According to this same article the number one cause of liver toxicity is alcohol abuse. Some medications contribute to liver disease, as well as some herbs and large doses of specific vitamins, to name just a few potential causes. http://www.medicinenet.com/liver_disease/page2.htm

If alcohol is addictive for you, I suggest reading this article on the metaphysical meaning being addictions before you read any further, because the cause of the addiction is more than likely the deeper root cause of the liver toxicity: http://self-healingsecrets.com/1251/healing-from-addictions/

I believe that everyone has at least one addiction. In spiritual terms they might also be identified as attachments, and most of us could accept that we all have some kind of attachment. Everyone also has fears, and addiction can be a way in which we play out some of our most deep-seated fears.

So, in our self-healing journey, it is important to be honest with ourselves about our addictions and attachments if we want to heal; and then it is important to be committed and gentle as we address our most profound fears. Those fears arise from wounds that may have occurred when we were children or took place before this life-time. They are legitimate and deserve our dedicated and tender care.

When it comes to the metaphysical meaning behind liver toxicity, this is what I heard in meditation.

A toxic liver represents a person’s fundamental fear of life itself. A person with a toxic or diseased liver is probably questioning whether they even want to be alive. They are deeply depressed and afraid they will never fulfill their purpose. ??They believe they have already failed and would like this journey to end as quickly as possible.  A diseased or damaged liver is one of the fastest ways to shorten one’s life. Fundamentally, this is denial of one’s value.

I just pulled out Louise Hay’s book to see what she sees for the liver:  Seat of anger and primitive emotions.

Let’s put these together. If you are deeply depressed and feel as though you have already failed, it would stand to reason that you are angry with yourself or others; and probably most angry with yourself for having failed.

It might also stand to reason that you have perceived your life purpose has passed by unfulfilled and therefore your life no longer has value. Perhaps you did not meet the expectations of you had for yourself before you came to earth. Or perhaps, instead of responding to a situation with love and healing, you responded in anger and abuse of yourself or another.

In my experience the hardest aspect of our own humanity to forgive is the abusive tendencies that live inside us all. If you believe you have failed because you were abusing yourself or another, that defeat might be the most difficult of failures to live with.

But measuring our value based upon our achievements or lack of achievements is too limited a view. As I discuss in the article on addictions, it is the abuser within us all that most needs our love. It is this part of ourselves that is the most fragile and most damaged. Abusing the abuser within with anger and disgust only feeds the cycle of pain, and keeps our souls in continuous cycles of despair.

There is only one remedy—compassion.

A teacher once said to me, When you heal the present, you heal the past and future too. I’ve discovered the truth of her wisdom. Healing is not linear. When a wound is healed, it is healed through time and space.

Regardless of what you have or have not done in the past, all abuse longs to return home to love. All of it. The moment you compassionately love the wounded part of you that allowed yourself to abuse or be abused, the cycle starts coming to a close.

When we allow ourselves to experience complete love, there are no more concerns about achievement or failure, or the value of your life, because those concerns exist in the friction of our thoughts and emotions. When you surrender to the healing antidote of love, all that there will be is love.

Image: David Castillo Dominici / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I know I’ve benefited from chiropractic care over the years when pain was due to spinal misalignment.  There are a variety of approaches to chiropractic care from energy stimulation to actual adjustment, so you might find it helpful to interview a potential chiropractor to be sure their approach appeals to you. Here are some insights about basic chiropractic practice: http://www.wellnesschiro.com/FAQs.htm.

While many chiropractors adjust the spine in order to positively affect your nerves, there are chiropractors that work more directly with the energy of your nervous system to positively affect your body—the spine, internal organs and emotions. I like how this particular chiropractor explains what is called Network Chiropractics: http://www.eastwesthealth.info/network_chiropractic.html
There are some incidences when chiropractic adjustment may not be appropriate. You might find it helpful to become familiar with those instances. This article will give you some insights. http://www.webmd.com/back-pain/chiropractic-pain-relief

With acute or chronic back pain, it is a good idea to find a doctor you trust to help you identify the physical cause of the pain and treat it properly. Whenever possible, of course, prevention is the place to begin.

