The fact is, stress and lack of self-care are killing us. Stress is the basic core root reason for 90-95% of all disease, particularly chronic disease, which is crushing our country right now. Symptoms of low energy, low libido and chronic weight gain is typically associated with stress at a root cause level in some form as a medical condition. If we don’t learn how to manage and self-regulate how we perceive and deal with stress, if we don’t make room to unwind our own mind and nurture with compassion our own needs, we will continue to drive ourselves into sickness and disconnection from others, frankly.

Self-care is not selfish; it is the path of wisdom. Once we are in a better place mentally, emotionally and spiritually, we can be in a better place emotionally and have the clarity and energy to participate in the community in tangible and healthy ways instead of constantly seeking attention and validation from outside sources – like social media or by distracting our pain and feelings of isolation with drugs or busyness.

Where does this belief that to care for yourself is selfish coming from? The short answer is conditioning. We are conditioned to believe that we are supposed to self-sacrifice, that humility means ‘self-deprecation’, that we are supposed to focus exclusively on the happiness of others even to our own detriment. We are unconsciously taught that we are supposed to work ‘hard’ and worry about what others think of us if we are to be socially acceptable and ‘normal’. This conditioning is one reason why stress and the cult of busyness are so out of control. We are so external focused, we don’t know who we are, what we really want from our heart and soul, and what we value.

Therefore we live and breathe in survival mode. Too tired to sleep and too busy to think about how we are making ourselves ill in mind, body, and spirit. Yet, now that the clarion call is starting to go out regarding the majority (greater than 50%) of individuals in our society are suffering from such conditions as depression, anxiety, chronic fatigue, obesity, chronic disease, insomnia, loneliness…on and on..and there is now a growing focus for ‘self-care’ to help people to take care of their self. Suddenly also, I’m starting to notice that there is a growing conversation that ‘self-care equals selfish’. This is just not true.

Why is self-care not selfish?

1. Self-care helps us to stop the vicious circle of imbalance and have more heart space for others – doing too much and not giving yourself a break, some quiet time, some nurturing – will only continue to feed the cycle of chronic anxiety and stress which is coming from our need to ‘survive’ which is really only a perception and separates us from others psychologically. We tend to feel isolated.
2. Self-care can turn off this chronic stimulation of the ‘fight, flight, freeze’ response that contributes not only to chronic disease development but also to narcissism and self-centeredness due to insecurity, just the opposite effect of healthy self-care.
3. It is the chronic fatigue and poor diet, lack of sleep and lack of self-care lifestyle that actually make us mentally and emotionally unstable and less likely to seek support and community than when our soul is nourished and rested. Self-care is personally and societally healing.

I submit that one of the driver’s of this wildly growing trend in poor health of mind and body is because we are so externally focused – on others, work, technology and media – that:

• We neglect our sleep and struggle with fatigue and anxiety
• We work too much and are too distracted by the external call to ‘do more’
• We don’t have time/make time to learn the truth about food and lifestyle and how important all this really is – we eat ‘fast food’
• We feel chronic insecurity because the truth is – we don’t love/accept our self in general – hence we over do things to constantly prove our self-worth
• We never make time for reflection and introspection – we are too busy striving and focusing on others to our own detriment
• We become so needy due to this lack of self-awareness and neglect – that we actually do become more selfish due to our chronic competitiveness, anxiety and craving attention from others
• We are disconnected from our soul because of all this

In fact, some people are so busy ‘serving’ to get love, security and self-esteem from external sources that they are damaging their adrenal, hormonal and digestive balance – and prematurely aging themselves. Hence, what looks on the surface like altruism is actually lack of self-compassion and workaholism to cover emotional pain of some form or to gain approval.

Then when we burnout, wake up, and attempt to find more life balance and joy for ourselves so that we can be more engaged with our own lives and feel the connection to others without worrying about what we will get out of it – when we try to take care of ourselves AS we are taking care of others – here comes the finger-pointing and shaming with the label ‘selfish’. When are we going to learn that it is a both/and proposition in order to thrive?

