True health requires all three parts of our body to be balanced, healthy and energized – our physical body, our mental body, and our spiritual/energy body.

We can’t delude ourselves into thinking that we’re really taking care of our health if all we’re doing is focusing on only one part of our body and ignoring the rest.

The Physical Body

We’re all familiar with our physical bodies.  There’s no denying the fact that while we are here on earth we occupy these physical bodies of ours.

Taking care of our physical bodies can take many forms, such as eating a healthy diet, exercising or relaxing and resting.  Billions of dollars every year are spent on finding ways to improve the health of our physical bodies.

With New Year’s Eve just around the corner, millions of people are going to be flocking to sign up at their local gym to meet their New Years resolutions for 2011.  This is all great news, and I think it’s totally awesome that more and more people are starting to take their health and fitness seriously and at least making an attempt to make an improvement.

However, even a perfect diet coupled with a perfect fitness plan isn’t enough to truly keep us healthy as that only takes care of one part of our body.

The Mental Body

When people don’t take care of their physical bodies and then they have a heart attack or develop some kind of cancer, it’s easy for us to jump to the conclusion that they just didn’t take care of themselves.

But what about all the people out there who eat super healthy, exercise every day and then die of the exact same diseases?  You know the ones that look like they could pose for a magazine cover one day and are going in for chemo therapy the next because they developed cancer.

What do we usually blame for that situation?  Genes?  It must be hereditary, right?

Wrong.  In case you haven’t heard the latest research, people like Bruce Lipton have shown that there is no such thing as a “cancer” gene or a “heart attack” gene that turns itself on at a certain age.  Genes don’t possess the power to turn themselves on or off.  They only way they can be triggered is due to the perceptions of our environment at the cellular level.

Meaning, our entire body is a thinking body.  Our whole body is a “mental body” with every cell in our body being an intelligent “thinking” cell.

Our perceptions are controlled by our beliefs.  Our perceptions control our genes.  Therefore, our beliefs control our genes.  That is what today’s science is showing us.

What does that mean?

That means that it is no longer good enough to just take care of your physical body.  You’ve got to take care of the “mental” health of your body as well.

If you’re chronically depressed, you’re not healthy, regardless how good your physical body looks or the diet you’re on.

If you’re chronically frustrated, you’re not healthy.

If you’re chronically stressed, you’re not healthy.

If 90% of the thoughts running through your “mental body” are negative, you’re not healthy.

We must take our “mental body” health seriously if we expect to live a healthy life.

Eating the perfect diet, and exercising daily is great, but if you’re feeding your mind a daily dose of “mental poison” in the form of watching the news, or listening to the negative blabbing of your “friend” who’s been depressed since they were born and calls you daily to fill you in on the intricate details of how their miserable day has been going – I’m sorry, but you’re not going to stay healthy for long.

We must take care of our “mental body” just as we take care of our physical bodies.  Reading an inspiring, energizing book is like eating a healthy, energizing meal.  Watching the (bad) news is like putting a little bit of rat poison in your food and justifying it by saying “but it’s just a little bit of poison!”

The Spiritual / Energy Body

The Spiritual / Energy Body is another part of our body what most of us ignore.

The fact is that if your spirit left your body right now, your heart would stop beating and that would be the end of it – regardless how good your diet is or the fact that you’ve got a six-pack.  Positive thinking wouldn’t be much help either.

I have to admit that up until a few years ago I was pretty ignorant about the spiritual / energy body myself.  I mean I always knew it existed, but I never knew much about it.

My level of awareness of this more “subtle” and often ignored part of our body has been growing in the last year or so after getting my Reiki training, my PSYCH-K training and especially in the last few weeks since doing some energy healing here in New Brunswick.

So far I’ve had three really eye-opening healings with an energy healer named Geoffrey McLatchie and I’ve also experimented with some other forms of energy healing work with my friend Chris Landry while I’ve been out here.

I know nothing I can write on my Blog will ever convince a skeptic that this stuff is real, but I will say this – this stuff is real.

Expanding Your Paradigm

No-body can call themselves healthy if they aren’t maintaining the health of all three of their bodies – their physical body, their mental body and their spiritual/energy body.

I see people who are taking care of their diet and fitness program but who are mentally miserable and who are too closed minded to even try out energy healing.  That’s not living in health, that’s living in ignorance.

On the other hand I also see some people who are energy healer junkies, who don’t take care of their physical or mental bodies.  You can’t treat your physical and mental bodies like crap, feeding them daily doses of poison and then expecting your Reiki healer to “fix” you.  That’s not living in health either.

You also can’t live just for the “mental body” and ignore the physical and spiritual/energy bodies.  That’s not healthy either.

We must expand our paradigm of health to include all three bodies.  It’s the only way to truly be healthy.

I’m not saying that I’m doing that right now.  I’m far from perfect myself.  But I am working on all three now because I know that all three have to be working in harmony to experience and maintain the state we call “health”.

There is no other way.

We all have our favorite “body” we prefer to expand energy towards.  Mine used to be my “mental body”.  For 15 years now I’ve been conditioning my mental body to be a lean, mean, positive thinking machine.  I’ve had periods of time when I’ve read more books in a few weeks than most people do in a lifetime.  I’ve got a library of hundreds and hundreds of books, DVD’s, seminars, audio programs etc.

If there was a body-building competition for the “mental body” I’d be putting on a pair of speedo’s and lubing it up with some tanning oil right now.

I’m not talking about knowledge or book smarts here.  What I’m saying is that my “mental body” is pretty fit because I’ve continued to challange it and develop it’s strength for over 15 years now, whereas most people stop learning after leaving school.

My spiritual / energy body is fairly strong as well, but as I am learning right now there is so much more room for growth in this area for me.

For example, in my last few healings I’ve had healing in the area between my heart and throat chakra and I couldn’t believe how it affected my lungs and my ability to breathe.  I never thought I had any problems breathing, but after my last healing I felt like my lung capacity tripled.  After the healing it felt as if all my life I’ve been breathing with just one third of my lungs and wasn’t even aware of it.

If your energy body isn’t operating at full capacity, there is no way your physical body can.  The scary thing is that there is no way to know what your full potential is unless you heal the energy body and see what changes.

A couple weeks back I stated that my highest value is Health (Diet, Fitness, Environment).  I’m ammending that now.

My new heighest value is now Health (Energy, Diet/Fitness, Environment).

I’m adding in the word “Energy” into my definition of Health as a Value of mine because I want to focus on my “Spiritual / Energy Body” as well as my “Physical Body”.  Out of the three bodies, I would definitely say that my “Physical Body” is the unhealthiest, so I will be working on that one a lot, but after what I experienced during my energy healings I also want to focus on my energy body as well because without it being in balance / health I know there is no way for the physical body to stay healthy anyway.

This photo of my friend Chris and I was taken a few hours after getting a healing from Geoffrey.  A few days ago I had to take cough syrup for a flu just to be able to get some sleep, and today I was out for a walk in the park with my wife, Chris and I and my lungs and throat were feeling great.

I’m not talking about them feeling as good as they feel when I don’t have the flu.  I’m talking about them feeling way better even with the remnants of this flu still hanging around than they have ever felt in my life even when I’m not sick.

I can’t even imagine how great they’re going to feel when my physical body fully kicks this flu.