How are you??

I don’t know, yet, how you will answer that question, but what I can fairly safely surmise is that each of us will respond with a different reply.  It is actually the formulation of that response and its effect that is very worth exploring.  Let me explain.

First, I want to share that in my desire to learn daily, it’s not uncommon that I go through my personal library and re-read an earlier favourite (amazing all you learn with the next pass). This week I picked up Deepak Chopra’s Ageless Body, Timeless Mind and it’s important to mention that this NYT best-seller hit the shelves in 1993. I’ll illuminate the significance of that shortly; first, back to our question.

“How are you?” is an important question to ask not only because each of us will interpret situations, conditions, incidents differently based on our life’s experiences, but because our bodies are the physical result of all the interpretations we have learned since the moment we were born. 

We experience life through our senses, then we internalize that experience physically by our interpretation of it.  “Your bodies are constantly processing experience and metabolizing it according to your personal views” states Chopra.  Depression over losing your job, for instance, might translate itself in a drop in hormone levels, loss of sleep, change in blood consistency, skin appearance, and a host of other physiological changes.  A new job might reflect a positive change in biochemicals but notice we said depression over losing your job, not the job loss itself, not the stress but the perception of stress.

The reason I draw attention to the date of this book is what Larry Dossey, author of Medicine and Meaning pointed out and Chopra shared, “The dominant message, incessantly preached from the editorial pages of the medical journals and the podiums of medicals schools, is that the ‘inherent biology of the disease’ is overwhelmingly important and that the feelings, emotions, and attitudes are simply going along for the ride.”  Dossey wrote that in 1991 when, in fact, medical study after study revealed that perception created our reality.

Can holding on to that old paradigm, that our emotional interpretations don’t affect our physical chemistry, be compromising our innate ability to foster wellbeing?

“Don’t we live in the same objective world?” a disciple once queried his guru.  “Yes,” his master replied, “but you see yourself in the world, I see the world in myself. This minor perpetual shift makes the difference between bondage and freedom.”

Aha! ~ What we feed our mind we feed our body.

Everything in nature contains a package of energy and information but only humans actually know what is happening to them.  “We are not stuck in our life cycle; being aware, we participate in every reaction that takes place inside us.” Only by becoming aware of that awareness – that your thoughts and your interpretations frame your reality – can you express yourself as that deserving picture of health.

So, how are you, really?