How You Think Creates How You Feel

Our own thought patterns effect the health of our body. Each emotional thought pattern is really an underlying “cause” of a physical illness. Understanding the illness can help you address the cause and thereby riding the body of the disease. How you think, literally creates how you feel.

There are many books on the market that describe this system of belief and understanding, but in my opinion, one of the best books on the market for healers is called “Heal Your Body” by Louise Hay, from Hay House Publishing. Ms. Hay created one of, if not the definitive source for emotional causes, their corresponding illness and a metaphysical affirmation to help the individual deal with the originating cause for illnesses.

One way to help bring about change in your life it so focus on replacing negative thinking with positive thinking through affirmations. Affirmations are a way of reprogramming the subconscious to think differently and to automatically react in a more positive way when trigger situations occur in your life.

Understanding the cause is not the cure for an ailment. And this metaphysical/shamanistic approach should be used as a support and in conjunction with traditional approaches to medical evaluations and treatment by your doctor. It doesn’t replace modern medicine.

There is a belief that even if you are involved in traditional treatment, and not addressing the whole body (mind/body/spirit), the ailment will either continue, or return. So there is a new approach by traditional practitioners to look at the whole person when deciphering disease and prescribing treatment. This approach isn’t new, as it’s based on very old metaphysical theory. But today it’s often referred to as the Mind/Body/Spirit connection or approach to healing.

Deciphering The Message
Your body will try to let you know there’s an issue to be addressed. Ailments tend to start out as minor discomforts. When ignored, these minor issues grow into more serious ailments. But how do you recognize there’s a problem and interpret the message?

To do this, you first need to understand a few basic principles of energy within the body. I won’t confuse the issue with metaphysical concepts such as Kundilini energy and chakra centers. While these are important, they can make something simple seem a lot more complex. So let’s stick to the basics.

Energy flows in the body in a clockwise motion. From the root of your spine, to the crown of your head and back again.

This flow has a physical and emotional connection to your being. The energy flowing on the right side of your body is related to masculine/physical energies and the left side relates to the feminine/emotional energies. This is not a gender specific flow. We all have emotions, we all have a physical connection to the world around us. So we all have both forms of energy flowing through us.

Each part of your body is related to a concept in life. The easiest way to put this is to give you an example.
Let’s say you have discomfort in your right wrist. This would indicate you’re having difficulty in the way you’re “handling” a situation, specifically, in the way you’re being flexible, or not flexible about that situation.

Now let’s say you have that same discomfort in your left wrist. This would indicate you’re not being emotionally flexible in how you’re handling or dealing with a situation.

When you have a discomfort or an uneasiness in one part of your body, the best way to look at what’s going on is to ask yourself, what does this body part do for me? The pancreas, for instance, manages the sugar in your body. So look at the sweetness in your life. Has it left you? Are you so focused on the material things in life, that you’re missing out on the sweetness life offers you? You can do this with any part of your anatomy. You just have to focus on what is physically bothering you.

Next look at which side of the body the ailment is manifesting on. The left side where you’re dealing with emotions, how you’re reacting to situations in your thoughts? Or on the right side which is affected by the physical actions you’re making? This is where the right/masculine or left/feminine energies come into play.

Finally, you might also look at who is involved in a situation that is currently causing you stress. Are you feeling uncomfortable with a man in your life, a love, a child, parent, boss or co-worker? It doesn’t have to be someone close to you. It could be someone that you’re having to deal with on a regular basis, male or female who you feel uneasy with. But you should always start looking within, at your self first.

Remember other people can not “make you feel” this way or that. Other people can do unpleasant things, but you are the one who chooses how to feel and respond to their actions. You make you feel a certain way.

Deciphering Examples
Ok, so how do we really put all this together. Again the easiest way is to give you 3 specific examples.

The first thing to do is look at the ailment and decipher it’s underlying issue. The key is to be very open and totally honest with yourself. Some situations can be things you don’t want to face, or admit that you are doing, either to others or to yourself. So you must be willing to face the truth and be open to changing your own mental patterns.

Let’s start with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
Underlying Cause:  Anger and frustrations at life’s seeming injustices.

Let’s say you have problems with carpal tunnel in your right hand. When the carpal tunnel becomes inflamed it tightens around the nerves in your hand. Causing a tingling in the thumb, index and middle fingers. Because it’s on the right side, we can point to an issue you’re having with a male figure in your life. Or with the physical things that are occurring within a situation you’re involved in. We can see how the tightening can seem like you’re being squeezed unfairly or unjustly.

From here no book can give you an answer. You need to look at the situations in your life and determine what the situation could be. Are you treating yourself fairly, or are you involved in a situation involving a male person where you feel they are creating or involved in an unjust situation that is impacting you.

Now let’s look at:
Stress in your shoulders
Underlying Cause: Carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. Feeling like life is a burden.

Let’s say you have tightness in your shoulders continuously, day in and day out. Define for yourself what do your shoulders do? What function do they perform? They carry things, they carry the heavy burdens, literally carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders.

