Positive Healing

Positive Healing

I am checking in with my body right now, and I am feeling delicious. I am a bit surprised at how good I feel right now, and I think my positive healing is the result of frequent practice of healing thoughts, like gratitude is the attitude, getting frequent meals with lots of vegetables, enjoying the the beautiful outdoors, anticipating continued growth, anticipating new life adventures, overall, an expectation that all will be well.

Over the years of my life, I have had some serious medical issues, (I am 61) and I was able to positively heal from that and have sustained remission for about 28.5 years, and that process has taught me that I can start over if need be.

In the early days of that positive healing I had to trust that the steps I was being advised to take would actually work. Since I was pretty sick, it was easy to trust, and those steps did work, and continue to work.

In an effort to continue positive healing, I sought out some other kinds of tools recommended by my teachers, like daily prayer and meditation, which opens me to a higher power when I practice effectively.

However, the most important thing I have learned about positive healing is that it needs to be practiced much more frequently than daily.

In fact, positive healing can be practiced almost heart beat by heart beat or thought by thought now.

I am a student of both Eastern (Chi Gong)and western (M.S. in counseling education) positive healing, and I believe that we can literally set the inner baseline of our life to health and longevity by practicing positive healing regularly in brief increments.

The western tools that I recommend are tools like HeartMath, or heart rate variability biofeedback, Open Focus, a meditative practice created by Les Fehmi,Ph.D., who is a Zen meditation pracitioner, and EEG Biofeedback, which will give you a sense of how fast your brain waves cycle, and how fast your attention shifts.

HeartMath is another tool biofeedback tool that will give you the same information about how your heart rate variability coherence is impacted by your thoughts. The physiology in my body follows my thoughts very rapidly. In fact the neuroplasticity researchers like Michael Merzenich,Ph.D., are saying that Senior Drivers need to be prepared to adjust to changing driving conditions as fast as 1/45th second, which is over 4 times faster than I can blink my eyes.

Life changes fast, doesn't it, and I want my body staying primarily in positive healing physiology, so I want to be aware of my feelings and thoughts and to be able to adjust them quickly.

I think we generally like to feel good, or contented, and I can have that feeling when I do my HeartMath regularly.

So what is HeartMath? Positive healing with HeartMath involves learning how to manage the time between my heart beats using my PC and a biofeedback program called HeartMath, surprisingly enough.

It turns out that my heart can learn and make decisions because it has a brain of its own, a very sophisticated nervous system, which sends more data to the brain than the brain sends to the heart, believe it or not.

And when I learn how to boot up this positive healing heart rate variability coherence, I am setting the physiological and psychological stage for positive healing and positive health, and I am even opening higher perceptual centers in the brain, which will then be available for increased neuroplasticity and neurogenesis.

Looks like we are establishing a wellness platform here based on heart intelligence, which impacts every cell in the body every time the heart beats.

Of course, I will on occasion forget all about my heart rate coherence and switch to resentful or angry thoughts.

The solution? Change the thought to change the feeling. Once the heart has practiced this style of physiology for awhile, it will tend to resist coming out of it, and will make you aware of the need to practice your HeartMath cue thought and breathing rather quickly so you can return to a positive healing homeostasis.

Earlier I mentioned Michael Merzenich,Ph.D., who is a pioneer in the study of neuroplasticity, which is what my neurons do when they are challenged with novel learning experiences, like learning a new language, or a new musical instrument.

We want to challenge our neurons frequently with novel learning experiences, or the brain will literally dismantle connections, and that is not a good thing for the prevention of alzheimers disease. In fact, according to Simon Evans,Ph.D. and Paul Burghardt,Ph.D. co-authors of Brainfit for Life, each night when asleep, our brain reviews the connections created during the day and decides if they are worth keeping. If not worth keeping, the brain dismantles the connection, so like your heart rate variability coherence, your brain is constantly adjusting itself.

By the way, Brainfit for Life is about what Evans and Burghardt call the pillars of brain fitness, which are physical exercise, nutrition, including getting lots of omega 3 fatty acid, sleep, stress management, and novel learning experiences, which might include computerized brain fitness programs, like the Posit Science Brain Fitness Program created by Michael Merzinich,Ph.D.

The use of brain fitness programs can enhance the brain' neuroplasticity and its neurogenesis, which is the growth of new brain cells daily. Remember how earlier we mentioned that HeartMath opens the higher perceptual centers of the brain?

Wouldn't it be nice to have new neurons available for higher perceptions