What is it and what are the signs?

Inflammation refers to your body’s process of fighting against things that harm it, such as infections, injuries, and toxins, in an attempt to heal itself. When something damages your cells, your body releases chemicals that trigger a response from your immune system.

Based on visual observation, the ancients characterized inflammation by five cardinal signs, namely redness, swelling, heat, pain, and loss of function. This according to the NIH.

1)In Chinese Medicine inflammation relates to heat. Whenever there is pain in the body it means there is a stagnation in the flow of Life Force, energy, or Qi.

Proper flow = no pain.

Things that cause an improper flow are things like injury, toxins, poor nutrition, emotions, to name a few.

We have choice over some of these things. We can choose clean, healthy, whole foods for example. In doing so it supports our digestive system so we don’t have ‘loss of function’. Good choices also support healthy Liver function which helps Qi flow.

We can move our body so the minor inflammatory processes we don’t even know about such as the micro-tears in our muscles from simply walking around the block. That walk also assists the lymph system in flushing out the inflammation.

With each passing year, I realize how intelligent the human body is. How so much goes right all day every day.

Sure, there are concerns and problems that crop up, but they are meant to be moved through.

How do we ‘move through’?

2)What I’ve observed in my 30 years as a healing professional, and research bears this out, is that when something is out of balance, it usually needs at least one of three things to rebalance:

• Something needs to be removed (toxins, chemicals, old wounds/trauma, anger/frustration/irritation, processed food, too much sugar etc.)
• Something needs to be added (whole greens to cleanse, nutrient dense whole foods to nourish cells back to health, self-acceptance/compassion, connection, enough water, movement, rest etc.)
• A combination of one and two.

It’s usually #3 that offers the greatest benefit. This approach is not as fast as taking a pill, but a pill doesn’t always work. And a pill doesn’t get to the root of the problem.

When we don’t get to the root, in the body’s infinite intelligence (coded in every cell), it will need to put forth a louder wake-up call so that we take a look at the 1, 2, 3’s of the situation.

3)Making elevated health choices is obvious. What’s less obvious is being willing to release old anger, or emotional wounding as well as the conscious choice to build the muscle of self- acceptance, forgiveness, and compassion.

Lots of people have inflammation. Our society is currently pretty inflammatory. And nobody likes it.

I don’t know many people who like the heightened levels of anger and bitterness being hurled day in and day out.

I know people who realize that mobilizing anger into a force for good is a better choice.

4)If there were such a thing as the Source of Life ‘texting’ humanity, I imagine it would read something like this:

“Hey listen up, it’s a lot easier than you think to release and redirect your anger, if you don’t know how, there are those that do, find them. You only need take care of your own anger. I’m texting everyone else to take care of theirs. I need all hands on deck, let’s transmute anger into a fuel unlike any you’ve seen in human history. A fuel brimming with my Light and Love. Then let’s see what we can create. Love, Your Source of Life”