There’s more to it than just getting by without physical pain or mental distress. Health goes deeper, as the World Health Organization recognizes. So, what are you doing about your health? Have you got health…really, truly holistic health? Are you ready to go all-in and whole-ass your health?
The late Dr Candace Pert’s research broke the barrier between emotions and health. In fact, Dr Pert might say there was never a barrier: emotions and health are scientifically inter-related! We human beings would do well to pay attention to how those connections work. Dr Pert calls this “psychosomatic wellness” our physiological tendency toward bliss.
Bliss … and all the feels
Of course, bliss isn’t the only emotional state you’re capable of feeling. Human beings have a built-in range of emotions, every one of which serves a purpose. Cutting off your experience of anger or fear may keep you from feeling those things for a while, but it’s a bad practice if real health is what you want.
You want real health, right?
So, if you’ve been avoiding the triggers that make you feel what you don’t want, you’ve been doing it wrong! This kind of emotional intelligence may seem new to you, but it’s the physiological equivalent of making sure your car has gas, oil, radiator fluid, brake fluid, transmission fluid, wiper fluid…. If you never check the oil, your vehicle is headed for a short life.
We need all the feels – even the ones we don’t like – to be in complete health. If that’s a new idea for you, please know that you don’t have to act on everything you feel, you just need to allow it. The good news? Emotions happen anyway!
Even if the front of your brain chooses to stuff feelings you don’t want, they’ve already happened to you physiologically. The choice to not allow or not experience a feeling isn’t a choice for health. Psychologists understand that stuffing anger, for example, can lead to chronic depression, and who wants that?
Getting it right
There’s a big difference between experience and expression. Feel scared or angry: that’s experience. Act out on those feelings in ways that break things and hurt people: that’s expression. Deny the expression; allow the experience.
If this is new to you, haul out your music player app and some headphones and dial up mood playlists that venture into emotions you’d rather not have. Do this with curiosity – you want to understand how those foreign emotions feel to you. Why? Because that’s part of health.
Spirituality
Dr Pert goes one step further on the physiology of your emotions. She’s written about this in a ground-breaking book (for a scientist!) called Everything You Need to Know to Feel Go(o)d. You see, there’s a part of emotional intelligence that connects you and all of us to one another, and to the bigger, unmeasurable power we call “God.”
Now we’re talking real health. Truly holistic health.
The bottom line
Cut off your emotions; restrict your health. Experience your emotions fully and open to door to real health. Whole-ass health. Don’t you want that?
Always ready
If you want some guidance along the way, we’re here for you. Reach out.
Ready for a deeper dive? The Musimorphic Quest, a fully-mentored online active-learning experience will immerse you in practical ways to meet life’s challenges with skills you may not realize you already have. It’s not for everybody, but you are that unique individual who really resonates with with the power of music and wants to learn to wield it with skill, give it a try. The landing page is here.