I am now quite grateful for the yoga and dance classes I have taken over the years. I have some basic stretches I do regularly that keep my neck and spine supple. Plus, I pay attention to what I choose to lift and how I lift it. Finding a good sleeping posture and good posture throughout the day also seems to help me maintain spinal health. Many people, including myself, find massages and hot baths or hot tubs to be wonderfully therapeutic for over-taxed muscles.

So let’s look at the metaphysical meaning behind back and neck pain to help you help yourself.  Here is what I heard in meditation:

Back and neck issues occur when we are out of alignment with our values. We have not allowed ourselves to have the support and structures we need in order to live a life that is clear and on course with our higher perspectives.

The spine is the conduit between our passion for life on earth and our blissful nature as spiritual beings. When we cut ourselves off from either our enjoyment of physical life or opportunities to open to enlightened awareness, our spines suffer.

When you have a spinal injury, consider noticing which vertebrae have been harmed and discover what organs are connected to that part of your spine. Then discover what emotional issues need resolution in order for those organs to function in a healthy manner.

If you are born with a curvature of the spine or other spinal condition, you may have come into this world with a strong karmic need to create a clear and direct life that is fully in alignment with what you most value.

If you have been doing a lot of spiritual growth work and you find your energy is congested in your spine, notice where it is congested and begin working with the organs that correlate with those vertebrate and/or begin lovingly working with the correlating chakra(s).

If you don’t know what you value most, consider writing your own eulogy. Ask yourself how would you like another person to describe your life after you have died? This will show you what is most valuable to you.

If your spine needs constant attention, you might discover that you experience your life from one of two extremes: either 1) overly rigid in your expectations about how life is supposed to happen or 2) too flexible, constantly surrendering your needs for the needs of others.

The spine requires a balance of these energies in order to be healthy.

As you heal your spine, remember that life is meant to be enjoyed and you deserve to give yourself the kinds of support systems that allow you to experience greater enjoyment, while living in alignment with your deepest values.

I do have a spinal health CD that you might find to be quite supportive. You can find it at my CD store: Spirit Treasures.

Here is a definition for osteoporosis from the U.S. National Library of Medicine: Osteoporosis occurs when the body fails to form enough new bone, when too much old bone is reabsorbed by the body, or both.

It is fairly common for osteoarthritis and osteoporosis to be confused. In a nutshell, osteoarthritis is about deterioration of cartilage and the subsequent inflammation (http://www.medicinenet.com/osteoarthritis/article.htm). Osteoporosis is the thinning of bone tissue and density. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001400/)

If you have either of these conditions and/or rheumatoid arthritis, you might find this article to be very informative because these conditions do share some coping strategies: http://www.niams.nih.gov/Health_Info/Bone/Osteoporosis/Conditions_Behaviors/osteoporosis_arthritis.asp

Now let’s look at what I received in meditation for osteoporosis: Osteoporosis is about the structures that have supported you. Structures you have counted on are no longer there and you don’t feel as though you have enough structure to adequately support yourself.

Your beliefs limit your ability to support yourself or to receive support from others. When you don’t feel worthy of adequate support or if you are unwilling to make the changes required so that you can receive the support you truly need, your bones begin to reflect the lack of that support.

Without adequate support, your body begins to collapse in on itself as you attention is being directed inward.

Inadequate support might look like not enough or appropriate: vitamins and minerals, exercise, love, attention, money, comfortable home, transportation, acceptance, etc.

Let’s see how this plays out in life.  As you age, your body needs more of your physical attention. You just can’t power through physical challenges like you used to. For example, your supplement choices need to change as you age. Your structure of support needs to change to reflect the changes your body is going through.

Perhaps you were counting on a pension that would provide you with a comfortable retirement, but you discover your pension barely covers your living expenses. You may need to reevaluate the structure you were going to depend upon. In order to live comfortably, you may need to consider new structures, such as starting an at-home business doing something you love, taking a part-time job in some field that you were always curious about, or even moving to another country where the cost of living is more affordable for you.

I once heard a story about a woman that took endless cruises because it was ultimately less expensive than maintaining her home. Because she cruised a lot, the staff usually informed her about special opportunities coming up. She lived a life of luxury because she was willing to change the structure.

