What is Conscious Living?

Conscious living is living your life in the light of awareness. It means making decision in alignment with your personal and spiritual beliefs while actively striving to create balance, harmony and sustainability in your personal life, and in the world.

Meditation naturally leads to conscious living. Through meditation, you’ll begin to feel connected to everything around you. As this sense of connection grows, we begin to realize that everything we do impacts our lives, and the lives of those around us. As our awareness expands, we naturally begin to make decisions that take into account not just our personal happiness, but also considers the bigger picture of what effect our decisions are having on the world. This is the beginning of conscious living.

But don’t worry; I’m not going to tell you how to live your life. That decision is entirely up to you. But I will share some ideas with you that may inspire you to live a more conscious and aware life.

Going Organic

Even WalMart has organic food (which is a little bit scary), but it shows you the importance of the organic movement in America.Eating organic food is a choice for personal health, due to the lack of pesticides, herbicides and other toxic chemicals used on conventional food. But it’s also a choice for long-term sustainability. If we keep poisoning the land and water with toxic chemicals used on our crops, what will be their effect on our future health and the health of our children?

Choosing to eat organic food is expensive, so of course, the monetary cost must be weighted against the environmental impact for each individual.

Meat eaters versus the vegetarians

Who will win? Spiritual masters have been touting the importance of a vegetarian diet for 4000 years. According to these spiritual traditions and the medicine of Ayurveda, a vegetarian diet is satvic, meaning it produces illuminating and pure qualities within you, while eating meat is rajasic, meaning it creates mental disturbance and can lead to disease.
Swami Sivananda, a great meditation teacher, says, “A vegetarian diet can produce supreme powers of both body and mind and is highly conducive to divine contemplation and the practice of yoga.”I experimented with being a vegetarian for 3 years. Although I acknowledge the importance of eating meat personally, being a vegetarian showed me that eating meat truly changes our body chemistry. I can tell a huge difference in my body odor, my digestion and my excrement when I eat meat as compared to a purely vegetarian diet. When I was suffering from Irritable Bowel Syndrome, following a vegetarian diet definitely had a positive effect on my health and taught me how food affects how we feel physically, as well as effecting our mental and emotion state.

Vegetarianism also taught me to have reverence for the death of the animal I am eating, which gave its life to provide me with sustenance.

If you’re serious about your health, or about making progress on the spiritual path, learn more about becoming a vegetarian to decide if it’s right for you.

Are toxic chemicals affecting your health?

Think about all your cleaning products. What kinds of poisons and toxins are we polluting the environment with each time we clean our toilet, use a paper towel or do the laundry? Who knows what affect these things are having on your health and the health of your family. Of course, those toxins are affecting us, but it’s not enough to be concerned with what’s happening now. Conscious living demands that we be concerned with future generations too.Are you ready to make a change? Take a look at ten natural products for your non toxic household.

Or consider Seventh Generation products take their name from the Iroquois belief that “In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations.”

I invite you to visit their website, where you’ll find valuable information on conscious living, including household hazards, living green, and making a difference in the world through your conscious buying decisions.

Explore the many non-toxic products Seventh Generation offers–like household cleaners, paper products and personal care products. When you choose to buy products that support a clean and sustainable world, you’re improving your health through a non-toxic living environment. And, you’re also choosing to live consciously.

Proper Nutrients

There are many ways to look at nutrition and I’m not an expert. But there are many resources that can connect you with recognizing the importance of using nutrition to avoid taking medications.Hippocrates said it like this:”Let food be thy medicine, and let thy medicine be food.”

If you want to live more consciously by developing your relationship with food, a great nutritional resource is Paul Pitchford’s book, Healing with Whole Foods. This is a tremendous resource that combines ancient chinese wisdom with a modern approach to food preparation for the support of a number of conditions and illnesses.

If you’re a health professional seeking information on nutritional healing, check out Dr. Jonathon Wright, a Harvard educated doctor who offers nutritional medicine workshops and a newsletter subscription called Nutrition & Healing. He also has a free e-letter.

