Health - Perception - Belief - Reality
To what degree is our health determined by our perceptions of reality, rather than reality itself? When we are ill, is it because we had no other alternative or has it only happened because we believed it to be so?
We have all experienced the concept in parkour or tricking. The way that the only means of achieving a new trick or technique is to believe you can do it before you have even tried. You actually have to believe to the point that you think you know it before you ever have a chance of coming close, yet as soon as you let go of your fears and preconceptions it becomes easy.
So what if the same thing applies to your health? If you actually believed, to the point of knowing, would you live your life differently?
Obviously some things like a broken arm or leg are physical and when it's dangling lose, semi-detached from the rest of your body, even the strongest of wills would find it hard to deny; but would you have actually broken your arm or leg in the first place if you had truly believed it couldn’t happen?
Stress is a great example here. We get told all the time that 'stress can kill' but have you ever thought about this literally? Stress causes all sorts of ills from headaches and insomnia to raised blood pressure, increased chance of cancer and even heart attack as a direct result. Now I'm sure that most of us would agree that a heart attack is a very real thing. Once someone is lying dead on the floor it is difficult to deny..... but is stress a real thing? No.
Stress is a product of the imagination, it is all in the mind, it’s not a physically defined thing, it's a set of beliefs; a choice. You might think that it is not your choice, that stress is passed on to you from school, work, traffic jams, lack of money etc but these are simply actions or events. How you chose to react to these situations can be a conscious choice if you choose for it to be so.
When I was younger I seemed to get a lot of colds and because of this I believed that I was easily susceptible and so the pattern continued throughout my teens. When I got to uni and was cooking for myself I made the conscious choice to buy organic food whenever possible. I had a very strong belief that eating organically would have huge benefits for my immune system as my body wouldn’t be constantly damaged in every meal by the traces of harmful chemicals left as a result of conventional farming methods.
Since changing my diet and going organic I barely get any colds at all and I believe my immune system to be stronger than it’s ever been because of this. But is this really the case? Is it just the higher quantities of nutrients in my food along with the lack of harmful chemicals that has caused this dramatic change, or is it my belief that this change would happen that has made the difference? Conversely if I held the belief that conventionally farmed foods were harmful for me, would this mean I could get harmed by consuming them not because of what was in or on them, but because of what I believed would ?
My Father is not exactly a role model for physical health and fitness. He gets little sleep, drinks fair quantities of alcohol as well as coffee and works all hours god sends, yet rarely ever gets ill. He has told me on numerous occasions "I don’t have time to get ill" which seems to reinforce the idea that there is a strong link between what you believe to be true and the effects which result from that belief.
So what do you think? Have you ever experienced anything for yourself where the power of thought and intention alone has had a real impact on your life? This article isn’t so much about fact as it is observation; there is no right or wrong here, but if it’s possible to change your quality of life just by choosing to perceive things differently in your mind, it’s got to be worth a try!