(that don’t include advice on food, exercise, drugs, tobacco and alcohol !!!)

We have access to a large number of organizations and individuals we can contact when we have a health imbalance or even if we are just lacking in energy. We can also access lots of information about how to keep ourselves healthy through diet, exercise, recreation, reducing our alcohol intake, avoiding tobacco products, and much more. All of this is useful and valid if we wish to keep ourselves healthy.

But there are other aspects to maintaining a healthy body and mind that are often not covered in the information about health that is available to us. These are issues that may, at first glance, seem irrelevant but they are often the most important factors in achieving a good quality of life.

Before we think about specific issues that help us to heal ourselves, we need to have a basic respect for our body. The body is a wonderful creation that is resilient and responsive so much of the time. It often takes a long time for the body to succumb to our ill treatment of it, whether we are aware of what we are doing or not.   Even prescription drugs taken for a health imbalance when it manifests in our body can cause serious side effects that, in some cases, create more imbalances than they resolve!

The one fact that we have to keep in mind is that our body has to last us for the whole of this lifetime so we have to treat it with respect if it is to remain in as good a condition as possible until we no longer need it. If we are not prepared to do this, and accept that this usually means a very poor quality of life in old age, then it’s fine because it's our choice. Many of us want to party until we drop when we’re young and then live a serene and healthy life in old age – but for most of us that’s an impossible dream!

The following tips are the result of working with many people on their healing, my research on healing and how the body responds to our treatment of it, whether that treatment is good or not so good.

1. The Breath of Life

Breathing is an automatic response for all of us – if we don’t breathe, we die. But it’s the way we breathe that is so vital to improved health for all of us.

Breathing efficiently is the first and essential practice for self-healing. On a physical level, breathing effectively allows oxygen to penetrate every cell in the body so that these cells can work at optimum efficiency. At an emotional level, breathing deeply and easily brings us a sense of peace and calm, and makes it easier for us to cope with life generally. Take a couple of deep breaths now and breathe out with a big sigh – feel the renewed sense of calm that this brings.

To find out more about how to breathe more effectively, click here.

Breathing through the belly area maintains calm because it is very difficult to be tense when we are expanding and contracting the muscles here, so it is a good exercise to remember when we start to become tense for whatever reason. Focusing on how we breathe takes our attention away from the tension, gives clarity of thought and a greater sense of calm.

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2. The awesome power of thought

Everything is energy – all the objects around us that look so solid are, in fact, bundles of molecules and particles vibrating with energy. We ourselves are individual masses of vibrating light. Nothing is static; everything is constantly on the move and full of energy.

Thought is no different – it is energy. And every cell in the body is responding to our thought energy. The power contained in this phenomenon is vital to our health and well-being. If we visualise our own individual body as unhealthy and diseased, this is the message we are sending to our cells and they will respond to comply with this picture. If, on the other hand, we visualise our body as healthy and whole and we live our lives through this visualisation, our cells will receive this positive message and respond healthily.

Even if we are currently experiencing ill health in the form of one of the numerous chronic diseases that are so prevalent, we can improve our health. It takes many years to create a chronic disease in the body so it may not be possible to heal ourselves completely of such a well-entrenched imbalance. However, we can improve the quality of our lives by our thoughts and help ourselves to cope better with these diseases.

But thought energy doesn’t just help with chronic diseases, it can improve, speed up the healing or even heal completely less serious conditions, such as colds and flu, headaches and skin complaints. We just have to visualise our bodies as whole and healthy and allow that picture to guide us as to the actions we take to bring ourselves back to fitness.

What we focus on is attracted to us, so maintaining healthy thoughts about ourselves is vital to our ability to heal ourselves of whatever ails us.

Thought energy can be equally effective when we think about other souls who have health imbalances or emotional issues. Again, we only allow thoughts of them that give us a picture of health because every single thought or word is an energy that goes out into the universe and affects everyone and everything on the planet. Repeated destructive or negative thoughts cause disruption.

This is equally important in healing the planet. There are many people around the globe who are holding a picture of Mother Earth in their minds as a planet of balance and harmony, in the environment and the people that inhabit it.

The power of our thought energy is a great responsibility for each and every one of us both in terms of how we influence our own behaviour and how we impact on others.

Our thoughts create the quality of our lives – we really can think ourselves healthier than we currently are. The choice is ours.

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3. Living in the present

Many people – and particularly younger people, surprisingly – talk about how poor their memory is. This may well be due to the fact that they are not concentrating on each moment as it happens – how can you remember anything if you’re not taking it in at the time? We all have a selective memory but that is very different to having a poor memory.