Maybe you expected to have a deeper bond with your children than you actually experience. You may need to reflect upon the structure of your beliefs that keeps you emotionally separated to see how you might create a new structure of beliefs that allows for greater intimacy.

If you have had to work hard most of your life, if you were the one that your children relied upon and if you were used to taking care of things on your own, you may find it quite challenging to see yourself as worthy of taking it easy, letting others care for you or letting other help you.  You can end up feeling unworthy and hearing yourself offering a bunch of reasons why you can’t let yourself be supported in new ways.

But, if you are experiencing osteoporosis, your body may be telling you that it is time to re-evaluate the structures you have counted on for many years, or perhaps even most of your life. Maybe it’s time to let go of those old expectations and patterns of behavior. It is time for life to be easier, and you deserve it. You might discover you simply have to get out of your own way in order to make room for new structures of support. Maybe it’s time to be a kid again—to explore life with enthusiasm by trying out new and different possibilities! Consider that your body may be telling you it is time for an adventure. It just might be time to search out new ways in which to be supported in experiencing a joyful and fulfilling life.

There are many reasons that energy healing doesn’t work. You can be holding limiting beliefs that are interfering with results, which I discuss at greater length in my free report, Beating the Odds: 10 Beliefs That Can Short-Circuit Your Healing. (http://misahopkins.com/bookstore/)

You might have feelings of despair, worthlessness, shame, regrets, resentments, or lack of hope that limit the ability of your intention to have any effect. Often, such feelings need to be lovingly addressed before complete healing can occur. The meditation I most often recommend for being present to such powerful emotions is the Creation Meditation (http://www.newdreamfoundation.com/forums/index.php?topic=75.0)

It is possible that an underlying need is getting met through your illness, such as the need to finally rest, be noticed, tended, honored, recognized or cared for. I discuss how this dynamic works in greater depth in my book, The Root of All Healing: 7 Steps to Healing Anything. (http://rootofallhealing.com)

And there is another significant reason that healing might not be occurring, and this is the topic I’ll be discussing during my upcoming tour.  There is a secret to healing that lives within your Sacred Feminine energy. It is as important to become the space in which healing can occur as it is to have clear intention.

The topic of this article is actually erroneous. You don’t really “make” energy healing work for you. That just happens to be the language that is familiar to most of us. What we need to do if we want healing to occur is to “allow” energy healing to work for us.??That means we need to learn how to become the receptive space for healing in addition to having clear intention. Consider that focusing on healing with clear intention is an aspect of your Sacred Masculine energy. You engage your mind to actively affirm your complete wellness, with no exceptions. Wellness is the only acceptable reality. It is mindfully clear and it is active.

Compare this to the Sacred Feminine energy in which you receive the whole of you in love. In the Sacred Feminine you do not choose which parts of you are okay. Your Sacred Feminine nature opens in compassion to your feelings of woundedness and your strength. In your love and acceptance of yourself as you are, you relax and become the space in which your healing intention can now do its work. It is compassionate and it is receptive.

In Chapter Seven of my book, I talk about going as deeply into your subconscious realms as you possibly can by learning how to take yourself into light trance states. In this highly receptive state you are more relaxed and open to receiving messages from your subconscious and accepting energetic healing energy.

Light trance states are completely safe, and though television suggests we lose control, you don’t lose control of your faculties as a result of being hypnotized or participating in a shamanic journey.  A part of you is able to remain conscious of your surroundings, the needs of your body and the input you are receiving.

If you are not seeing results, you might want to check in with yourself to see if you are truly in a receptive enough state for healing to occur. If you don’t think you are as receptive as you need to be, consider exploring this question, How could I become more relaxed and receptive to the healing energy I have chosen?

Many of us have simply had little education about how to do it. We have gotten so used to the concept of taking prescribed medications or having surgery done, where we perceive the healing is happening to us, that it can be a stretch to understand we are playing a role in our healing progress.

Whether we choose to be actively engaged in our healing or not, our beliefs and feelings are part of the process. If the mind is busy or feelings are overwhelming, we have a difficult time actually hearing or recognizing our own inner wisdom.

