On June 14, about forty people gathered to hear Cindi Claypatch from The Health Realization Training Center.  Cindi has been working in the mental health field since the 1970’s, including work in chemical dependency, dual diagnoses programs and other types of therapy.  Although she loved her work, she realized she was burning out, and jumped at the opportunity to learn about Health Realization.

“Health Realization,” according to the literature from the Center, “is a philosophy that has been identified as a best practice for resilience or strength based programming.”  It “teaches people how to maintain their peace of mind regardless of what is happening in our lives.”

We all come into the world with core health, feeling good about ourselves.  Our mental health is uncontaminated and the essence of who we are is fine.  We innately have the gifts that we need to navigate the world.  Those gifts include common sense, wisdom, knowledge, creativity, self-esteem, instincts, mental health, intelligence, love and resilience. The core essence of our being is love.

Along the way, we find that many of those gifts are not recognized by the world as being important in our day to day dealings.  That’s when we need to turn back to our core health, to help us to evolve, accept new ideas, and bring us peace of mind.  It is there, always ready to rise,- the essence of who we are regardless of our circumstances, and accessible via a calm state of mind.

Achieving the calm state of mind is the tricky part.  We create our experiences and reality with thought.  We entertain many thoughts at once, especially when we are being asked to multi-task, or when we’re dealing with difficult issues.  Instead of throwing thoughts out, we go to our intellect and think harder in an effort to solve our problem.  We’re “in our heads.”    Our mind jumps from thought to thought, creating an atmosphere not of clarity, but of chaos.  It impedes our ability to clearly think through a problem, because we’re unable  to sort through all those thoughts, many of which are of no value in the situation.

We have to free out mind from that chaos.  It isn’t necessary to entertain all those thoughts.  We can easily navigate through life without many of them.  In order to find answers to our problems, we have to let our brain rest, let our intellect quiet down, and throw out some of that information that seems to bombard our brains.  Then we can go into our core health.  We can rely on old information, and our other innate gifts to clarify and solve the problems.   Think of how often we get a “gut” feeling that proves to be true.  That’s core health in action.

We have about 60,000 thoughts a day.  We can have lots of thoughts in the brain, but very little activity.  So it seems to follow that if we can eliminate the thoughts that aren’t productive, we actually can be more effective.  We’re thinking more clearly.  Another way to put it is, as Cindi said, “Don’t hop into every car, but just in the one that takes you where you want to go.”

We can’t control the mind, we can only calm it.  The more we learn how we operate, the better we’ll be.  If we notice “static in the attic”-that chaotic state of mind, we’ve already made a positive step.  If we see that what we’re doing isn’t working and become anxious or even depressed, we have choices.  We can blame the externals around us, which doesn’t help to alleviate the problem, and has the potential to exacerbate it.  We can seek security in our thoughts, and just keep welcoming more thoughts into our head.  Or we can look to our essence.  We have to find ways to calm our minds—take a walk, meditate, breathe deeply-whatever works for us.  We have to trust our instincts and intuition and allow common sense, wisdom and positive thinking to come through.   We have to believe in ourselves, in our core mental health, our intelligence and our inborn resiliency.  And we have to act out of love, which is the core essence.

So do a “check-up from the neck up”.  Find out what the noise is in the mind.   Then work to quiet it.  By learning to rely on our core health, we can maintain greater peace of mind and stay grounded no matter what life hands us.  That can lead to increased personal effectiveness and more creative thinking.  We can improve our relationships and reach out to others in a truly compassionate manner.  We can reduce stress and anxiety, which leads to better physical health. . . And who of us wouldn’t savor those things in our lives?

For more information about Health Realization, contact:

The Health Realization Training Center      (www.puc-mn.org)     612-823-5973