Musings: We Are Yogis Waiting to Happen
In just a few short decades, the image of modern medicine, once revered as miraculously lifesaving, has been clouded with doubt. Rising disease rates, an epidemic of hospital error and infection statistics, and the indignity of medical bankruptcies experienced by millions at a time in their lives when they are most vulnerable, have created a climate of fear surrounding our healthcare. We are afraid of getting sick, afraid we won’t be able to afford the treatment if we do get sick, and afraid of what the treatment side effects might have in store for us in the long run.
Healthcare has turned into a fearfully risky business these days because profit has superseded care as its goal. The twin parasites of the pharmaceutical and insurance industries have hijacked our healthcare system, not so they can cure disease but because healthcare in America is big business. There are huge profits to be made in selling a lifetime of prescription drugs, vaccines, invasive testing and treatments to Americans desperate to safeguard their good health with “medical science” against the ravages of today’s increasingly toxic world.
The trouble is that you can’t make or keep people well by interfering with the body’s natural healing design, so in many cases these drugs and procedures not only don’t help, but actually damage the body’s overall healing ability. Consider the cholesterol statin drug frenzy, where, according to holistic medicine expert Joseph Mer cola, MD, one in four Americans over the age of 45 are currently taking a statin drug.
In “This Cooking Mistake Can Ruin Your Health” from www.mer cola.com, Dr. Mer cola observes:
“Statins are very effective for lowering your cholesterol across the board, however they shut down your body’s innate capacity to create the cholesterol it needs.
“We know that your body actually requires cholesterol to manufacture vitamin D from sunlight, to synthesize sex hormones, and is vital to your neurological and proper brain function. Cholesterol is absolutely essential for optimal health and is so important that the body produces it both in your liver and in your brain.
“So what’s the connection between cholesterol and heart disease? The culprit of heart disease is not just any cholesterol, but oxidized, damaged cholesterol. Oxidized cholesterol is introduced into your system every time you eat something cooked in vegetable oil. As soon as the oil is heated and mixes with oxygen, it goes rancid. This is why I recommend avoiding all vegetable cooking oils, such as canola, corn or soy oil, and replacing them with organic coconut oil, which does not oxidize at higher temperatures.”
In other words, instead of popping a pill to lower your overall cholesterol, first try eliminating cooked vegetable oil, and processed and refined foods from your diet. Eat lots of antioxidant rich foods, like brightly colored fruits and vegetables to combat oxidization. Let your body naturally make and balance the cholesterol it needs with good nutrition. Exercise is also highly recommended.
Despite the pharmaceutical industry’s decades-long campaign to convince you that taking drugs is the best way to maintain good health, the facts prove otherwise, as even their own commercials crow a mile long list of terrifying side effects. You may feel more vulnerable to illness and disease than ever before in our increasingly toxic and stress-filled world as friends and relatives and friends of friends battle cancer and chronic fatigue and gluten intolerance, but this is all the more reason to explore how you can access the most powerful healing force on the planet for your own health and vitality.
Fortunately you can only tap into this power through your body’s energy meridian system that connects every cell, tissue and neuron with healing intelligence and life force. The more you work with this energy in whatever modality you choose, the more skilled you will become in the driver’s seat of your own self-healing.
You will feel it working through any of the various forms of holistic bodywork such as massage, shiatsu, Rosen Method or dozens of other specialties that can provide restorative, challenging or soothing therapeutic sessions. Healing systems of movement such as Yoga, tai chi and qigong combine conscious breathing with intentional movement to free the body and release toxins. This feeding and toning of your energy meridian system feels good, prevents disease and continually brings new insights to light. We are fortunate to be so richly endowed.
Sometimes it just takes reading someone else’s healing success story to light your own spark into action. Before long, I suspect we will look back on this period of allopathic treatment as a lack of common sense in our healthcare history when people forgot their own healing power and medicine lost its way while pursuing business profits.
We are so much more than disease, diagnostics and treatment. We are ancient, earth-based herbal medicine. We are the rainbow light medicine of DNA stretching backwards and forwards eternally through time. We are yogis waiting to happen.
Carol Bedrosian is the publisher of Spirit of Change, New England’s largest holistic magazine. Visit www.spiritofchange.org.
Yoga Art by Claudia Tremblay
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