How To Create Real Change In Your Life

After last week's post, people commented that they're intrigued by the concept of meditation and want to try it, but would like to understand more about what's actually behind it. So I wanted to write about how you can take something like the concept of meditation (which may sound great in some abstract philosophical sense), and create real change in your life. Not only inner change, but clear, sustainable outer change. That's the bottom line you're trying to achieve - a noticeable difference in the way you feel, think, react, and experience events in your life. When you change the inner, the outer automatically changes - that's the secret.

The true litmus test of any set of beliefs, whether they come from organized religion, spiritual beliefs, or your own personal experience, is whether they are adding value and helping you create the life you want to live. If your beliefs are not helping you grow, evolve, and accomplish the things you want, it make senses to explore and adapt them to what will work for you. So ask yourself, is your belief system helping you or hurting you?

Meditation helps you to do just that - instead of assigning random outside causes to things in your life (I'm unlucky, the economy sucks, I was born into a bad environment, my government is holding me down, my husband/wife is unsupportive, etc), it helps you look within to create change. Think about it - you really have no other option - if you do not look within, you are looking without. While it is certainly true that outside circumstances do influence your life, you can slowly begin to change those circumstances from the inside out, which is the only real way to create change.

Meditation helps you get in touch with the part of yourself (your consciousness, or the greater Energy source that some people call God), that is beyond your mind, ego, and body. It is a way of silencing your mind so that you establish a stronger and clearer link to your own power source. As you begin to identify more with this Source (which is only pure, positive energy), your mind and body benefit as well. For example, after a while you will notice your breathing become deeper and more relaxed (in fact, this should be one of the first things you should notice). You thoughts will become more peaceful and have more clarity. You might notice negative emotion like fear or anger subside; on the flip side, meditation sometimes heightens emotions that are laying just below the surface in order for you to be able recognize and deal with them more effectively.

There is no absolute set of things that will happen to any given person, simply because no one has the same thought patterns, emotional blocks, expectations, desires, and goals as anyone else. It is a highly personal journey, just like your life. But your own consciousness or higher self is always aware of everything that is going on with you (past, present, and future), even if your mind is not. Flashes of intuition, insight, solutions to problems, healing in your body, and seeming coincidences all come from this untapped pure, positive Energy space. The impulse may occur to you through an idea in your mind, a random synchronicity in your life, or an inspired action. But the source is always the same.

Simply put, the goal of meditation is to heighten your awareness, and to increase your level of consciousness to the point that all your thoughts and actions are always inspired. But, it's not an all or nothing game, and no one is keeping score. You can never lose. Consciousness is always present, beckoning you. The only choice you have is whether or not to answer the call.

10 Reasons You Should Be Meditating

Meditation has countless benefits on your health and life in general. Here are some great reasons to make meditation a part (even if it is a small part) of your daily rountine.

1. It increases your mental clarity and focus by eliminating incessant mind chatter created by an endless stream of thoughts.

2. Morning meditation sets a positive, peaceful energy into motion that infuses itself into the rest of your activities for the day (after a while you will notice things running more smoothly on their own).

3. Evening meditation helps you unwind from your day and improves sleep quality.

4. Injecting positive, specific intentions into a non-thought space during meditation helps your intentions manifest faster.

5. Meditation automatically reduces heart rate, lowers blood pressure, reduces muscle tension, and improves breathing.

6. Meditation improves your ability to receive. Ask yourself specific questions before a meditation (Who am I? What is my purpose? What is the best solution to this problem?), quiet your mind, and then listen. Meditation puts you in touch with the silence that holds the answers.

7. Meditation jumpstarts your intuition, creativity, and inspiration. A quiet, relaxed mind is more likely to receive an intuitive hit than a frazzled one.

8. Meditation helps to release negative energy and toxic emotions.

9. Meditation triggers self-healing mechanisms that activate the body's natural immune system.

10. Meditation helps you fully focus and channel your energy into each present moment. It makes you more powerful and effective in the present.

The Placebo Effect and Why It Should Matter To You

One of the most fascinating aspects of my job is being able to evaluate clinical trials for different drugs: figuring out how trials are designed and what the data actually means. One of the tenets of evidence-based medicine is that trials should be "double-blinded, placebo controlled." What this means in plain English is that patients are divided up into two groups, one group is given the drug and the other is given a "placebo" or fake pill. Double blinded simply means neither group knows which it is getting. Sounds straightforward and logical, right?

The ignored part of this equation is what this type of study design is actually trying to control. Scientists have long known that when you tell a person they are getting a medicine (even if it is a sugar pill), and the person actually believes to their core that they are getting treated, a lot of times that person will actually get better!! This to me, as a physician, is incredible. Why does this happen? And what are the implications?

It is hard to deny that there is some sort of mind over matter effect going on here. And it is a well-known phenomenon, which is why all trials have to control for it. Quantum medicine believes that what you think about your health and your body (both consciously and subconsciously) matters. It matters a lot. Your vibrational energy level, which to a large part is driven by the energy of your thoughts, dictates the degree to which your body can activate its own healing and defense mechanisms to ward off and cure disease.

If it is hard for you to believe that your thoughts have influence over your body, look at examples from your own experience. Have you ever felt afraid about something and then felt your heart beat faster? Have you ever been anxious and felt a knot in your stomach? Have you ever gotten into an argument or had a prolonged unpleasant interaction with someone and then developed a headache afterward? It is hard to deny that emotions have an effect over your body. That's why they call it a stress ulcer. It's why strong emotions are known to trigger asthma attacks in some people. It's why when you are doing a job you don't like all day long, you come home to tense neck and back muscles.

Dis-ease is your body's way of telling you that your thoughts and energy vibration are out of whack. Emotional, psychological, or physical stress shows up as symptoms. Every time. The good news is that it works the other way around too. Your body would much rather respond to a positive focus than cope with your usual negative orientation (I am sick. I hurt. My body has let me down and the doctor told me there something wrong with my stomach / heart / muscles / whatever) . If you give your mind a subconscious suggestion (which is exactly what a placebo accomplishes), and your mind actually believes it, then your vibrational energy patterns begin to recalibrate to that new belief system, and begin to realign the cells of your body to the orientation of wellness, which is their natural orientation. It is really quite extraordinary.

Each individual has varying results to a drug or a placebo not only because of physiological (or constitutional) differences, but because of differing thought patterns. If, for instance, you have a belief that the medicine is helping somewhat, but you are also strongly focused on your symptoms, the pain you are experiencing, or see yourself as fundamentally not well, then the degree to which the medicine "works" will be mixed.

Your thoughts are like vectors in physics. If you have a vector going right pulling at 20 mph, and you have another vector pulling left in the exact opposite direction at 10 mph, then guess what? You will end up going right at only 10 mph. But, if you do not have any negative thoughts or attention in the opposite direction, the speed and degree of your positive thoughts go unopposed, and your wellness vector gains momentum.

So whether you believe in taking medications for chronic diseases or not (either belief system is valid- so don't feel guilty either way!), do yourself and your body a favor and start cleaning up your thoughts. Start focusing your thoughts and visualize what it would feel like to be healthy. It's not so much about fighting against dis-ease (remember, what you resist, persists), as it is looking in the direction of ease. Reorient your belief about yourself as fundamentally well and in balance. Incorporate meditation and exercise as a daily part of your routine, to give chronic stress and negativity (which act as toxins to your cells) an outlet. And then let go, with a strong conscious belief that your mind and body will take care of the rest.