What's the single most important factor for predicting lifelong good health and longevity?

It’s not eating "right."

It’s not exercise.

It’s not maintaining a "healthy" weight.

It’s not getting regular checkups.

It’s not making sure you get the right vitamins and minerals.

It’s not the purity of the air you breathe or the water you drink.

It’s not giving up smoking.

It’s not having "good" genes.

It’s not the country you live in.

It’s not access to advanced medical care.

So what is it?

It's what you believe.

Scientific studies of the mind-body connection reveal that mental states are reflected immediately in your biochemistry—the chemical messenger system that controls how your body functions.

And what triggers those mental states? Your beliefs. Your choices of belief determine how you respond to life. They are the lenses that color your perception of your world. They trigger the responses that can make you sick or allow your natural well being to flow unimpeded.

That means that focusing your attention in ways that generate feelings of conflict, anxiety, tension, worry, stress, anger, depression, mistrust, or conflict can lead to very real physical effects in your body.

Your habits of attention and reaction can produce high blood pressure, lowered immune response, asthma, digestive disturbances, infertility, insomnia, back pain, skin problems, colds and flu, headaches—the list goes on and on.

Doctors say that more than half of all doctor visits are for stress-related problems.

When you consider how powerfully our emotions and attitudes affect our bodies, it shouldn't be surprising that doctors estimate that 60 to 90 percent of all patient visits are for stress-related symptoms.

These are problems for which your doctor will find no physical cause—problems that conventional medical care often cannot solve.

Now, you might assume that this means doctors aren’t doing sufficient testing to determine what's really wrong, or maybe there are mysterious new ailments that modern medicine just hasn't learned to identify.

Or you may believe this shows that only 10 percent of patients have "real" illness, while for those with stress-related problems—most of us, it seems—"it's all in our heads," which we believe translates to, "You're not really sick, even though you're feeling miserable."

But the real explanation is that we do not yet understand that all symptoms are stress related, and that our very real physical problems always start—and end—"in our heads," in how we react to life.

Science validates the power of the mind-body connection.

Scientific studies have shown that mind-body factors—such as an independent attitude and an optimistic outlook—influence health and longevity more than anything else.

More than what you eat. More than how much you exercise. More than "good" genes. More than whether or not you smoke.

Scientific research has shown that using mind-body techniques reduces doctor visits, speeds healing, reduces use of pain medication, shortens hospital stays, causes symptoms to interfere less with life, and improves patients’ sense of control over their health.

But this information can be hard to take in when all you hear is that you can stay healthy if you "eat right, exercise, get plenty of sleep, and get regular checkups."

Which means you'll need to keep reminding yourself:

Scientific research shows that mind-body factors have a far greater effect upon your health than diet, exercise, exposure to germs or toxins, smoking, genetics, or any other known health risk factors.

In fact, these scientific studies show that people with what we think of as "good" health habits (eating "right," exercising, not smoking, getting lots of sleep) who do not have beneficial mind-body factors like an optimistic outlook tend to be markedly less healthy than people with health-promoting attitudes who have "bad" health habits.

That means that the person who has a generally relaxed and optimistic outlook and eats cheeseburgers every day probably has a better chance of staying healthy and living a long life than the tense pessimist who rigidly avoids consuming fat and runs four miles a day.

But if the mind is such a powerful tool for health, why aren't we using the mind-body approach routinely?

Despite increasing scientific validation of the healing power of the mind, we rarely turn to the mind-body approach to health except as a last resort. And the reasons are obvious: there's not much support for this approach in the mainstream of medicine.

It seems that lots of things need to change before the mind-body approach can become an accepted part of health care. Before we can reap the benefits of using this powerful healing energy within us, it looks like we need to change big institutions, the entire system of conventional medicine, or maybe the whole culture.

But the truth of the matter is this: the only thing standing in the way of using this new approach to health is each of one us. That means there's only one thing that needs to change in order for the mind-body approach to become an integral part of health care:

Your mind.

We’ve been hearing about the power of the mind-body connection since Dr. Herbert Benson wrote The Relaxation Response in 1975.