We can BOTH care for ourselves AND care for others. In fact, I know for sure that as I stopped overdriving myself professionally and from being a pleaser or seeking validation, I learned how to value sleep, recreation, took the time to relearn how to use food as medicine and more holistic natural approaches, dealt with my fears, anxieties and compulsive behaviors – and lo and behold, I started having better relationships!

I stopped being so focused on survival and being self-centered, feeling tired and getting mental fatigue or unfocused easily by twisting myself into a knot to fit into ‘the box’ and instead I got in contact with my own unique heart and soul expression. I found my voice…one of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn, even if it didn’t look that way to others. And, I connect with those that I feel a connection with and show them support for all the ‘right’ reasons. And, I definitely give myself some of this care also.

We can learn how to BOTH take care of our self AND take care of others. It doesn’t have to be either/or, black or white. That is the old way of thinking. Self-care is ‘personal lifestyle care’.

We are in a world that lacks joy and connection because we are so tired and burnt out, there is not enough energy to be present to the person in front of us. Instead, we seek to feel good by seeking attention, ‘likes’ on social media, and become easily distracted and addicted to our devices. We have forgotten how to ‘love the one you’re with’ as the old song goes. Frankly, this state of mind sounds more stressed and selfish to me. Making time for self-care for me has been lifesaving from a health perspective and has given me the focus, confidence, and energy to create healthy relationships and boundaries.

To attempt to shame people into submission by continuing to push them to serve others and institutions outside of their self without consideration for their own needs is ‘business as usual’.

Don’t expect to reduce the rise in chronic disease until people start to respect their own health needs for rest and restoration. Our bodies need a chance to slow down and heal. Our mind needs some silence. Our hearts need space to heal from our inner emotional wounds. Yes, we need more self-care and in doing so, we are more likely to heal our soul and thus our body, in the process…and ultimately restore healthy social bonds and community. Stressed, sick people create a stressed, sick society.

As we heal ourselves, we are in a better place to be a healing inspiration for others and also to have the time and energy to participate again in community with others.

We can learn to do this as an integrated lifestyle. As we care for our self, we also can shift the pattern of seeking attention from others and looking for love in all the wrong places. Instead, we can give it to ourselves. And as we love and care for ourselves, we make more room in our hearts to give to others. It’s just the way our mind and body works,

For those who wish to continue to neglect their own self-care, that is a personal choice as well. I do not judge this. The question I have is, can we stop interfering with the personal choices of others who are on a different path than ourselves? In so doing, maybe we can make the world less stressful and self-centered in the thinking of the collective mind. To each his/her own. Let’s us all find our own way, in our own time. Then maybe there will be more room for peace and for people to reach their own authentic expression, healthy mind and body, and their own authentic greater potential.

What are your thoughts about stress and self-care? I’d be curious to know.

The post 3 Surprising Reasons Why Self-Care is NOT Selfish appeared first on Valencia Ray, MD.

Let’s define first what I mean by feminine and masculine because I want to be clear that I am definitely not referring to gender or biological sex. I am referring to energy and principle. Feminine energy and principle are gender neutral – both female and male humans contain this energy as part of simply being human. The same goes for masculine energy. Our society has essentially conditioned children and the genetic pool of human consciousness (as in epigenetics) to program our thinking that feminine means female and masculine means male. This is not the truth.

Let’s define the principles of these energies first – this is not the stereotypical storyline that has been created by culture.

In principle, feminine, in essence, means ‘receptive’:

• It is diffuse, sees the big picture, able to see the whole more clearly and has more diversity of associations, spiritually aware.
• It is our capacity to receive and listen. To hold a space.
• It is more concerned with our feeling nature or certainly at least cares about it.
• It is more intuitive, non-linear, and appreciates humor.
• It is our source of empathy, compassion, and non-judgmental discernment.
• It sees new patterns and is our source of insight and exploring the field for transformation and evolutionary pathways.
• It is community and unity based, helps us to feel connected to others.
• It aligns with the qualities of our right-brain – it is the ‘heart’ and spirit.

