Do negative emotions really have negative health consequences? You bet! A simple Google search reveals a pile of evidence. Fortunately, though, cultivating a calm, centered response to life’s trials can help us remain happy, healthy, and inwardly secure.
We’ll shortly get into the weeds of how we can learn to find a calm center within. For now, here’s what Google AI says about the negative health consequences of toxic emotions:
Poorly managed negative emotions can lead to significant negative health consequences, including increased inflammation, cardiovascular disease, and a weakened immune system. Chronic emotional distress causes wear and tear on the body, potentially shortening lifespan by accelerating cellular aging.
Chronic stress and negative emotions can lead to a weed garden of unfortunate sequelae.
- Hostility and chronic anger are known risk factors for high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease.
- Negative emotions can damage the immune system, reducing the body’s ability to fight off infections and increasing vulnerability to illness.
- Negative emotions such as anxiety and sadness have been linked to increased inflammation, associated with a broad array of diseases.
- Emotional strain can manifest as physical symptoms including digestive disorders.
- Chronic stress associated with negative emotions has been linked to rapid aging and a heightened risk of disease and death.
- Persistent negative emotions can lead to depression, anxiety, and irritability.
As naturopathic doctors, we practice wholistic medicine – a phrase that has sadly become so engrained in the popular mentation that it has lost much of its original revolutionary spark. But for us, as working health professionals, it retains every bit of its first excitement and power.
That’s because we don’t treat people as bundles of physical symptoms to be identified and expeditiously resolved.
Instead, we see every patient as a complete being whose healing must take account of all five aspects of their being: body, feelings, will, mind, and soul.
Of these five human “tools,” we work deliberately and proactively with the patient to determine their natural “center of gravity.”
Allow us to explain. For some people, their “center of gravity” is primarily physical – there are people who shine on the bodily plane; often, they seem to have indestructible bodies that hardly ever are ill – or they may possess exceptional athletic skills. They many be naturally bouncy, agile, quick, and enduring.
In people with a strong physical center of gravity, their emotional, volitional, mental, and spiritual nature may play subordinate roles. While their lives may be focused around the physical, their hearts, minds, and souls may be somewhat confined to supporting their principal mode of being – the physical. Thus, a star athlete may find that harmonious feelings, a calm mind, and a spiritual moral and ethical compass will aid them in achieving their physical goals.
As health practitioners, we are noticing that spiritual, emotional, and mental distress has become much more deeply involved as a source of physical pathologies than we have witnessed at any other time in our decades-long practice.
Not a day goes by without our hearing in-person or media reports of deeply disturbing crises, from outright war to unprecedented crimes against persons, to new stresses aroused by AI’s threat to our basic safety and sustenance.
The media always magnify the news. The latest “breaking news” always insists that the latest crisis is more dire than the last.
Let’s face it, we’re living in a time of a very real potential for planet-wide destruction, where all it would take is for a single angry, disillusioned individual or government to press a button in the deluded belief that it will make all their problems go away, however briefly.
Fear, anger, resentment, and anxiety are the mood of the day. The ugliest word of all, “hatred,” is on every tongue, and the seamless barrage of negativity is wreaking havoc on our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being.
There have been rare times in history when the world experienced a great spiritual renewal. Always, the great reawakening was preceded by times of extraordinary chaos, dissolution, and destruction, and a pervading mood of portending doom.
It happened circa 3000 BC, at the conclusion of a period of great confusion, chaos, and darkness, when the Buddha appeared with a great spiritual light that restored people’s faith and gave them new hope.
It happened again circa 900-1000 AD, at the conclusion of the Dark Ages (700-900 AD), during which Europe was ravaged by murderous hoards and crippled by a feeling of general hopelessness. The church was no longer a force for good, having fallen into widespread corruption and disarray. A cynical observer said at the time that if things continued on their present course the church would be finished, at most in a single generation.
A seemingly overwhelming consequence of the present pandemic of negativity and meaninglessness has been a rising wave of physical pathology. This is a major symptom we are seeing today in the health of the planet.
Fortunately, as in the time of Buddha, and the “Great Thaw” of 1000 AD, there is a light shining in the darkness.
Great saints have come, in this age to remind us that the only sure place of safety that exists is within us.
A great harbinger of the present reawakening was Paramhansa Yogananda, who taught that we can find an unshakable place of security in our own innermost being.
Yogananda said, “At the inner end of the human nervous system, the mind, interiorized, communes with God.” These weren’t empty words – he taught simple methods by which we can work with the energy of our bodies and minds to find that safe harbor within.
It is the secret place where all that is good in us exists. We know instinctively that goodness is there. we experience it when we perform kind actions toward others, and when someone does a kindness for us.
It is the place that we’ve accessed when we feel love and appreciation for our close ones.
We are born with an ability to imagine, and a longing for, the ability to access that place of perfect joy and sacredness whenever we need its healing help.
It is a place where we experience a perfection of love in which fear and anxiety cannot exist, no matter what is happening in our body or in the world.
Naturally, there is a delusive counterforce in us that tries to persuade us that it simply is not possible to live consistently in that center. But as Paramhansa Yogananda taught, it only takes a persistent daily effort and the right tools. Yogananda said to those who doubt their spiritual worthiness or their ability to meditate deeply, “You will be distracted, but if you keep on, you will enjoy it very much.”
Few people can find that place within by their own unaided effort. They need a teacher who is anchored in that awareness and can guide them, one compassionate step at a time.
The best advice we can offer, if you are longing for a path that can lead you safely through the negativity and chaos of today’s world, is to find a spiritual guide and path that call to you, and be deeply committed to it.
Ignore the suggestions of the restless mind that always speaks negatively. Take the mind’s excuses out of the equation, and follow your common sense and intuition.
Surround yourself with people and influences that inspire you. Spend time in uplifting surroundings. Forgive yourself daily for any lapses – we all have them, and they are an inevitable challenge to those who aspire to live on a higher plane of consciousness. Be patient. Learn to relax and enjoy the spiritual life.
One of the most powerful shortcuts toward a life of spiritual inner fulfillment and glowing health is to find ways to serve others. As Gandhi said, the small positive things that you do may not be of world-shaking importance, but it is very important that you do them.
Why? Because helping others, even in small ways, with a sincere smile or an encouraging word, opens our hearts to a flow of love that blesses us as it goes out to bless others.
As Yogananda said, if you change your consciousness, you will do your part to change the world. You will also find a higher protection and guidance entering your life. Think about this, and give it your serious consideration.
May Peace and Happiness be Ever Yours.
Drs. Connie (Ruhia) and Marcel (Mahavir) Hernandez
DrConnie@DrsHernandez.com
DrMarcel@DrsHernandez.com
650-282-5176 (leave us a message)