by Marcel Hernandez, ND
Dr. Connie wrote brilliantly last week on the public’s growing restlessness with the general state of health care.
As medicine increasingly adopts a corporate model based on efficient throughput and the bottom line, many people are longing for a more human-centered, cooperative, patient-friendly, solution-oriented relationship with our healthcare providers.
For now – and perhaps forever – the solution seems to lie in taking back responsibility for our own care. As Dr. Connie suggested, with a little effort we can still identify a tribal assemblage of medical and traditional healers and healery that will serve our own unique and special needs.
Health care has always been a highly personal matter, despite what the penny-pinchers would have us believe. They would love to process us through an efficient, cost-effective, impersonal care pipeline whose twin weaknesses are (1) the false assumption that science can solve everything, and (2) that a single remedy or set of remedies is the best treatment for a given symptom or symptom complex.
Let’s be clear. There are general practices in self-care that apply to all people. But there are also specific practices that may be urgently needed by the individual.
Dr. David R. Costill, a legendary pioneering sports physiologist, recalled a grad student who worked in his famous Ball State Human Performance Laboratory, and who believed that an ordinary neighborhood jogger could run a 4-minute mile or a 2:30 marathon, if only they would train hard enough.
Costill firmly disagreed; and after the young grad student had studied hundreds of athletes, he too was forced to concede that each human body is a spectacularly unique and individual machine.
Our bodies, which seem so superficially alike – they all have arms, legs, eyes, ears, and noses – are extremely individual beneath the surface. So much so that Dr. Costill believed that world-class marathoners are so vastly different from the ordinary neighborhood jogger or tennis player as to be physiologically almost a different species.
What kinds of tools can help us each do the best we can to meet our unique healthcare needs?
We can start by applying our common sense, our self-awareness, and our intuition.
Of course, most of us are bound to make occasional choices that run counter to our best interests. We will go ahead and eat that cookie, for example, even though we’re clearly aware that it will give us a sugar high and promote a compensatory biological response, and that if we persist in regularly dosing our bodies with processed sugars, the consequences are extremely likely to be dire, in the form of serious, life-threatening disease.
At the everyday level, we are on our own – nobody else is going to make these small healt—care decisions for us. We all know that a habit of provoking our bodies with cookies and ice cream will ultimately lead to dysfunction and illness – which only we can take steps to avoid.
Self-care takes place at three levels of our being: physical, mental/emotional, and spiritual.
I hope our readers will never tire of our referring to our great teacher, Paramahansa Yogananda, whose ideas on self-care frequently serve as inspiration for our writing.
Paramhansa Yogananda was an avatar, a fully enlightened soul of a type that comes on earth only rarely, and then, always with a special mission. In Yogananda’s case, he came to help all people adapt to a dawning age of energy-awareness that would change their lives forever.
A notable feature of the new energy age, which began at roughly the time Albert Einstein announced, in 1914, that the underlying reality of create was not matter, as was formerly thought, but energy, is an emphasis on the needs of the individual, instead of n formal institutions, rigid rules, and one-size-fits-all solutions.
Yogananda revealed how the new energy-awareness would impact our lives on every level: our relationships, how we educate our children, our work, and our health.
His teachings are a perfect expression of what it means to live holistically, for he taught that each aspect of our being – body, feelings, will, mind, and soul – profoundly impacts the well-being of the others.
At a physical level, diet, exercise, and sleep are the primary concerns that impact our health. At the physical level, the rules are simple – and if we haven’t yet understood them, they can be found online.
For example, we learn the dangers of a modern diet. We learn to avoid trans fats, to keep our blood sugar under control, to steer clear of chemicals added to the foods and other products we use, to avoid being sedentary for extended periods, and to develop rituals that promote relaxation and sleep, etc.
Paramhansa Yogananda taught that the physical body is a temple, and that we should care for it with the same reverence with which we would pray, chant, and meditate in a place of worship.
Yogananda taught a series of “energization exercises” that can serve us as a powerful tool to help us keep the body charged with energy, and even to heal disease.
Nayaswami Shivani, a disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda, now in her seventies, has had a lifelong interest in his teachings on using energy for health and healing.
For decades, she collected every scrap of information she could find regarding his teachings, as well as scientific discoveries that support them, and hundreds of stories of individual souls who had healed themselves using these energy-based methods.
In 2024, she published this life’s work as a wonderfully readable and informative three-volume set of books, Healing With Life Force: Teachings & Techniques of Paramhansa Yogananda. The focus of volume 1 is “Energy” (Prana). Volume 2 is “Mind,” and Volume 3 is “Magnetism.”
To improve and sustain our health at the mental and emotional levels, Yogananda urged us to avoid dwelling on our flaws, weaknesses, and past failings and deficiencies, and to devote all of our energy and attention instead to filling ourselves with, and rediscovering our own inner source of, positive, divine healing energy.
Whenever we have negative thoughts or feelings, Yogananda taught that this is the best time to affirm that which is already, eternally perfect in us.
We should stoutly affirm: “This quality is not mine. It does not define me!” and fill our consciousness with divine healing light instead. Thus, he promoted the use of divinely infused affirmations to reprogram the subconscious mind with positive healing power.
Yogananda taught that our thoughts create our reality, and that we should therefore base our self-identity on the divine Self within us, and not on the ego or the body. He recommended affirmations such as: “God is within and around me, protecting me! I will banish the fear that shuts out His guiding light!”
These methods are all based on the new awareness of energy, applied at the level of body, heart, will, mind, and soul. While the affirmations may sound a bit simplistic, compared to, say, powerful modern pharmacological drugs, Nayaswami Shivani discovered in myriad cases that these positive affirmations can change our brain chemistry and bring powerful rays of healing energy to any part of the body where it is needed. Just as physical exercise changes our metabolism and musculature, so does energization improve our spirit, emotions, thoughts, and body parts.
In most people’s minds today, “spiritual health” is simply not within their concept of reality, much less as a potentially powerful factor for self-care and self-healing.
Yet, my service as a naturopath with thousands of patients over the decades has shown me that spiritual health sets the tone, and the schematic, for all that occurs on the physical and mental/emotional planes.
I would urge you to read that paragraph again. When our whole attention is upwardly focused on the Spirit within us, comfort, peace, and understanding replace darkness, fears, and anxiety – even when we are faced with challenging physical trials.
Yogananda taught that our modern lives are filled with too many desires for material possessions, which he called “unnecessary necessities.”
He advised us to examine our daily activities to see if they are really important or just idle distractions. He said that the constant desire for better cars, clothes, and stimulations will only ultimately increase our worries, and that it can never give us the happiness we are seeking. Instead of focusing on expensive pleasures, he recommended that we find joy in simple things and in the hidden beauties of nature.
Yogananda taught that the most vital practice for self-care is meditation, because it gives us direct access to true happiness, and to the power behind all healing. He emphasized consistent daily practice to deepen our inner calm and communion with God.
Although Yogananda never used the term “self-care,” he taught that the highest form of self-care begins by turning inward to connect with the joy of our divine, higher, inner Self, rather than depending only on external circumstances to bring us happiness and healing.
This was not mental speculation on his part. He was not simply spouting pleasant-sounding ideas. His teachings are firmly based on common sense, and on experiences that we can have for ourselves.
For Yogananda, the highest form of self-care is communion with God. He taught, based on his own direct experience, that we can test this truth for ourselves. He said that when that divine inner communion comes, true and permanent healing will be ours.
Drs. Connie and Marcel Hernandez