In principle, masculine in essence means, ‘active’: 

• It is linear, logical and linguistic. Loves to speak and help us to ‘be heard.’
• It is structured, focused and goal-directed.
• It is critical, meaning, lives in the land of polarity – ‘this versus that’ – judgmental in general.
• It ‘decides’ consciously, meaning as the word decision implies, it cuts away what it doesn’t want, ‘good versus bad’.
• It is not the big picture, it sees things and people, in pieces.
• It is individualistic – protects the identity of ‘self’.  Us versus them.
• It keeps us in the 5 sensory, 3D realm; it is not intuitive. Intellect rules. And, it loves to be right and have predictability.
• It aligns with the qualities of our left-brain – it is the ‘head’.

Can you see both men and women you know who have qualities of both masculine and feminine? In fact, I see a spectrum of these qualities in every person I know. You see, we all have a right and a left-brain. The issue is that we are socially conditioned to define ourselves by a distorted definition of what it means to be male or female and what is valued and what is not.

In our society, the active is highly valued.  The active principle is ascribed to male, and male in our culture is ascribed to masculine. There is an emphasis that men are supposed to be active, focused and goal-directed, and aggressive – to a fault. No time for feelings, humor, intuition or connection. Even though, the men who tap into these qualities within themselves tend to have more charisma, likeability and frankly, greater leadership success!

Women are taught that feminine means ‘passive’. Yet, tacitly, we are expected to take care of everything outside of the realm of money and power – which means we have very little time to be receptive and connected from our heart and are prone to burnout and chronic fatigue trying to be all things at once. Because we ascribe goal-oriented and focused behavior to men instead of to our left-brain masculine energy or principle, women who are exhibit these qualities are labeled as ‘acting like a man’.

Now that I’ve given some examples of these Yin-Yang, brain-based, energy-based qualities of being human, I want to relate it to health and well-being.

It is when we can freely move along this spectrum of feminine and masculine energy within ourselves, that we can become healthy and whole. That we can express our own individual authenticity while still staying connected to others in relationships that are fulfilling and cooperative. We can allow others to be who they are and still feel secure about ourselves.

It is when we can access both sides of ourselves that we can be active and receptive, we can talk and listen. We can work hard and rest. We can be goal-directed once we have had time to slow down and reflect and see the big picture. This would actually save time by avoiding needless mistakes from rushing through our ideas. We can value sleep, recreation, and restoration when we value our feminine principle. We can access our assertiveness, speak up and make clear decisions when we own our masculine principles.

Our society overvalues activity and ‘doing’, individualistic self-centered thinking, and undervalues listening, taking time to rest and restoration, simply, ‘being’. This is one big reason that there is so much depression, relationship dissatisfaction, workplace unhappiness, and all of this helps to create chronic stress and disease. Our mind affects our body and when our body is tired, ill-nourished and uncared for – it affects our mind.

Integration is about rebalancing, whatever that may mean for you, and bringing together the whole of feminine and masculine energy within us. It is about blending in an authentic way. In integrative/functional medicine, we get to the root cause of disease, not simply medicate. Yet, while it is important to focus on the gut and removing triggers and repairing nutrition, let’s also remember that our thinking, feeling and behaviors also are a part of the rebalancing and healing process.

Our lifestyle matters and what impacts our lifestyle of course, is how we prioritize. We have to care about rest, being receptive to others by listening and being present. Cultivating healthy relationship and not always needing to be right or suck all the oxygen out the room for ourselves. This not only bring about healing energy for others, it truly helps us to heal our own whole being as well. It has been shown repeatedly that there is a connection between healthy relationships and a healthy body and mind.

Accessing both sides of ourselves in a holistic way – not just piecemeal is very important for well-being. We cannot hope to live healthy, happy and productive lives while living the lie that we are who we are based on an artificial definition of gender roles or social stereotypes. It is not a matter of ‘either/or’ thinking; 21st-century skillful living requires ‘both/and’ thinking – feminine and masculine. Both are equally important.

