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Positive Thoughts, Positive Health What is the connection between thoughts and health? I asked Naturapath Anankha K. Chandler to unravel the mystery.

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Quarterly Quote

"The measure of mental health is the disposition to find good everywhere."
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Quarterly Affirmation

Every cell in my body is filled
with love and gratitude!

When I was 15 years old, I had emergency major surgery to remove a tumor. The doctors were suspecting Cancer, but I knew otherwise. How did I know this? The adults around me were worried and stressed, but I just relaxed and enjoyed the time off from school because internally, I knew I was going to be just fine. Turns out, I was right—the tumors were benign and I had a full recovery. Was it my positive thinking that brought about the outcome, or was the outcome inevitable?

Quarter after quarter, you’ve received my newsletters touting the importance of positive thought. Thinking about the surgery I had at 15 and my overall health, I began to wonder: Is there a real connection between how we think and our health? My instinct says Yes! In order to better understand the connection between positive thought and positive (good) health, I spoke with Anankha K. Chandler, Naturopath, Herbalist, and Hypnotherapist located in Fremont , California .

Nancy :	In your 23 years of practice, Anankha, have you noticed a connection between positive thought and (good) health?
Anankha:	Absolutely! When you know how the body functions, it makes perfect sense. Every thought…also what we call self-talk…is a form of visualization complete with an audio track (your inner voice) and visual image screen that generate emotions, which then activate the adrenal glands for that fight or flight response. So, when you have a thought that creates a feeling of panic, your body responds as though it was actually being attacked. This is how many patients burn out their endocrine system by staying ‘hyper-vigilent’ or always in a state of hurry, panic. Adrenals are the front line of the hormonal system. For those with depression, anxiety reinforces this loop and it plays forever if you don’t stop it. Negative thoughts or emotions also put additional stress on the liver. Emotions travel through the body on neuro-peptides, so once these chemicals make it  through the liver, then liver has to be detoxified. Many people don’t realize this. The liver is responsible for creating our hormones and neuro-chemistry. If your liver is out of balance, it can cause your body’s pH to shift from alkaline to acidic. Pathogens can only grow in an acidic environment, so it’s important to keep your body balanced and healthy. Positive thoughts can make the difference. I tell my patients that it’s actually in their most selfish advantage to experience love, forgiveness, and gratitude because it changes your chemistry for the better. You can’t heal while you are angry or hating. Hating will acidify your body.
Nancy :	Do you have examples of patients whose lives have been transformed though positive thought?
Anankha:	I guess I would be example number one! At one time, I was on 4 separate psychiatric medications, suffering from ‘incurable bio-chemical depression’ and diagnosed with Bipolar Depression, Panic Disorder, Agoraphobia, Epstein Barr/Chronic Fatigue, Colitis, and Cervical Cancer. Talk about being out of whack! I did all the logical stuff that the doctors suggested, but the kingpin in my recovery was confronting my internal thoughts. What I learned is that whatever frequencies we carry around through our thoughts will attract like frequencies. Our natural desire, as humans, to resist causes things to become stuck in our bodies. The opposite needs to happen for healing to occur. Non-resistance dilutes the frequency and allows it to just move through you. Buddhists have a similar approach. For me to finally heal, I had to consciously begin creating positive emotions. Once I did, I began to see positive changes in my body and overall health. Eventually, I got off all the drugs and that motivated me to help others. Besides myself, I have seen self-cutters, which is currently a growing epidemic, who were able to heal themselves once they began learning how to be loving to themselves and have loving thoughts about themselves. I have had patients with Diabetes who needed to find the ‘sweetness’ in life. Once they begin to find that sweetness and develop healthy self-love, their illness often reverses itself.
Nancy :	What techniques do you recommend to change thought patterns?
Anankha:	Regardless of the illness, I can often find the correlation between the patient’s internal self-talk and their health. Our illnesses usually have a message for us, if we are willing to ask and listen. One patient, a Hispanic man, had suffered for 20 years with blinding headaches. He had visited many doctors, but no solution worked. He came to me in desperation. I began asking him about his life, and learned that he had reached all of his career goals, his children were raised. To the outside world, it seemed as though he had everything, but when I asked about his marriage he admitted that he no longer felt any connection to his wife. Now that the children were gone, he felt like he was living with a stranger. Using Hypnotherapy, I asked him to go into his headache pain and ask the pain to share it’s message. When he finally spoke, he said, “I need out of this relationship. I am not being true to myself and it’s killing me.” After that session, he ended his marriage and never had another headache. It is not uncommon for our bodies ‘somatize’ or create symptoms in order to get our attention. If we are not being honest with ourselves, our bodies will command our attention.
Nancy :	What surprises you most about the connection between positive thought and health?
Anankha:	That more of us haven’t figured it out. The difference is that it’s not taken more seriously. People flock to doctors and collect prescription drugs like they were candy, but the true core of their problems remain unsolved which creates the never-ending need for more drugs.
Nancy :	If you could tell everyone on this planet 1 thing they could do to improve their health with their thoughts, what would it be?
Anankha:	Focus on what delights you, and continually generate positive thoughts and feelings around what brings you joy. For me…it’s kitty tummies! All I have to do it think about kitty tummies and I’m smiling and happy. It completely changes my energy. It’s also important for people to realize that change can only happen through repetition. You can’t have 10 minutes of positive thought and be done with it. It doesn’t work that way. The body is constantly responding to our thoughts with chemicals that race through our bodies. Every new thought presents a choice: To be happy, joyful, and full of love, or not. Everything I’ve ever read about changing habits says you need to do something for at least 21 days straight to change a habit. Some people may need much longer than that. So, if you want to improve your health, you need to first make a commitment to shift your thoughts…one after the other…until you are doing it without realizing it. If you stick with it, change will happen!
	Anankha K. Chandler, located in Fremont , California , has more than 23 years experience as a Naturopathic Practitioner, Herbalist, Herbal Nutritionist, Homeopathic and Vibrational Medicine Practitioner, and Hypnotherapist. She uses the tools and strategies garnered through her own recovery to assist others in finding and maintaining good health. To learn more, visit www.thereferencepoint.com. Nancy Barry-Jansson is an illustrator and the creator of AffirmingSpirit™ Affirmation Cards, which she sells online through AffirmingSpirit.com. The cards were first conceived when Nancy was looking for a more beautiful way to experience her daily affirmations. Now her dream is that they will inspire and help others in their daily practice of affirmations.
	©2006 Barry-Jansson & Associates and AffirmingSpirit.com. We welcome suggestions for this quarterly newsletter. Got a question you'd like explored, a resource to recomment, or a great idea to share? Send your suggestions to inspiration at affirmingspirit.com! Table of Contents

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