Wellness Affirmations

Best of Better Endings, re. Health and Wellness:

March 15, 2014

A principle of Better Endings that can facilitate this week’s topic of Health & Wellness is Affirmation or setting positive postulates. Most of us are familiar with the use of affirmations to frame our goals according to a positive mindset. One approach to using positive affirmations is called the “fifteen times” technique. You write a very positive statement that expresses the successful realization of a goal, writing that statement fifteen times daily. In relation to health and healing, for example, I might write 15x:

I am exercising weekly and eating fewer processed foods. (a behavioral affirmation)

Or perhaps:

I am mindful of all that I permit into my mind and body. (an awareness raising affirmation)

You can use this method to orient yourself to establishing values or behaviors you desire to integrate more fully into your consciousness.

As a cultural anthropologist I have learned about many fascinating cultural approaches to manifesting health and wellness, many of which employ practices that are similar to setting positive affirmations. The Hopi, for instance, attribute any mental or physical manifestation of illness or disorder as an indication that one is holding self-limiting or negative thoughts.  A medicine person might ask a person then to change their thoughts about themselves to positive, more healthy images or postulates. The individual must learn to “manifest” a positive state of health rather than a negative one. According to Don Talayesva as cited in Sun Chief , this is a capacity and a responsibility of the individual, to express hopi (harmonious) rather than kahopi (inharmonious) thought patterns and behaviors. While the medicine man might also practice ritual means of reinforcing positive postulates to help the individual to reorient to a healthy pattern, it is within the capacity of the individual to accomplish their own improvement of outlook.

Repeating positive Affirmations, whether 15x or in some other manner, is a matter of establishing a habit of thought or behavior that might replace other thought or behavior habits that no longer serve you.

It is important, however, to be kind to yourself. Practice acts of kindness with yourself, always. Fill your heart with unconditional love for yourself as well as allowing that love and consideration to flow through you to others and to your environment.

If you hold yourself in high esteem and give humbly of yourself to all of life, how can you be other than in harmony with life affirming, healthful realities? Illnesses or conditions need not impair your Wellness, and positive wellness affirmations—though they may not of themselves accomplish immediate or sufficient “healing” of such conditions—certainly will do “no harm” and may help you to manifest qualities and achieve relationships you might otherwise overlook by remaining ‘caught’ in the lair of negative postulates.

You deserve to SHINE, to Manifest Better Endings, Now and Always!

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• Posted in First Principles
• Tagged affirmations, health & wellness, health and wellness, positive affirmations, postulates,power of positive thought, wellness

Wellness Affirmations

A principle of Better Endings that can facilitate this week’s topic of Health & Wellness is Affirmation or setting positive postulates. Most of us are familiar with the use of affirmations to frame our goals according to a positive mindset. One approach to using positive affirmations is called the “fifteen times” technique. You write a very positive statement that expresses the successful realization of a goal, writing that statement fifteen times daily. In relation to health and healing, for example, I might write 15x:

I am exercising weekly and eating fewer processed foods. (a behavioral affirmation)

Or perhaps:

I am mindful of all that I permit into my mind and body. (an awareness raising affirmation)

You can use this method to orient yourself to establishing values or behaviors you desire to integrate more fully into your consciousness.

As a cultural anthropologist I have learned about many fascinating cultural approaches to manifesting health and wellness, many of which employ practices that are similar to setting positive affirmations. The Hopi, for instance, attribute any mental or physical manifestation of illness or disorder as an indication that one is holding self-limiting or negative thoughts.  A medicine person might ask a person then to change their thoughts about themselves to positive, more healthy images or postulates. The individual must learn to “manifest” a positive state of health rather than a negative one. According to Don Talayesva as cited in Sun Chief , this is a capacity and a responsibility of the individual, to express hopi (harmonious) rather than kahopi (inharmonious) thought patterns and behaviors. While the medicine man might also practice ritual means of reinforcing positive postulates to help the individual to reorient to a healthy pattern, it is within the capacity of the individual to accomplish their own improvement of outlook.

Repeating positive Affirmations, whether 15x or in some other manner, is a matter of establishing a habit of thought or behavior that might replace other thought or behavior habits that no longer serve you.

It is important, however, to be kind to yourself. Practice acts of kindness with yourself, always. Fill your heart with unconditional love for yourself as well as allowing that love and consideration to flow through you to others and to your environment.

If you hold yourself in high esteem and give humbly of yourself to all of life, how can you be other than in harmony with life affirming, healthful realities? Illnesses or conditions need not impair your Wellness, and positive wellness affirmations—though they may not of themselves accomplish immediate or sufficient “healing” of such conditions—certainly will do “no harm” and may help you to manifest qualities and achieve relationships you might otherwise overlook by remaining ‘caught’ in the lair of negative postulates.

You deserve to SHINE, to Manifest Better Endings, Now and Always!

 

Planetary Health and Wellness

All of us live microcosmic lives in relation to the macrocosmic life of the Planet, the Universe, Divinity, or all that IS. We live in times when it is very important to acknowledge our systemic interconnectedness, not only with each other but with the Macrosphere. The health of the Planet, for instance, affects the health of all its denizens—from minerals through plants and animals, including humans. We are learning more and more about the reciprocity between our own actions and actions of the planet. We frack, yet each drill pad uses over 5 million gallons of water and potentially contaminates ground water through seepage, while fresh water is already being rationed in many parts of the world and is swiftly becoming an endangered resource (for more information, see the documentary Last Call at the Oasis). We destroy forests at the rate of a football field or more per minute, yet trees produce oxygen we all need for survival. Our unhealthy behaviors threaten the health of the Planet that bore us and gives us nurturance—Gaia, Mother Earth.

So consider our own health and wellness, and behaviors we can adopt to sustain these, in relation to the health and wellness of the Planet. If nothing else this sort of awareness might lead us to consider how toxins we allow into our bodily ecosystems through processed foods and alcohol or drugs mirror the contaminants we allow to engulf the ecosphere. Of course we must each make our own choices that affect our individual states of wellness. Planetary health is our combined responsibility, and its wellness is the legacy we aim to leave to future generations. The Canadian documentary Surviving the Future is an excellent reminder of where we could be headed, or alternately where we might arrive if we will focus positive energy on sustaining the health of the planet.

We appear to be at a vital tipping point, right now, globally, with regard to the interaction between our own healthful behavior (or, dearth thereof) and the wellness of the global environment that is needed to sustain life. Perhaps if we can heal the microcosm, first, with a heavy dose of positive self-esteem and wellness-building, person by person and in relation to those other animals we tend and the ecosystems which nurture our wellness, then the repercussions will reach to the Planet herself with collective choices that replenish rather than deplete resources, that clean rather than pollute, and that build instead of destroy. The macrocosm is a mirror for and of the microcosm. May we accept the interrelatedness and live individually in the collective synergy of our shared affirmations of health and wellness-building, for all.

“Humankind has not woven the web of life.

 We are but one thread within it.

Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.

All things are bound together. All things connect.”                                                                                                                   

― Chief Seattle