This morning, I was speaking with my family about the powerful aspect of how we feel about ourself. I’ve wanted them to take more control over their well-being, specifically the area of allergies. My wife and two of my kids all suffer from environmental- and food sensitivities. I confess to being a little frustrated by that (but that’s a topic for yet another day ;)).

A few years ago, I very secretly and very successfully worked on my wife’s pollen allergies during the winter. The spring rolled around and pollen season hit. It wasn’t until my wife had met and talked with a few of her allergy-suffering friends and found out that this particular day was rife with pollen in the air. And yet my wife felt wonderful.

I was rather pleased with myself for helping her body reprogram its reaction to the pollen. Dialoguing with the immune system is a technique I’ve been working with for a few years now with great success. It was, indeed, wonderful to hear my wife look in wonder at how it could possibly be that for the first time in memory, she was allergy-free.

This situation lasted all year. The following pollen season rolled around and … sneezing and eye-irritation abounded. How could this be!?

It turns out that there was an aspect that had yet to be worked with: How she viewed herself. Despite a season being allergy-free, the fact is that a lifetime of allergy suffering is a pretty solid programming in how one identifies the self. Over the course of the winter, she had begun thinking about the coming pollen season in the old ways, strongly identifying herself as an allergy sufferer rather than that of a person who isn’t affected by pollen at all.

Her thoughts very handily created a new persona of allergy suffering. The physical self is always a mirror of our feelings, emotions and thought. Even though the body was healed of its inappropriate response to pollen, the feelings of dread of the oncoming pollen surge and the self-identification as a sufferer very literally created that reality in the spring.

These are huge, huge lessons for us to learn in life. How we think creates what we experience. In the example here in this article, we see how a person literally created a state of dis-ease where none existed. Conversely, we can create well-being out of dis-ease. It’s all about how we identify with ourself, how we feel and how we think.

The Placebo Effect

Modern medicine has a rather disdainful way of explaining all of this: the placebo effect. A placebo has no therapeutic effect whatsoever and is often used as a control in studies. The reality here is that instead of the placebo effect being some kind of unwanted therapeutic wildcard that is the bane of the medical establishment, it is the very basis of ALL our healing.

How it works is this: The doctor gives you this cool, new purple pill that is supposed to cure you of your ills. The more powerfully you buy into the belief that this little pill will cure you, the more powerfully you align yourself with your well-being. As you believe more, your immune system is bolstered, autoimmune response recalibrates, inflammation is reduced and so on. The little purple sugar pill didn’t cure anything. You did.

The magic here is in understanding that this is ALWAYS the case. It doesn’t matter what drug is administered, either. You’ll have to excuse me for the emphasis and chest-beating here, but, ALL HEALING IS DONE BY YOUR BODY. Any healing that happens by virtue of a drug is consequential because of the disruption to normal processes caused by said drug.

This concept is important. Think about it until you really get it: Drugs disrupt the natural processes in the body.

Why would this be a good thing? Normally, it wouldn’t be, but when the body is horribly off-balance, sometimes a kick in a seemingly wrong direction can help to put things back on track long enough for the body’s innate healing processes to restore balance.

What would happen, however, if we were to begin thinking thoughts that would create that balance without the necessity of drugs? I think you already know the answer to that: In the presence of balanced thinking, there can be no imbalance in the body.

This truth – nay, Truth – is a hard one to accept for most of us. We’re so accustomed to something being out of whack that it’s pretty much impossible for us to imagine complete physical, emotional and spiritual well-being. Modern lifestyle and environment place stresses on our body that make it difficult to remain balanced. I will say, however, that it is not impossible.

So, here’s the challenge. I’m dropping the virtual gauntlet here. 🙂 If you’re a sufferer of any malady whatsoever, your job is to begin to look at yourself in a new way. If you have allergies, practice seeing yourself as allergy-free. If you have MS or some other serious illness, practice seeing yourself as being completely well in every way. Imagine feeling full of energy, vibrant and healthy. See yourself as being fully mobile. Free of pain and simply full of good feelings.

If you’re on medications, I encourage you to work very, very closely with your medical practitioner(s) to ensure that as you change the way you view yourself, your medications are adjusted accordingly. The more you practice, the more you’ll begin to see yourself with new eyes. Eventually, you’ll begin to see the proof of your thoughts and THAT will kick-off a virtual landslide of positive change in your life.

Eventually, you won’t need drugs of any sort whatsoever. DO take adequate precautions in this regard, however, and be sure to work with a qualified professional ANY time you adjust your meds. Don’t just make willy-nilly changes on your own; that can kill you. Always work with your doctors to ensure that your blood-serum levels are accurate and correct for the physical/emotional conditions you’re experiencing.

Getting back to my family for a minute … I’ll keep working on their various allergies and sensitivities. This time, however, I’m going to make sure that they’re participating in the process, practising to see themselves in a new, healthy way. For in identifying ourself as being unwell, we get stuck there.

Get unstuck. Heal your Self through changing the way you think.