Think good health is just about consuming the right food and exercising? Think again. In this episode, Jen dives into the three areas of health – the attitudinal, emotional and physical – and explains how one area out of balance can derail your whole system if you’re not careful.

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SHOWNOTES

Einstein had a theory that human beings are a complex network of energy fields interfaced with physical body systems. He eventually proved to scientists that energy and matter are dual expressions of the same universal substance. The universal substance is the vibration from which we are composed. If the vibrations of our physical and emotional energies are balanced, we experience good health and if they are not? Well, I am sure that you know how that feels.

Me, I grew up a snotty kid. I always had hay fever or sinus, and everyone firmly believed that I was allergic to dogs, cats and pollens, and so many things in life. If we would go visiting someone and they had a cat, I would have more snot than even I thought was humanly possible. It drove me nuts. 

When I was 17, I joined the Australian Army, and there you aren’t allowed to be sick. So their answer was to operate, and I had my turbinates reduced. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s where they scrape out the lower sinuses to open your airways. Well, for me it just made a bigger area to collect snot. 

This continued with me believing that I was allergic to cats and pollens, and I used so many nasal sprays to try and help that I burned all of the hairs out of my nose. This made it hurt to breathe as my air was not being filtered and warmed. 

When I started to study naturopathy, I learned that emotions influenced our health, and I started to map when I would get my hay fever and sinus, and that changed my life forever. 

In the book Love Your Disease it’s Keeping You Healthy, Dr John Harrison demonstrated the reason people get ill when he said, “People get ill to get what they want (caring, etc.)” and “People do not get what they want (caring, etc.) so they become ill.” 

Think about that for a minute. When do we get the most care as a child? When we are ill. In mapping my hayfever, I understood that there were two times that I had full-on symptoms. The first was when something had just happened, and it did not go the way I expected, and the second was when there was something coming up that I did not want to do. 

Working with patients in my naturopathic clinic, I grew to understand there were emotions behind all physical ailments that I saw. Let me explain. The best way I have found of explaining this lack of control of life is with the “Triangle of health.” It’s like the theory behind naturopathic medicine. If you think of your life as a triangle and you can keep the three points of the triangle in a positive state, you experience that wonderful sense of wellbeing. If the three points of the triangle drift into the negative, you experience physical ailments. 

Let’s get into it. 

The first point is our Attitudes & Beliefs.

This is the matter that we have ingested subconsciously over the years, creating our attitudes and our belief systems. These attitudes and beliefs hang around in the subconscious, waiting to be used. For instance, remember your mother telling you not to go outside in the cold weather without a singlet on or you would catch a cold? Statements like these were projected onto us in our childhood and adult years – not just from parents, but also from others of significance in our environment. We took in the material consciously and subconsciously, and it is now stored somewhere in our memory banks. Yes, it is.

The second point of the triangle is our Emotional State. 

Have you ever heard people say they caught a cold or flu, just when they didn’t have time for it? Or, that they always catch “two colds a year”, or “everyone at work is sick, I bet I catch it too”? It is almost as if they are subconsciously setting themselves up. I am sure they don’t really want the cold, but on some level, they like the attention that sick people attract. Remember, I mentioned the time that most of us received that extra attention as a child was when we were sick or injured?

Our self-talk can reflect how we emotionally feel about life, and our bodies listen to it. We are more susceptible to “catching” ailments when we are running negative stress and using negative self-talk. Personally, I think stress is a catchword for life and the way we choose to react or respond to what is happening. Again, we can call the experience negative or positive. Stress is what helps keep us alive; it’s just that positive stress does not have a negative impact physically and emotionally on our bodies where negative stress does. 

“The body itself has no power to generate illness; illness is merely the shadow thrown by the mind. A healthy mind will shadow forth a healthy body; an unhealthy mind will shadow forth an unhealthy body. Every new cell created in the body is either negative or a positive thought in form. In the older days, it was customary to say that cells are “built under the influence” of either negative or positive thought. In reality, the cells are the thought itself. Healthy thoughts mean healthy cells; sick thoughts mean sick cells.”

It is the well-known story of Norman Cousins (the man who laughed himself well in 1964) that shows how simply changing your mindset and attitude or emotion towards an illness even the nastiest ailments can be reversed. His book Anatomy of an Illness is a really inspiring read. 

The third point of the triangle is our Physical State.

The third point is that of the physical or circumstance. This is the event or happening that collided with you. Take the not wearing a singlet on a cold day scenario. The circumstance/physical is the cold weather. You could be out playing golf and having a great time, but it may also be cold and raining. You are not dressed warmly, but you have such an enjoyable, positive time that you do not have a chance of catching anything negative that day. On the other hand, you could be caught late after work and tired from your day at the office, when the car breaks down in cold and wet weather. You have the emotional “too hard” or the “poor me”, and you are running plenty of negative stress. Guaranteed, this is the time you will catch a cold.

With the triangle, consider what patterns or incidents you may be setting up for yourself without actually thinking about it. When you are struck down with an ailment, think about what is coming up or has just happened that could have caused enough stress to manifest, or exacerbate, an ailment. 

The bottom line is that we are all responsible for our health. Yes, we all have experienced some pretty interesting physical ailments and learning experiences in the past. But the past is the past, like Anthony Robbins says, “nothing from your past will influence your future unless you let it.” You can decide today to work on balancing the points of your triangle to regain your power and excellent state of good health. 

Everything in life is simply how we want to look at it; we can choose to consciously turn around any negative situation into a positive learning experience. If we refuse to listen to our bodies and keep pushing them beyond their limits, something has to crack. If we do not stop and listen to our bodies, it will bestow an ailment upon us. This ailment has manifested to stop us and make us listen. 

The secret is to listen to our bodies as we move through life and make corrections to any imbalances that may be happening before they turn into a physical ailment. We all hold our stress somewhere in our bodies. For some people, it manifests as headaches, or back pain, or upset tummy, or tight neck and shoulders or skin conditions. For me it’s snot. I cannot hide it if I am out of balance. It’s in my face. 

You see I was never allergic to cats or wattle trees or anything of those things. I was allergic to not having life flow the way that I wanted it too. 

Today I have a very hairy cat names Harlee and have had many cats over the last 30 plus years. Today if I get snotty I ask myself, what’s been happening or what is coming up that I’m not keen on? I can break that point in the triangle by changing my thought patterns around it and of course, treating the physical. I promise I will speak into all snotty and respiratory ailments in future episodes. For now, contemplate this concept as I know how it changed my life and health the last 30 plus years.

So the Healthy Life Hack of this episode is:

Think about where you hold onto your stress, is it your nose, your back, headaches, the skin – where is it? The next time it shows itself, ask yourself, “What’s this stopping me from doing, what’s just happened or what’s coming up?” The answer will be there. You can still treat it physically the way you generally do, and by identifying it, you can change your perception to what is happening and come back into balance way sooner. Remember, you are in control of your life.

Additional Resources:

Anatomy of Illness – Norman Cousins

Love your Disease – Dr John Harrison

Did you enjoy the podcast today? Please let me know by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. Every month I draw one lucky reviewer to have a free one-hour consultation with me. Also, remember to subscribe wherever you’re tuning in from so that you always catch the next episode.

Are you looking for more great resources? Get a free copy of my Feed Your Body ebook here and be sure to explore my blog while you are there.