Books about healing and the mind have been making bestseller lists for almost thirty years. We’re enthusiastic about the idea of healing and the mind—in theory. But when we get sick, most of us forget we’ve heard anything about the mind-body approach to health. Instead we head to the doctor expecting a definite diagnosis and medicine or surgery that will "fix us."

If the mind is our most powerful tool for health, as many trusted health experts and scientific research indicate it is, why aren’t we using the mind-body approach to health?

We don't like the implications.

We believe that if we can get well just by thinking differently, it means we’re not really sick.

Nobody who feels sick wants to be told, "It’s all in your head," but isn't that the first thing that pops into your mind when you hear about illness being "stress-related"?

What if your doctor does a lot of tests, says that he can’t find anything wrong, and suggests that psychological counseling might be helpful? If you’re like most people, you don’t take this as good news.

You don’t translate a diagnosis of "stress-related symptoms" into, "Lucky for you, there’s no sign yet of a terrible disease. It looks like the problem is that you’re having trouble dealing with something in your life."

Instead you hear, "It’s all in your head. You’re making up your problems to get attention or sympathy or to avoid work, or you’re a hypochondriac. You're not really sick."

How can you think seriously about using the mind-body approach to health if you believe it means there’s nothing really wrong with you? Or that what's wrong with you is that you need to just "pull up your socks" and stop being such a neurotic whiner.

That would be too embarrassing. And besides, it seems obvious that there is REALLY something wrong when you're sick—something physical, not mental!

But indications are that all ill health starts first as disturbances in the energy systems of your body--reflections of your mental and emotional lack of ease in your life. These subtle energy disturbances cause very real physical reactions and very real symptoms. And these feelings of dis-ease, if allowed to continue, eventually increase their effects until you see them as actual diagnosable conditions.

If you're smart, then, you'll want to deal with your dis-ease in the early stages, before it becomes the kind of disease that shows up on tests and x-rays. But as long as you translate "stress-related" to mean "I’m not really sick," you’ll go back for a million more tests as the energy disturbances inside you progress to physically visible symptoms that result in a "real" diagnosis.

Better physically ill than mentally ill.

The way things are now, it seems that most people would rather be diagnosed with chronic or terminal disease than acknowledge that the way they react to life is making them sick. It seems we’d rather say, "I was REALLY sick but no one believed me!" than use the power of the mind-body connection to reconnect with health before our symptoms become so physical they are difficult to deal with.

After all, being "really" sick gets you all kinds of benefits. You get sympathy for being "really" sick, in addition to it being a universally acceptable excuse for avoiding everything from social occasions to work.

But at present there’s nothing socially advantageous about admitting to having stress-related symptoms that are disrupting your life and the lives of everyone around you. In fact, as long as we think that "stress-related symptoms" means "you need to get a grip," it seems humiliating.

And we continue to think this way even though the evidence is clear: the way you react to life can make you sick—really sick. Even deathly ill.

The power of the mind-body connection is clear--but what's the active ingredient?

It seems like great news that scientific evidence reveals mental factors are the most powerful influence on health. But we haven’t figured out how to apply this information, because scientists don’t have a clue about the "active ingredient" in mind-body factors. They haven’t been able to come up with a theory about the "mechanics" of the mind-body connection that fits the scientific view of the world.

Is it emotion? And if it is, what are "good" emotions and how can we distill their effects into something we can put in a pill. Is it social status? Is it education? Is it marriage? Is it owning a pet? Is it going to church? Is it having a certain number of friends? Is it volunteering? Is it intimacy?

All these factors (and more) have been isolated as influencing health. But science has not yet noticed the elusive "ingredient" is not specific actions or choices or distinct biochemical reactions, but is belief. Belief is what generates our perceptions of safety, comfort, fulfillment, enjoyment, power, and freedom--those states that allow well being.

Belief as the active ingredient doesn't fit the scientific worldview. Beliefs can't be counted or weighed. You can’t see beliefs. You can’t measure attention. You can’t count perception. So scientists keep looking for some chemical, some hormone, some thing that explains how your mind can affect your body.

Until science changes its mind about what counts, beliefs won't be acknowledged as the active ingredient in the mind-body connection. Until then, scientists can’t offer much advice about using the mind-body connection for health.

