By: Lissa Rankin MD / Source: Wake Up World

Positive psychology and New Age ideas about health and healing have flooded the internet and bookstore shelves in recent years.

But as a doctor who wrote a science-based book about the physiology of the body’s natural healing process, it strikes me that some of what’s out there is giving the idea that the body can heal itself a bad rap.

Why do I say that?

Well, there’s a lot of pseudo-science and quasi-psychology masquerading as real data, when people are hungry for truth. Here’s some help debunking popular myths that may confuse what’s real.

1. It’s “just the placebo effect.”

Just the placebo effect? Why do people say “placebo” as if it’s a four-letter word? Don’t they understand that the placebo effect is proof positive that the body is brilliantly equipped with natural self-repair mechanisms that can fix broken proteins, kill cancer cells, fight infectious agents, and retard aging?

And don’t they realize that even if a clinical trial fails to demonstrate that a drug or surgery or alternative medicine treatment is better than a placebo, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t “work” when 18-80% of the time, the body heals itself when given a sugar pill or saline injection in a clinical trial. And that’s GREAT NEWS!

The placebo effect needs a major image overhaul. I suggest we call it the “self-healing effect” to remind ourselves that it’s just a measurable phenomena related to the body’s known self-repair mechanisms.

2. The placebo effect is all in your mind.

While thoughts, beliefs, and feelings originating in the mind can activate placebo-like “self-healing effects” in the body, the placebo effect doesn’t just make people feel better; it effects measurable outcomes in the body’s physiology.

When patients are treated with sugar pills, saline injections, and fake surgeries, warts disappear. Colons become less inflamed. Bronchi dilate. Bald men even grow hair.

It’s not just in your mind. It’s in your body.

3. Placebo effects only happen to gullible people.

Nope. All of us are susceptible to placebo effects. In fact, some studies suggest that people with higher IQ’s may be even more susceptible than average.

The only ones who seem to be relatively immune to placebo effects are those with Alzheimer’s.

4. You can heal yourself.

To say you can heal yourself is kind of a misnomer. As I elucidate in great detail in Chapter 3 of Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof That You Can Heal Yourself, the data suggests that your body can heal itself, but it does so much more effectively when the process is facilitated by the right kinds of healers who support the body’s self-healing process.

These may include doctors and nurses, but they may also include therapists, acupuncturists, energy healers, naturopaths, shamans, and many other modalities of healing practitioners.

A combination of positive belief on the part of your provider and nurturing care that leaves your amygdala feeling calm and safe has been scientifically proven to improve health outcomes.

5. Doctors don’t use placebos in clinical practice.

Psych! Approximately 50% of doctors admit to using placebos in clinical practice, usually without the patient’s consent. They’re not trying to be sneaky.

Those who do this are just trying to help. (For example, when a patient has maxed out her pain medication and will be at risk if she gets more, a doctor may inject saline into her IV and tell her it’s morphine. Very often, she gets relief.)

It’s not always a sugar pill or a saline injection. Sometimes, instead, it’s a drug known to be ineffective for the condition being treated or a vitamin proven not to work.

It’s an ethical dilemma for doctors, and many are conflicted about their choices, but if you think it doesn’t happen in medical offices, think again.

6. If you can’t heal yourself, you’ve done something wrong.

No! No! No! While thoughts, beliefs, and feelings that originate in the mind can trigger stress responses in the body that deactivate the body’s natural self-healing processes, predisposing the body to illness, the presence of illness does not mean that you’ve been a bad patient with bad thoughts and you deserve a cosmic spanking.

There’s no place for blame, shame, or guilt when it comes to the healing process. Such thoughts only trigger more stress responses. As Dr. Christiane Northrup says, “We are responsible to our illness, notfor our illness.

” Instead of blaming yourself, try asking yourself, “Is there a lesson I might learn from my health condition?” or “If my illness had a message to deliver me, what would it tell me?”

If the answer to both questions is “Nada,” cool beans. Even if your health condition has something to teach you, it doesn’t mean you’ve done anything wrong. It means you’re doing something very right by allowing illness to be an opportunity for awakening.

7. Healing yourself is all quantum physics.

I’m studying energy medicine and what I’m learning fascinates me. But I think there’s a tendency to try to explain everything with science, when perhaps some things are better explained in spiritual terms.

These days it seems like everyone and her mother is referencing quantum physics as the explanation for things some may find hard to believe or understand.

But perhaps we need to cultivate our tolerance for ambiguity, rather than trying to couch what we don’t fully understand in pseudo-scientific language that just gets the scientists up in arms.

In other words, if you’re gonna quote science, make sure you get it right. Don’t throw scientific language around if you’re not really sure what you’re talking about.