We can not get off the merry-go-round of chronic disease only living in the land of activity and treating the body like it is a mechanical thing. We will only begin to thrive when we put the soul back into the science of our technology and access our inner superpowers of both sides of who we really are. The root source of healing is restoring this connection between the head and the heart. This will then make it much easier for your body to get on board and align with its innate source of healing power.

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In general, we are all taught that we need medication to control the diseases that show up in our body and that once we get a disease that is chronic, we just have to learn to live with it and be on medication for the rest of our lives. We are taught that we have no control over getting sick.

We are taught that we need flu shots for what used to be called, ‘the common cold’. There is so much controversy on this issue that you will just have to decide for yourself what is the truth or not. I personally, have never received a flu shot – and I’ve done just fine, thank you.

We are taught that aging equals disease. That our genes are our destiny and there’s nothing we can do about those affecting our health. Wrong again. We are taught that calories are calories and that carbohydrates are carbohydrates, that fats are fats – so not true.

Gulping down high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) sodas carbs – that by the way, HFCS can lead to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease big time, and this is the leading cause for the need of a liver transplant these days – these carbs are very different carbs than those found in sweet potatoes or green veggies.

And, all fats are not the same – the source matters, the animal’s treatment in farming matters to the quality of the protein, whether or not pesticides and chemical processing were used – all matters to disease formation in your body!

Do you realize that a sickly, depressed, antibiotic-filled cow can be affected by environmental conditions and its epigenomic expression changed by its farming conditions, and this, in turn, can affect yours?  These are theories emerging right now in the field of epigenetics.

So, now you start to feel the cow’s depression…oh, oh. Your genes are not your destiny! Your thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and environment affects the expression of genes affecting your health and well-being. This is true for the cow and it is true for you also.

Clean food is good medicine.

Integrative and functional medicine are new terms and can mean different things to different people. Integrative is defined as serving or intending to unify separate things. It is a type of systemic approach, it is seeing the whole picture and the whole person. It may bring in some of the old ways that are useful, but discards what is not.

It looks at the spirit, the mind, emotions, and body as a whole unit. There are some things from the traditional model of medicine that may be helpful. If so, we can integrate it into newer more effective ways of healing.

Functional medicine would include this approach. It, however, is not focused on symptoms and labeling people with diagnosis and then covering these symptoms up with medication. Instead, it is the search for the root cause.

It looks at the whole environment of the person, both internally and externally. It looks at food choices and symptoms that could be associated with foods. The thoughts, feelings, behaviors, triggers, environment, including people and even chemicals – that affect the patient/person being examined. It all matters.

The goal of functional medicine is to bring back homeostasis and balance, to bring back a healthy body and mind functioning. Not simply tick off a checklist of tests for the annual physical exam. With this existing traditional or allopathic model, doctors often watch and wait until a disease process gets bad enough that it is equally a threat to the life of the individual as the side effects of the medication.

By just waiting and watching, let’s say for example in osteoporosis, it is more difficult for functional medical approaches to heal the process, but still, it would be important to the process. Why wait until you are crippled, or even worse, dead?

Why suffer like this? You do have options, contrary to what you probably think. Don’t wait and watch, see a functional medicine physician!

Using medication for depression and anxiety without teaching the patient how to shift their thinking or without addressing the potential underlying gut-brain imbalance will potentially just lead the person down a deep, dark hole of chemical imbalance and dependency on drugs. Yes, sometimes it may be needed acutely, but this is not the long-term solution by any means.

A functional medicine approach addresses what is the underlying causes for the mood issues or anxiety.

Why should you care?

If you don’t care, and stay in the existing disease care system that is the model of healthcare in the U.S., hopefully, you never develop chronic disease. The odds are, you will, due to our environmental toxins, poor food quality for the masses, and high-stress levels without good teaching of self-management skills.

We understand our cell phones operating system better than we do our own brain’s! And we can simply learn the basics of how to do this in ways that are extremely self-empowering!