So, who're you gonna call for mind-body help?

Your doctor probably won’t tell you how to use the power of your mind to change your health.

Partly because scientists don’t understand it.

Partly because your doctor never studied the mind-body approach to health in medical school.

Partly because you aren’t insisting on it.

Partly because you want the doctor to agree that you're "really" sick, instead of suggesting something that makes it sound like your problems are "all in your head."

And you aren’t asking for this information because you rely on the authorities to tell you what works to keep you healthy. And they're telling you to eat right, exercise, and get regular checkups.

That makes this a kind of Catch-22 situation.

You don’t insist on mind-body health information because the health authorities don’t tell you it’s important.

Health authorities don’t think it’s important because the public isn’t demanding information about it.

So, you won’t see public health announcements telling you to look at life differently to stay healthy. It’s not that health authorities haven’t heard of the mind-body connection, but since they don’t know to translate the research results into health rules, what can they tell you about using your mind for health? "Avoid stress" is all they say.

How much optimism equals a serving?

What we're used to is good, solid rules about exactly what we need to do or not do, eat or avoid eating to stay healthy. But the mind-body connection is a new approach to health, one that doesn't have those clear objective measurements. The mind-body approach is a subjective approach to health. It's about what works for you, according to beliefs you choose.

So, while scientific research indicates that mental factors like an optimistic outlook, a sense of purpose, and self-acceptance are health-promoting, they can't tell you exactly how optimistic you need to feel every day. No one can determine the Recommended Daily Allowance of meaning and purpose? There's no way to know how much self-acceptance protects you from dis-ease.

Because it’s much easier to tell you how to eat and exercise than it is to tell you to approach life differently, trusted health authorities keep telling you that eating right and exercising is what will save you from ill health. And while it's clear and it's measurable, it's not the whole story about what it takes to stay or get healthy.

You're already using the mind-body connection, but you aren't using it deliberately.

Maybe the reason we aren't pushing for clearer information about the mind-body approach to health is that most people think they already understand it. It's easy to recite the sound-bite version of mind-body health: think positive, avoid stress, and have a good attitude. This media simplification of the mind-body approach has most people convinced that they use it all the time.

And they do. They just aren’t using it consciously, the way they think they are.

By deliberately using the power of your mind—learning to relax, learning to choose beliefs that make you feel good, learning to shift your attention and change your perception—you can relieve pain, calm your digestion, free your breathing, soothe your skin, vanquish your headaches or backaches, overcome infertility, lower your blood pressure, cure insomnia, reduce your need for medication, and even bring about cures that seem downright miraculous.

But there's more to this than a simplistic determination to "put on a happy face" when you have problems, or repeat positive affirmations, or visualize successful outcomes.

In order to deliberately employ the power of the mind-body connection, you need to learn to notice how you feel so you recognize when your choices lead to tension, and then choose differently. Not once, but repeatedly. It requires new habits of attention and choice, and the effort demanded to develop new habits can be daunting. It's simple, but rarely easy.

So why not just take a pill?

It's a lot easier to just put your trust in Western medicine and simply take your medicine than it is to figure out what's going on inside you and change the way you look at life. And if it's working for you, keep doing whatever you're doing. Complete trust in your choices is powerful medicine.

But for many people, modern medicine alone isn't solving their problems. Taking pills hasn't sufficiently eased their symptoms. Or their symptoms have disappeared in one area and new symptoms have cropped up in other areas.

If your current medical choices aren't doing the trick, you may find that the only way to change your dis-ease into ease is to start looking inside for answers. It's not as easy as just taking a pill, but it provides benefits that go broader and deeper.

And while it's true that deliberate use of the mind-body approach to health requires more from you than conventional medicine does, the effort is more unfamiliar than overwhelming.

As I've already pointed out, it requires that you learn to NOTICE habits of belief that cause you dis-ease, recognize that you can choose other ways of looking at things, and then make those choices.

And, as I also pointed out, this sounds simple, but because it's unfamiliar, learning to apply these simple techniques can be quite challenging.