8. All illness results from past life karma.

I’m learning all about past lives after recently meeting psychiatrist Dr. Brian Weiss, author of Many Lives, Many Masters, with whom I had the privilege of experiencing a past life regression when we were both speaking at Hay House’s I Can Do It! conference in Atlanta. (Read about my past life regression here).

I’m not dissing past lives or suggesting that we can’t learn a lot about how we’re behaving in this life by looking at the arc of our soul’s journey in past ones.

Whether past life regressions illuminate real past lives or are metaphors for what our soul is here to learn in this one, I think they can be profoundly healing to body, mind, and soul.

But to suggest that all illnesses are the result of bad karma we inherit from things we did “wrong” in past lives strikes me as off base.

It sounds too much like blame, and if you’re an 8 year old who has leukemia or you just got hit by a semi and are now paralyzed, the last thing you need to hear is that past life karma is striking you down in this life.

9. Illnesses that resolve without medical treatment are the result of miracles and magic.

While I’m not denying the presence of Divine intervention and miracles (I believe!), and while I’m certainly open to the possibility of magic, the body’s ability to heal itself can be explained with pure physiology.

The people in the medical literature who experience spontaneous remissions from seemingly “incurable” illnesses aren’t just lucky. Instead of learning helplessness and sitting back passively, feeling like victims, many of them chose to be proactive about increasing their odds of spontaneous remission. (Read here to learn the 6 behaviors people who experience spontaneous remission from Stage 4 cancer have in common).

Mind Over Medicine explains in great detail the physiology of how such behaviors influence the amygdala in your brain, which affects hormones in your blood stream, and affects every cell in your body.

While magic may exist, when the mind is optimally healthy, the body may follow.

10. It’s all about cure.

Yes, when we’re sick, it’s natural to focus on how much relief we’d feel if only the disease would vaporize completely.

But what if there’s a deeper sense of peace we can access when we let go of the need to control outcomes and instead, surrender to what is, while simultaneously doing everything within our power to make our bodies ripe for cure?

Kris Carr and I will be appearing together on a DVD that we’re filming this week as part of a public television special about Mind Over Medicine.

In preparation for our interview, I asked her how she handles the fact that she’s done everything “right” on her healing journey, but she still has Stage 4 cancer.

Kris eloquently told me that she long ago relinquished the attachment to cure, choosing instead to define success as thriving, with or without cancer. Within such surrender, true healing lies.

Source: Care 2

1. You are stronger than you think. Life sometimes throws you a test. Throw it back.

Dig deep into your soul and use the resilience you have learned over the years to get where you are going.

2. Journeys take steps. Action is required to see results. The road may be hard at times, but if you just keep putting one foot in front of the other, you will reach checkpoints along the way that will allow you to see how far you have come and give you the strength to continue the next leg of the journey.

3. Listen to the whispers. Your body and soul know what it wants and needs. Listen to the whispers. They come at the strangest times but almost always the quietest times.

Follow them. Trust them. Love them and thank them for guiding you.

4. Give to yourself first. Rid yourself of the idea that you have to please and give to others first. If your tank is empty from giving to them, you will have nothing left.

Fill your tank with love for you so you have more to give others.

5. Accept others the way they are. When we live in a world that is constantly pushing us away from who we authentically are, it is easy to judge others, yet we do not want to be judged.

Free yourself from the cycle of you judging them and them judging you by creating and giving space to those in your world to just be who they truly are; in return you will get the same.

6. Live in a gossip and drama free zone. The intention of negative gossip is to tear apart the individual being gossiped about. Drama takes an incredible amount of energy to participate in and listen to.

Declare all of your spaces – including your mind – drama and gossip free, and bask in all the energy you are saving for positive, loving and productive activities.

7. Get control of the negative voice in your head. We all have that voice in our head who has had years of practice holding us back. Get control of it. Do not allow it to take over.

When it begins, tell it “not today, I am not listening” and push forth in your dreams, for if you listen to it, you will be forever held back.

8. Inspire others. Do the things you love to do and do them well. You will naturally inspire others and in turn will find yourself surrounded by inspiring individuals.

9. This is the only life you have on this earth: make it count. It doesn’t matter where you have been; each and every day is a new day, an opportunity to rewrite your story.

Make each day count for yourself for it may be your last. Spend your days living on your own terms, with those you love, in the spaces you appreciate.

By: Lissa Rankin / Source: Care 2

The key to happiness is to be more of who we are. That’s what Gretchen Rubin, author of ”The Happiness Projects” tells us. Gretchen says that in order to know who we are, we must ask ourselves a few key questions.

Try writing down your answers to the following questions she lays out for us.

