Love
• Nurturing
• Spirituality
By “energy medicine,” I mean methods such as Reiki, Donna
Eden’s energy medicine, Quantum Touch, Therapeutic Touch, and other methods that alter the body’s electromagnetic state. A full list appears in the book Soul Medicine.
By “energy psychology,” I mean methods such as Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), Thought Field Therapy (TFT), Tapas
Acupressure Technique (TAT), and other similar therapies that release the emotional charge of traumatic events. In my book The Genie in Your Genes, I provide a full explanation of how energy psychology works, and how to use some of the most popular methods.
The key to epigenetic health is releasing as much as possible of the unhealthy programming we received as children, and then releasing stresses that occur in present time right after they occur.
Try this simple experiment from energy psychology to see how easy it is. Think of a recent incident that deeply upset you. Give it a number from 0 to 10, with 0 being complete peace, and 10 being the most extreme upset possible. Write down your number. Now cross your hands over your heart, and take three deep breaths. Tap on the center of your chest with one hand ten to fifteen times. Take another breath. Now think about the incident again, and write down your
number. Most people report a big drop in the intensity of their feelings after doing this fast and simple exercise to release emotional charge. Rather than storing all that emotion in your body, you’re letting it go. Do this whenever you have a big emotional reaction and you start to create a life in which you aren’t being the neglectful rat
mother to yourself! Clean up enough of your real-time emotional reactivity and you can then work on your childhood deficits with the aid of a good coach or psychotherapist.That’s the kind of work I do now, much of it with veterans of the
wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. We teach EFT to soldiers suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). After they learn to release the intense emotional energy of their combat experiences, many of them apply these methods to their personal lives.
This is part of the Iraq Vets Stress Project (www.StressProject.org), which connects coaches who are teaching EFT with veterans suffering from PTSD. In witnessing the powerful positive changes in the veterans’ lives after EFT, I am awed and humbled to see the difference that self-nurturing makes.
I’ve also tried this with elite athletes. Helping healthy people release emotional memories enhances their performance. I performed a rigorous type of scientific experiment called a randomized controlled trial (RCT) with the men’s and women’s basketball teams at Oregon State University. We split them into two groups. One received EFT and the other received a placebo treatment, a fake intervention. Before and after treatment, we tested how high they could jump, and how many free throws they could accurately deliver into the basket. Although both groups performed about the same beforehand, their performances afterward were very different. The group that received EFT scored an astonishing 38 percent better at free throws than the group that got the fake intervention!
I teach EFT to groups through an organization called EFT Power
Training and we’re seeing major changes in the stress levels of executive groups, sports teams, professional organizations, and other collections of people who learn EFT. When you release your stress, you perform better at any task, no matter whether you’re hitting a business sales target, putting a golf ball on the green, doing surgery,
or coaching a client. As your stress level goes down, all your body’s biological resources become available for cell repair, combating the
effects of aging, and filling you with lightness and energy.
The bottom line is that you are not living a life script programmed into your DNA at conception and out of your control ever since. You have it in your power to change the on-off switches
in many of your genes. In fact, you’re doing this every day already, through your emotions and your lifestyle. As you learn the skills of self-nurturing, you consciously select responses that support a long and healthy life. You can increase your physical energy, sharpen your intellectual powers, boost your spiritual practice, and live a life brimming with optimistic promise at any age. So love yourself, and
choose the best life possible!
No comments:
Post a Comment