If I could give you a pill to make you healthy would you take it?  Sure you would, wouldn’t you? 

What if I told you it had no active ingredients and it was just a placebo?  Most people today probably wouldn’t take an inactive sugar pill.

But new research suggests that even when people know that they are taking a placebo they still get positive effects from it.  

I know that this sounds incredible, but NLP has recognized for about 25 years that there is a certain powerful effect that occurs when people set an intention and take responsibility for the results that they are producing.  Just doing something, almost anything different than what you have been doing is often enough to effect the

whole system through and through.  The therapeutic wizard, Milton Erickson used to teach his medical students that the primary goal is to get the patient to take some small, but significant, new action. 

How can this be?  Our human bodies are very complex systems.  Complex enough that we generate the experience of consciousness.  But did you know that what you think also affects physical reality? 

Psycho-somatic medicine recognizes that the mind has the power to literally make us sick.  The good news is that that means we also have the power to heal.  Our immune system is in a communication relationship with our mind.  Stress can suppress our immune system response.  Relaxation and recovery can improve it. 

It seems like many of us in the Western world have forgotten what it means to take good care of ourselves.  We eat too much; we work too hard; we allow ourselves to get stressed out.  Our aspirations and our culture’s norms drive us to live lifestyles that are less than healthy.    In the Hopi language, this is called “Koyaanisqatsi” meaning “life out of balance.”  We are out of balance in our personal, family, work, community, and spiritual lives.  But we find it hard to see because we are so programmed by our workplace, our societal expectations, TV, and the advertisements we live with every minute of every day to accept all this as "normal." 

The way we think changes the way we feel and the way we behave.  And the way we behave changes our bodies as well as our environment.  But you can’t just get healthier by wishful thinking.   Or can you? 

In the Navajo language they have a word, Hózhó, that means beautiful balance or wholeness.  This, to me, sounds like something what we need more of.  Try out the following experiment for yourself and find out if it improves your life.

Hózhó Experiment:

You may want to print this so that you can carry it with you as you walk away from your computer. 
Before you start, notice how your body feels now.  Take a snapshot of your energy in your body at this moment in time.

Steps:

  1. Stand up and make a moment right now to take three deep breaths. (No, I mean it.  Really do this experiment.)
  2. And as you continue breathing, relax and imagine connecting your heart to your mind.
  3. Now, allow yourself to visualize your body and mind as whole and healthy, step into it and begin to slowly walk around in the space wherever you are right now feeling what that would feel like if it were already so.  Walk with as much beauty, ease, and grace as you can.
  4. When it feels right, stop walking and tell yourself one thing you can do to simplify or make things more graceful in your real life.
  5. Take another breath and relax into life for a moment while you imagine what it would be like to live with this new change.
  6. If you decide to do so, put a commitment on your calendar to practice this new simplification or gracefulness in action.
  7. Take another deep breath and go on about your business.


Congratulations you just took a medicine more powerful that any sugar pill and twice as sweet.  Your prescription from Medicine Man Keith is to take two of these each day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, until you either find your life rebalanced or decide that you are too incongruent to commit to taking good care of yourself.  In which case, call me and I’ll help you troubleshoot. 

Contact me if you want to learn more free ways to re-balance your "out of balance" life.   512-507-5464

~ Keith


Keith Fail is an NLP Trainer, Coach, and Master Modeler in Austin, Texas, and Director of NLP Resources Austin.  He writes and speaks about tools and techniques that help people to communicate better and live their dreams.  He works with teams and individuals to create contexts and communities that support a better world.  He can be reached at +1-512-507-5464.