Living in the moment allows us to focus fully on each activity so that we do everything much more thoroughly and learn new activities more easily. Giving part of our attention to anything does not lead to quality actions or outcomes.

We also give our full attention to those around us, affording them the respect they deserve just as we deserve their full attention. Our loved ones would benefit greatly from our full attention more often – particularly our children who often miss out on our time and interest because we are rushing off to the next thing. And that next activity is just one more on which we will probably not focus fully!

People who live in the present for most of the time enjoy life so much more and are therefore much healthier – life is to be enjoyed, not to be endured!

There is no point in living in the past or the future – one has passed and the other is completely unknown. And the present is fleeting – what you were thinking a moment ago is now in the past; that is how fleeting it is. For most of the time the present moment is good and if it is not, it lasts such a short time that it is not really a problem.

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4. Accepting (and preferably loving) our bodies

Most of the things we perceive to be wrong with our bodies are as a result of our abuse of it – they are our responsibility. The body that has to last us the whole of our life needs to be nourished with healthy food, fluid, sleep, rest, recreation and exercise.

This is not difficult if we listen to our bodies when the cells communicate with us. If we experience pain, we usually stop doing whatever is causing us the pain. So if we find that something we put into our body is causing us pain, discomfort, indigestion, joint pain or any other difficulty, we simply need to avoid that substance, whether it is food, alcohol or drugs. We need to be kind to our bodies – but it is a choice!

Every cell in the body is responding to whatever thoughts we allow ourselves to have. If we constantly regard our body as ‘not good enough’ either in appearance or function, our cells will respond by creating a body that is always falling short of our wishes – but not our expectations! If, on the other hand, we view the body as fit, healthy, attractive and able to cope with whatever we need it to do for us, the cells will respond positively and co-operate with us to bring this into reality. It really is a case of being careful what you wish for!

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5. Forgiveness

Throughout our lives we usually find that we perceive that many people harm us by what they say and do; equally, of course, we do the same to others. The majority of people who seek healing have been harbouring angry, resentful, or painful feelings as a result of these situations, directed at others and at themselves.

Forgiveness is a very effective healer. We all need to let go of the emotions that arise when we remember these situations and, better still, move on in our lives by choosing not to remember them at all, having forgiven ourselves and others for whatever was said or done.

Letting go of these emotions also allows the person to whom they are directed to move on – that thought energy will be doing its work if we hold on to grudges, although our target may not be aware of it! In many cases the person we feel has treated us badly in thought, word or deed is not even aware of it. So, while we are going over and over a situation and getting more and more angry and resentful, they are often blissfully unaware of our distress. This means that the only person suffering as a result of this perceived ill treatment is us! What a waste of energy!

Planet Earth is not an easy place to live so we have to remember that:

Everyone does the best with the knowledge, wisdom and experience

they have at any given moment.

Remembering this helps us to forgive others more readily. It also helps us to forgive ourselves because our own actions can often cause us greater distress than those of others. We can beat ourselves up for years about something that would probably seem trivial to others. It is almost impossible to forgive others effectively if we cannot forgive ourselves for our own actions. Lighten up by learning from the situation, letting go of the burden and moving on! We are all only human and we’re all learning every day – that’s what we’re here for!

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6. Gratitude

We are all so very lucky, even when we think we are not. Most of us in the western world live an extraordinarily privileged existence. Pardoxically, those who are not so fortunate are often much more grateful for the few good things they have in their lives than those who have so much.

There are many jokes about this next suggestion, and it may seem trivial, but counting our blessings and being grateful for them before we sleep can be a great healer. A significant number of people who seek healing have no insight into their own blessings and often experience ill health as a result. Their anger, resentment, envy and dissatisfaction eat away inside of them and can create health imbalances that may be impossible to resolve because of their attitude to life. Their interaction with their cells is far from healthy!

At the very least, thinking happy thoughts last thing at night will help us to sleep better. Trying to sleep when we are holding on to negative and destructive emotions can be very difficult.

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7.  Generosity

Being grateful often leads us on to become more generous. Whatever we have or have not, being generous with everything in our lives helps us to focus on something other than ourselves for a while. And this is not about money necessarily, although financial generosity is valid as a way of passing on positive and creative energy to others. But it’s equally valid and helpful to be generous with our time, our patience, our encouragement, our willingness to help and our creative thoughts about others rather than always thinking the worst first.

Being generous with our love is one of the greatest healers. Unconditional love is vital to all of us – and this is not a sentimental love. It is a practical love. Unconditional love embraces all of the suggestions above and anything else you can think of.