Deliberately using mind-body therapies can result in the same biochemical alterations that you can get when using medication alone. For example, depressed people who take antidepressants show beneficial changes in their brain chemistry, and depressed people who learn to think differently using cognitive therapy also show the same kinds of beneficial changes in their brain chemistry.

Now, learning to think differently takes a lot more work than opening a bottle of pills. But, according to studies, people who learn new habits of perception have fewer relapses than those who use only medication.

Learning to look at life differently solves the problem at its source, while only taking medicine often does not. And learning to look at things differently is a skill that can be used in many other areas of your life. Are these factors important enough for you to make the extra effort of changing mental habits? Only you know the answer.

But isn't it better to avoid drugs and surgery?

Let's get this clear: There is nothing wrong or "less-evolved" about using prescription medicine, surgery, or any other treatment offered by conventional or alternative medicine. Any and all treatments work by acting as catalysts for shifting your focus from illness to well being.

Using nothing but "mind power" to just "poof" away your symptoms can happen, but you are also "poofing" away your symptoms when you take a pill and your headache stops. Or when you get surgery that frees you from a troublesome symptom.

Therefore, anything that helps you relax and allow your energy to return to its natural state is genuinely health-promoting. There is nothing "better" about forgoing conventional medical treatment and trying for a cure using mind power alone.

After all, when you're sick, your goal is not to achieve some kind of mind-body purity. Your goal is to get back into alignment with your innate well-being.

Then why not rely on pills, surgery, annual checkups, eating right and exercising?

Because adding deliberate use of the mind-body approach provides benefits you may not get otherwise.

Remember: if what you're doing is working, keep doing it. But if you have pesky or debilitating physical or mental problems that aren't responding to conventional or alternative approaches, you will benefit by adding deliberate use of the mind-body approach. If you feel worried--about your health or anything else--you will benefit by adding deliberate use of the mind-body approach.

Adding the mind-body approach to any treatment program helps solve health problems at their source, a side effect you may not obtain from use of prescription medicine alone.

Using the power of your mind can enable you to solve chronic or mysterious health problems that modern medicine does not treat successfully.

Using the mind-body approach in conjunction with any other treatment helps you to accept the health-promoting reassurance your health practitioner is offering you. Accepting reassurance creates relaxation, which is a key component of healing.

Noticing how your attitude affects your health enables you to feel comfortable about making treatment choices, providing a sense of self trust that is an essential part of your foundation for well-being.

For example, people who take antidepressant medication to change their brain chemistry often take in with the medication the belief that they are a helpless victim of their brain chemistry. They feel that they cannot trust their own body to function properly.

Contrast this with people who treat depression by learning to change their thinking style, using such therapy by itself or in conjunction with antidepressant medication. Changing the way they perceive and react to life changes their brain chemistry, but more importantly, they get results that last by trading that debilitating sense of being a victim of their brain chemistry for a sturdy trust in themselves.

Symptoms are the signals, not the problems.

One aspect of using the mind-body approach is redefining familiar terms so you can perceive your situation differently and deal with it differently.

According to the mind-body approach, a symptom is a signal, like the oil pressure warning light in your car. The symptom tells you there's a disruption of the natural flow of energy in your body. Such disruptions result from tension of some sort--a internal conflict related to how you’re dealing with something in your life.

The way we usually deal with health, we don't recognize the symptom as a signal. We see the symptom as the problem. For example, we think our depression is caused by our brain chemistry. The truth of the matter is, our brain chemistry is caused by and can be altered by how we choose to respond to life.

Because we believe the symptom is the problem, we think the solution is to get rid of the symptom—for example, the "bad" brain chemistry. But this is like going to a mechanic and asking him to remove the oil pressure warning light—or putting a piece of tape over it—instead of repairing the problem that the warning light signals.

The symptoms—the brain chemistry that accompanies depression, or your pain, insomnia, headaches, carpal tunnel syndrome, infertility, irritable bowel syndrome, high blood pressure, chronic fatigue syndrome—are not the source of the problem, no matter how annoying or painful or life-threatening they may be.

Since symptoms are feedback generated by your body to draw your attention to whatever is causing you dis-ease, it is useful to not only treat the symptom, but address the symptom's underlying source. When you only treat the symptom and don't address the it's source, the result can be new symptoms that appear in other areas.