If you want to access your self-healing wisdom, at some point you’ll discover that you need to quiet your mind. Clear intentions have a difficult time getting through mind clutter. It is difficult to create a state of allowance, where you literally allow your body to heal, if your fear is running high.

Self-healing wisdom comes through when the mind is quiet and the heart is open. Allowance and intention are the two energies that need to be clear and in balance for healing to happen. And in both cases, inner stillness is required.

My thirteen-year-old nephew caught on to this the first time he did energy healing on his own body. He was in the hospital, and expected to be there for a week, as the doctors treated his blood. His white blood cells were attacking red blood cells with markers in them. The markers were basically telling the white blood cells that these were invaders and needed to be eliminated. Ultimately he didn’t have enough healthy red blood cells in his system so he was growing weaker and more toxic by the day.

I sat down on the edge of his bed and asked him if he understood what his cells were doing. He explained it to me, so I asked him if he was willing to come up with a way to visualize a different scenario for his cells.

Being a thirteen-year-old, he created a kind of mental computer game that he could engage in with his cells. I watched and felt him become very still inside, as he got ready to play the game in his mind. In the stillness, his mind went into laser-sharp focus.

I held space for his best healing through my sounds as he visualized. Minutes later we stopped together and I left him to rest for a while. The next day the doctors expressed their delight with his rapid progress. They held him one day for observation and sent him home—five days early.

What struck me was his ability to quiet his mind and focus. This is not easy for everyone to do, particularly when you are afraid. The mind has a way of racing, imagining all the worst possibilities. The mind racing in fear is counter to healing. When the mind becomes quiet, there is peace. In peace, you see all of the potential outcomes with clarity, particularly your healing and how to achieve it.

This state of peace also allows you to become the space in which healing can occur.  With inner peace, prescription drugs, surgery, herbal or homeopathic remedies, natural treatments and energy healing can serve you better.

Quieting your mind is one of the best ways to facilitate your healing. Even if you are not a meditator, notice how a walk in the park, having a quiet cup of tea on your porch, or engaging in a craft that you love help to quiet your mind and allay your fears.

In a serene and quiet mind, insights about your healing can come through. Insights might surprise you, as they seem to come out of nowhere. A little, but persistent thought might continue to be on the edge of your thoughts—more noticeable because your mind is still.

This is how self-healing insights find their way to us—through stillness of a quiet mind that can finally notice them.

Healing is a journey to your self-awareness. If you aren’t using it as an opportunity to discover your true nature, abilities and spiritual talents, you are missing out on its potential gift.

We think of healing as a nuisance, keeping us away from what we really want to do. But what if healing is the thing our subconscious mind/higher self wants us to do? What if the healing is the doorway to our self-realization? Then we are missing out, aren’t we? In my experience, getting involved is when the real healing started happening. That’s why I talk about a person’s spiritual gifts when I do a healing reading. I know you need to be deeply involved, discovering the power of who you really are as well as your true potential as a human being.

Many of us struggle when we engage our energetic healing gifts for our own healing. We come up against perceived barriers or limits, where our beliefs seem to stop us.

Part of you may believe you really can influence your healing. Perhaps another part of you isn’t so sure. Here’s something you can do to encourage yourself through any doubts.

Imagine a time in your life when you wanted to learn something new, and you did in fact succeed. A part of you was probably scared and wondered if you could really do it. Perhaps another part of you was really excited about the potential.

Allow yourself to remember how you coached yourself to keep going. What did it feel like when you finally succeeded? I remember the first time I put snow skis on. There were kids zipping by me on the bunny-hill, while I was still trying to figure out how to remain upright. I was nervous, embarrassed, wondered if I would ever learn how to do it, and almost gave up a couple of times.

But I told myself if the kids could learn how to do it, so could I, and it looked like so much darned fun. I would just have to live with my embarrassment and get on with it. I persevered until I got it and glided blissfully down the slope. The challenge with healing some parts of our bodies is that we can’t see what is going on.

It truly requires faith to know that what you have intended is actually happening. In a sense, you have to decide your dedicated practice is making progress in your healing. Here’s the deal. It’s happening, the same way I learned to ski. Healing is happening as I’m learning how to do it. In the same way skiing was happening as I was learning how to do it.

