I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about how much of your life is lived out of habit, out of unconscious behavior structured out of impulses, desires, hungers, aversions, fatigue and hope the name of which you can no longer remember.

And knowing that most of your life is lived in the fog, the computing cloud if you will, of such inchoate structure will tell you why you, me, we all fail to make the changes necessary for restoration of health. Remember “The Body Always Makes Sense” and then make sense out of being sick, weak, depressed, with frail bones, diabetes eating away at your vitality, your heart best fit for sitting down or dying rather than playing Frisbee with the Kids and Grand-kids. The body does make sense: it is giving you the body and health that your unconscious life has built for you. There are exceptions: the cancer, the Type 1 diabetes, the congenital heart disease but this is not most people, this is not most disease.

While ‘fixing’ something as deep and personal as ‘consciousness’ sounds impossible it turns out to be available to simple behavioral changes. You can do this and by doing it can use the wonderful fact that ‘The Body Wants to Heal’ to restore your health, your vitality, your hope the name of which you will remember.

Here is where I get in trouble. Not from advocating fewer or no drugs; the drug companies actually do not have death squads no matter I have been told that more than once. Trouble, not because I advocate working with your doctor, though he may or may not know what you are up to. No, trouble because I will tell you that all world-historical religions have much to teach us about health. More than that if you do not learn the lessons they teach you will never be healthy; not truly as a scientist measures it, healthy. Further if you are already sick you will never find a path out of that fact without their insights.

The anthropology of man on the earth in the transit of time has shown us that prayer and meditation have characterized all major religions. Science has bumped into some measurable aspects of this in relaxation studies. Breathing, interior silence, rhythm, ‘holy’- ah, there is the rub- ‘holy’ movement seems wired into the biology of our brains and endocrine systems. Under the influence of such behavior we sleep better, heal better, have lower cortisol levels, more vibrant electroencephalographic patterns.

Prayer/meditation/Qigong/Yoga/Rosaries are all great medicine that make healing not only quicker but more sure. Get over it; that is what ‘the survey says.’  Try it.

Another element of success is the California Foo Foo of massage; it too works. I am from Texas and I yield to no one in my reluctance to see the therapeutic benefit of massage but the facts are the facts. Try it; your blood sugar and blood pressure will go down. Not permanently but transiently and that is a start and part of the fabric of healing that you must begin to weave.