When you learn to notice how the ways you respond to life are affecting you and choose different responses, you solve health problems at their source and build skills that keep you in balance over the long term.

Remember, the mind-body connection cannot be turned on and off. It is always active. That means it's only sensible to learn to deliberately direct the mind-body connection. Doing so puts you in charge of your health and gives you optimum results from any treatment you choose.

Would you benefit from using the mind-body approach to health?

Do you think you'd benefit from consulting a medical intuitive?

Go to the mirror and you’ll find one.

Every "professional" medical intuitive says the same thing: using the mind-body approach, you can learn to tune in to your intuition when you have health problems and understand how to apply the information you receive.

Do you feel worried, anxious, or stressed?

Today's health seekers have been called the Worried Well, because even when we aren't sick, we're worried about our health.

Stress is considered to be a key component of health problems today. Relaxation no longer seems to come naturally to many of us. As a result, you may be looking for ways to stay healthy or get healthy while dealing with health-sapping day-to-day stress.

Stressful situations will never go away, but by using the mind-body approach to health you can learn to respond mindfully—rather than automatically react—to the inevitable ups and downs of life.

When you learn to use the internal coping skills of the mind-body approach, you change your habitual reactions to stressful situations. This turns off jangling inner alarms and releases the natural healing abilities of your body.

Are you dealing with chronic illness?

You may be confronting the limitation, pain, uncertainty, or inconvenience of chronic illness.

Chronic health problems are on the rise, but conventional medicine has a poor track record for treating them. From the mind-body perspective, the symptoms of chronic illness are bodily distress signals whose messages have been ignored for so long that they can no longer be turned off by just taking a pill. To heal, you must address your symptoms at their source, rather than just trying to make them go away.

Using the mind-body approach, people with chronic health problems can reconnect with their natural flow of healthful energy, minimize or eliminate symptoms, improve functioning, and regain a sense of control and freedom.

Have you been given a terminal diagnosis?

You may have been diagnosed with a life-threatening condition. Of course you want to pull out all the stops to get better.

And if you intend to do everything you can to get well, you'll want to enlist the power of the mind-body connection to enhance whatever other treatment you choose, and to calm your fears and put you on the health-promoting path of hope.

Do you have ongoing problematic symptoms?

You may feel tired all the time. Or be depressed. Or just get sick with colds and flu every time they "go around." Or you may have insomnia. Or can’t conceive. There are dozens of symptoms that aren’t life threatening but can leave you feeling miserable, worried, or frustrated.

The mind-body approach gives you options for healing that conventional medicine doesn't offer. Using mind-body techniques, alone or in conjunction with other therapies, you address your health challenges at their source instead of just struggling with your symptoms.

Got pain?

Do you have headaches, backaches, carpal tunnel syndrome, fibromyalgia, joint aches, or other disabling or distracting pain?

Pain is one of the most common reasons for seeking medical help and often one of the most difficult symptoms to treat.

Enlisting the aid of the mind-body connection can relieve or eliminate pain and give you back your life.

Does aging look like an inevitable downhill slide?

Scientific studies of centenarians show that healthy aging is not a matter of eating right, exercising, regular checkups, and good genes.

Instead, scientists have found that the qualities shared by those who age well are health-promoting mind-body factors like an independent attitude and optimistic outlook. Aging is not an inherently disabling condition.

This is good news for all of us. It tells us that it’s never too late to learn to use the power of your mind to improve your health and change the way you age.

Are you seeking a fuller, richer life?

Many people who are drawn to the mind-body approach to health simply want to be the best they can be.

They want to learn about the mind-body connection because they know this approach is about more than just how your physical body functions. It encompasses every aspect of your life: body, mind, psyche, emotions, relationships, work, finances, and creative self expression—how you relate to the world around you in every way.

Learning to apply the principles of the mind-body approach can be a path to feeling more in balance, more fulfilled, more in tune with life, and more in touch with your purpose and power.

The mind-body approach is the path to the genuine sense of well-being that defines health.

No matter what your motivation, no matter what your symptoms, no matter what challenges you’re grappling with, for optimum health and real healing, you need to understand how to deliberately, consciously apply the principles of the mind-body approach to health.

