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Green is the Color of Healing

I found a new blog last week that has really good vibes. Jules of Golden Reiki wrote a post several days ago about creating an orb of life that is just beautiful. The jist of it is that you imagine a ball and fill it with positive energy. When you sense that the ball is full, you allow the life energies to fill your body. You direct the energy in any way you wish.

I learned a similar technique many years ago that involves white light, which is a powerful energy from the universe that everyone has access to and may use in any way for the highest good of all. In the course of this blog, I will share that meditation with you.

After reading his post, I decided to create an orb filled with life energy and the healing color of green and send it to my brother, Don. (See my previous post.) I did this meditation outside where there is a beautiful, healthy tree with a round shape that is flowing with life. I simply meditated on the tree, imagining that all the healing energy of nature and the universe was filling a sphere–a large bubble–with a pure green healing light. When I felt it was ready, I closed my eyes, saw my brother Don in my mind’s eye laying in his bed at the hospice, and sent the healing ball of energy to him, seeing the sphere gently hover over him and then enter his body and flow through him, renewing and replenishing him. Will this cure him? No, because he has already accepted that he is going to die shortly. Will it make him more comfortable? Yes. I spoke with his doctor shortly after I sent Don this healing ball of energy and the doctor said that he seemed much better, that his spirits were lifted and he was happy.

This is a very powerful meditation which you can use to renew and regenerate your life-energy and to put your natural healing abilities into motion. It is limited only by your thoughts and beliefs. Allow a healing green light to enter your body, mind, and spirit. If you are sending healing to someone else, send it with the thought that this is for that person’s highest good. You can’t heal someone else unless they want to be healed. You can heal yourself if you want to be healed.

This meditation offers you one way to tune into healing energies, but there are so many ways to heal yourself. Please use it as a basis for creating your own healing meditations, ones that you feel comfortable with, ones that you believe will work for you. Or just make up a healing meditation. You already know how to do this. You don’t need instructions–unless you feel that you do–because your body knows how to heal itself in harmony with your mind and spirit. All your body needs to heal is for you to want it to be so, for you to believe that you can heal yourself, for you to allow it to be so, and for you to simply accept the healing within your body, mind, and spirit.

Please Take Care of Yourself

I got a call last night from my sister, telling me that my younger brother, Don, has only six months or less to live. He was diagnosed with Type Two ten years ago and never took care of himself. He ate what he wanted, didn’t exercise, and didn’t take his meds. His diabetes progressed and he required insulin, which he said he couldn’t afford and therefore didn’t use.

His kidneys failed and he requires dialysis three times a week. He weighs 80 pounds and is nearly blind. He can’t move around without help and is now living in a hospice. He is only 52 years old. Much of this could have been prevented or delayed if he had only cared enough about himself to take care of himself. I’ve already lost my mother, who had Type One and was 47 when she died and my older brother, Doug, who had Type One and was 37 when he died. Now I’m losing another brother to diabetes.

If you have Type One, more than likely you are well aware of the devastating effects of diabetes. If you have Type Two, you may think that only these serious complications affect people with Type One. If you have diabetes, you are at risk for all the serious complications. Let me give you some statistics: There are 21 million people in the United States who have diabetes. 16 million people have pre-diabetes, which means they are at risk for developing diabetes–if they don’t take care of themselves. Diabetes kills more people each year than AIDS and breast cancer combined. In ten years, there won’t be enough dialysis machines to keep all the people who require this treatment alive.

Just before I sat down to write this post, I came across a Dying Man’s Journal, written by Bill Howdle. He is sharing his thoughts on facing death. His words touched me deeply. If you need a wake-up call to take your diabetes seriously, go and read his blog.

My brother doesn’t want to die but knows he is going to die very soon. He says he wishes with all his heart that he had taken his diabetes seriously and had taken much better care of himself. Please, I implore you, if you have diabetes, care enough to take care of yourself. Many of the serious complications can be prevented or delayed. Ten years down the line, please don’t wish with all your heart that you had taken better care of yourself. Please take care of yourself now.

What’s in Your Food?

Want to know what’s in your food in terms of calories and carbs? Spark People has an online recipe calculator which shows a nutritional analysis. Want to eat healthier? Check out Healthy Eating for recipes and healthy lifestyle tips. Have any healthy recipes you’d like to share? Please leave us a comment or send us an email.

