Emotional healing is no easy road. In varying degrees, anxiety and depression are ingrained patterns of behavior, reactive attempts to deal with stress that become increasingly ineffective, and eventually, life-impairing.

These patterned responses are particularly resistant to change as they are associated with emotional-command circuitry in the brain that automatically activates the body’s survival system in response to stress or certain triggers.

Human being are fully equipped inside however, with everything needed to unlearn these responses, and self-direct change and own healing.

In Part 1, we looked at reasons why it’s essential to tune into your inner-world experience more than you do outer-world signals, in particular, to become aware of any prevailing mindsets, personal or cultural, that are limiting.

The bottom line is that foods have an immense impact on your emotions, moods and physical health, all of which directly impact your ability to deal with not only challenges, and day to day stressors, but also issues in your relationships.

Findings show that nutrition deficiencies cause biochemical conditions in the brain and body that raise stress to toxic levels, fostering depression and anxiety and other emotional (and physical) disturbances. More specifically, the culprit is chronic inflammation of the brain and body.

Chronic Inflammation, a public health issue?

Inflammation itself is the body’s natural immune response to harmful stimuli, an automatic initial defense of the body, without which wounds would never heal.

• When acute, inflammation is a healthy process that is designed to restore balance by containing harmful irritants that would otherwise spread and harm the body; at the same time, it moves restorative agents, such as white blood cells, to the region to allow healing of injury, infection, stress, etc., to take place.
• In contrast, chronic inflammation is a prolonged condition that attacks healthy cells and tissues instead of protecting them; it can lead to a host of diseases, among others, diabetes, asthma, heart disease, arthritis, autoimmune and neurological problems.
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If you’re not already exercising, and wish to make exercise part of your lifestyle, you may be wondering how you will ever find the energy, the will or even the time to exercise.

If so, you first need reasons to love exercise for its many benefits so you can begin to energize your heart and mind to fully embrace, and welcome a balanced exercise program into your life, for its many benefits to your physical and emotional wellbeing.

Naturally, the next step is to talk to your doctor about taking a fitness test, to determine if there are any exercises that are unsafe or off limits for you. [Hopefully a doctor that values a preventive, holistic approach to primary care...]

And now, to really get started, here are 12 tips or guidelines to follow, and more and more, to enjoy making exercise an integral part of your lifestyle:

You’ve heard it before, and increasingly, doctors and therapists are recommending it: Exercise is one of the healthiest steps you can take to improve your life, health and emotional well-being. It not only helps you maintain a healthy body and weight, it also has proven benefits in increasing your happiness and even improving your relationships.

If you’re already exercising, you may want to improve your consistency, and spend less time making excuses or dreading what’s involved. Wouldn’t it be great to enjoy and appreciate its value to you, your health and your happiness?

You can. Check into how you may energize your love and appreciation for exercise. And, if you are just getting started, here are 12 tips to help you make exercise part of your lifestyle.

Regardless your fitness level, however, it’s important to work toward putting together an exercise regimen that is balanced. What’s that entail? A balanced exercise program is one that includes the three essential components of physical health: endurance, strength, and balance and flexibility.

Believe it or not, you are in a perfect place in your life, exactly where you need to be.

If that doesn’t feel true, you may not be exercising your capacity for conscious acceptance as a springboard for making optimal choices, or may not understand how it can serve you as a bridge or anchor, to realizing the larger vision of where you aspire to be your life (whether you know what that is or not).

In Part 1, we looked at conscious acceptance, and how it can empower you to respond to disappointments and challenges in consciously positive ways. Considering the life-shaping power of responses, that’s big.

In this post, we look at three factors that shape how you respond – your beliefs, choices and actions – and how acceptance can play a vital role in cultivating these key abilities, so that they more fully support you to take the shortest, most expedient path to living a life of balance, healing and transformation, or what psychologist Abraham Maslow would call self-actualization.

How does conscious acceptance maximize your beliefs, choices and actions?

• Like an anchor, acceptance grounds your sense of self in mind- and body-calming core beliefs.