Through meditation, you will naturally become aware of how food is affecting the way you think, feel and behave. As your awareness deepens, you may begin to intuitively know which foods to avoid and which ones will support you on your journey toward healing.

If you have a suggestion for something I should add to this page, please contact me. I look forward to hearing your suggestions and sharing them with others.

Spirituality involves a recognition and deep connection with a higher power–something beyond yourself and possibly beyond thought conception. This higher power has many names in many different cultures and religious traditions. Spirituality recognizes that you, as an individual, have the ability to connect with and develop a relationship with this higher power. Through your relationship, you can access the power to be healed, or to heal others.

What is Spiritual Healing and how does it work?

Spiritual healing is also called faith healing or energy medicine. It incorporates the channeling of energy and vibration to a person in need. The principle behind this type of healing practice is that the person channeling the energy is drawing it from a spiritual source. So it’s not that the energy is coming from that person, rather it is moving through them. This transmission of energy usually takes place from a healer, but it can also take place during meditation.

The Importance of Faith

Faith plays a major role in this process of healing. Studies conducted by Harvard Medical School associate professor Dr. Herbert Benson, M.D. indicate that the method of meditation is not as important as the person’s belief that it will produce beneficial results. This idea is also mirrored in many mystical and religious writings.

Benefits of Developing Spirituality

One of the most powerful benefits of developing your spirituality is a heightened sense of hope. Without a sense of hope, many people suffering from disease or illness find themselves drawn into a world of depression and negativity. Life just doesn’t seem worth living. Strengthening your connection with a higher power offers you the hope that miracles can and do happen.Studies also indicate that people who participate in religious or spiritual activities have a well developed sense of psychological well-being. They are more likely to experience positive mental and emotion states. They are more likely to experience high self-esteem and feel good about life. And they are less likely to experience depression.

What Conditions Can be Treated With Spiritual Healing and Meditation?

Any condition that is created by or made worse by stress can be treated with Spiritual Healing and meditation. Dr. Benson’s Mind Body Medical Institute treats patients with allergies, anxiety, arthritis, asthma, back pain, cancer, depression, diabetes, Fibromyalgia, headaches, IBS and other gastrointestinal disorders, infertility, Lupus, and many other conditions using both conventionally and alternative treatments, including meditation. Dr. Benson states that 60-90% of all doctor’s visits are stress-related. Consequently, any type of treatment that is effective at reducing stress will be effective at benefiting a patient’s health. His treatment model embraces the belief that “physical health is influenced by thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and conversely, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors can be influenced by physical symptoms.”

Furthermore, “mind/body medicine teaches you how to take control of your life – how to use your own healing power to reduce stress and other negative behaviors and thoughts – and thus maintain or regain health.” Sound good? It’s the very reason why I choose to make meditation a part of my life.

Spiritual Healing Stories

Stories help illustrate the power of spiritual teachings. If you’d like to read stories of how meditation, contemplation and spiritual practices work together to manifest spiritual healing, click on one of the stories below. Or share your story with me and I’ll consider adding it to the stories below so others may benefit from your experience.

Read how one woman overcame her addiction.

Cautions

One of the biggest criticisms of using spiritual healing and meditation as a treatment modality is when it’s used as the only method of treatment. If you are suffering from a serious disorder or illness, I encourage you to do several things:1. Get a proper diagnosis from a qualified healthcare practitioner. Don’t self-diagnose.

2. Follow the guidance of your healthcare practitioner and research any conventional or alternative treatments they recommend so you can make an informed decision about your health care.

3. Consider spiritual healing and meditation as a complimentary treatment option. This means you don’t rely upon it as your only form of treatment.

Following this three-step approach assures your safety and empowers you to make informed decisions about the treatment of your condition.

When I was experiencing Irritable Bowel Syndrome, I did exactly what I’m sharing with you now. I went to my doctor and they ran tons of tests to find out what was wrong with me. When they had exhausted all the possibilities, they diagnosed me with IBS, and their treatment option was eating more fiber (which I did). But when I kept getting sick, I sought other forms of healing, which led me to energy medicine and eventually meditation.