Indigo Earth Healing Arts

In alternative healing circles there it's common to hear practitioners talking about how all disease can be traced back to tension and stress.  Most people dismiss that as too simplistic.  After all, there are bacteria and viruses out there, right?

In the middle of September I found myself spending an all expenses paid weekend on the sixth floor of the Roy Carver Pavilion at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics which resulted in me getting my gall bladder removed.  I had a lot of time to lie there and think about healing and stress.  I know without a doubt that stress and tension resulted in the gall stones. 

I was also very aware of how prevalent heart disease is, both from listening to other people's stories and from how surprised the nurses and doctors seemed to be that I had no heart related illnesses.  The first thing they asked was if I had any kind of heart disease.  Sure, eating high cholesterol foods and being sedentary is bad for your heart, but so is constant unnecessary tension.

Adult onset diabetes can also be traced  to stress, because stress blocks insulin from being released causing an imbalance over time.  (See Stress - All About Diabetes for more info.)  Not to mention reaching for something sugary is a common stress buster.

If you think about it I'm sure you can see how even the common cold can be attributed to higher stress levels because the body's immune system is compromised.  So, the goal for each of us should be to remove as much tension and stress as possible because it can prevent our bodies from healing themselves naturally. 

The work I do as a massage therapist and energy worker is primarily to lower stress and tension levels on many levels.  Certainly people can find other ways to do this but it doesn't hurt to have someone else give you an hour's worth of focus on just that.

Obviously it would be great to be able to prevent disease with relaxation but our society rewards us to overwork ourselves and compete, so I don't think it's going to be possible to completely replace seeing the doctor with getting a massage any time soon.  But, even while being treated by a doctor relaxation can play a key role in helping you heal better and faster.  Sometimes even the stress of the treatments themselves needs to be addressed. 

All of us would benefit by making relaxation and true re-creation a priority whether it be from getting a massage or practicing meditation or prayer, playing with your kids or just making sure you get a good belly laugh in once a day.  It would change the world if we could afford to make it a priority.  I don't know how we can not.