The outcomes and statistics, the financial burden of this system, are the worst in the world when it comes to chronic disease.

Also, when you work with a knowledgeable functional medicine physician, you can re-educate yourself about food and empower yourself to stay healthy. To not gain weight with aging. To lose weight and keep it off if you have gained weight already. To feel more energetic and vital than you ever thought possible.

And, you can grow your bank account instead of having it drained by over-the-top, nightmarish, hospital medical bills. Even more importantly…you can avoid suffering and pain.

Ultimately, we all have choices to make. You can choose to keep doing things the same way, and keep the brain fog, the leg cramps, the anxiety, the depression, the low energy, the bowel and digestive problems, diabetes, thyroid and other autoimmune issues, weight gain, and general malaise – or you can take back control of your health. Integrative/Functional medicine is the best path to your best life – and puts you back in control.

The post What is Integrative or Functional Medicine and Why Should You Care? appeared first on Valencia Ray, MD.

Think about how during these times of change we often have to ‘reinvent’ ourselves, meaning change our self in some way. We must become more adaptable and willing to open our mind to new ideas in order to continue to be successful. We need Science with Soul. We need to be able to change our thinking.

This applies also to  health and well-being as well as to every area of your life. My medical practice is in the area of Integrative/Functional Medicine which is a way of practicing healing and medicine that gets to the underlying cause of your symptoms. This includes your mind and your body. For me, I also have a special interest in our ability to understand how to empower our thinking. Both mind and body are essential ingredients to a happy and fulfilling life!

Traditional healthcare simply covers the symptoms by supressing them with drugs. Suppressing your mind, your bodily reactions and ultimately, often causing dangerous side effects as consequences.

I’m here to not only help you to empower yourself to health and wholeness but to also learn how to ‘optimally operate’ your brain in the process so that you are not so easily distracted, hijacked or prone to worry. So that you understand how both your thinking and your feelings impact the health of your body.

Pharmaceutical drugs generally are not healing you; you will still have the disease eating away at your body. Also, these drugs have annoying at best and fatal at worst, side effects. If you want to have optimum health, you will need to relearn what you currently believe about health and healing.

If you continue doing what you are doing, you will continue to keep getting what you have been getting. Right now in America, we have a crisis of obesity and chronic diseases as well as well as a mental health crisis. Change is challenging, but the good news is that I am here to assist you!

Healing is an art as well as a science. I am a trained physician, yes and I also know that our mind/brain is intuitive and this helps the success of our healing process when we listen to our guidance and learn how to trust our knowing for what is best for us as individuals. Healing is a collaborative relationship – a Dr. Dictator approach doesn’t work. There is no one-size-fits-all approach.

With NeuroReInvention, since the word ‘Neuro’ means relating to the brain or nervous system, NeuroReInvention is referring to changing your brain, changing the way you think and how you use your mind. It entails learning how to take a healthy attitude toward your feelings and learning how to consciously self-regulate them to live with more joyfulness. It is a scientific fact that our thoughts, feelings, and environments mold and change our brain.

This physiological ability to change our brain is called, ‘Neuroplasticity’ – I call it NeuroReInvention. And the implication is, you can learn to do it intentionally, on purpose and not simply allow the forces around you to hijack your thinking. YOU have the ability and are capable of learning new ways to empower your Self. This is good news!

This blog shares information that helps you to think differently in the way that you can choose to apply to sectors of your own life by learning the truth about the Mind-Body connection. How the mind can help you stay healthy, or totally sabotage your health and influence what dis-eases show up in your life – in general dis-ease is definitely not random! It can help you:

• By learning how food – which foods – work or do not work for you.
• By learning how we are creating dis-ease or allowing our brain to make us depressed, anxious, insecure or worried. By realizing that food affects mood and mood affects the health and functions of our body, particularly our gut, which neuroscience is finding is the center of vitality and health for our entire body.
• By learning how to find the best food plan for you that slows down or reverses aging, maintain your ideal weight and keep your brain sharp and performing at its best!