Relaxation…

A very real and very powerful part of healing is simply allowing yourself to completely relax, letting go of all your cares, worries, problems, and fears. Just simply relaxing brings you into harmony with yourself. When you’re in a relaxed state of mind, your body naturally and automatically begins to heal itself. I love listening to the sounds of the ocean. It’s very relaxing and peaceful to me, and puts me in tune with my body and my natural healing abilities.

Chicken Marsala

This recipe offers you a delicious, low-fat, low-carb main dish. If you want to serve it over pasta, choose whole-grain pasta. Watch your portion sizes: A 3-ounce serving of meat is one portion. If you serve this over pasta, use 1/2 cup cooked pasta. Sautéing the chicken in the olive oil flavored cooking spray instead of olive oil adds flavor and eliminates the calories.

• Olive oil flavored cooking spray
• 4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts, pounded thin
• 1 (8 oz.) container sliced mushrooms
• 1/2 cup Marsala wine
• 1/2 cup fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
• 2 T. fresh lemon juice
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1 T. chopped fresh parsley

Spray a 12-inch nonstick skillet with cooking spray. Heat over medium-high heat. Add the chicken and brown on both sides. Remove and set aside.

If necessary, add more cooking spray to the skillet. Add the mushrooms, wine, broth, and lemon juice. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly to scrape up all the flavorful brown bits from the skillet. (These add so much flavor.) Reduce the heat and simmer, uncovered, for 10 minutes to reduce the sauce.

Return the chicken to the pan, scooping the sauce over the chicken to coat. Cover and cook for 5 more minutes or until the chicken is cooked through.

Season to taste with salt and pepper. Sprinkle the chopped parsley on top.

4 Servings. Per serving: Calories 123.2; Total fat 1.3g; Cholesterol 49.3mg; Carbs 1.9g; Fiber 0.2g; Sugars 0.6g; Protein 20.4g

Does Diabetes Have the Better of You?

Who is in control? Are you in control of your diabetes or is your diabetes in control of you? While it’s important to control your blood sugars through healthy eating and exercise, and sometimes insulin shots, you can help to control your diabetes simply with your attitude. If you feel that diabetes has the better of you or that your diabetes is out of control, then guess what!? You’re right. Your diabetes has the upper hand and is controlling you.

You can change this. You have the power to choose to control your diabetes rather than the other way around. The way you perceive your diabetes is the controlling factor. If you look at diabetes as a disease, a losing battle, then you will lose the battle and you will have a disease. If you look at diabetes as a condition that helps to make you healthy, then you have the better of your diabetes.

It’s your choice. You’re the one with the power to decide that yes, you can control your diabetes. You can make your diabetes part of your healthy lifestyle. You can choose to eat healthy. You can choose to exercise. You can choose to have a healthy attitude. You can choose to self-empower yourself and be in control. You can choose to change your mind, to have a positive outlook, to make the decision to put the power to control your own life in your hands–something that is so easy to accomplish.

Once you take control, once you give yourself the power to control your diabetes, an amazing thing happens. You do have better control over your blood sugars. You do have better control of your diabetes. You have the better of diabetes! All you have to do to achieve this is to simply know that you’re the one in charge. Once you assert yourself and accept your ‘I’m in charge’ attitude and follow through with positive actions, you can be better because of your diabetes.

Spinach Makes You Strong

I grew up watching the cartoon, Popeye. As a kid, I totally hated spinach; it was slimy, gross-tasting, and looked like worms. My parents would implore me to eat it, saying I would be strong like Popeye. I wanted no part of it. They even went so far as to sing me the jingle: I’m Popeye the sailor man, toot, toot. I’m strong to the finish cause I eats me spinach; I’m Popeye the sailor man, toot, toot.

I found out recently there is a way that spinach can make you strong and you don’t have to eat it. You can do strength-training exercises with the cans of spinach. Just use the cans as weights. Strength-training builds muscle; it’s an important part of an overall exercise program.

Another thing I discovered when I began to change my eating habits was fresh spinach. I had no idea that spinach came any other way except in a can. I know that sounds silly, but I had a hate relationship with spinach for most of my life. Fresh spinach is really good and I love it in a simple salad.

1 cup fresh baby spinach leaves, washed
5 cherry tomatoes, halved
8 cubes fresh mozzarella cheese
1 T. light balsamic vinaigrette
1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
1/4 tsp. dried oregano leaves

Toss all the ingredients together and enjoy as a snack or before dinner.

