The Emotional Element to Healing
By Joshua Stevens
The last time I wrote about cancer awareness, I described the fertile ground that toxicity, sugar, and acidity creates for cancer’s growth and development in the human body. Ridding the body of these pitfalls will not only help the individual avoid cancer but other degenerative diseases as well. Detoxification, avoiding excess sugar in the diet, and lowering acid-producing stress are marks of a healthy lifestyle, longevity, and a disease-free body.
The piece that was missing from the last article, however, was the emotional one. Oftentimes, ‘reducing stress’ comes to mind when one considers emotions, but I feel this term gets swept under the rug with ideas of ‘eating better’ and ‘exercising more’. We are numb to them. They have lost their meaning. Simply ‘reducing stress’ in one’s life does not mean one’s emotional state is conducive to a healthy disease-free lifestyle. In other words, the absence of a negative emotion like stress does not mean one is automatically entitled to a positive emotion like happiness.
I do not believe either, that one must be in a highly euphoric state of happiness for recovery nor do I believe that depression is a precursor for declining health. Happiness and sadness are simply part of life’s normal circumstance. They flow evenly throughout most of our lives. To believe this is not true, is to deny one of the basic characteristics of human emotion. It is acceptance of the nature of life’s circumstance, whether it is diseased or disease-free, or happy or sad, that can lead to true contentment and health. Without acceptance of life as it is now, how can true joy and true recovery from within manifest? It cannot.
When a human is in a state of acceptance, he or she can experience healing, joyfulness, and wholeness like no other time. The presence of a disease by it’s nature is evidence of the lack of acceptance, lack of joy, and loss wholeness. This wholeness or integrity in the human body is essential for the recovery and healing from a disease process and maintaining the body’s maximal state of health. Integrity in the realm of emotion involves communication with one’s self (recognizing one’s own true nature i.e. wants and desires) and with others (recognizing the true nature of others, i.e. their wants and desires) in a clear, complete way. This acceptance of life as it is in ourselves and the lives of others as they are is as close as we will all come to experience perfection. At this point, the stage is set for total healing and total recovery.
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Joshua Stevens, D.C., is a holistic chiropractor in Chapel Hill and Durham where he utilizes chiropractic, acupuncture, detoxification, nutrition, and cold laser therapy with patients. A two-time Ironman finisher, he focuses on racing cyclocross and mountain bikes… much easier!
