Active Vs. Passive Medicine

                     Active                    Vs.                       Passive

Healing oneself takes an individual's active participation in the process. This participation can be physical (body), emotional (mind), or spirit work.  Often times, all three woven together into a beautiful Self-Healing tapestry is your healing magic in action.

We live is a culture that generally works from a space of passive health care.

One western medicine scenario:

1. Visit your practitioner.
2. Explain your symptoms, issues, challenges.
3. Have a prescription handed to you.
4. Go home and take your pills.

Rarely does a western medical practitoner ask you to participate in the process of regaining your health. Drugs and surgery do not get at what is causing your health crisis. Drugs cover up the symptoms. Surgery removes the damaged organs but never opens up space to determine why this organ is in a state of dis-ease and how can I change my habits to reverse the damage that has been done?  What is actually causing the symptoms usually continues in a person's life because no one asks us to take a hard look at what made us arrive at this space of ill health. When we do take this hard look, unravel the causes that led to the problem, we can then start working in reverse to remove the problems and recover health.

Examples of the "You don't have to do anything active about your health problems" scenarios:

• High blood pressure: just take this pill and it will bring your blood pressure down. 
• Type 2 Diabetes: again, take this pill and continue doing what you have been doing. Until, of course, your diabetes get worse and now you need to... inject yourself with insulin at least once daily.
• Joint problems: take this pill, come on in for a replacement... keep eating and drinking all you have been because like the problems above... these problems are not your fault. You know, it's just bad genes. Take this pill and call it a day.

I could go on & on... PMS, menstrual irregularities, infertility, arthritis, auto-immune disorders, cancer... Nothing you eat, drink, or do in your life has anything to do with the presence of this health problem in your life.

Or so we are led to believe by mainstream media, mainstream medicine, and mainstream agriculture.

Active Participation in your health and healing means taking ownership of your lifestyle habits; true Lifestyle Medicine. Lifestyle Medicine is Active Medicine. You are asked and required to take a participatory role in your health and healing. You are invited to make changes towards whole health eating and whole health living that will ultimately repair your body cells.

1. How has the food I have been eating over the course of my life impacted my body's cellular health?  (Unhealthy cells mean an unhealthy body.)
2. How are my daily lifestyle habits impacting my health, my display of symptoms?
3. How is my body weight affecting my heart, blood pressure, diabetes, joints, back problems, and overall health?

It is time for your health care providers to invite you and inspire you (that is right, health care professionals who activley participate in their own well being and are good role models of real health). Your health cae providers need to be asking you questions:

"Stand up people. Take a hard look. Where can you change habits that have contributed to this crisis in your health? What can you do to actively return your body to vibrant, vital health?"

Trust me, return to health is a reality.  You just need to get active about the process. Invite healing support into your life:

• Lifestyle medicine professionals (think Functional Medicine, Functional Nutrition, Naturopathic Medicine, Holistic Health Coach)
• Acupuncture
• Massage
• Reiki
• Shamanic Care
• Chiropractic Care
• Spiritual Counselor
• Osteopath who practices lifestyle medicine

So where does preventative health care fit into this?

There is a difference between mainstream medicine's view of preventative health care and "holistic - whole health care - lifestyle medicine's" idea of preventative health care.

Mainstream's Idea of Prevention  -  Whole Health Care's Prevention                                                            (Lifestyle Medicine)

• mammogram                                                                          whole foods
• colonoscopy                                                                            deep, restful sleep
• cholesterol screening                                                              maintain healthy weight
• prostate exam                                                                         yoga, meditation mindfulness
• bone scan                                                                               moving the body daily
• vaccines                                                                                  immune building lifestyle habits
• diabetes screening                                                                  good posture
• blood pressure screenings                                                      hydration with pure water (no chlorine and fluoride)

Natural health habits are preventative health care; TRUE preventative health care.

The "get your annual mammogram, colonoscopy, cholesterol screening type of prevention" (which often leads to your lifetime pharmaceutical prescriptions)  does not actually prevent anything but instead is an early detection tool so your symptoms of dis-ease can be treated, managed, for the rest of your life. This is management of disease through management of disease symptoms.

Healing, active medicine, needs to be part of this equation.

Active Health Care is about real preventative health care... choosing lifestyle habits that build amazing cellular health & vitality so you truly prevent dis-ease from ever darkening your doorstep and actually knocking on your door. 

If disease symptoms are already part of your life, Active Health Care invites you to heal your symptoms of disease. 

I invite you to become an active part of your own healing team AND I will do my best to educate you and inspire you (be a healthy role model) towards whole health choices and self healing! 

Join me at 5 Elements Living for

Creating Inner Wisdom: Your Personal Health Journey

Register Today

3 Class overview
• March 27th: Eating for Cellular Health
• April 3rd: Natural Food Know How
• April 10th: Wise Woman Nurse "Movement Magic"
for Digestive Health & Herbs for Gut Health

Monday Evenings 6-8 PM

More info? Click here.

Ready to join us? Register here.

Healing the Collective Mind, Body, & Soul!

Human… Heal thyself! 