Also, did you know that your self-image will affect your choices? You are actually creating your self-image yourself, in your brain/mind, whether  you realize it or not. We are affecting our own sense of worth, value, confidence, and capabilities – without realizing how we are doing it. Hence, we are giving our power away to others in the external world that really do not have our best interests at heart.

We must learn how to internally reconnect our mind and our heart to become whole, healthy and empowered human beings.

My belief and experience has been that our mind is like a ‘supercomputer’ control center that affects our heart/feeling nature, our health, our sense of Self, our relationships, our abundance and wealth and even our spiritual understanding. As the ancient proverb says, ‘As a man (woman) thinks, so is he/she.’ This is Truth.

A part of learning how to stay healthly includes learning how to ‘retrain your brain’ and to take back the steering wheel of your mind’ from outside forces that attempt to steer you down the wrong road in regard to your health and well-being for their own profits.

Since our mind plays such a powerful role in directing our feelings, behaviors, choices, and actions, then doesn’t it just make sense that we learn practical ways to not only take more control over it but to also expose ourselves to ideas and information that helps us to live more of the life that we actually want to live? We empower ourselves when we:

• Learn how to make friends with feelings and develop an emotional set-point that feels grateful, joyful and passionate about life? Instead of anxious, stressed and worried?
• Learn how to stay healthy, how to successfully get off of the societal treadmills that run our bodies into the ground, making us sick and ineffective.
• Learn how to actually heal our mind and body so we can get off and stay off of excessively expensive and potentially dangerous medications.

We can learn the truth about the power of food as medicine – you really are what you eat to a great extent, and what we are told to eat as a ‘standard American diet’ sad enough is one of the issues actually at the root of our chronic disease epidemic.

In fact, notice that ‘Standard American Diet’ is the acronym, SAD – it’s sad alright!

NeuroReInvention will allow us to have the information and insights to help us to unplug and free our own mind from the fear, chaos, and stress that is harming our health and well-being. While we can’t control everything in our environment we can learn how to much more easily change our perception and what we allow into our mind-body system – this is for sure.

While my early medical training was in strictly traditional medicine, over time I have continued to learn ‘out of the box’ thinking and continue to evolve my worldview in all areas of life. I have continued to hone my skills and train in functional medicine and will continue to learn as long as I am practicing. Nowadays, many more people are searching for better answers, and with good reason.

The solutions we have been given are no longer working and is in fact, are a big part of the problem. Simply trying to medicate everything is only making a sector of corporate business very wealthy, while the masses of people get sicker and poorer from their expensive hospital bills and insurance premiums. Something is very, very wrong with this picture.

As I have stepped out of the indoctrination of this existing dis-ease care system that teaches sickness comes with age – when actually sickness is highly associated with foods, lifestyles, environments, emotional responses and our own belief systems – I have not only reversed aging in myself in many ways, I have reversed and healed health issues in my body that the traditional system was only aggravating.

I have witnessed several so called, ‘miracles’ of ‘incurable’ disease. Our bodies are designed to be capable of self-healing when given the right protocols, guidance and the support that is really in our best interest. You will be amazed.

In order to achieve these goals, you will first need to be willing to neuro-reinvent or change your mind. You must be willing to unlearn what no longer works that you have been told to accept as true and begin to open your mind and heart to new ideas, scientific evidence, and your own inner intuitive guidance. You will need to learn how to harness the natural healing body of your own mind and body.

To trust yourself. To stop listening to external authoritative voices that really do not have your best interests at heart. Remember, you will have to learn how to take back the steering wheel of your mind to ‘optimally operate’ your own brain, thoughts, and emotions.

Unfortunately, we know more about optimally operating our cells phones than our computer-like brain. No worries, it is much simpler to learn practical techniques to access your brain’s operating system than learning about your cell phone.

I certainly believe you can do it! And I know, like anything else, YOU have to want it and be willing to do the work. I’ve done it, mostly through trial and error…many errors over the past few decades.

