Lift your right arm. Seriously, stop reading this and lift your right arm right now. Close your eyes and do it several times.
Have you ever paused to consider what’s involved in that seemingly simple movement? The sequence of activity is mind-boggling: electrical impulses are generated and conducted from the cerebral cortex of the brain to motor neurons in the spinal cord, which release chemicals that trigger the coordinated contraction of muscle fibers that require the stabilization of bones and the mobility of joints, all fueled by innumerable chemical reactions within cells.
Thankfully, arm movement generally involves only a simple intention on your part – the act itself is executed and coordinated by a multifaceted set of unconscious bodily processes.
In many ways, establishing and maintaining your health and happiness are analogous to moving your arm. Your body, mind, energy, and spirit are unfathomably complex, consisting of trillions of cells, hundreds of muscles and bones, in addition to thousands of subtle energetic pathways, centers, fields, and bodies recognized by ancient healing traditions.
Like moving your arm, you do not consciously need to orchestrate this entire show. Instead, to stay healthy you can establish conscious, positive habits in a handful of areas such as diet, exercise, sleep, stress-regulation, purpose, and relationships. By learning the principles for optimizing each of these domains and gaining the discipline to put them into consistent action, your multifaceted system automatically takes care of the rest. It’s truly amazing!
In my experience, effective self-management covers 85 percent of establishing and maintaining our health. However, even under “perfect” self-maintenance conditions, health challenges do arise and working with professional practitioners through targeted therapies helps cover the final 15 percent and addresses specific conditions as they come up.
But whom should you work with? Figuring out which approach and practitioner are most appropriate can be an overwhelming task, especially when biomedicine often touts itself as the only viable option and many “holistic” healing practices profess to address everything! In such a marketplace, it’s helpful to have a basic understanding of the healing landscape, especially the intended focus of various modalities.
My particular healing practice focuses on mind, energy, and spirit. Through spiritual counseling, I help clients get to the heart and soul of their challenges and offer actionable solutions. Through Sat Nam Rasayan – a healing technique based in Kundalini Yoga, I directly adjust the energetic patterns that underlie those challenges, giving rise to both positive mental-emotional shifts and transformative meditative experiences.
While I aim to cover a lot of territory in my practice, there are important gaps. I don’t offer comprehensive dietary plans. I don’t order lab tests or prescribe pharmaceuticals or targeted supplements. Working over the phone, of course, I don’t make manual adjustments to correct structural misalignments, which can result in chronic pain or headaches.
In truth, no single doctor or healer can address every single health-related issue, as the human system is simply too complex for that. Instead, it is generally best to work with a team of practitioners who complement each other’s areas of focus. Many of my clients are referred by their doctors, chiropractors, or psychotherapists and our coordinated care results in better outcomes than any of us could achieve on our own.
If you would like to learn specific strategies for self-care and gain a better understanding of what options for healing are available for addressing your particular issues, then I invite you to join me for the Roadmap to Healing workshop at the beautiful Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York this Memorial Day Weekend, May 25-28.
I will be joined by three other inspiring practitioners, and together we will guide you through the landscape of healing, taking a deep dive into several popular and prominent traditions: functional medicine, osteopathy, EMDR, energy medicine, and meditation. This roadmap will provide you with a lifelong guide for making informed treatment choices and maintaining your health and happiness in body, mind, energy, and spirit.
I hope you’ll join me over Memorial Day Weekend as we explore these topics in more detail.
