How To Enhance Your Innate Health

The tendency to health is intrinsic, it comes first, and then comes the disease. Being healthy means being completely natural, that is, with the body and mind in sync.

But this synchronization to maintain health supposes a lifestyle, a way of being and thinking or meditating, which is elaborated daily on a personal, social and environmental level.

If the balance is broken, in a natural way it will be sought to return to it and in that rebalancing the disease will appear, sometimes as a way of adaptation or of trying to recover and maintain health and life for as long as possible.

Sick to correct

The approach is simple but in the face of the reality of the patient who is born with genetic alterations or the patient who suffers great pain or disorders, how do you explain that the same disease is part of the body’s response to the environment to solve problems the best? possible?

There are people who are born with some disorders, or who suffer from other chronic ones. Can it be considered that this is also a state of health in which the body is seeking balance?

What some may see as a genetic alteration or disease, for others it is an opportunity that nature offers to react with new adaptations, or warn us that something is being done wrong.

A radical example would be the environmental contaminations that produce fetal malformations : the disease shows us in this case that certain behaviors must be changed.

It is the same with some chronic diseases. They appear as an adaptation to a lifestyle : sedentary lifestyle and abundant food produce obesity, diabetes and gout. And this does not change until the lifestyle is changed.

The tendency to balance: an intelligent mechanism

The constants that living organisms maintain are not static. These are states of dynamic equilibrium, since living beings are open systems, subject to continuous exchanges of matter and energy with the external environment.

The body maintains its constants with an internal balance that in turn depends on the external one. All this works as a great intelligent mechanism, whose tendency is to maintain harmony between chaos and order.

Examples of self-regulation are found in:

• The mother’s breast adapting to the vital needs of the child.
• The adaptation of the body to effort, depth, height.
• The adaptation of the skin to sunlight.
• The ossification after a fracture.
• The adaptability of the human eye.
• Adaptation to cold or heat: in thermoregulation or with fever.
• The mechanisms against infection: Fever, asthenia, anorexia, increased mucus secretions, coughing, vomiting, diarrhea.
• Pain, functional impotence.
• The placebo effect and the mechanisms in which endorphins intervene.

Symptoms of the disease present with organic reactions that attempt to restore a lost balance.

Know in depth the signs and symptoms, organic reactions, biology, physiology, pathology and, in general, the mechanisms of health and disease, and the reactions that remedies, plants and medications have in the body , in health and in sickness, it helps to be a better doctor and patient.

On the other hand, knowing and respecting a mechanism or the iatrogenesis of the intervention (the state, the disease or the condition that causes it), can lead doctors and patients to adopt one or another attitude towards the disease.

It is not about trusting a magical and unknown vis medicatrix , but about believing in what we know and trying to discover or learn what we do not know. And, in the face of ignorance, act with humility and respect towards the sick person and towards those who may know more than we do (although they will have to demonstrate it by rationally convincing us, by teaching us).

How to promote a healthy balance?

Before all this arises how to know and implement these self-regulation mechanisms, how to train them and increase their capacity. Naturopathic therapy has an important function, as long as techniques that help these self-regulating mechanisms or hygiene techniques of life and customs are tried that maintain the vital capacity of the organism in good condition.

For this, it is good to design healthy habits: exercise, food, adequate rest, contact with natural elements; in short, all the attitudes that favor the body’s ability to respond to the changes that arise.

Some simple measures enhance the body’s innate ability to protect itself from disease, heal itself from disorders and illnesses, and improve overall health.

Recognize the fundamental health of the mind

Chögyam Trungpa, in his book Our Innate Health. A Buddhist approach to psychology , it argues that we are all born with basic goodness and health. From the Buddhist perspective and practice the mind is experienced as essentially pure, that is, healthy and positive.

Taking this into account helps to see problems differently: they are considered temporary and superficial obscurations.

In the words of Chögyam Trungpa, “this point of view does not mean so much ‘getting rid of’ problems, as changing one’s approach to them. ” They come to be seen in a much broader context of health: “You begin to stop clinging to your neurosis and to overcome obsessions and your identification with them.”

By understanding the nature of the mind, the emphasis is no longer on the problems themselves, but on the basis of experiences. When problems are viewed in this way, fear lessens. “Instead of seeing them as a threat, they become situations we can learn from, opportunities to discover more about our mind and thus move forward along the way.”

Take charge of our health

This implies being responsible for the genetic capacities that we have inherited for our own healing. Also of the environment that surrounds us and that is part of that same health, and, thus, recover a healthy lifestyle.

Taking care of the body, following a proper diet, being in contact with nature, meditating, praying … learning to connect with the intelligence of the body and mind, learning to listen to them and respect their needs and rhythms, stimulate their self-healing and prevention mechanisms.

Recognize that everything that helps maintain health also helps with disease : diet, fasting, exercise, rest, cleanliness, contact with water, earth, clean air and sun, concentration and the attention on our vital forces, the meditation… All this improves the vital force and helps in the disease.

Hygienic standards, caring for the environment, positive mental control … continue to be a basic part of treating the disease.

Get rid of not only junk food, but also mental junk

Meditation can become a learning for health : it helps to discover that we are born in good mental health and that we can always enjoy it, whatever our confusion. It allows you to experience the inherent health of the mind. “We found that the roots of our problems are not that deep and that we can make real progress.”

The potential to be happy is in ourselves, but we have to look for that fund every day, contact it. It is important to appreciate the body and mind, and to become familiar with the notion of the fundamental goodness that is in each of us.

As human beings, we have a foundation capable of dignifying our existence and lifting our spirits. It is not about ignoring problems but also about seeing our potential to solve them.

Beyond the ego

The prospect of inherent goodness and health comes from the experience of egolessness. It means that you can let go of your habitual patterns and open yourself up to a larger reality.

The therapist’s task is to help his patients to reestablish contact with their fundamental health and goodness, to guide them towards the experience of the essential space of health that exists within them.

Returning to Trungpa, “We might think this is a tall order, especially when working with someone who has a long history of problems, but the health of the essence of the mind is actually in our hands and we can easily experience and nurture it. ».