1. Who do you envy and why?

When someone has something you want, that’s very useful information about who you want to be. Rather than focusing on the negative aspect of envy or the judgment you might put on yourself for feeling that way, focus on being grateful for this additional information about what you value and care about.

2. What do you lie about?

Anything we try to hide is a big red flag. The lie is a disconnect between your behavior and your values.

3. What would you do for fun?

It is a sad fact about happiness that when you say to adults, “What would you do for fun?” many adults are truly mystified. HINT: If you don’t know the answer, answer this—What did you do for fun when you were 10 years old?

4. Are you an abstainer or a moderator?

Think of something you find very tempting — chocolate, cigarettes, sex, alcohol, Cheetos, shopping — whatever.

Gretchen says there are two types of people — abstainers and moderators. To avoid temptation, abstainers have to go cold turkey. They can’t even get started with a bag of potato chips or they’ll eat the whole bag.

Moderators, on the other hand, can eat just one square of dark chocolate and be happy, and if they abstain completely, they get totally cranky. Moderators feel rebellious if they’re not allowed to have just a little bit.

Since part of what makes people unhappy is trying to resist temptation, it helps to know whether you’re an abstainer or a moderator.

If you know yourself and your own nature—and you OWN it—you’re much better prepared to handle temptation. In other words, just accept your own nature and act accordingly.

5. What’s the nature of your relationship to the expectations of yourself and others?

When you are trying to change a habit, you’re trying to impose an expectation upon yourself. But there are two kinds of expectations—outer expectations (work deadlines, a request from a loved one) and inner expectations (what you desire for yourself).

Gretchen explains that there are 4 categories of expectations:

• Upholders

These people respond well to both outer and inner expectations without much fuss. They just do as they’re told, whether their motivations come from internal or external expectations.

These are your classic “goody two shoes,” who follow rules pretty blindly. If a sign is posted, they will obey it. If they set a New Year’s Resolution, they’ll just do it.

Upholders are motivated by fulfillment. They feel good when they meet expectations. They hate to be blamed or let people down. They want to know the rules, and they’re great rule followers, but they’re unhappy if they don’t know what is expected of them.

They’re good self-starters. If they make up their minds to do something, they do it. But the dark side is that if upholders don’t know what’s expected of them—if things are ambiguous, they feel paralyzed.

There’s a grinding quality, a relentlessness, to upholders. They need to stay within their comfort zones to feel happy, and that includes knowing what is expected of them.

• Questioners

These people question all expectations, whether internal or external. In order to change a behavior, they must be persuaded.

If their questions are answered to their own satisfaction, they can be persuaded to meet an expectation. If the motivations for change don’t make sense to them, forget it!

Questioners can have either upholder tendencies or rebel tendencies, but most lean one way or another.

Questioners wake up in the morning and think “What needs to get done today?” They want to know why they should do something. The questioner is saying, “Why are we doing this at all?”

They love information and research. If they accept an expectation, they’re good at fulfilling it. They endorse everything internally if they sign on. But their upside is also their downside.

If you don’t get a questioner on board, they’re not going to meet expectations. It’s hard for them to act if they feel they don’t have enough information. This can make them seem totally arbitrary.

• Rebels

These people resist all expectations, inner or outer. A rebel wants to do what a rebel wants to do. If you set an expectation for a rebel and tell them to do something, they’ll actually go out of their way to disobey you and fail to meet the expectation, just to prove a point.

The upside of the rebels is that they’re willing to think and behave outside the box. They can be creative nonconformists who push the envelope. But they can be incredibly frustrating!

Gretchen says rebels can be manipulated by challenging them and suggesting that they CAN’T do something. Tell a rebel she can’t do something and she’ll be all, “Well, I’ll show you. Ha!”

Tell a rebel, “I don’t think your team can get that done by Friday!” Then watch them be ready by Wednesday.

Although rebels are not motivated by following the rules, rebels may occasionally (and shockingly) choose to do something purely out of love for you — not because you asked them to do it, but because they love you. But not always. So don’t get your hopes up.

• Obligers

These people readily meet outer expectations but have a hard time meeting inner expectations. So they’ll go out of their way to please others, but they do at the expense of what is in their own best interests. These are the typical “people pleasers” who sell themselves out for the approval of others.

Obligers wake up and think “What do I HAVE to do today?” They are motivated by external accountability. They’re great to have around — great team members, great friends, great family.

They hate to make mistakes. They bear the brunt of it on themselves. They hate being people pleasers but they can’t stand to let someone down. An obliger needs to build in external accountability for inner expectations.

So if they’ve made a New Years Resolution, they need to tell everyone by blogging about their intentions, for example. Then they’re motivated to please those they’ve promised, even though they’re really serving themselves.