If you aren’t used to using your spiritual gifts, it is going to take some practice and lots of repetition. Some days you’ll heal more than others, just like some days I spent more time upright on my skis than others. Yet, each day I experienced even a little success, I felt great.

May I suggest that you find a story from your past—one in which you learned something new and succeeded. Before you use a Sound Healing CD, do Reiki, begin doing your light work or taking your herbs, remember your success story and FEEL the success.

Then tell the cells of your body that’s what you and they are doing together—feeling the success of a body that is completely well. Then practice away!

Most of us understand that depression can have many causes, but did you know that there are differences in the brain that occur with depression?  According to this article at WebMD, the hippocampus, a small part of the brain that is vital to the storage of memories, appears to be smaller in people with a history of depression than in those who’ve never been depressed.  Further, a smaller hippocampus has fewer serotonin receptors, a chemical known for its calming affects. http://www.webmd.com/depression/guide/causes-depression??

There are many ways to treat depression from psychotherapy to herbal remedies. Any treatment or combination of treatments could make a difference for you depending upon the source of your depression. And it seems, there is a common underlying metaphysical meaning that you might want to explore for supporting your treatment(s) of choice.  When I meditate about the root metaphysical cause of depression this is what I hear:

Depression is the result of not feeling worthy to experience the pleasure of life or the hope that life can offer you soulful fulfillment. Because you feel let down by what life has presented you, you have given up hope (at least temporarily) that you can enjoy a satisfying life right now.

Loss is consistently involved in depression. You might feel a loss of hope, clarity, ability to trust yourself or others, health, ability to live your purpose, happiness, innocence, control, acceptance, love, awareness of your divinity…you feel a loss that is profound and deep.

In some of our current spirituality, we attempt to jump over our feelings of depression, telling ourselves that what we are feeling is not real. All we have to do is get back in touch with loving feelings and everything will be all right.

To some extent this is true. Love does remedy depression. However, if you ignore your current feelings, are you really loving the whole of who you are? Is it possible you are ignoring the part of you that most needs your love?

Louise Hay describes the metaphysical meaning of depression as: Anger you feel you do not have a right to have. Hopelessness.

Loving the parts of ourselves that we perceive are working and ignoring the ones that feel bad, isn’t full and complete love is it? It’s selective love, and if some of us were to trace the root cause of our depression, we would probably find that somewhere in our journey someone (maybe even ourselves) loved us only selectively. So how do we learn to love ourselves completely?  We’ve got to discover some compassion for the parts of us that we consider to be unworthy. We need to hold in our energetic arms the things we have done or experienced that caused us to feel unworthy to be fully and completely loveable.

How do we get there? For those of you that read my articles regularly, this suggestion won’t be a surprise. Consider this guided meditation created to help us hold our most vulnerable feelings: Creation Meditation.

Depression has been called “anger turned inward.” Anger and sorrow are natural responses to feeling unworthy. However worthiness is a natural state of being, and it arises from within us when we hold in deep compassion with the parts of ourselves that are feeling unworthy—the parts of us crying out to be understood and loved.

It’s a good thing that I have a wonderful team reminding me to let you know that if you want metaphysical support, I have a meditation CD specifically for depression.

Osteoarthritis is the most common form of arthritis, affecting millions of people around the world. Often called wear-and-tear arthritis, osteoarthritis occurs when the protective cartilage on the ends of your bones wears down over time.

While osteoarthritis can damage any joint in your body, the disorder most commonly affects joints in your hands, neck, lower back, knees and hips.

Osteoarthritis gradually worsens with time, and no cure exists. But osteoarthritis treatments can slow the progression of the disease, relieve pain and improve joint function.

In addition to medications that your doctor can prescribe to you for relief, the Mayo Clinic suggests some things you can do at home to help reduce the amount of pain you experience, http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/osteoarthritis/DS00019/DSECTION=lifestyle-and-home-remedies

They also suggest some alternative healing approaches. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/osteoarthritis/DS00019/DSECTION=lifestyle-and-home-remedies

I appreciated this article on natural healing through the use of glucosamine sulfate (with the caution from Mayo clinic), describing this naturally occurring substance’s ability to stimulate the manufacture of cartilage components. http://www.dynamicchiropractic.com/mpacms/dc/article.php?id=42537

As always, it is wise to talk with your own doctor and do your own research regarding the physical cause and treatments that might best work for you.