It is easy to show our close family and friends unconditional love, although that is not always the case for some souls. But it is much more difficult to demonstrate such love to those we don’t know as well, or perhaps not at all. Read the paragraphs about Forgiveness above and the nature of unconditional love becomes clearer. Those families who have lost loved ones during wars and terrorism, and who forgive the perpetrators of these atrocities as soon as they possibly can because they wish to bring peace, understanding and love to the world, are a wonderful example to us all. Anyone who can forgive such dreadful acts is a very special soul.

They have learned to separate the individual from the deed. They understand, knowingly or unknowingly, that we are all here to learn and that some souls find the learning more of a struggle than others. We are all from the one Source so we must try always to be generous in our opinion of others, knowing that they are doing the best they can with what they have.

If we were all to learn to give unconditional love to everyone and everything on the planet, there probably would be very little illness and certainly less, if any, violence and war. But it is not easy and, if it were, it would not be, what I believe is, the ultimate meaning of our lives here on Mother Earth. It takes understanding, willingness and courage to be able to offer unconditional love to all souls.

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8. Being (instead of doing)

Activity in the world is speeding up and we are all feeling the pressure that this creates. If we are not engaged in some form of activity, we seem to feel we are wasting our time, but this is a fallacy. Taking time to sit quietly and go into deep relaxation every day for 10 to 20 minutes is a very effective healer and gives us more energy to accomplish the tasks of the day

Twenty minutes of deep and complete relaxation is equivalent to two hours sleep, although it should never be used as a substitute for our full quota of sleep each night.

Sleep is not necessarily the time when we are at our most relaxed. If we think of those who, as they sleep, grind their teeth, talk, walk, move around excessively in bed or wake several times in the night, it becomes obvious how little deep relaxation sleep can bring.

During deep and complete relaxation we allow our thoughts to flow through our minds but do not follow them with further thoughts other than checking that each part of the body is fully relaxed. (See Relaxation)

If we can do this once – or perhaps even twice – a day, we will start to feel the benefits in a short time. The mind becomes clearer. We can concentrate more easily and for longer. We become less irritable, calmer and more at peace with the world.

If we have a health problem, this may well improve and, giving ourselves this time for ourselves, can improve the immune and other systems in the body. Blood pressure can also be reduced.

We are giving ourselves a greater chance of being generally more healthy and alert, less tired and more serene. We give the body a chance to regenerate so that it can operate at a higher level of efficiency and effectiveness.

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9. Life as a series of experiments

I believe that we come here to learn and that every experience is like an experiment from which we can learn. Scientists are detached from their experimentation so that they can gain the most insights from them. Without losing our compassion or love for life and other souls, we can do the same with our own experiences.

This may be difficult for some people to accept because it may seem as if I’m suggesting we stop caring about our lives and others around us. But when we take a step back from our lives – detach at some level – we are able to be much more objective about what is happening and what we truly desire in our lives.

Viewing life in this way can take the ‘sting’ out of the unpleasant events in our lives and we can live more effectively and without the stress of taking everything personally, because most of what happens to us is not necessarily aimed at us personally but is just available to us to learn from.

Concentrating more on what we can learn rather than how dreadful we find the actual events can offer great healing and can help us to avoid uncomfortable situations in the future.

Together with living in the present, detaching to a certain degree from the emotional roller-coaster that life can become also allows us a greater capacity for being true to ourselves in all that we think, say and do. We can give ourselves the space to be able to decide what, in fact, is being true to ourselves, which offers a calmer and more harmonious way of living.

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10.  Healing the world

We are not separate from each other or from the rest of the flora and fauna on the planet. How we think and live has a direct impact on everyone and everything around us whether we accept it or not.

Whilst we are focusing on healing ourselves, the suggestions above will also help us to heal those around us. We are all inextricably linked with one another and with the Source – whatever we do to ourselves, we do to every other soul on the planet. If we are behaving in a creative, rather than a destructive way, in all our thoughts, words and deeds, this benefits us – but the spin-off is that it also influences and benefits everyone else.

Equally, if we consciously work to heal Mother Earth, this can also have a beneficial effect on us and everyone else. Everyone can make a difference by sending out creative and positive thoughts and words into the world as often as possible.

Before sleep at night, turning our thoughts to a vision of the planet as whole and healthy with peaceful and loving inhabitants will eventually help to make that happen. We have tried the other way and it has been a failure so what have we got to lose by thinking in a different way? We can all be peace warriors, regardless of our age, ability or state of health.

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