Obligers are not good self-starters. They need deadlines, coaches, late fees, check ins. They’re also very susceptible to burn out. Everyone else takes advantage of the obligers. So if you’re in a relationship with an obliger, be mindful of that.

Certain combinations of people and jobs work better together. Rebels are almost always married to obligers. Upholders must be in relationship with upholders or questioners with upholder tendencies. Otherwise, it’s a disaster in the making!

In the end, we can only build a happy life on the foundation of our own true nature. To learn to understand yourself is the adventure of a life—to love ourselves, to accept ourselves, and to live in accordance with your true nature.

By: Sara, from Institute of Heart Math / Source: Care 2

Now and then we all take a moment to look at the life we are living and daydream about how our futures will look. So, take one of those moments right now, and rather than “thinking” about what the future might look like based on your life as it is now, do the following:

Look as deeply as you can into your heart and visualize the future you‘ve always truly desired, the one that fills your heart with joy whenever you imagine it.

In that simple exercise, you have glimpsed what I call your heart blueprint.

What Is Your Heart Blueprint?

From the earliest days of our lives, when we begin to imagine the future and our place in it, an idealistic vision begins to unfold of what could be, or as some would say, what we came here for.

Think of your heart blueprint as a city map that shows all the one-way and two-way streets, left- and right-hand turns, traffic jams and detours you must negotiate as you travel a city.

In each instance that you do this or that, go one way or another or otherwise delay your arrival at your heart’s desired destination, you drain precious energy. Similarly, following ambitions and desires not aligned with what your true heart yearns for, delays the arrival at your heart’s desired destination.

Detours away from your heart’s destination, especially during these times of rapid change and relentless demands on our time, can lead to harmful levels of stress.

Researchers at the Institute of HeartMath have found that constant change and time overwhelm are leading contributors to stressful responses to situations and challenges in our daily lives.

The result is a depletion of energy reserves and a breakdown in resiliency, both of which are critical for meeting the challenges of our modern world.

Look for Your ‘Hinge Points‘

Although looking back and pinpointing the precise “big” moments or encounters in life that steered us in one direction or another and helped shape our futures is often difficult, most of us are aware that they did happen.

Those big moments actually are a series of smaller moments, or what is called “hinge points,” that happen most every day.

Each of us makes innumerable choices that navigate us through the day. Hinge points are those choices that arise in which we can elect to remain on the most efficient course, according to the heart’s higher blueprint, or take a detour. For example, consider the following:

Among the sincerest desires you hold in your heart is to always be unreservedly kind to everyone you encounter.

As you arrive at your workplace one day, a supervisor greets you with the admonition: ”There‘s a lot to do today, so there‘s no time for slouching.“(Now there’s a hinge point for you!)

You can choose to take a detour from your heart’s true desire by replying, “Why are you telling me that?“ (Sounds confrontational).

Or you can stay on course with a response like, ”I‘m ready. Let‘s get to it!“ (Pure kindness.)

The ”on-course“ reply in this example compromises neither your heart’s blueprint nor your self-respect. In keeping with your true heart’s blueprint, you are listening to your heart, sticking to the highway and staying in the flow toward your heart’s desired destination.

Remember that popular definition of insanity? “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Hinge points are like that: If you don’t meet them, the same or similar situations may loop around over and over, and despite your heart’s blueprint, the outcome will be the same each time: detour, detour, detour.

All of the hinge points/choices we encounter daily comprise a collection of possibilities for our unrealized futures. As we act on these, we crystallize the possibilities – the words we speak, who we meet, the relationships and jobs we choose.

This is the process of activating our futures according to our heart blueprints.

Unfolding in the Planetary Shift

You’ve often heard in recent years about the current shift in global consciousness. In this great shift, millions of people are seeking a deeper heart consciousness and connection – within and with others – and to rewrite the future and create a better world.

A new heart-conscious generation is accelerating the shift and remaking the world “from the inside out.” These individuals are learning skills for generating high levels of personal heart coherence and radiating compassion, healing and creative solutions across the planet.

HeartMath has developed a unique set of tools and technology that help individuals and groups expand their heart field environment – and ultimately activate the heart of humanity.

As greater numbers expand their heart environment, they encompass more and more people and enable them to more easily discern their heart’s intuition and visualize their own heart blueprints.

Connect to your purpose, create a life mission statement

This is a practical exercise to help you understand your heart blueprint.

• Focus your attention in the area of the heart. Breathe in and out through the heart area.
• Appreciate your own heart intelligence and its encoded blueprint for your fulfillment and optimal potential.
• Ask your heart what your life’s mission statement might be. Write down what first comes to you, without judgments or editing. Know that this is something that can grow and evolve, change and refine as you do!