Dr. Weeks’ Comment: We all accept input constantly, but how we accept it can make all the difference.
Consider food, for instance, and nutritional practices in general as dietary “input”. It is not true when people say “You are what you eat”. It’s more complex than that. In fact, it’s not only what we eat, but it’s how we eat as well which conditions the result. I don’t just mean chewing thoroughly (in the macrobiotic tradition we “chew our liquids and we drink our solids”) but it’s getting into a receptive, appreciative, parasympathetic state of mind which allows for optimal absorption and distribution to every cell in our body of the energy delivered to us by the food that we eat. Yes. Attitude enhances digestion. Calm down before starting your meal. Relax. Don’t eat on the run. Pause and exhale. Give thanks. Be appreciative and enthusiastic. I would much rather somebody eat junk food with a grateful, calm heart than for them to eat organic, nutrient dense food with the bitter, resentful and fearful heart.
How about criticism? Again: how we receive criticism from others (well-intended or not, constructive or not) is far more important than the actual criticism itself. Some people learn from all feedback, critical or not, and other miss that growth opportunity entirely.
On a neuro-cognitive plane, each of us spin everything which we experience using our thought processes. On the neuro-cognitive level, sensations arrive for us to think about before we “name” the sensation as good or bad, dangerous or not and, in this way, each of us thinks our individual reality into being. We perceive and then we conceive. Sensory data inspires thought which allow for definition and hence meaning. Our thoughts create our feelings and our feelings in term alter our biochemistry. Some thoughts are inflammatory and can create enhanced the suffering from painful experiences. Some thoughts are anxiety provoking and can disrupt hormone regulation. Thinking allows self-fulfilling prophecies to come to pass. Some thoughts can literally scare us to death. So job #1 for anybody committed to preventive health practices is to study CorThot™ in order to discriminate carefully what you pay attention to. As Mark Twain once quipped: “I’ve suffered thousands of tragedies in my life some of which actually happened.”
So you decided to get radiation therapy for cancer pain. Is radiation good or bad for you? That question is less significant then the following question: “How can I accept this targeted energy infusion in such as way that it enhances my life and well-being and how can I be thoroughly grateful for this healing energy infusion” Ask a question like this OUT LOUD – speak it out loud- and then relax and wait patiently for your inner wisdom, the Physician Within, to give you insight and a strategic optimal solution.
As a clinician working with cancer patients for more than 30 years, I can tell you that, in no other illness, do attitude and healing thoughts count for more than in reversing the cancer process. In his landmark cancer recovery book Love Medicine and Miracles, my friend Bernie Siegel, M.D. wrote that there is no such thing as false hope. He is correct. Any positive imagination or visualization contributes to enhancing your immune system. Otherwise stated, radiation into a positive energy field such as yours actually works better and differently than radiation pointed into a depressed dark hole of a troubled person. God gives only gifts. That is valuable insight. So keep your intentions conscious and be enthusiastic (note the derivation from the Greek “En Theus” meaning “God within”) so that you empower your body to heal optimally.
Radiation therapy is fundamentally just targeted energy. How you receive it conditions how you utilize it? You set the rules. Just as people who visit your home must behave in a respectful and considerate manner, so too you can tell the radiation how you expect it to behave while visiting you within your temple, your astonishingly resilient human body.
Let there be Light!
Bradford S. Weeks, M.D.