What Is Health & How Do I Find It?

Health is a topic that I’ve been exploring for years, but it’s only in the last year or so that I’ve started to see it in a new light. In this article I wanted to share what I’m seeing about health now and how you too can find your health and vitality.

I am not medically trained and share my personal experience in this article. If you are taking medication please consult a doctor before changing anything.

What is health?

Many (including me up until around a year ago) would have described health as the lack of ill-health or the lack of symptoms of illness.

But what if it were more than that? Consider the saying “they’re radiating health”.

When you think of someone you could describe as that what are you describing? To me it is something beyond words but rather an invisible thing that makes them glow; that draws your eye to them.

Perhaps they have some physical health issues and yet they still radiate something?

And to me, that radiation is ease; being at ease with oneself.

So health is perhaps being at ease, while the clue is in the name for what dis-ease is?

Is health more than physical?

After years of experiencing Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), eczema, food intolerances, headaches, insomnia and other physical ailments I thought I was quite ‘clued up’ about health.

After all, I’d spent years studying it and I created the Free From Fairy to share what I knew about physical health and wellness.

But there has always been a vital part missing on my quest to find health.

I had focussed solely on the physical aspects; never once considering that there could be anything else to look at.

Then I came across an understanding of how we create our experience of life, called the Three Principles, and everything became clear.

The missing part to the health puzzle for me, was spirit (that which cannot be seen). Now please don’t leave me at this point because I have some very valuable things to share with you that could change your life too.

If, like me, you have never considered yourself to be ‘spiritual’, and/or like me, you have an analytical brain that dismisses anything that can’t be proven, then stay with me.

Equally if you’re shouting at the screen that it’s obviously spiritual and has nothing to do with physical then stay with me too.

Because here’s the thing. Our health is dependent upon the physical and the spiritual (and please bear with me and this word because I’ll explain what I mean later on).

Consider a house. It’s a physical thing. And being a physical thing, it requires maintenance. We’ve all walked past abandoned houses in our lives and seen what happens when a house is not looked after. It literally falls apart.

Well we too are physical things! And as such we require ‘maintenance’. We need the following in order to thrive:

Water and nourishing food (not any old food hence people in developed nations being over fed and undernourished) – the thing I focus on in the Free From Fairy

Movement – without moving we become weak

Rest – enables our system to restore, heal and regenerate

Cleaning – to ensure we are not over-taken by opportunistic bacteria

Touch, love and safety – the Bucharest Early Intervention Project showed that neglect in the early years of life can be profoundly damaging to development.

But it would seem that these things alone are not enough.

In my own experience, having all of those things, I still experienced a lack of health or a feeling of un-ease.

So if health isn’t only physical, what is it?

Over the years I had the sense of feeling more and more uneasy. I couldn’t pin point it. My physical symptoms weren’t that difficult to navigate and yet something didn’t feel ‘right’.

And then I saw it.

I had become disconnected from my intuition; my wisdom; inner knowing or inner compass.

You know? The thing that means that you just know things sometimes; or when you stop frantically trying to work things out you know what to do; or the thing that moves you to do something in an emergency.

When I experienced symptoms I, like almost everyone else in the world, took them as a sign that there was something wrong with me that needed ‘sorting out.’

I’d reach for the painkillers for the headaches, munch my way through umpteen indigestion tablets and visit the doctor to fix my insomnia.

What are symptoms if not indicators of ill-health?

And then someone pointed me to something different. They suggested that symptoms were actually a sign that my body was working perfectly. That symptoms were simply love letters from my body showing me that I had become disconnected from my inner knowing.

Read that again and let it sink in. What if that were true?

How do you feel now about your symptoms?

You see there is a perfection in everything.

When you look at nature you see it don’t you? The fact that the trees know when to drop their leaves and then grow them back. That birds know when and where to migrate; that flowers know to orient themselves towards the sun.

Nature is seemingly directed by an invisible conductor (my definition of spirit by the way).

Well you are part of that perfection. You are guided by something that cannot be seen too. And when you forget that, your body simply tries to tell you in the most effective way it can.

First with little, quiet, niggly symptoms that amplify into a crescendo when ignored.

When we stop listening to our inner knowing we suffer; we move out of ease; out of health.

The role of thought in disease

From a young age I was aware of my thoughts. I thought they were me, and I were them. That they were instructions for my life

“You’re not good enough”, “you’re not good at anything”, “nobody likes you” directed many of the choices I’ve made in life.

And here’s the thing about negative thoughts.

When we believe them, they lead to tension in our bodies.

Thoughts create feelings. But that’s another topic that I explore in many of my other blogs like The Source of Happiness.

When there is tension or unease in our bodies we often make poor choices (hands up who reaches for the chocolate, coffee, wine or other ‘vice’ when we’re feeling ‘out of sorts’?). And those poor choices often lead to further suffering; further negative thoughts and tension. And so the downward spiral begins.

Overwhelm and feelings of unease become the ‘norm’ and that unease over time becomes dis-ease at which point the body starts to join the conversation with symptoms.

And if we know no better, then we rush to the doctor or start popping the pills to quieten the body trying to talk to us. And what happens next? More symptoms pop up. The initial ones might have been stifled by medication, but our body won’t give up that easily so it gives us other symptoms that are usually more severe.

What starts as a minor ailment becomes something major. All because of a misunderstanding.

How do I find health?

Rather than seeing yourself as broken, start to see everything that is right. Seeing yourself as a brilliant system that is working perfectly has helped me so much.

When I get a headache or other symptom I no longer immediately reach for something that will take it away. I stop and get quiet.

I get curious about what my body might be telling me.

And in that space where I let go of what my mind wants to say (“it must be this or that”, “take the tablet so you can get on with work” blah blah) something might occur to me.

Perhaps it’s a simple “have a drink” or “have a little nap”. Or perhaps it is to take the tablet. But by getting quiet and considering that your body might be talking to you, allows for something different to occur to you about how to deal with it.

Because when we start tuning back into our innate intuition and knowing, we begin to move back towards ease. And from a place of ease we become settled and have the ability to see life differently.

We have more energy; more vitality because what had previously been caught up in our bodies in struggle can be released to other things.

Our outlook improves; we sleep better (or are more refreshed from sleep), our appetite might increase and we feel better generally (even if we still have symptoms).

All signs that we are moving towards ease (health).

So if after reading this you’re interested in exploring your own health issues, then arrange a free exploratory call with me. There is no obligation or ‘hard sale’ to work with me, just a space for you to see what might be possible in your life when seen from a fresh perspective.

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