When it comes to staying healthy, it’s easy to get caught up in trying to solve the specific symptoms we’re currently experiencing in our minds or bodies.
A lack of energy, a diagnosed disease or physical ailment, brain fog, poor sleep, or a racing, hectic brain.
However, if you only focus on what’s on the surface, you’re never going to truly solve what’s going on for you.If you take the opportunity to go beneath your symptoms, however, there are six core, foundational causes that lead to physical, emotional, and mental discomfort within our lives.
When you can get to the source of this disconnect, to the real foundation of what’s really driving the discomfort and you can evolve and change those. This is where true whole healing can begin in our minds, bodies, and life.
In truth, diseases or lack of ease within your body and mind are never the cause of poor health, they are simply a group of symptoms that have been given a name.
And these symptoms will always have one or more underlying causes, none of which are a disease name.
These six causes of physical discomfort are…
- Negative Self-Image
- Toxicity
- Malnourishment
- Poor Food Combining Practices
- System Weaknesses
- Imbalanced Lifestyle
It can be tough sometimes to know how to improve on these pre-conditioned patterns as in our society we’re led to go, go, go and chase, chase, chase and try to get the quick fix like diet plans, or supplements, or working out or cutting ties to energy sucking relationships.
But in my experience working with many clients over the years, I’ve found that paying close attention to the six foundational causes of physical discomfort that cause our health to deteriorate, we can then resource the six elements of vibrant healing to reverse poor health and restore a nourished, healthy, whole existence.
Below are the six causes in detail – what they are, the consequences they create in our minds and bodies, and ways to begin healing these core pre-conditions.
1. Negative Self-Image
Our self-image defines how we see ourselves, it’s our inner vision for who we are and what we’re capable of achieving. When we overly focus on our faults and weaknesses, we amplify our imperfections.
This negative self-images creates all sorts of issues in both our minds and as a byproduct of our physical well being. Feelings and thoughts of unworthiness, fear of judgment or criticism, doubts about our capacity or our power, these program us to believe we are weak.
When we’re in this negative place, it’s very difficult for us to move forward with changing habits and behaviors that will benefit our health. In addition, as proven through the field of epigenetics, our beliefs about ourselves directly affect our physiology.
When you continue to reinforce that you are sick, or have low energy, or can’t stick to a goal or new habit, you’re sending signals to your body that will continue that pattern.
How do we begin to improve our self-image? By taking conscious pauses as frequently as possible to contemplate what alternative perceptions are available to you.
When you find yourself being self-critical or judging, pause and take a deep breath. Connect with your deeper knowledge of your own wholeness. Perhaps ask “how can I see this situation differently?” or “how else can I feel about this?”.
Practices such as yoga or meditation, which help to slow down and center the mind, can also improve our image of self.
2. Toxicity
Toxins from the environment, home, work, food, water, medicine, medical treatments, and negative self imagery are at the foundation of most disabilities, disconnection, and ill health.
These toxins get into our systems even before we’re born…through our host (our mothers), our environment, and once we’re in the world, through the foods we eat, the air we breath, the water we drink.
Toxins take residence in our bodies and start to wreak havoc on all our internal systems. And they aren’t even paying rent! They leech nutrients and other life-giving elements straight from us. A lot of gut issues are especially tied to toxins.
There’s also mental “toxins” such as limiting beliefs and our inner critics, which contribute to our negative image of self.
The solution here is to start finding ways to detoxify the body and mind in a safe, effective way. You can detox through clays (like the Edible Earthens Cleansing Clay), sweat therapy, superfoods, cleansing herbs, and herbal circulatory stimulants for the blood.
These are all super supportive ways to escort those pesky toxins out and create space for vibrant health to flow.
3. Malnourishment
In our modern society, a majority of the foods we consume are so far removed from natural wholeness, there’s also no true nourishment left that our bodies need to be healthy.
Malnourishment results from poor food quality, chemical growing practices, microwaves, resulting in diets of depletion. Consuming these types of “diets’ ‘ are when our bodies become super depleted of the vitamins, minerals, and the vast array of nutrients it needs.
These foods are fragmented, incomplete and imbalanced and create huge issues in our physical, mental and emotional wellbeing.
Moving from malnourishment to what I call super nourishment is a big part of my Vibrant Health Academy, and I’ll give a few basic tips here.
To begin to nourish yourself fully, begin to consume foods that build vitality rather than simply going by taste alone. Over time you will adjust to these new tastes and actually enjoy them MORE than the fragmented foods you may be consuming.
Also pay attention to food combining (which foods are meant to be paired with others, discussed more below) and consume plenty of superfoods (sea vegetables, herbal nutritives, etc). Superfoods are keys to providing the nutrients missing in today’s farm grown produce.
Final two tips – choose chemical-free produce! And reduce your reliance on isolated vitamin and mineral supplements. Consume whole herbs, clays, and sea vegetables that contain hundreds of nutrients beyond the common basics sold in bottles today.
