Guarding The Five Gates

(Part 1)

by Michelle M Pearson

As we are continuing in our series, "The High Fives to Health", we turn our attention to an often overlooked foundational health truth, which is the effect your personal atmosphere has on your health and on having a happy life.

Some of the most powerful lessons I learned as I turned away from the "pressure-cooker" life filled with looming diseases were the lessons I learned about "Guarding the Five Gates."

The five gates I am speaking of are your senses. LIFE starts in your heart and your heart is fed by what comes in through your five senses:

1) SIGHT -

What you look on day and night is what imprints on your brain, in your mind, and in your heart. Out the abundance of what is imprinted, you will speak and act. In other words, what is continually being imprinted through your eyes is one of the most influential factors on your choices either for health or for disease. It has never occurred to many people that they could actually be sick, diseased, or even struggling with weight issues because of what they watch and look at!

Case in point - if you are constantly watching shows and movies about other folks who struggle with their weight, their behavior, their lack of fidelity to marriage, "their disease" etc. - even if those shows are supposed to be counseling or coaching them to improve - your heart and mind will relate to those people - and you will feel comforted that you are not alone. BUT what you just did was identify with the very thing say you want free from. Listen...

IDENTITY is the key to your outcome in life!

Guard the EYE gate from receiving any input that is contrary to the healthy, prosperous, happy you that you desire. If what you are seeing does not match what the Word of God says about you... shut the gate. (That means you are NOT a big loser! You do not have a fear factor. You do not need to work out to insanity. And you are not a desperate housewife. Get the picture?)

2) SOUND -

Again, what comes in, impacts every thought and every decision. Sound can be a powerful ally in transforming your life. Did you know that sound or actually, frequency, is a destructive or constructive force? Yes, your physical cells, the cell structure in your entire body, responds in health or disease to what you hear!

Your body actually responds to what comes in the ears with neuro-chemical reactions. Those chemical reactions signal to your organ function, your nervous system, your immune system, and even your brain's response!

Music, for instance, can be a powerful weapon in your health turn-around when you learn to regulate your atmosphere with different types of music to produce certain body responses! Parents have known this about infants for years... remember singing lullabies at bedtime? Or how happy music can turn a fussing tot to dancing and smiles? Folks, it doesn't change as we age, we just forgot to employ it!

Here's a very important tip about sound and health: your body should be in maintenance and healing mode while you sleep. This is not the time to have anything coming in for your brain receptors to process and think on.

In our achievement-driven society, we have lots of folks training others to listen to books, music, even scripture, while they sleep so that the brain retains it better without distraction. Which is good in theory - but not consistent with God's design of the body! If you never stop working, the cleanup crew can't do it's job. Newsflash: it is OK not to be working 24/7! It WILL mess up your sleep cycles and your hormones!

(By the way, same thing with keeping the LIGHT on at night. Keeping a light, TV, or radio on at night is a horribly unhealthy practice many parents train their little ones in, mostly for their own convenience, that can cause all kinds of hormone disruptions by the time they are teens!)

Guard the gates in the day, but guard them at night too!

(To be continued in our next post...)