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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Your perception can obstruct your vision through your brain as much as a literal cloudy fog can hide a huge mountain in our environment. The photo on the left is the same portion of my backyard as the photo on the right taken only about an hour apart.

Where’s the mountain and the blue sky in the one on the left? From a perceptual viewpoint, it appears there is no mountain, we can’t see it. If we didn’t know better, we would not even assume there are other possibilities than the way we are currently looking at this area of the background.

Perception is ‘how’ we see, it’s the story or the meaning we assign to a given situation or circumstance based upon our unique way of looking at life.

Sometimes we can be even looking at a situation or event right in front of our eyes and not really see that there is more than one possibility of what is before us. Like the mountain range behind the fog. Very recently, during a period of heavy rain here in Northern California, I noticed that the vast mountain range behind my home seemed to disappear as the clouds and fog descended low enough to obstruct it, so I took the photo of my backyard from my window.

If I didn’t know better, it looked like there were no mountains, that the land behind my home was flat and that I was just seeing the edge of the sky on this rainy, dreary day. In reality, things were not as they seemed. In a little while, the clouds and fog rolled away to reveal the huge, majestic mountains and the beautiful sun and blue sky.

I found this situation to be a an interesting metaphor for perception. This is important to your mind and body health and well-being. Whether we realize it or not, things really are not always the way they seem, and in fact, they are generally are the way WE see; it is subjective based upon the meaning we assign due to our perception.

It’s like a ‘Cataract of the Soul’ that blocks the Light of our soul, who we really are, and keeps us from witnessing our own intrinsic worth and beauty and from seeing this beauty also in others.

As an ex-eye surgeon, I can tell you that most people had normal, healthy eyes behind their cataract, which is simply a clouding of the lens of the eye. Once removed, their vision typically returned to 20/20. We don’t often realize that there is more to a situation, person or explanation than meets the eye. Two individuals can come to very different conclusions based upon how they have unconsciously wired their brain over time and how they expect the outcomes to evolve.

They can have different, ‘stories’ for similar circumstances. So they ‘see’ things differently. Often we are metaphorically seeing the world through a ‘cloudy lens’ of perception.

For example, we’ve been taught that chronic disease is a part of aging. Therefore, when we buy into this, we assume that there’s nothing we can do to age with good health. We don’t look for causes in our behavior, food, or toxins in our environment that harming our mind and body and destroying our health. We ignore new research. We don’t pay attention to reports that show toxic foods and pesticides are harming out gut. We don’t recognize that allowing our mind to wander into negative self-talk is actually creating disease in our body through the stress response. We continue to only look for evidence that aligns with what we believe and we therefore miss evidence right before us. It’s like there’s a cloud blocking out potential. That’s perception.

This is how perception can work. When we are not aware of how we are conditioned and have unwittingly wired our mind with a host of self-limiting beliefs, we can make assumptions that we will never see our way clear again and become full of stress, anxiety or even become depressed. When we don’t have a vision for our life we only focus on the clouds and lose sight of the potential majesty that could be hidden from our view at the present time. However, if we take the path of higher wisdom, we can make room for the possibility in our mind that perhaps there is just a mis-perception within our thoughts. That things can change, that we can change. The the ‘authorities’ are wrong and that what we once thought was true, is just not true or certainly not for everyone. That we can expand our vision and possibilities and change our perception.

Instead of thinking less of our self and allowing our fear to rob us of peace of mind and even help create disharmony in our relationships and lives, we can learn to hold the faith and courage to recognize that there are beliefs and ways of seeing life that need to evolve if we are to reach our greater potential. As we change our beliefs, we will notice new information starting to show up in our view.

Our soul’s journey is one of remembering that underneath the surface, behind the clouds in our life lies the Light of our spirit that is magnificent, like the mountains, beautiful, strong and majestic all at the same time.

It just may be temporarily covered over by confusion in our mind and heart that cloud our vision for our life. If we make time to

• feed our soul and spirit, to contemplate and reflect
• develop the trust in our inner spirit to guide us
• to apply the actions of our intuitive nudges that come from within our heart…

…we will be able to expand our vision for our lives as the circumstances shift and the clouds roll away in our perception to see the hidden beauty that was there all along. We can open our mind to new ways to heal our bodies and reverse chronic disease. This is the new science. It also requires your active belief change to participate.

The more willing we become to learn and grow and recognize that retraining our brain and mind and ‘making friends with our emotions’ is a skill that we can develop, the easier it becomes to navigate the storms and clouds that show up in our lives, including our health.

As we get to know our inner lives and the power within us to cut through the confusion and fog around us, we are better able to live with greater purpose, passion and to see the beauty that is hidden from our perception within the context of our everyday lives.

The post How Perception Can Cloud Your Vision for Your Life 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).

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