Ten years ago I spent a year living at a yoga ashram. They had quite the lineup of guest speakers, healers, and musicians from all over the world so I looked at it as if it was a year of "yoga college". I wanted to learn as much as possible about yogic philosophy and truly live the yogic lifestyle before I started teaching.
I had the privilege of attending lectures and workshops from Dr. Joe Dispenza, Dan Millman, Donna Eden, Joy Nischala Devi, Vianna Stabil... and these are probably names you have never heard of in the mainstream world so I won't go on!
During that time, a homeopathic doctor spoke about all diseases starting in the mind before they actually present in the body. He went over each chakra (energy center) of the body and the related illnesses. I found this information fascinating but I never really grasped how it all worked until I finished my own healing journey last year. Now, a decade after this talk, I find myself doing a deep dive into studying this topic so I can better help others on this journey towards healing.
What I didn't originally understand is how the subconscious mind works. I didn't truly realize that it is the thoughts underneath all the conscious thoughts. I didn't acknowledge that it is a part of our brain that we don't control but it controls us instead. I didn't understand that the subconscious has no logic or reason but operates based on memories and emotions. It isn't as easy to change subconscious thinking patterns as conscious ones because we aren't as aware of what is lurking beneath the surface-level thoughts.
During my own healing journey I also didn't want to admit to my own wounded thinking patterns. I felt like I was a hopeful, grateful. and an optimistic person so there couldn't possibly be something in my mind contributing to my illnesses. (Wow, look how loud my ego was...)
Later on, I realized that I was simply an expert at spiritually bypassing my issues. I would look for a lesson in the experience and as long as I could find a takeaway to be grateful for, I was able to see any traumatic experience as a positive one. It was a great survival technique but it ended up destroying me from the inside out with health problems later on. I never actually dealt with any of the issues or trauma that had happened over the course of my life.
Can you relate to this at all?
Nobody really teaches us how to deal with being human. Our school system thinks it is more important to teach us the Pythagorean theorem to figure out the size of a triangle rather than how to deal with our stress and emotions with healthy coping mechanisms. Instead, we are encouraged to keep ourselves busy and forget about our problems. No wonder society is addicted to scrolling on their phones!
Our subconscious mind controls us more than we imagine. It remembers EVERYTHING!! It is always awake, even when we are sleeping. Every illness has a subconscious correlation unless it is genetic. Genetic diseases are only about 10% of the health issues in the world. Even if you have the breast cancer gene, epigenetics (your environment, nutrition, stress levels, relationships, subconscious thoughts, etc) play a bigger role than your genetics do.
Speaking of breast cancer, there are actually four personality/psychological traits that attribute to breast cancer. In fact, in two different studies, researchers were able to predict breast cancer in patients with 94% and 96% accuracy based on these four traits alone.
Now, just because you have these personality traits doesn’t mean you will have the disease, but it does make you more predisposed to getting it.
Here they are:
Childhood was characterized by an emotional disconnection from your parents or other disturbances in your upbringing.
You tend to repress emotions, particularly anger.
You lack nurturing social relationships in adulthood.
You are the altruistic, compulsive caregiver type.
This means that doing inner child healing work, learning to express your emotions, developing a better support system, and ending the people-pleasing habit could prevent you from getting breast cancer... so would you rather face your past and work on your subconscious now or eventually deal with surgeries, radiation, and chemotherapy?
This is just one example of how subconscious dis-ease turns into a physical disease.
We aren't taught any of this. We aren't taught healthy coping mechanisms in school. We aren't taught about how to do inner child work, how to face our shadow side, or how to deeply forgive not only others but ourselves.
I never knew that if you reflect on something in the past and still feel emotional or upset about it in any way then it isn't healed. I just thought that was a normal reaction when you look back on the past. I didn't learn that until I was 38 and I wish I would have learned it earlier on in life.
Doctors are finally starting to study this aspect of the mind/body connection more but it isn't very celebrated in the medical community. I was watching an interview with Dr. Howard Schubner a couple of weeks ago, and he made a great point about why more people aren't talking about this. He basically said, "If I can reverse your chronic pain in 28 days with no medical intervention but through talking, journaling, pain reprocessing, and teaching you not to suppress your emotions - where is the money in that?"
We are not just this physical body. We are a mind, a body, and a spirit. Being human is a complicated experience with no handbook or instruction manual! Learning more about healing is up to us individually. We each have our own healing journey to go on regardless of if we have an actual illness.
When you are ill or in pain, it is very easy to get hyperfocused on the physical health issue and symptoms and forget about the other aspects yourself. Don't forget to pause and ask yourself if this could be a spiritual awakening asking you to heal other aspects of your mind and spirit instead. From my experience, once I healed the mind and spirit, the body automatically healed with no effort.
I still think you can have a disease simply be a physical health issue so please understand that I don't think everything begins in your mind. I do think it is the difference between getting COVID and getting long-haul COVID though. It is the difference between treating Lyme with a couple of weeks of antibiotics versus having it chronically for years. It is the difference between having structural permanent lower back pain versus pain that comes and goes.
My illness journey taught me A LOT about healing the past, forgiveness, and the power of our belief systems. Now, as a spiritual life coach, I am able to help others do this inner healing work too. I had to figure it all out on my own and it resulted in five years of severe illness. My goal is to prevent others from that level of suffering.
If you love to read and are interested in learning more on this topic, these are the top five books I found helpful on my own healing journey:
Please share this article with any friends that may find it intriguing or helpful, and always feel free to reach out and ask me questions! My email is hilery@healingwithhilery.com
I am 73 and know you’re really onto something there. I’m going to learn more by reading the books you just recommended. Thanks.