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If you are in good health, you're balanced. If you are sick, you've lost some balance, temporarily I hope.

Hang with me here.

Picture yourself swinging between Yang and Yin over a precipice. When you stop swinging you see a ledge. You stand on it, safely.

Now, if you're unfamiliar with Eastern medicine, consider the Aristotelian Mean. Aristotle advocated following a path between two extremes. If you swing too far in either direction you are apt to get sick.

Since I have skimmed the surface of Eastern Philosophy, Aristotle, Stephen Hawkings' string theory, brain research, religions, meditation, and Western medical science, I am no authority, but I can show you how they relate to good health.

First, Yang refers to the masculine, left-brained energy in everyone and Yin the right-brained, feminine energy. When these two are out of balance, things go awry. Acupuncture is the medical practice of releasing blocked flow of energy to regain balance and good health. Obviously, it works.

String theory, I think, says everything in the universe consists of strings of energy. Nothing is solid. (Phew, wish I could understand physics!)

Brain research shows three major parts to the human brain: reptile, limbic, and neo-cortex. We use our reptile brain whenever we feel our survival threatened. (Explains continual warfare.) The limbic system, our midbrain or early mammalian brain, stores our emotions. We use the neo-cortex for thinking, forward planning and problem solving. All three brains are interdependent and function together. The neo-cortex houses the right and left brain. When either of these is too far out of balance we suffer.

You may know, slightly, an accountant or computer programmer who is so left-brained he is practically a hermit. Or you may know an artist who is so right-brained he forgets to pay his rent and is often in some kind of trouble.

I think most physicists use all three brains in balance. I may be wrong.

Experiments with meditation have shown some amazing results. Dr. Richard Davidson of the W.M. Keck Laboratory for Functional Brain Imaging and Behavior studied the brain waves of some Tibetan Buddhist monks, including the Dalai Lama. He found unusually high amounts of gamma brain waves?brain waves that increase compassion for others.

Compassion comes out of good balance and good health.

Bill Harris, Director of Centerpointe, created a sound track designed to create the same brain waves experienced by the Buddhist monks. I have benefited from Centerpointe's sound tracks. They put my left and right brains in balance and kicked out my shy bone by broadcasting my words subliminally into each ear at different rates of speed.

Learning Strategies, Inc. has a program called Spring Forest QiGong that teaches you how to heal yourself whenever you get sick. Guess how?balancing energy! I recommend the book, "Born a Healer" by Chunyi Lin.

Finally, there's nothing like Western medicine when you tear a meniscus or get a concussion, among other off-balance things.

In our Western World fear hovers below the surface. The more money and power we have, the more fear. We are not openly afraid. It shows up as anxiety in our dreams and in our bodies.

Anxiety is catching, like bird flu. I spent a lifetime hunching up my shoulders, anxiously expecting to be yelled at for something I did wrong. My shoulders finally gave out. I had them replaced. Now they set off security alarms. Sweet revenge?

Since you have read this far, you will be fascinated by "Does Mind-Over-Body Healing Work?" It's an article by an African professor of Western Medicine that begins, "Life is energy, and all living beings are energy beings."

Google the title. You may be surprised by his thesis.

Here's to your good balance and good health.

Copyright 2006 Cole's Poetic License