4. Poor Food Combining Practices
Clearly the foods we eat play a huge role in upgrading and maintaining our health.
While a truly good herbal program will always speed progress towards your ideal health goals, yet when coupled with an ideal or just a better diet, you’ll see dramatically better results.
What most health programs don’t teach you, however, is the proper way to combine foods. There are specific combinations of macro and micronutrients that are most beneficial for our bodies…and certain combinations that you should NOT do, because they interact very poorly in our system.
Because most people are not aware of this, even a good diet and proper herbal supplementation can be severely hampered by negative food combining choices.
While there are dozens of food combining do’s and don’ts you can eventually master, here’s two DO’s and two DON’T to get you started:
Food Combining Don’ts:
Do not combine a sweet, a fruit, a grain or a starch (which converts to sugar) with an oil, a nut, a fat, or a protein (which can interfere with sugar metabolism, which can then promote pathogen overgrowth).
Food Combining Dos:
Eat or drink fermented foods with every meal (whey, kefir, non-soy miso, sauerkraut, kraut juice shots, fermented salsa, etc.), however, if the ferment contains sugar (kombucha, jun, honey mead) then it is best not consumed with meals that contain fats or oils.
5. System Weaknesses
We live in an era in which extremely high stress loads are being placed upon us simply through the course of daily living. Our lifestyle, diet and environments have been imbued with toxic influences, a high level of stressful demands, and a limited number of natural options.
Our hormonal, digestive, and nervous systems are frequently pushed to a point of critical dysfunction or failure.
When one or more of our systems are weak, it creates a domino effect on our overall health, as all of our body systems are connected. Over time this can lead to multiple mental and physical ailments like anxiety, depression, digestive problems, headaches, muscle tension and pain, heart and blood pressure issues, sleep & weight problems, and memory and concentration impairments.
Fortunately, in spite of the high stress loads daily that impact our body’s systems and abilities , solutions do exist which will counter the stress and rebuild the affected systems of the body.
In order to create true system strength in your body, begin by ensuring daily hydration, maintaining an alkaline pH, ensure the body’s natural hormone production during the day, and cleanse toxins from the body internally and externally.
Consider supplementing with some Edible Earthen Essentials that will help with repairing system weaknesses, including Cleansing Clay (supporting the delivery of minerals to the cells of our body), Renal & Adrenal (support for for the kidneys and adrenals as they play roles in regulating metabolism, immune system, blood pressure, responses to stress, and many other essential functions, and Clean Spleen (support for the spleen as it is responsible for increasing drive, energy, focus, and groundedness).
6. Imbalanced Lifestyle
Living an imbalanced lifestyle means living outside of the natural order of life. As humans we are nature, and when we live in harmony with that nature (both inside of us and around us), we live happier, healthier lives.
In our society though, we live very far removed from the natural order, and there are many aspects of how we choose to live our lives that exacerbate this issue. We become disconnected from wholeness, which weakens our immune system, creates confusion and fear in our minds, decreases our energy and vitality, and can lead to depression, anxiety, and contribute to many diseases.
Examples include spending too much time around EMF and smart devices, working with harmful chemicals in our home or office, trusting in a medical system that comes from a “fragmented” place and disregards mother nature (including prescription meditations with life-deteriorating side effects), spending too much time indoors and sitting down, and many other unnatural habits of your modern lifestyle.
To balance your lifestyle, start by trusting nature more, and questioning science more.
Learn to go within and feel for what truly feels GOOD for you deep down. Live as close to nature and spend as much time in nature and sunshine as possible.
Touch the earth with hands and feet frequently and surround yourself with trees and plants. This doesn’t just feel good, it scientifically grounds and balances our internal systems, and is extremely nourishing for our minds, bodies and souls.
Eliminate your reliance on chemical products and reduce electronic influences to every degree possible.
And finally, strike a balance between technology and the modern “hustle” lifestyle with spiritual development and time for quietness and contemplation. This is the space where you can deeply connect with your true nature and your body’s intelligence.
UNLOCK YOUR SIX ELEMENTS OF HEALING
As you can see, none of the above causes of physical discomfort are a disease or disorder name. All physical and even mental and emotional issues we face are rooted in one or more of the causes above.
If you’re looking to truly heal yourself and attain vibrant health, there is nothing more effective than finding the right combination and quantity of these 6 elements to healing. Woven together, they give your body & mind exactly what you need to build your own medicines that will restore your health.
Air, water, sunlight, spiritual time, plant-based phytonutrients, and soil-based minerals are all examples of elements that are deeply rooted in wholeness and most helpful to our bodies and minds. Properly nourished, you have what you need to naturally “clean house,” build strength, restore working order, and heal.
To walk this path effectively, there are also lifestyle changes, shifts in your self-image, and improvements in diet to be made as well to ensure maximum results. Yet ANY movement that helps you return to wholeness will be beneficial.
Many blessings of health and success on your vibrant health journey.
Enjoy the simple gifts from Nature!