In exploring the metaphysical meaning behind osteoarthritis in meditation, these are the insights I received, and I hope they will be helpful to you:

Osteoarthritis is about working too hard at life; pushing too hard. When you are living outside the natural flow of life (see Chapter Two of my book, The Root of All Healing for more insights about this), you are not on the path of least resistance. You are working and creating in resistance. In a sense you are burning through your life. Your energy becomes too dry internally and your hormones become out of balance.

In order to heal you need to experience greater fluidity in your life. You’ll want to discover how to “go with the flow,” allowing life to happen, rather than making it happen. Discover time to play as well as to work, and when you work, affirm a life in which you achieve with ease.

If you appreciate Louise Hay’s work, as I do, she does not distinguish between osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. (See my article on rheumatoid arthritis  if that is the condition more appropriate for you.)

Hay describes the metaphysical meaning for arthritis as:

Feeling unloved. Criticism. Resentment.

Now let’s put these two definitions together. If you are hard on yourself, you will be critical of yourself and others. If you push hard to achieve while others do so with ease, you might find yourself feeling resentful. Ultimately, if you do not love yourself as you are, you just might be working hard to be more—to be worthy of love.

When you feel the urge to push yourself harder or do more, consider pausing first. Give yourself a moment to imagine, feel, sense, know that there is any easy and fluid way to do this. Become still enough within to recognize the easiest way to achieve. Open up your mind to the possibility that there could be an enjoyable way to create that is truly in the natural flow of life.

Give yourself permission to first love you as you are, with all your perceived strengths and weaknesses. After all this is the journey you came here to experience so that you could discover the depth of your capacity for love. So love it all!

Then when you feel loved as you are, by all means, achieve. There is great satisfaction in creating something meaningful in the world. Consider that you deserve to live life with joy and ease as you create, loving yourself as you are right now and also for the wonder you are creating.

I just created a CD for a friend for osteoarthritis. It’s not on my website yet, but if you are interested, just send me a note from the Contact Page here at the site.

When I began my self-healing journey many years ago, I wouldn’t have considered these questions. My pain was the result of someone else’s abuse (or lack of care) toward me, or genetic predisposition and that was the end of the exploration.  I would heal because I would generate enough love, knowledge and support to do so, but I wasn’t going to entertain the idea that I might have actually chosen it.

It was years before I considered the possibility that I chose this body, this life and my unique experiences because I came to earth with an intention, and the fulfillment of that intention included healing conditions I had allowed or even chosen.

In order to experience greater ability to self-heal, I needed to consider those two questions:  1) What does it mean if I chose this illness or condition? and 2) If I did choose this, what was I hoping to discover?

I finally got my courage up and asked myself about the seemingly impossible—that I had chosen my physical condition.

In The Root of All Healing, Chapter Four, under the subsection What If You Discovered You Chose Your Life, you can explore these questions with me with a very simple exercise that invites you to write your case argument for coming to earth, and presenting what you intended to learn, be and do while there. http://misahopkins.com/therootofallhealing/

This exercise can be quite freeing and empowering as you explore in great depth exactly why you might have chosen this life and all that it entails. Imagine the freedom of discovering why you have a chronic illness, were sexually abused, or seem to become ill so easily. You realize that the world and people around you are no longer (and never were) in control of your experiences.

You are the one that chose and packed your bags with talents and abilities that would help you awaken to your true potential. Every challenge was and is an opportunity to broaden your perspectives, accepting the Divine and limitless nature of who you truly are.

In all fairness to you, you might not believe that you did choose this reality. Even if you don’t believe it, I’d like to recommend the exercise anyway. Even as a creative endeavor, you are likely to discover something about yourself.

If you do believe you are the creator of your reality, you still might find the exercise reveals nuances and insights about your journey that could be quite helpful in making self-healing choices for yourself during this particular time.

Early on I thought, if I discovered I had actually chosen all the challenges my life seemed to present to me, I simply wouldn’t be able to bear it. I would see myself as a tyrant to myself. I would curl up in despair.

