Self-Love and the Immune System By Marie Manuchehri

The most beautiful dance in the human body pulses within our immune system.  Trillions of cells come together, similar to a highly organized waltz, exchanging precious information, which sends signals to our organs on how best to function. Cells that have forgotten the dance are quickly retired. This causes our health to swing into high gear, allowing us to live longer than ever before.

Sometimes our body doesn’t recognize slow-dancing cells and so their weaker forms send the wrong message to our organs, eventually causing the immune system to fail.  If this happens, our bodies may experience dis-ease: exhaustion, weak digestion, and little real rest and recovery from simple or sometimes complicated health issues.

Eventually, lack of sleep and increasing symptoms of ill health send us to our doctors. Modern medicine’s cure for a weakened immune system is to suppress the healthy, dancing cells until all cells can come back together and take a synchronized step. The way holistic medicines heal the immune system is to retrain the cells that have forgotten their steps and integrate them into the dance.  It’s tricky for either modern or holistic medicine to organize a waltz with trillions of partners, as is the identification and treatment of immune system health problems.

If your health or the health of someone you love has suffered, regardless of your choice of medical approaches, there is more you can do, all on your own to speed up the healing process and get your cells out on the dance floor.

Everything in the universe, is made of energy, including our bodies. Moving energy throughout the body is critical to healing.  Emotions play a key role in the movement and transfer of energy; they release stagnant energy, helping prevent and heal disease, while also receiving vital life force energy, which is needed for cellular rejuvenation.

The science of energy medicine teaches us that our organs and other physiological systems sense and store emotions. The immune system’s intelligence observes feelings we have about ourselves, and can improve its health when we develop authentic feelings of self-love.

Simply thinking kind words isn’t enough to move large amounts of vital energy into the body and stimulate a healthy immune response.  Experiencing a sincere loving emotion for one’s self can.

In your body are thousands of energy centers that receive vibrant life-force energy while freeing stagnant or toxic energy from your body that it no longer needs. These energy centers, called chakras, rotate in a clockwise direction, which allows for the transfer of this fundamental force. With more than three thousand small chakras and seven large primary chakras, your body is a highly organized energetic maze, responding to your every thought, feeling, and choice.

The chakras are cone shaped and located in the energy field of the human body. Their tips point deep into the body, while their bases lie just beneath the skin. The primary chakras influence large anatomical areas of the body, and are connected to the emotional complexity of any one human life. The seven chakras are each a different primary color, and their bases are approximately two and a half inches in diameter.  They lie in the center of your body, forming a line of color from the top of your head to the pelvic floor.

The smaller chakras are about the size of a nickel and influence smaller areas of the body, such as the joints, cartilage, muscles, subcutaneous tissue, and acupuncture points. Though they’re small, their spinning is powerful. They glow a shimmering silver color while delivering surges of energy to specific locations in the body.

The third primary chakra is located in the solar plexus, between the opening of our rib cage. Anatomically, it oversees the gall bladder, spleen, stomach, liver, pancreas, and small intestine. Emotionally, the third chakra is about self-love, because in addition to the organs it influences, it directs energy to the glands in your body (adrenal, ovaries, testes, prostate, thyroid, penile, hypothalamus, and pituitary; the pancreas is considered both a gland and an organ). Glands release hormones into the body. Hormones act as tiny messengers, regulating the function of your organs, and so contribute significantly to the health of your immune system.

Surprisingly, 80 percent of your immune system’s functions are located in your thirty-foot long intestinal tract. A healthy intestinal tract is necessary for proper absorption of nutrients and for releasing harmful waste products. If it functions poorly, toxins (unhealthy substances such as processed foods, alcohol, and environmental pollutants) build up on the intestinal wall, where they are absorbed into the body.

Thoughts and feelings about ourselves, along with environmental toxins, play a key role in the health of our immune system. Self-loving thoughts and feelings vastly improve the immune system. When we are disappointed in ourselves, or react emotionally to the negative things that others say to us, we weaken our immune systems and hold onto toxins. To some degree or another, all of us need to work on experiencing self-love to maintain or improve our health.

Self-Love Exercise

The trick to feeling bona fide love for yourself is to think of something or someone whom you love unconditionally— perhaps a child, a beloved pet, or a magical part of the world. Unconditional love means that if your daughter keeps you up at night for months when she has colic as a baby, or wrecks your car when she’s sixteen, you still love her to pieces and always will.

If it’s a pet you’re thinking of, you care deeply for it as you would your child. Even if this four-legged animal soiled the rug or bit your neighbor, you adore it and hope it has a long and happy life with you.

If it’s a piece of land or body of water you’re thinking of—a magical, faraway place, or a mountain you see every day from your car when crossing a bridge—you can be grateful for its existence and feel a warmth in your heart every time you visit it in person or in your mind.

Now feel how much you love this person, pet, or place, and let the feeling expand. Allow the emotion to grow, as if you were holding the object of your love. When you let your-self feel this unconditional love, you’ll find that very little can hold you back from intense, profound emotions.

Now transfer these intense yet warm feelings into your body, but just for you. That’s right, let the unconditional emotions of love you feel for someone or something else move into your body, and allow yourself to feel comfortable experiencing these feelings toward yourself. You are just as wonderful as the other people or places to which you direct your love. You, too, are a blessed and irreplaceable part of creation. You are amazing! Now let yourself feel that. Feel it every day just for a few moments. Feeling even a small amount of self-love every day can make huge positive changes towards a healthy immune system.

Photo by epSos.de