How to Heal...

I am a BIG fan of Deepak Chopra, MD. He and Dr. Wayne Dyer have been extremely instrumental in my spiritual and emotional growth and healing. A few months ago, I began listening to an audio book from Audible called, The Secret of Healing, by Deepak Chopra. In this audio book Deepak guides you through a series of Sutras that activate self-repair mechanisms. What does this mean? it means he guides you through a meditative state to a place of peace, stillness, objectivity, and compassion. When our bodies and our minds are in this place, healing and self-repair happens. More recently, I have been following his Facebook page and stumbled upon a video post of his in which he talks about how to heal and strengthen immunity in the face of this Pandemic. While there is a contagious virus to fear, the fear itself is more deadly. It triggers the fight, flight, freeze response and sends our bodies into a compromised state. When this happens, the body creates inflammation. According Deepak Chopra and his research center, this virus is most harmful due to the inflammation it creates in the body. He talks about how to repair this mechanism and how to strengthen our immunity. MEDITATION is the answer. According to his team's research the use of mindfulness, imagery, chanting, gentle movement, compassion and loving-kindness will create homeostasis in the body and therefore improve the body's ability to heal itself. Through these techniques we calm the parasympathetic nervous system. Feel free to watch his video yourself by going to his website, deepakchopra.com.

I have been practicing a various types of meditation for about 20 years. The most profound experiences I have had were as a result of doing a daily practice for a minimum of 15-20 minutes. The form of meditation I subscribe to for healing is "Metta" or Loving-kindness meditation. The reason for this is that it cultivates a felt-sense, or somatic feeling all throughout the body, mind and spirit. Once in a state of compassion, kindness, friendliness towards self and others, we become detached from the 'self' and free from ideas of fear and separation. Fear, judgment, anger, resentment are all mind-states that keep us separate-separate from ourselves and from others. This triggers the "fight, flight, freeze" response and literally cuts us off from the the rest of our(self) and our access to rational thinking. However, in a state of compassion, it is impossible to feel fear. While in this state we have access to all aspects of our mind, body and spirit. We literally have the ability to direct healing energy towards ourselves and others. Continued use of Loving-kindness meditation will calm the parasympathetic nervous system and strengthen internal resources, which can be utilized during crisis.

If you are new to meditation and would like to practice Loving-kindness meditation click here for a free, 15-minute guided meditation.

~ Namaste