You have a difficult choice to make, and you’re getting a lot of conflicting suggestions from a lot of different people. Your palms are sweaty, your heart is pounding, and your gut feels queasy. How in the world are you going to make the right decision? Why not turn to the person who always knows what’s best for you – yourself.
It’s true. Your body, mind, emotions and spirit, when aligned, will always steer you in the right direction. But that “aligned” part can be the tricky thing. How do you stop all that mental chatter and come into a place of balance, where you can access your inner wisdom, and truly trust it?
For starters, breathe. When we go into stress mode, the first thing we usually do is tense up and start shallow breathing. That starves the brain and body of oxygen and impairs our ability to think clearly. Andrew Weil, MD, founder, professor, and director of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona, suggests deeply inhaling to a slow count of four, holding the breath to the count of seven, then forcefully exhaling to the count of eight. Do that three times, and feel the stress melt away.
Now that you’re in more of a relaxed and receptive Alpha state, think of one person, situation or thing for which you’re truly grateful. Focus in on how that object of your sincere gratitude enriches your life, and be very specific. As you mentally get in that place, you can literally start to feel your heart expanding. The Mayo Clinic is conducting research on how gratitude not only opens the heart – it also activates positive emotion centers in the brain.
Getting into the habit of quieting the mind with several deep breaths and feeling gratitude will automatically help bring you into body-mind-spirit balance, and guide you into that deeper awareness of connecting to your inner wisdom, God Consciousness, or, in scientific terms, the Unified Field. From this place of open-hearted connection, you will get the right answers to your questions – the answers that are in alignment with your values.
You can quickly double-check those answers by monitoring whether or not those panicky physical sensations go away. Feeling stress leaving your body is an excellent indicator that you’re making the right decision.
It’s scientifically proven that the verbal part of our brain processes around 40 pieces of information per second, but the non-verbal part chunks down on between eight to eleven million bits of information per second.
That means that the thoughts we put into words are actually less reliable than the physical sensations and emotions that we feel coming from the non-verbal part of our brain. Even if everyone else is saying, “THIS is what you should do,” if your body is still sending out stress signals, it’s probably not the best decision for you, and it’s not in alignment with your values.
Learn more about bringing healthy balance into your life when you cleanse your body, quiet your mind and rejuvenate your spirit at the Optimum Health Institute in San Diego and Austin, Texas. We can help you achieve your mental, physical, emotional and spiritual goals for optimal health. Visit our website at www.optimumhealth.org , and call us at (800) 993-4325 to make your reservation.