Beyond Clean Eating: The Emotional Foundations of Health

Subtitle: And Why We Didn't Keep Tapping!

If you had to guess, what percentage of your health is based on availability of clean healthy food, air, and water? In other words, your physical environment. And how much is based on your mental and emotional state-of-being?

Before I read Feelings Buried Alive Never Die, by Karol Truman, I would have said at least 90 percent of good health is based on physical elements. My main efforts at keeping my family and myself healthy were focused on meeting these physical needs: vitamin and mineral supplements, clean whole foods, and minimizing exposure to toxins.

One of the main lessons for me in this book came from the story of a soldier in World War II and his encounter with a healthy concentration camp inmate at the war's end. Everybody assumed the prisoner had only been there for a few months, but they later learned he'd been there for six years. His story was horrendous—he had watched his wife and children be executed while he was kept alive because he could speak several languages and was therefore useful to his captors. As a lawyer, he had observed the effects of hatred and resentment on the physical health of clients in divorce and inheritance cases. In the moment he knew he would be kept alive, he chose simply to forgive and love. Everyone. Even his captors. This was the only difference between himself and the rest of the emaciated, sick prisoners that the US soldiers found when they opened the concentration camp.

The author asked: who do you think lives better—the happy, loving person living on junk food or the fearful, anxious person eating an organic salad and cleanly produced meat? I had to flip my percentages! And my focus.

If you've been following my story, you know that EFT, the tapping technique, worked profoundly for me and my husband. (Funny note—when I told him about writing these stories, he didn't remember the money one!) Obviously, since it worked so well, we'd keep employing it for many things, right?

Well, no, actually. The protocol had us tap, tap, tap on twelve different points on the body while saying the belief we wished to erase—for every belief or feeling. Then, it required us to tap, tap, tap again on the same twelve points while repeating the belief we wished to install—for every belief or feeling. Honestly, it felt too time-consuming and onerous, even though it had proven so effective. There had to be a more efficient way!

The next significant resource in my search was the previously mentioned book, Feelings Buried Alive Never Die. The title says it all, doesn't it? Suppressed, unacknowledged, or unexpressed feelings don't just sit there; they grow and expand. Every time another instance of that feeling comes along it gets added to the heap, wherever it's been stored in the body. This book addressed beliefs, too, but put heavy emphasis on releasing feelings.

When we first read it, the information felt new and revolutionary. Now, there is abundant research supporting the idea that suppressed emotions create diseases, pain, and other uncomfortable symptoms in our bodies. Constipated?—What are you resisting; in what area of life are you holding back, putting on the brakes, stopping the flow? Coughing?—What do you have to say but "can't" about feeling nervous, critical, or annoyed? Asthma? The book offered a list of ten possibilities. These weren't exhaustive lists, but rather patterns that showed up regularly in the author's practice for given conditions.

This book not only had lists of diseases with their known underlying emotions and beliefs, and lists of feelings with their beneficial replacements, but it also provided a remedy for making the swap. It's called "The Script"—a prayer-like text running four or five paragraphs, attempting to name all the roots and locations of the detrimental thing that needs to be released, followed by a paragraph naming the beneficial things to fill the void where something had been removed.

It was effective. But long. It still felt too time-consuming to roll through the script every time I needed to release something. Eventually, I thought, You know what? My brain has this script memorized by now. Instead of repeating the whole thing, I'll just say, Brain, script away X and replace it with Y!

There, now that's efficiency! And, yes, it worked also. I'd heard that we use only a small portion of the capability of our brains, so I thought I'd just hand off the work to the subconscious!

I used this tool for a good long while, recommending the book to many people. Though I don’t use The Script anymore, I still recommend this book. I value the lists as a resource, now available in a handy card pack on a ring, and I deeply appreciate what I learned from Karol Truman. In addition to an effective tool for healing, this author opened my eyes to new ways of thinking about familiar passages of The Holy Bible, which I began to read with new understanding. I’ll share some of those experiences and insights in my next post: The Forgiveness Factor.