This process as made me more resilient and I become wiser from my mistakes. Now, with help from neuroscience and experience, it is not only easier for me to apply these ideas and principles, it is easier for me to share what I’ve learned with you.

We hear the term, ‘Mind-Body’ but there is very little focus on the mind/brain and health beyond the new idea for many people of ‘Mindfulness’.

Mindfulness meditation is very important, yet it is simply a way to become more self-aware of your thoughts and feelings, which is an important place to begin. Meditation helps to focus the mind and to calm it and the body.

Yes, using mindfulness practices will improve your immune function, lower blood pressure and can even improve memory among other things, however, if other psychological and nutritional education are not gained alongside mindfulness, it can take you many years to transform your mind, body and reconnect to your heart/spirit.

Let’s be practical here…we can’t just meditate all day and who has ten years to wait on tiny incremental improvements? We also need to learn how our unconscious thinking is sabotaging us in ways that damage our health, our relationships, productivity, and even self-confidence.

We can access and change our self-sabotaging unconscious behaviors intentionally and on purpose when we know how. And when we are given the correct information and techniques to support this reinvention process, it becomes much easier.

As a former eye surgeon I used to help people see better with their physical eyes as I diagnosed and co-managed their underlying chronic diseases or neurological problems. Now, as an Integrative/Functional Medicine physician, I can not only be a guide for my patients/clients to heal their mind and body, but I also help people to expand the vision for their health and lives in general.

Because I see the world in terms of a holistic system, I will share my knowledge and professional training in medicine and psychotherapy in ways that interconnect mind, emotions, the physical body health, psychosocial well-being, and spiritual insight. I see people through the lens of wholeness, not in simple piecemeal terms.

As long as we see ourselves through a deterministic, mechanical lens, as if we have no choice to change, we will live lives of, ‘quiet desperation’ as Thoreau once said. We will see life piecemeal and scattered. We will struggle with ill-health, excessive stress, overwhelm, unproductive activity, relationship dysfunction, and distraction.

It is when we find the courage to open our mind that we will be able to free it.

The NeuroReInvention Prescription is the antidote for ‘dis-ease care’. It strikes at the root of dis-ease in all its forms.

Striking at the root is the foundation of Integrative/Functional Medicine. The NRI Prescription utilizes the Mind-Body connection.

It contains self-empowering ways to manage and heal depression/melancholy, anxiety, and dysfunctional insecurity that damages confidence and self-worth. It also provides knowledge and skills for improving health and well-being maintenance including nutrition, mindset changing techniques and nutritional supplements. Striking at the root means, learning how to keep your gut-brain axis nourished and healthy. Think about it – this affects the quality of your life in every way – including financially.

At the time of writing this post, the number one reason for bankruptcy in our society is related to healthcare related – disease care – expense. It is also eating up the nation’s budget and hurting the quality of life for people in this country. And – we are practically dead last in quality of healthcare when compared to other advanced countries in the world.

Healing our own mind is at the root of healing underlying causes of loneliness and experiences that limit love and connection, the drivers of lack consciousness and debt, and patterns of behaviors that are no longer serving you professionally and in your personal life.

Studies show the importance of healthy, happy relationships on Mind-Body health and well-being. While this may seem like a broad list, they are all interconnected through the Mind-Body connection. We just have not been taught how to understand ourselves in these terms.

We are a complex system of thoughts, feelings, and emotions, that drive behavior, yet at the core of this complexity is the simplicity of unification – holistic principles and applications – to help you to eat better, sleep better, feel better, relate better to your self and others, to live a higher quality of life and to take back the steering wheel of your own mind.

To reconnect to your heart and spirit. The truth about our ability to neuro-reinvent ourselves is a gift for our times that enables us to live a more abundant, whole life. I’m here to help and support those who would raise their hand to live a more authentically inspired life.

If that’s you, then I invite you to join me to learn more about The NeuroReInvention Prescription (NRI).

The post With ‘The NeuroReInvention Prescription’, You Can Empower Yourself appeared first on Valencia Ray, MD.