Calories 114.4; Total fat 6.8 g; Saturated fat 3.2 g; Polyunsaturated fat 0.3 g; Cholesterol 16.4 mg; Sodium 396.4 mg; Potassium 328.9 mg; Total carbs 5.8 g; Dietary fiber 1.3 g; Sugars 0.6 g; Protein 8.3 g.

Spinach contains high amounts of Vitamin A (beta carotene), Vitamin B6, and is rich in Vitamin E. Plus, spinach is high in the disease-fighting antioxidant lutein. Additionally, it improves both your eyesight and your memory. Spinach is good for you and it can make you strong, just like Popeye.

Small Choices = Big Changes

Choosing to live in harmony with your diabetes and incorporating a healthy lifestyle very often means changing your life around to accommodate your diabetes. This can be really overwhelming–thinking about all the changes you need to make. An easy way to deal with diabetes is to make a conscious choice to make small changes every day. Here are some easy food choices:

• Choose whole wheat bread instead of white bread;
• Choose light mayonnaise instead of full-fat mayonnaise;
• Choose water instead of soda;
• Choose mustard instead of ketchup;
• Choose skim milk instead of whole milk;
• Choose natural peanut butter and sugar free jelly;
• Choose vegetables instead of potatoes;
• Choose tuna packed in water instead of oil;
• Choose yogurt instead of ice cream;
• Choose fruit or nuts instead of candy; and
• Choose light margarine instead of butter.

By consciously making small healthy choices, you’ll achieve big changes. This is just a little list; it helped me make better choices when I was first diagnosed with diabetes. I kept this list in mind when I went to the grocery store and it inspired me to read the food labels and make healthy choices.

In essence, you’re substituting a healthy item for one that’s not so healthy. What substitutions have helped you make better food choices?

Think Healthy Thoughts

Emile Coué was a French psychologist and pharmacist who introduced a method of healing based on autosuggestion, which is simply the suggestions you give yourself or the thoughts you hold in your mind. He coined the phrase, “Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.” He suggested that people repeat this to themselves first thing in the morning and last thing at night.

Coué noticed that he could improve the effects of a medicine simply by praising its effectiveness to a patient. He saw that those patients to whom he praised the medicine had a marked improvement over those patients to whom he said nothing. This began his exploration into the power of the imagination and autosuggestion.

Patients with all sorts of ailments would visit him. These included kidney problems, diabetes, memory loss, stammering, weakness, atrophy, and all sorts of physical and mental illnesses. He also found that while his patients were being cured of specific ailments through positive autosuggestions of health replacing previous negative suggestions of sickness, other ailments, illnesses, aches, and pains disappeared. This is because of the words ‘in every way’ in his healthy, powerful phrase.

Patients flocked to Coué for a cure. Before coming to see him, they had heard about his “magical” cures and most patients came with receptive and open minds. Many patients would achieve immediate success. Coué would clearly explain to his patients that he possessed no power; the power lies within themselves. In short, one is what one thinks. This “magic” is within ourselves. We all have this “magic” ability to heal ourselves through the power of our imagination and the thoughts and feelings we hold in our mind and believe in our heart.

The basis of Emile Coué’s method is the following principle: Any idea exclusively occupying the mind turns into reality, but only if the idea is within the realms of possibility. If a person without a hand thinks that his hand will grow, obviously this won’t happen. If a person thinks that his/her asthma is fast disappearing, it happens, limited only by how fast the body can cure it. This is a very basic premise in metaphysical thought: You create your own reality. What you hold in your mind turns into what you actually experience.

I first heard of Emile Coué when I took a Mind Dynamics course in the early 70s. We were taught how to enter our subconscious mind to open up the innate powers we all have within us. We were given what was called a beneficial phrase to repeat every time we entered our subconscious mind. The phrase was Coué’s phrase: Every day, and in every way, I am getting better and better. This beneficial phrase is really a positive affirmation; the more you repeat it to yourself, the more your mind will act on it.

I changed Coué’s phrase around a bit to make it sound better for me and to be in tune with my belief that I was already better—in my mind. I didn’t want the ‘getting better’ part; I wanted to be completely better right away so I changed it to: Every day, and in every way, I am better, better, and better. I added another ‘better’ because your subconscious mind likes repetition; it acts more quickly on the suggestion and heals you faster. These are very powerful words; simple little words that played a big part in turning my diabetes around. They can turn your diabetes around, too.

You can use any positive affirmation that you feel good about, one that you believe will work for you. My favorite affirmation that I repeat to myself many times a day is, “I’m perfectly healthy.”