Healing literally means to make, return yourself, to whole–whole in mind, body, and spirit.

Healing is natural

I write this to remind everyone of their own innate ability to heal.  Healing is the norm.  If you cut your finger, it heals without intervention.  Every part of your body is capable of healing if it is given what it needs to heal and thrive.  This is a Vitalist philosophy of healing:  healing comes through nature.  You are nature; therefore, healing comes from within you and through you.

The responsibility to care for our bodies, to ensure lifelong health, prevent disease, and heal is ours.  Healing is not about what you are giving up; it is not about deprivation.  It IS about what you are inviting into your life: the choices, changes, and additions that will open doors to healing, health, and happiness in ways you may never have imagined or experienced.

Healing your own body is a supreme act of self-responsibility.  It means taking control of aspects of your life that have often been left in the hands of the modern medical professional. “You are in the driver seat, Doc. I will do whatever you say.”

Self-responsibility would change the above statement to,  “Thanks for being here to support me, Doc. This is how I plan to handle this health crisis.”

“If you don’t take care of your body, where are you going to live?”      Unknown

Healing is a simple equation:

Remove the cause(s) of your health issue + add in healing choices = healing, returning to whole!

10 steps to start on your self-healing path:

• Remove the causes of your disease.  If you are diabetic, this means removing sugar, in all its forms, from your diet. Lung disease?  Stop smoking or exposing your body to the toxins creating the lung challenges.  Find a healer who can help you with the task of discovering the causes of your health challenges.
• Add in whole foods.  Whole foods heal the body by feeding your body cells with nutrients.  Refined, factory made foods deplete the body of nutrients.  You want to nourish the body, not deplete it.
• Add in herbs that heal the health challenges you are facing.  Every organ system has herbs specific for healing that system.  Herbs are whole foods.  Herbs feed your body cells.
• Movement.  Movement, daily exercise, increases circulation to every body cell.  This brings more oxygen and more nutrients to each and every body cell.  This IS healing! I call this Movement Magic! Increased circulation also removes the waste products, toxins, from each and every body cell.  Again, this is healing!
• Movement Outside!  Engaging in your daily movement outside has the added benefit of fresh air and natural light.  Fresh air and natural light are amazing healing tools for every body cell.  Both help your body to produce the hormones that balance the nervous system and create happy, feel good emotions. Feeling happy and emotionally balanced sends ripple effects of healing throughout your body to every cell.

 “Just lift the corner of the clouds and the sun is always shining.”  Eli Schechter 

• Sleep.  When we get to bed, to sleep, before 10 p.m. each night, our bodies work in rhythm with the earth’s circadian rhythm. This is poetry in motion; magic healing energy to your every body cell.
• Get plenty of juiciness in your life!  Hydration is a must for keeping body cells working at their optimum levels.  The internal structures, organelles, of each and every body cell need proper hydration to do their jobs.  If your cellular structures are doing their jobs, your whole body is functioning at optimum performance.  Your cells are your building blocks!  Get your juiciness from pure water, herbal teas, and fresh produce every day.
• Juiciness in your emotional and spiritual life is also essential for health and healing.  When we connect with people we love, who love us, when we have support in our lives, have people to tell “our stories” to, and have people we listen to as they tell their stories, we produce oxytocin.  This is the feel good hormone, the hormone of love.  Oxytocin is also the antagonist of adrenaline, the stress hormone.  Oxytocin helps us to relax, release stress, feel love, and heal mind, body, and soul.  Find some juicy friends in your life.
• Kindness.  Create and live from a space of a healthy attitude toward yourself, all others on this planet, and life in general.  Practice a kind attitude towards all, starting with you.  Self-care, and its ripple effects for your health and how you perceive and interact with the world, cannot be  emphasized enough.
• Energy Healing.  Energy healing helps us to release blockages in our body’s internal energy system, the chakras and meridians.  When life force energy flows freely to every body cell, this is healing energy.  Find a form of energy healing that works for you and use it regularly to shift the healing, life force energy in your body.   Energy healing to try includes acupuncture, acupressure, reiki, yoga, Tai chi, Qi gong, Tae kwon do, prayer, meditation, massage… to name but a few.

Taking one step at a time can create huge changes in your health, happiness, and vibrant longevity. Step up to your plate of health and healing today.  Ask a holistic health coach for support on your healing path. This one action could bring some juiciness, oxytocin, into your self-healing equation.

See my bonus pages for more tips on incorporating healing changes into your juicy life!

Every person who self-heals adds one more healed being to the collective mind, body, and soul. These actions, in your personal life, make the world a better place for every living being.

Get healing and, please, tell me your story!  

My Happy, Juicy, Life Announcement:

My next book... Early Morning Coffee & Donuts will be out before the end of this year, 2014.  OK, so my fingers are crossed that all goes as planned with the publisher!

Are you chuckling yet?  A book about coffee and donuts from Paula, seriously?  Maybe, just maybe, it is more than you think it is.... read what it IS about here: http://www.paulayoumellrn.com/book-2/

Cheers of good health to you in mind, body, and soul!