The Healthy Way to Get That Summer Body
Memorial Day is the unofficial kick-off to summer, so chances are you’ve already been bombarded with images of perfect bodies in perfect shape in perfect locations. From bikini-clad girls and shirtless men like in those sunscreen commercials, to ads for fad diet products or lose-weight-fast exercise programs, the emphasis on bodily perfection this time of year can make you feel overwhelmed and depressed, which is never the right mindset for meaningful change.
It’s perfectly okay to want to get in better shape—as long as you do it in a safe, healthy way and for the right reasons. Energy medicine can be your guide to both the how and the why, and not only will you look great, but you will feel great too — and even more importantly, find confidence in your own body, just in time for swimsuit season.
Weight Loss Starts Within
How many times have you tried to lose weight? If you’re like millions of other people, probably quite a few. I can’t tell you how many crazy and unhealthy weight-loss tactics I’ve heard from attendees at my energy healing courses and in my years as a spiritual teacher. Everything from cabbage soup diets to napping through mealtimes to hypnosis. But like you, none of my students found success with any of these methods because they weren’t really addressing the deeper problems.
The attitude that if you simply try harder—eat less and exercise more—you will look svelte and ready for Baywatch is a devastating lie. It’s true that eating well and exercise are an essential part of being in good shape, but that is not the only part of the equation, otherwise all my followers who starve themselves and live at the gym would have the bodies they desire. There is something deeper going on here, and recognizing that fact is the first step to getting and keeping that summer body.
Your Weight Is Not Just Physical
Losing weight and getting in better shape is not just an issue of physicality. Western medicine tends to treat healing as solely a physical process, and this culture treats weight-loss the same way. In both cases, the true healing needs to happen on the energetic level, which is where energy medicine comes in.
The blueprint for your body is stored in your energy field, which means that if your energy field is distorted, your body can become out of balance as well, causing problems from headaches to allergies to weight gain. Energy healing addresses the health of your energy field, clearing blocks or imbalances in your chakras and directly influencing the health of your body. If there are energetic causes for your inability to lose weight or get in shape, until you address those, all your efforts will be undermined and less effective.
Here are a few ways you can begin the process of using energy medicine to heal your whole being, including your waistline.
- Express Your Emotions, Don’t Eat Them
As a child, were you given sweet treats or candies as a consolation for grief or disappointment? You may have created an association between comfort and food that has stayed with you into adulthood and is thwarting your weight-loss efforts. To combat that food-to-mouth response to emotional pain, be aware of when you are eating your emotions. A few tell-tales signs are mindless binge-eating and urgent and sudden cravings for sweet, salty, or fatty foods.
- Drowning your sorrows in ice cream is bad for you in two ways: you ingest unnecessary calories while burying those feelings. When you don’t process negative emotions, they become lodged in your chakras and create blocks in your energy field. So eating your feelings creates current weight gain and can cause further weight gain down the road—a two-fold attack on your attempts to lose weight. Journaling your feelings will allow you to release them in a healthy way and keep your body from absorbing the emotional damage.
- Stress Less You probably know by now that stress takes a big toll on your whole being, but did you know it can also lead to weight gain? The stress hormone cortisol has been linked to belly fat, stress hampers your sleep which you need to maintain a healthy weight, and stress can lead to anxiety and depression which can make you lethargic. My first recommendation for stress reduction is always meditation. Meditation slows your mind and body down, allows you to connect with Source, and brings a sense of peace that lasts for hours beyond the meditation itself.
- Along with meditation, deep breathing techniques are helpful for lowering your stress. Try to inhale and exhale through your nose, and maintain fluid, regular breaths. This practice can help boost metabolism, and aid the body in removing toxins. Breathing deeply also helps you use oxygen more efficiently, which improves your ability to exercise. Exercise is a bonus weight loss technique since it burns calories and relieves stress.
- Examine your intentions.
Losing weight is a noble goal if your motivations are pure. Do you feel sluggish and tired? Has your doctor warned you of health complications from your weight? Is your figure causing you to miss out on things you enjoy or making you feel too depressed to spend time with other people? Do you just want to have more energy and feel better? These are some examples of healthy reasons to begin the process of trying to lose weight. Being motivated by a true desire to be healthier for yourself will keep you on the path when the work gets tough.
- If you’re more motivated by the societal pressure to be thin, or by someone who has told you you aren’t beautiful, or a general shame about your body that will never truly be satisfied no matter how skinny you become, then you might not be as willing to put in the work needed yet, but energy medicine will help you with that. Not only will energy healing help you shed pounds, but it will help you to go deeper into your psyche so you can get to know yourself.
Losing weight is just one of the many ways energy medicine can improve your life and lead you on the path of discovering your true self, the self you came to Earth to become. To learn more, please join my LifeForce Energy Healing® I Certification Course.