But it's doubtful that you'll get this kind of information from your doctor.

It’s not that they don’t believe the mind strongly affects health—remember, doctors are the ones who tell us that 60 to 90 percent of all doctor visits are for stress-related symptoms.

But until science comes up with answers that appeal to the scientific worldview, we’re mostly on our own when it comes to using our minds for health.

Where do you find support for using the mind-body approach?

The ways things are now, if you want to use the mind-body approach to health, you’ll need to do your own research—and that means lots of reading and lots of experimenting.

You’ll need to sort through all the information, misinformation, good advice, misguided advice, brilliant insights, distortions, and sheer nonsense you’ll find when you research the mind-body approach to health.

You’ll need to figure out what works and what doesn’t by trial and error.

That would be a lot to do even if you felt great and had plenty of leisure time.

If you’re like me, the last thing you're in the mood for when you’re in a health crisis or under a load of stress is sitting at the computer doing endless hours of Internet research, or combing through dozens of books, trying to make sense of hundreds of different points of view.

I've done lots of research.

Exploring the details of using consciousness for change has been my passion for more than 25 years.

When I first started exploring mind-body health, I was exhilarated by the idea that I could change my body by thinking differently. I wanted to know exactly how to accomplish this magic.

So I read everything I could find about healing and the mind.

But the more I read and studied, the more confused I became.

There's a lot of conflicting advice.

And there is plenty of information from respected authors that just doesn’t make sense.

Because many of the authors writing about mind-body health are doctors, their strong allegiance to the scientific worldview keeps them from taking the ideas about the power of the mind far enough to allow them to understand how it works.

And the more metaphysically-oriented authors often make up new rules for health that are as limiting as the conventional ones.

As I studied, I tried to apply the information I read, but I was rarely as successful as I thought I should be.

I wondered what was I doing wrong. How could I tell which information was accurate and which was distorted? What was the common thread?

In search of the active ingredient

I gathered and organized every clue I could find about the affect of consciousness on the body.

I read reams of scientific evidence that pointed toward the power of the mind in health, studies about how optimism affects health, research on the placebo response, documented cases of spontaneous remissions from cancer, and research on centenarians.

I read the New Age "conscious creation" authors, New Thought authors, channeled information from metaphysical teachers, advice from medical intuitives, and information from spiritual teachings throughout the ages.

I read books on quantum physics and string theory to try understand what science knows about the energy that makes up matter and the universe. I read metaphysical teachers to connect what they said with what physicists think about energy.

I also read the naysayers, the scientists and medical authorities who denied or minimized the power of the mind to affect the body.

All this exploration led to clarity about the role of the active ingredient of belief and perception in the mind-body connection. And it also revealed why we love the idea of the mind-body connection but reject practicing the mind-body approach to health.

Why do science and medicine resist the mind-body approach to health?

As I studied the history of science and medicine I saw how the scientific worldview and beliefs about health and how the body works have changed over the past couple of millennia.

I learned that cultures and institutions always resist new ways of thinking, new theories, and new worldviews before they finally accept them. Negative reactions to new health theories in the past are identical to current reactions to the mind-body approach by today's health authorities.

Despite the fact that science can't explain it, the evidence remains overwhelming that the mind-body approach is something real and useful. Becoming convinced of this only requires opening your mind a little and exploring the ideas for yourself.

This is important, because it looks like being willing to be convinced that the mind-body approach can work is the first step in putting this tool to conscious use.

More evidence supporting the mind-body approach.

I discovered many areas of scientific research reveal that mental energy—something we can’t see, can’t measure, and don’t seem to want to believe in—can affect the physical world.

Psychology of health is a field devoted to examining the effects mental and emotional factors have on health.

Studies of biofeedback and clinical hypnosis reveal that we have an almost miraculous ability to exercise conscious control over even what we call our "unconscious" physical functioning.

Research in the area of Psychoneuroimmunology is providing evidence that our thoughts and emotions chemically affect our bodies with an immediacy that can't be explained by the brain-body connection.