In this example, we’re not talking about the left or right side, but both. So how does that correspond to situations? Well, you still have a right and left shoulder. So in this case, we’re talking about how you feel you’re carrying the load of life, both emotionally and physically doing all the things life requires you to do. This could mean you’re responsible for always carrying for the kids, the house, the chores of the house, cooking, grocery shopping and so on. Having no down time for yourself. This can be overwhelming and can often make you feel like you have no emotional support at home for all the things you feel you’re required to do.

Next let’s look at Cancer
Cancer of any kind eats away at you. So you will need to focus on the type of cancer. For our example, let’s look at Pancreatic Cancer:
Underlying Cause:  Not being able to enjoy the sweetness in life.

This one is a little close to home in my family. So let me use that issue in this example. The pancreas manages the sugar in your physical body. So from this ailment we can decipher the message as the sugar in life is being or has been eaten away. My father’s brother developed pancreatic cancer within 2 years of his wife, of 50 years, passing. She was the sweetness in his life and there is no cancer history in our family. When she died, his life was suddenly lonely and he felt it was empty. His sweetness had left him and that was eating away at his emotions, and within the things he did. Everything they had done together, was gone and he no longer felt as though he could do them without her. Those emotional thoughts manifested in his body, through the pancreas.

Now before we continue let me address the criticism from people who are going to say, this approach doesn’t account for environmental conditions. Or accidents or unexpected events that happen to people every day.

Really? Are you sure about that? You make choices every day that alters events in your life from moment to moment. You leave the office late because you wanted to get that last memo out to your co-workers. Now you’re in a hurry to get somewhere that you have to be. That rush causes you to speed down the road, and you cut a traffic light a little too close and end up getting t-boned by truck. Are you sure your emotions didn’t play into that scenario causing you to make choices that put you in danger of a car accident? Everything we do during the day has consequences. Most of the time, they’re benign outcomes. But sometimes, they result in bigger events, because we’re ignoring the messages within the energy around us.

Addressing The Issue
Now that you know what the underlying issue is, what do you do next? Knowing is fine, but if you don’t work to change the outlook, the issue will not go away. There are of course various ways to deal with issues in your life. Let me emphasize again, that holistic healing is not meant to take place of conventional medicine.

If you catch an ailment soon enough, you might be able to change your thought patterns and resolve the issue permanently. But if you’ve constantly ignored the issue, it could have evolved into a worse situation that requires mainstream medicine.

So the first step is not to self diagnose your problem, and then self treat your ailment. But to understand that you have an issue, find a doctor you trust and verify your physical conclusion. Then develop an emotional/mental plan for addressing the underlying cause. Use the mainstream medicines that are offered and in conjunction with those, start a holistic approach to treat the whole self, the whole Mind, Body, Spirit.

Let me give you a quick example. If you have constant pain in your stomach, and you try to diagnose that problem as simply being uneasy with your gut feelings, you may be treating the wrong issue. That stomach pain can be indigestion, a stomach ulcer, or even an early sign of pancreatic cancer.

From a metaphysical point of view, addressing the underlying cause is paramount to reversing or curing the ailment. If it’s not to late. So how do you address the cause? Through healing the cause, and changing it’s pattern in your life. And that’s the hard part, making change. No one likes change. Change is hard. By our very nature we’re repetitive creatures. We like patterns, we create patterns every day. Either for convince, efficiency, just so we don’t forget to grab the travel coffee cup as we walk out the door. We create all sorts of patterns.

To change issues in your life, you just have to follow the basic formula for change, Acknowledgment, Acceptance , Forgiveness, Action and Letting Go.

• Acknowledgement – you first have to admit you have a problem.
• Acceptance – when you identify the exact issue, accept it. You are “this thing” or “have this trait”.
• Forgiveness – no one is perfect, so there’s no reason to blame yourself or feel guilty. You have admitted you have an issue and it’s time to work on the issue and change it. But before you can change, you must first forgive yourself.
• Action – here is where you start working on changing the issue. You’ve admitted you have a problem, you accept your actions and are willing to change the physical and emotional pattern. So now it’s time to start making that change.
• Letting Go – At some point you need to let go of the old patterns. Stop dwelling on the old negative thinking or concepts that have been replaced by your new positive thinking. Just let go of the past and stop beating yourself up, or worrying you’ll get into the same pattern again.

These steps are done on both a conscious level, you really have to work at controlling your thoughts and actions when dealing with situations. And on an unconscious/mental level. Here you can use various methods to help make change. Visualized meditations, therapy, holistic healings and affirmations.

You can even use affirmations in a meditation to help you alter your subconscious thoughts. Let me give you an example. Here’s your ailment, the cause and an affirmation:

Ailment: Gout
Cause: The need to dominate to avoid anxiety, fear and hurt feelings, having impatience and overwhelming anger.
Affirmation: I am safe and secure. I am at peace with myself and with others. I move freely without fear.

When you repeat that affirmation, when you take that affirming message into a meditation to reprogram your subconsciousness, you will start “feeling” better about the things that have caused you distress. But the affirmation alone, isn’t going to make the change permanent unless you also physically change your patterns to let it go. And you can do all this, with a little effort and desire to heal and change your thinking.

© 2012-2019 Springwolf, D.D., Ph.D. Springwolf Reflections / Springs Haven, LLC. All Rights Reserved.