How are you doing with being a little kinder with yourself? Last time I wrote about taking little steps one at a time towards your health goals. This is not about me being nice and trying to make things easier. This is about what it takes to make things effective. When we “buckle down” what we are really doing is stepping into a left brain control mode designed for short-term survival. It is part of the fight-or-flight mechanism that blocks out pain in order to survive the moment. This is very useful in emergency situations where we may need to override pain in order to do some amazing things to survive. The problem with this mechanism is that those pain signals are important, they are there to tell us we are damaging ourselves. The amazing things we can accomplish in emergency situations occur at a price. That price is our health. We may create permanent damage to our joints, muscles, even our brain, during this override of feelings. So while this is a worthwhile price to pay to survive, it is a lousy price to pay simply to be comfortable. Here is the big issue – people like to go into left brain control mode because it blocks pain – physical, emotional, and mental pain. This means we can think we are ok even when we are not. This is like cutting the wires to the warning lights and speedometer on your car dash so you can feel more comfortable driving. You can pretend everything is all right no matter how fast you are going or how many bad things may be happening to your engine.
If you truly think being pain-free would be a good thing then I suggest volunteering at a leper colony. Leprosy is a disease of the pain nerves in your body that makes them not work; hence you feel no pain in your body. Without pain you can not feel when you damage yourself. You have no ability to tell when something gets infected, torn, or even falls off. The body can’t even internally regulate itself to direct healing to injured areas without pain signals. Our life works the same way when we live in left brain control. Without the constant feedback of our feeling self to guide us, we become like the leper. We are unable to heal. We don’t even notice when important pieces of ourselves fall away. We can not guide ourselves back into health.
What is the upshot of what I am saying? We must be gentle with ourselves if we are to heal. Health is not about fearing and controlling the bad choices. Health is about feeling the consequences of our bad choices and being attracted to better choices. Health is a trial and error process of finding what works best for us individually…what choices actually make our bodies feel good and strong and balanced. In a natural environment Mother Nature provided a simple road map called pain and natural pleasure to guide us to health. For example in a natural environment we seek sweet tastes because things that are sweet in nature are generally not poisonous. We need to use that map today, but we also need to use our intelligence. We have created an unnatural environment in which we can not feel the effects of many of the things that are harmful to us for a long time. In our modern environment most things that are sweet are now poisonous… just the opposite of a natural environment. Our natural instincts must now be tempered with awareness and good judgment. Natural pleasure has been replaced with the desire for excitement and the unnatural desire for excess. These are actually just variations on the survival/fear based function of the primitive part of our brain…the same part that avoids feeling. It seems to serve a purpose in the moment, but just remember that its actions lead to ill health physically as well as mentally and emotionally.
Feel your way to health. That means a slow and very personal process. It does not work to jump onto other people’s bandwagons. We are all different on every level and need different diets and lifestyles to be healthy. I can suggest things to try that I find improve health, but you must then feel the effect of these suggestions for yourselves and see if it helps you personally. This is part of what I mean when I say be gentle with yourself. Find what fits you, because ultimately that is the only thing that will work in the long run.