Heal-thy Self will Create a Healthy Self

More and more we're finding that people are being stricken with devastating illnesses like cancer, inflammatory diseases, and other debilitating illnesses. Research shows that stress hormones such as cortisol eat away at your immune system and then to add insult to injury we ingest toxins that compromise our bodies even further. Most of these illnesses are preventible when we take a look at our lifestyle and environment. I lost my father when he was 54 (my age now) and my mom at 67. Both were far too young and the deaths could have been altered if they would have played by the motto: Heal thy self. When we start evaluating our life choices and our priorities we can see that we only have one life to lead and that life should have a quality of life that will creates a healthy self. We need our minds, bodies and spirits to view life differently. Positive outlooks are the key. My son died April 19, 2013. The devastating and unsuspecting blow caused me to stop caring about myself. I was so consumed in grief that I simply did not care if I lived or died. I gave up my practice as a therapist because I didn't want to deal with other people's pain when I had so much of my own. Parenting is a huge job and most of us want to do it right so we give too much. Being exhausted wears down the immune system and allows for disease to show up. We become tense where our blood vessels don't operate well and our digestive track gets all whacked out. They call it dis-ease for a reason. What I want you all to do today and consider what you are role modeling to your children. Do you wish for them to learn that life is about sacrifice, exhaustion, resentment and dull? If not, role model and heal-thy self and show them what a healthy self looks like. Take care of yourself for just 15 minutes a day by escaping: do yoga, meditate, breathe, do acupuncture, walk, watch a funny movie, read a couple of pages in an interesting book or get a massage.