Today

Today I’m getting my Epic Pass for the upcoming ski and snowboard season. I’m an avid snowboarder. I enjoy it so much I even instruct part time up at Beech Mountain in North Carolina. The Epic pass is a season pass for unlimited use of seven resorts around the Vail area in Colorado:  Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Keystone, Heavenly, Northstar and Arapahoe Basin. I usually spend most of my time at Vail, Beaver Creek and Keystone for the night skiing.

My holistic Gastroenterologist, Dr. Zarin Azar, will not likely recommend me snowboarding this soon. Among other concerns is that I’m anemic presently. My hemoglobin is 10.9 which is low. Ultimately, I’m not producing red blood cells yet, and when your muscles break down from strength exercises, they need red blood cells for your muscles to recover properly. Not to mention, that your solar plexus radiates nerve energy throughout your body which helps your body get what it needs to be healthy, and she wants 100% of my body’s healing power to be focused on my Crohn’s ulcers. She is not recommending exercise quite yet.

Although I haven’t had a blood test for a few weeks, I’m certain my hemoglobin hasn’t risen to where it needs to be yet due to the fact that I have other issues affecting my monthly cycle if you know what I mean. When that gets back to normal, I suspect I’ll be producing red blood cells again. My next blood test isn’t until January 10 and I expect to reduce my Sediment Rate to 20 or below and increase my Hemoglobin to 12 or above, which would be normal for both. This would be a great indicator that my ulcers are well on their way to healing. When that happens, exercise is more feasible.

In any regard, I’m still buying the Epic Pass and will begin working on scheduling a trip for the middle of January!

Also, last weekend I went up to Beech Mountain for the Instructor’s kick off meeting. All the ski and snowboard instructors for the season attend. We complete the employment paperwork and get our employee identification and jackets in preparation for this year’s season. I attended of course, but I only agreed to about 50% of the time that I instructed last year. Even without Crohn’s, I had already decided not to commit to as many weekends this season as last. Last year, although it was very fun, it simply was too much of a commitment based upon the time requirements of my real job. Also, I like to travel to different places to snowboard, so committing to instructing almost every weekend prevented me from doing so.

This year, I agreed to instruct about half of the weekends between December and March. This will give me the flexibility to travel to other snowboard locations, take a break, or just rest so that I don’t over stress my body and prevent my healing progress.

If you have been reading my blogs, you may have noticed that I am doing phenomena since my Crohn’s flare up just a short time ago this past September. I not only had severe inflammation, but it was my first ever medical diagnosis of the disease. I have stabilized the symptoms by diet, rest and managing stress. This allowed me to wean off of the medication within two months of the diagnosis, which is unheard of.

One of the reasons I believe that I’m doing so well is that I expect to heal. I am convinced that the body can heal itself when given the right circumstances better than any medicine can. Dr. Sigmon had a patient that has done so, and David Klein's book talks about others that have done so as well. So there is no reason why I can't do so. 

Medicine is meant to treat symptoms, it doesn’t cure. The body is what cures and heals itself if you treat it properly. Certainly, the diet I have adopted has a lot to do with why I am progressing so well. But another reason why I am progressing is due to my positive expectations. An expectation creates actions and circumstances that bring about a result consistent with the expectation every time.

The circumstances or situations that occur within our lives do so because we have thoughts consistent with the circumstances first. Let's look at an example, such as your body weight. Your weight today is a result of the behavior or actions of your recent past. Your behavior of the recent past is a reflection of your current beliefs, which are a result of your past thoughts. Ultimately, your past thoughts created the chain of events that resulted in your current weight.

However, if you decide today that you are going to lose weight, and you know that failure isn't an option, then you immediately begin to change your thoughts. The changes include how you have been thinking about your food intake and exercise, among other things. Your beliefs know that improvements in this regard will result in weight loss.

In this example, only after your behavior changes will the result begin to manifest physically. So if you start acting as if you're one hundred thirty pounds when you are actually one hundred sixty pounds, you will become one hundred thirty pounds eventually. But if you continue to behave as if you're one hundred sixty pounds, you will remain there.

I absolutely believe that every result or effect in my life has been as a result of my thoughts. So if I think it, believe it, and expect it, it will happen. Now there is a difference between hoping for something and knowing it will result. Using the weight loss example again, when you really decide that you will accomplish your weight-loss goal and you know that nothing will prevent you from achieving it, when you truly know and expect it as sure as the sun rising in the morning, then you attain it, don't you?

But if you say, "I'll try to lose weight" or "I'll give it a shot," then you likely will not lose weight of any significance, because the undertone and true belief is that it's difficult and won't likely happen. You must decide for certain, and then have the faith that your desired result is certain, or you will achieve what you know to be certain instead.

I saw Joel O’Steen once with my friend Mark Kopaz in Tampa, Florida. Joel used a great analogy as it relates to power of faith. He talked about the differences between behavior of a married couple that was trying to have a child and one that was expecting a child. The one expecting a child was already preparing the baby’s room; buying furniture; getting their child care figured out, etc.

But the one that was trying to have a child, that had yet to conceive, didn’t do these things. He talked about faith as having the desired expectation. Meaning that if the couple that wants a child because considering it as eminent, than that level of faith would be more apt to bring about their desired result.

My expectation is for the results of the blood test on January 10 to be that which confirms I’m well on my way to being healed, and therefore, snowboarding won't be harmful to my healing process. So I'm purchasing the Epic Pass and I don't consider it a financial risk at all.  I also am going to be scheduling the trip; purchasing the plane tickets and reserving the room. I am already acting as the results are guaranteed; just like the couple that is expecting a child.

I’ve decided that I will go on a very strict healing diet starting tomorrow through Christmas. My commitment to my blood test results has already influenced a different behavior than without it. I have been cheating a little and adding some foods that really are meant for post healing. But if I expect to be healed enough to snowboard this winter, I cannot cheat any more. 

Just think about this for a moment. If you had to consciously think about needing air when you breathe, or pumping the blood within you, or even what each organ has to do in order to function, you’d be dead within seconds of being born. But our subconscious coordinates all of our vital functions without ever needing a conscious thought from us. It knows that to do and does it. Our subconscious also knows how to direct our bodies to heal!

I’m convinced that once a belief is fully formed consciously, it is then stored in the subconscious mind and the subconscious doesn't make decisions about true or false, or if something is right or wrong. The subconscious takes the conclusions of the conscious mind as fact. I intend to use the power of my subconscious mind to assist in my healing. 

By the way, I believe it is within subconscious mind that we are connected to God, and having faith is how I go from wanting to heal, to knowing I am going to heal. If you’d prefer to consider all of what I’ve been saying as a form of prayer, that works tooJ

Ultimately, I get the feedback from my doctor on the blood results usually within about 3 business days, so somewhere around January 13, I’ll make sure to blog the results!