The Self-Healing Concept


The Self-Healing Concept
   Self-healing is all about thinking – “What can I do to address what is imbalanced in my body and in my way of life?” “How can I change things which may have gotten me into this situation in the first place and to help prevent getting into this situation again?” It is only partly concerned with what may have been the original causes, and only in so far as knowing the causes can actually help in addressing practical solutions. Sometimes analysing causes can be a great big lot of historical puffery, and a great mental distraction from real action which is required in the present. Some causes are unchangeable, non-reversible and must be lived with, but some are self-caused and are eminently changeable. These are the ones you must come to see and address rather than wasting time and effort on the ones you can’t change.

   The first thing any aspiring self-healer must resist is immediately reaching for the medicines which have been stocked up in the bathroom cupboard. The second mindset is to resist running off to the drug store or chemist for ‘something off the shelf’. The third trap to be avoided is to stop thinking – “I am sick, therefore I need a doctor to tell me why I am sick and to help me get better”. Whilst there may be many valuable things in all these three places – for certain illnesses and at certain times – it is not always the case that an outside source is needed to battle the ailment or provide the cure. Initially, in any instance of ill health, a brief moment of self-reflection must be made so as not to react according to past habits, then an adventurous and bold new paradigm must be established to break old patterns of thinking and acting.
The Basic Method
The basic lessons a person must learn if they wish to effectively lessen and self-treat any respiratory illness are:
   1 - To listen to your body. This means to watch, to be sensitive to the changing states of mucus in the nose, throat, and lungs. The second thing one must do is to:
   2 - Interpret the observation. This is not as hard as one might think. You certainly don’t have to be a doctor to see the simple ‘cause and effect’ events which are making your body give you signs about what it does and doesn’t like. But you do have to make the mental effort to take the time to investigate and interpret what is going on. You also have to be honest with yourself and with others. You can’t just jump into blaming outside forces. The next thing you have to do to prevent ill health for yourself, both in the short term and the long term, is:
   3 – Act to change the circumstances. This is the major hurdle for many people. And this is the area where the remedy may take lots of self-discipline to make certain lifestyle changes. No matter what the cause, or what the illness, there is always, always, 100% of the time, lifestyle changes which can lessen the effects of the causes. And at this point in the illness, the main issues then become: Do you want to improve the situation enough to change some things in your lifestyle? Do you value your health enough to put it above other factors such as habitual comfort? Because that is what you’ll have to do to break the chain of cause and effect. No amount of warm salty water up your nose or even prescription nasal spray is going to fix (as examples); your hayfever allergy – if the cause is the pretty flowering tree in your neighbour’s backyard right next to your bedroom window; your recurring winter colds – if the cause is the temperature and germ-pool of the office air-conditioning system; your chronic sinusitis – if the cause is the smoke-filled pool room bar you frequent every Friday night; the perpetually blocked snotty noses of your children – if the cause is Dial-Up Pizza and a Monster Chocolate Thickshake several nights per week. Such hypothetical examples would need to be eliminated from your life before restoration of normal body function can even begin to take place.
   The above three factors can be summed up from the yogic perspective as: Awareness - Thought - Action. As a yoga teacher and yoga therapist of 25 years experience, I have had opportunity to be aware of, think about and prescribe many actions (yoga practices and lifestyle changes) for people with many differing ailments, as well as my own personal experience and training in these areas. So, like many health practitioners, my experience can help give you a head start of knowledge in your quest for the most likely causes and remedies to the sorts of conditions for which most people try nasal cleansing.