And there are many studies somewhat off the beaten path of science that reveal that we inhabit a "living energy universe": the work of psychic researchers, studies showing bizarre similarities between identical twins raised separately, the fact that people with multiple personalities can have diabetes one moment and not have it as another personality takes over, and experiments that show that animals know when their owners are coming home.

In the search for evidence supporting the power of the mind-body connection, I sifted through information about every healing practice and theory I could find: Western medicine, Chinese medicine, acupuncture, Ayurveda, healing touch, homeopathy, radionics, Christian Science, shamanism, voodoo, Huna, megavitamin therapy, color therapy, aromatherapy, macrobiotics, chiropractic, naturopathy—the list goes on and on.

I did not discover an easy formula for guaranteed health.

You probably don't want to hear that.

Anyone who wants to sell you something—whether it’s their point of view or a product or service—is supposed to get you to believe you’re buying a no-effort, simple to understand, easy to apply formula for guaranteed success.

You know how this goes:

"Lose 30 pounds a month eating foods you love with this guaranteed weight loss program!"

"Use antioxidants and stay cancer-free."

"Just spray on and dirt rinses off. No scrubbing needed!"

Despite the fact that these claims are never true, we seem to have an endless appetite for assurances that life can be this easy.

So this is what I should tell you:

"Use the amazing power of your mind to banish illness forever!"

"Three easy-to-apply secrets to curing any disease!"

"Just spray on the mind-body approach and symptoms disappear with no scrubbing!"

Guaranteed!

Instead, I discovered bad news and good news about the mind-body connection.

The bad news is, if you want a formula for health, you may as well stick with conventional medicine. Today's health authorities are happy to give you formulas galore.

Of course, there’s one small problem with the current belief that we can find a formula for health: health doesn’t work that way. Each of us has our own particular problems that will most likely require our individual creativity, flexibility, persistence, time, energy, and attention to change.

Therefore, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll read about healing and the mind, experience a flash of enlightenment, and have everything in your life change with no effort on your part.

As I've pointed out, the fundamentals of the mind-body approach to health are simple, but their unfamiliarity can make them challenging to understand and apply.

What's the good news?

Through years of researching and using this information and helping others use it, I understand where you’re likely to have problems understanding and applying this new way of health and what you can do to transform the inevitable roadblocks into bridges. And I can guarantee you this: once you start using this approach to health, you'll find your health--and your life--improving in ways you might have hardly believed possible before.

What's your next step for changing your mind for health?

Read the articles on this site.

Fountain of Youth covers aging and the mind-body connection.

Health in the News examines health-related news stories from a mind-body perspective to provide antidotes to the media's daily doses of negative health "information" and to encourage you to question common limiting health assumptions.

Practice offers practical ways to use the mind-body approach to solve or prevent health problems.

Practice the suggestions in the articles.

Check out the suggested resources.

Contact me with your questions, if you like.

Remember, there is no once-and-for-all trick to deliberately directing the mind-body connection. Changing your mind so that you feel good (and feeling good is what health is, isn't it?) takes ongoing practice and ongoing commitment to making choices that feel better than the ones you're accustomed to.

It takes effort to make new habits of perception familiar. It takes practice to notice how you feel and use that information to make choices that feel better. It takes effort to choose to relax instead of automatically responding with tension.

The effort may seem daunting, but it's not impossible. Persist. Keep practicing. Keep noticing how you feel and practice shifting to better feelings. You are changing habits of a lifetime. It is simple, but rarely easy.

Don't forget -- you can't turn off the mind-body connection.

This means you ought to learn to use it with awareness, because the mind-body connection is always involved in everything that goes wrong—and right—with our bodies.

Remember, all illness can be treated more effectively by consciously using the mind-body approach to health, no matter what other kinds of treatment you choose.

Your well being in all areas always benefits when you learn to deliberately direct the power of your mind in order to positively influence your responses to life.

The benefits of using the mind-body approach to health are not hypothetical.

Remember, the evidence is clear: scientific research shows your mind is your most powerful tool for health.

This means no matter what kind of health care you choose, adding the deliberate use of the mind-body approach is your most reliable key to better health--from solving minor problems to achieving seemingly miraculous cures,

If you're really concerned about your health, it's time to start changing your mind.