How To Avoid Falling Into Chronic Illness As We Age
I find it quite surprising that even with increasing advances in medicine and science we are still seeing increasing numbers of health challenges such as autoimmune disease, chronic pain, inflammatory conditions, thyroid disease, cardiovascular disease, anxiety, depression and other mental conditions. Why is that? What are we missing? What really is the cause of these increasing chronic conditions that are continuing to hold us back from living the life we desire, and deserve?
My personal healing journey
Let me start by saying at the moment I feel like I am at a “cross-roads” of sorts. Speaking from my own personal experience, over the course of more than two decades I have been travelling along a health exploration journey.
For hidden, unconscious reasons I have always been attracted to the human body, how it works and why, and what we might be able to do to optimise it. Not that I had any close personal experience of anyone I knew suffering ill health but for some reason it felt like the right information I needed to know about.
It served me well during my nursing career but as I got older and had children, another unexpected challenge presented itself. My son’s healing journey was the impetus to take a deep dive into holistic health, alongside conventional medicine, and as much as I might regret what he had to go through, I have also come to realise that it is through resistance where we grow the strongest.
Now with aging parents (not to mention myself) I find it just as important to consider the necessary actions to avoid falling into chronic illness with the advancing years. Challenges to health may be physical or psychological. What I have learned over the years is that our actions are not the only things we need to be mindful of but we also need to be aware of what is going on in our mind. Our thoughts are often on repeat and consequently can have a powerful influence, especially if they are negative.
Thoughts generate emotions and depending on how we feel we will either be motivated into, or out of, action. The key to overcoming, or better still avoiding, chronic pain is to firstly believe we can.
Escaping the chronic disease trap
Our nervous system picks up on the rational and emotional energy and becomes sensitive to the tension, or resistance, we are placing on it which further exacerbates the symptoms – essentially creating a trap into chronic disease.
The good news is that if you’ve gone from doctor to doctor and no one can seem to help you then it is highly likely that the key to open the door to your healing is actually transforming your beliefs around your own experience of your condition and moving away from these beliefs that are creating tension. Reframing beliefs like “I’m never going to get better” or “this is just the way things will be” by beginning to accept that your symptoms are an uncomfortable way to get your attention to challenge your beliefs about past health experiences. It is our past experience that creates our future experience.
Our thoughts create our reality of our life experience, and the traumas and the limiting beliefs that we develop at a very early age play out in materialised ways as symptoms in the body. We need to focus on the fact that we can heal our bodies. That is why mindset is so important. We all need to develop the skills to guard our mind and stand firm when the winds of change blow through us in an attempt to knock us over.
Removing, or overcoming, the resistance gives our bodies have the ability to heal themselves. That is the nature of homeostasis and the intelligence within the body, one that can function with ease, and without dis-ease.
Self check
Check in with the relationship you have with your body. Is it one that allows your healing process by working towards health restoration or one that makes you feel afraid of your healing where you believe that you are trapped inside a body that is unable to live the way you desire? The good news is that you can decide.
