By Dr. Paula Joyce, Ph.D.
In a recent episode from my radio show, Uplift Your Life: Nourishment of the Spirit, my guest, Noa Belling, talked with us about ways to listen to your body in order to heal physically, mentally and emotionally. She shared the importance of exercising the muscle of joy, of feeling passionate about what we do and spending time with the people we love. There’s new research on the social nervous system, which are the parts of our brain that help us create more joy, happiness, immunity, and resilience, down to the cellular level. It turns out that having joy and fun increases your ability to have more joy, fun, and happiness. Noa also gave us a powerful technique to help change your negative thinking. As she took us through it, I suddenly had difficulty breathing. I knew something from the past had surfaced to clear. Here’s the technique: First ask yourself, what is my body telling me? Do I have tension on one side of my body or tightness in my chest? Then notice if standing more upright makes you feel more comfortable or maybe taking a deep breath helps you release the tension. This will open you up to new ways of thinking and being more resourceful and creative. Even doing something small is empowering because it gives you control over your emotional, mental and physical well-being. To learn more, I encourage you to click here.
Dr. Paula’s Tip of the Week
My Tip from my e-book, 33 Tips for Self-Empowerment is: Be Positive. The person we judge the most is ourselves. Listen for the ways in which you criticize yourself and others. When you think or hear a negative thought, turn it into a positive. For instance, replace, “I’m stupid,” with “I know a lot of things,” and in response to “how are you?” instead of saying “bad headache” or “boss chewed me out,” think of something good in your life and share it. Being negative is a habit of the mind. You can prevent yourself from moving into a downward spiral of stress, worry, panic, illness or pain by catching your negative thoughts and changing them. We have a false belief in current times, that once a thought is in your mind, there’s no way to get it out. That is just not true. We can change our thoughts and we can change our outlook on life. I have done it for myself and have helped my clients do it, too. The more positive we become, the healthier we become.
Dr. Paula’s Silver Lining Story
As my regular listeners know, I have been working on healing my own body since 1980. At the age of 15, I was diagnosed with scoliosis and told I didn’t need surgery. After giving birth to 2 children, my spine started to get worse and the doctors wanted to put a steel rod up my spine. I refused and began an adventure chock full of silver linings. Although my goal was to heal my spine, what I discovered was how my emotions, thoughts and physical ailments were all connected. To heal one, I really had to work on healing everything. Because I had lived my whole life with abuse, I had never learned how to process and release painful thoughts and emotions. Consequently they got stuck in my body and grew into a disfigured spine, panic attacks, on-going sinus and respiratory infections, gall bladder, digestive and bladder problems, brown spots on my skin, and osteoporosis. My thoughts were filled with doom and gloom, blame, guilt and resentment. Anger, hurt and sadness were always close to the surface and no matter how many degrees I had, how long my list of accomplishments was or what my job title and salary were, I never felt like I had done enough or was good enough. My desire to heal my spine, led me to the people and experiences that changed me on the inside, helped me face and let go of the thoughts, emotions and people that were hurting me, and led to profound physical healing. I’m still in process, but I feel and look younger and am stronger physically, emotionally and mentally. Some of my conditions have healed and the rest are much improved and continue to heal to the point where people comment on my disappearing wrinkles and the improvement in my spine. In addition, I’ve learned a tremendous amount about new ideas and methods for healing the body as well as powerful traditional ones, like acupuncture and healing with the help of the spiritual realm, where true miracles are just everyday occurrences. My acupuncturist marvels at the power of the body to heal itself and my spiritual healer gives all of the credit to the guides, angels and archangels who do the actual healing as we open our hearts and minds to them and invite and allow their help. In fact, just this week, Archangel Gabriel told me to trust that my guides were helping me. Trust has not come easily to me after a lifetime of trusting the wrong people. But I have learned to trust my guides and angels and they continue to prove that miracles are real. I’ve received the added blessings of growing in my spiritual knowledge and connection, my personal life, my career, my understanding of abuse, its legacy and how to heal the generational pattern, and I’ve grown in the spiritual qualities of strength, forgiveness, love, including self-love, compassion, empathy, acceptance, non-judgment and more. Along the way, I have also learned how to listen to my body and do my part to facilitate my own healing in partnership with my helpers in the physical realm and in the spiritual realm.
Marian Stephens’ Story
I have listened to Uplift Your Life: Nourishment of the Spirit every Thursday since January without fail. A few weeks ago, Noa Belling was featured, and this was the first show that I missed live. I was in what felt like a physical crisis mode – I was having an emergency colonoscopy the morning of the show to assess the problems I am having with my digestive system, and I found out that I need to have surgery. So, I felt like everything was just crashing down around me. The silver lining to missing the show is that I was not ready to receive the message of that episode. So it worked out for the best that I was in a better state of mind when I did listen. Noa Belling encourages one to listen to their body to discover more about their emotions and feelings, finding patterns and then working to change those patterns held in the body, thereby changing the emotional state. I have found this to be a powerful tool; just using my mind’s eye to scan my body and focus my energy on places that are uncomfortable or not working properly.
Dr. Paula’s tip of the week is simple: Be Positive! I realize that I tend to worry and look to the future too much. It takes a great deal of energy to stay in the moment, and to redirect negative energy. However, the more I train myself to do these things, the more energy I have. I have a great deal of responsibility, and I am just learning how to put myself first. Dr. Paula recently explained to me in our life coaching session that we have the wrong definition of selfish. Being selfish truly means being full of self, a whole and complete person. The more I fill my emotional and physical tank, the more gracefully I will be able to handle my responsibilities.
Dr. Paula asks listeners how their body is trying to communicate with them, and this resonated with me. My body is desperately telling me to take care of myself. In all ways. I cannot keep going with the amount of stress and distress I face without focusing my energy on healing myself. I have been putting in a great deal of effort to do so, and I am starting to feel physically better. That is my body telling me that I am on the right track!
Dr. Paula’s Coaching Response
Marian, I love that you ended by congratulating yourself. All too often, we focus on what is wrong and what we still have not accomplished. You just showed me that you are taking care of yourself in many ways, including acknowledging your successes and celebrating them! Yay!!! I hope everyone is cheering for you and finding ways to congratulate themselves in their own journey toward health.
For more shows on Healing Through Body Awareness:
- Healing from Trauma by Reclaiming Your Body with Susan Scurlock-Durana on July 20, 2017
- Create Success With Your Internal Guidance with Zen DuBrucke on May 19, 2016
- Healing Trauma Through Yoga with Becky Thompson on September 15, 2016
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Dr. Paula, The Life Doctor, has helped thousands of people improve their health, wealth and relationships through writing, coaching and speaking. Contact her today to get started on your personal journey. Recently Dr. Paula Joyce, PhD was honored as one of the 16 Best Life Coaches in Dallas.
Cell: (214) 208-3533
Email: paula@paulajoyce.com
To learn more about Dr. Paula, please visit her website at www.paulajoyce.com.
To hear more shows from Uplift Your Life: Nourishment of the Spirit, please click here.
