Trust
Rate yourself: How much do you trust your body to maintain good health without your help?
Not much
Health hazards are everywhere! It's only sensible to take steps to protect myself. I believe it's imperative to take vitamins and/or herbs, avoid fat, avoid salt, avoid processed food, avoid toxic substances, drink only bottled water, exercise dutifully, shun fast food, and I resonate with the concept of food allergies.
Some
I feel kind of okay about my health. Mostly. Sometimes. I do all the above to a greater or lesser degree depending on what scary news I've read or who I've talked to about health hazards or how worried I feel in general.
Totally
My body is awesomely dependable! I think of it as a miraculous factory that can turn everything it gets into something beneficial. I eat exactly what I feel like eating. I use my body by doing things I enjoy. I assume I'll get all the nutrients I need from my varied intake of interesting and tasty food. I drink water right out of the tap. I commit myself to feeling relaxed and good most of the time. The only toxic substances I tend to avoid are the news and negative people.
Can You Trust Your Body?
For the health conscious today, micromanaging the body is considered responsible behavior. Camouflaged by good intentions and supported by popular theories about health, the compulsive quality of this fear-driven habit is invisible to those who practice it. Health-oriented -- or, more accurately, disease-fearing -- micromanagers, also known as the "Worried Well," believe that their behavior is essential, not obsessive.
The goal of the Worried Well is a health nirvana of perfect bodily balance that supposedly can be achieved by juggling micronutrient intake, avoiding all toxic substances, and eating according to research findings that are more changeable than the wind.
Compulsive attempts to manipulate bodily processes are symptomatic of a lack of trust in your innate vitality -- a stress-inducing vote of no confidence in the body's ability to function well on its own. Instead of regarding minor bouts of common symptoms (like irritability, sleeplessness, tiredness, gastric distress, etc.), as normal and temporary, the Worried Well believe every little bump in their road is a sign the wheels are about to come off their inadequately oiled machine.
They don't realize that the more closely you observe your physical condition for signs of imperfection, the more you accumulate evidence that your body can't stay healthy without help. In fact, micromanaging your health is likely to produce the very problems you're trying to avoid, since studies show that paying attention to symptoms increases them.
Learning to Trust Your Body
The mind-body approach indicates that if you really care about your health, you'll stop trying to do the work your body is so miraculously capable of and let it manage itself. But how do you break the health micromanagement habit?
First, you wake up to the fact that your assumptions about what it takes to stay healthy are driven by a campaign of misinformation and distortions slanted to stoke your insecurities. The propaganda that causes you to distrust your body is not intended to promote your health. Its purpose is to insure the economic health of businesses with something to sell you.
Next you gather evidence that supports the fact that developing an optimistic confidence in the natural resilience of your body is one of the best things you can do for your health. Such trust does not require a daunting leap of faith; simple observation reveals that physical well being is the rule and ill health the exception. And scientific research shows the powerful health benefits of such optimism, even if faith in your body does not translate to a minimum daily requirement or earn a place on the food pyramid.
Then you practice trusting your body to keep itself in balance. You do this by noticing how well it functions without your help. You slowly abandon fear-based health practices -- all those things you do because they're "good for you" or because you're afraid something bad will happen if you don't control your body with dietary restrictions, supplements, and exercise. And you redirect your attention toward learning to be more relaxed, spontaneous, and trusting of the body's robust, resilient, reliable energy -- the true source of health.
Your job is to get happy and get out of the way.
"The physical characteristics of your body are not something for you to orchestrate from your place of physical consciousness. They are orchestrated from a cellular level," says the metaphysical teacher Abraham. "And the reason that you get so frustrated when you find yourself out of balance is that you're not the orchestrator of it, and there are so many opinions about what you should be doing, or what you shouldn't be doing. When the truth of it is: It's not your job to maintain the cellular balance of your body. The cells will do it! Your job is to get happy and get out of the way."
www.abraham-hicks.com April/May/June 2000 Newsletter
Exercises: Getting out of the way of health
Develop awareness of what you believe about health
- Notice health-related messages that suggest your body can't be trusted to function well without help.
- Notice health-related messages that suggest you will experience miraculous health improvements by using certain products, avoiding certain things, or doing certain exercises.
- Observe your reactions. Do these messages speak to you or can you recognize them as attempts to manipulate your thinking?
- Which of your health beliefs, behaviors, or habits are based on the assumption that your health will go wrong unless you micromanage it?
- Which of your health habits, behaviors, or beliefs are based on the assumption that your body takes excellent care of itself?
How can you tell if you're being compulsive about health?
Stop your health-oriented behaviors for a month. Imagine turning back the clock 30 or 40 years to a time when health concerns were not a major interest. Drink tap water. Eat whatever you feel like eating. Exercise if it amuses you or don't. Relax about health.
Does the thought of giving up your safety measures make you feel tense? Does a month without the security blanket of micromanagement seem dangerously long? Do you feel that you're a special case and that you really cannot stop your program of control without endangering your health?
How does trusting your body change things?
If your job is to get happy and get out of the way of the work your cells do naturally, how would this change your health behaviors?
- How does this change the way I think about what I'll eat?
- How does this change my beliefs about needing supplements and vitamins?
- How does this change my reason for exercising?
- How does this change what I tell myself when I don't feel well?
- How does this change what I think of as toxic?
- How does it change where I put my energy for creating health?