When you are sick, you turn to your doctor for an answer. But when your doctor doesn’t have the answer, where do you turn to? You see one doctor after the other and pretty much give up and face the fact that you may never know what disease you have and feel that you will have to live with the symptoms for the rest of your life. This really is the case for thousands, if not millions of people out there.

More than often, most people end up turning to a form of spiritual practice. A spiritual practice does not have to mean a religious practice. In my eyes, a spiritual practice is any type of practice that brings you a greater sense of inner peace and happiness. A spiritual practice is that which heals the body from inside out and places your attention on you and the solution, rather than you and the problem. When you are not getting answers from outside sources, that signifies that the answers to your problems lie within you, so you must search inside.

So how exactly do you use spirituality to heal yourself? The remedy is quite simple…although everything in life is easier said than done. If you know me as a person, or even from reading any of my other posts, you have heard me and will probably hear me say it another million times, is that happiness is the key to healing. Doesn’t matter whether you have a cold or a terminal illness, if you are happy, you will feel better. If I could turn happiness into a pill, I would, because really that is the secret ingredient.

Spiritual practices, such as meditation, yoga, forms of art, music, poetry, etc. all ask you to explore within and find that which makes you happy. Through such practices, you will see that true happiness comes from within and not from external factors. Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” Our physiologies and minds are capable of anything and doing everything. My yoga teacher Shashi always says that our bodies have their own pharmaceutical company that works round the clock for us.

Through various inner development practices, you can cultivate that inner intelligence that our bodies have to nourish a healing environment from within. Next time you feel down or know a loved one who is suffering and whether or not there are answers to the problems, look within and find that inner happiness and peace. By enlivening that inner intelligence, great healing can take place. Keep in mind that our bodies are extremely intelligent.

Health and happiness,

Varsha