In truth, I found the opposite to be true. Exploring the possibility that I had chosen and accepted, and even created, some or all of my most profound experiences—difficult and easy—was empowering. If I had created it, I was completely free to recreate it and fulfill my intentions.?? Recognizing and embracing myself as the creator was pivotal to my healing.  My self-healing was exponentially more powerful. I explored in greater depth and with greater confidence my own healing gifts and applied them with a sense of knowing that what I created could be recreated.

I have seen others discover the same for themselves. To know you have chosen your life (the wonderful and the challenging parts of life) is to know that you are the one that can fulfill it—you are the chosen one that chose yourself.

Before you go looking for your limiting beliefs, let’s consider why they exist in the first place. In order to experience life on earth, we have to do so within limits. Without limits, you wouldn’t know if you are a human or a tree. There are great mystical experiences in which you can transcend those limits, remembering that we are one with everything. While those mystical moments are wonderful, so are the experiences of our limits.

Limits create definition so that we can interact with each other. That can be great fun. For example it feels really good to kiss someone. It can also be painful. It can really hurt when you bump into someone. Limits in and of themselves aren’t good or bad. They are simply necessary for experiencing life on earth. In fact, limits can help you to feel safe and that is how many limits are created.

For example, when you were a child you were probably taught that when you cross major intersections on foot, you should do so with the lights. That limit was set so that you would be safe, and it is probably ingrained in your conscious and subconscious mind.

Now let’s say that your daughter or granddaughter just ran out into the street against traffic. I would bet that you aren’t going to think very hard about whether or not you should run out into the street to get her. You might run out to get her without stopping, looking for cars, or even thinking about it. You might very well break through your own limit of restraint and cross against the lights in order to protect her.

However, except in an emergency, you might find that your conditioning to cross with the lights is so strong that you have to consciously break that childhood limit. Let’s say the street is blocked off so you can cross at any time, with or against the lights. You might find it challenging to “break the law that is in your mind.”

When we get stuck because of a limit, some part of us knows we are going to have to go against what may have been keeping us safe in some way. Now the limit creates more danger than safety and we have to recondition ourselves. There can be a lot of internal resistance to that new conditioning, so a part of our subconscious mind keeps the belief hidden.

If you really want to get to those limiting beliefs to set them free, here are some of my suggestions:

1)    Know that the limits were once set for a reason and it may have been a very good one—even a way to protect you;
2)    Be willing to dive into your subconscious realms where those beliefs live;
3)    Be willing to acknowledge that the belief might still serve you in the right time and places; and
4)    Know that changing old beliefs requires risk, and consider if you are willing to give new (reframed) beliefs a real chance.

In my book, The Root of All Healing, I talk about some different ways to help you get to your deepest beliefs, feelings and truths—where those limits live. If you don’t have a copy, you can get one here.

I recommend reading Chapter One where you learn how to become a deeper observer of your own life. You’ll discover how to look at your reactions from a broader perspective. You’ll also read some stories about how quieting your mind can help you uncover your subconscious motivators and limiting beliefs.

In Chapter Three, we explore creativity. Creative activity helps your subconscious perspectives rise to the surface where they can be noticed and interpreted in terms of your life, motivators and choices.

Chapter Five focuses on getting to those deeper truths by learning how to ask questions that will get you there. I especially recommend pages 78-79, where I specifically address limiting beliefs and the problems with over-riding them rather than address them.

In Chapter Four on pages 48-50 I share a personal story in which I used my feelings as a doorway to greater self-understanding. Like me, your feelings are doorways to your subconscious mind and deserve your respect in your healing process.

In Chapter Two on page 24-25, I talk about how trance states can play a significant role in helping you accept new beliefs about your healing. What I don’t mention in the book that is also true is that trance states can also help you get to what you really believe and recognize the limits that may be causing you harm now.

In addition to the book, I recommend downloading a copy of my free report: Beating the Odds: 10 Beliefs That Can Short-Circuit Your Healing. Something there just might trigger an insight for you.

You can bring your limiting beliefs into view. If you are willing to meet them with your compassion and understanding, they are more likely to rise to the surface of your consciousness and allow you to reframe them in ways that will be more helpful to you in your self-healing journey.