First of all, I will need to warn you: this post is for open minded people only, people that care about their happiness, not about money, cars or other insignificant goals. HAPPINESS!

It would be absolutely impossible for me to write how many amazing things I’ve learned from this book and after applying them, how much my own life changed. So much so that I bought a copy to each one of my loved ones and did not give up until they read it 🙂

Today, I’m not planning to explain how “Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof That You Can Heal Yourself”, written by Dr. Lissa Rankin, helped me manage my stress response, thought me that happiness is preventive medicine, much more effective than any other prescription out there, made me believe in the power of meditation and how I can allow my body to heal by triggering body’s natural self-repair mechanisms, encouraged me to hug my loved ones and express my gratitude since these simple actions make your brain release dopamine, the “happy hormone”. To learn all this you’ll need to read the book. BUT, I can walk you through an easy exercise in order for you to identify the aspects of your life that might be triggering your stress response and predisposing you to illnesses. It’s true what they say, stress CAN make you sick!

Everyone on board? Let’s begin …

Do you know what a cairn is?

Stone Cairn

A cairn is a stack of balanced stones you see marking hiking trails or sacred landmarks. A well-built cairn can withstand the crashing of the waves, yet if you move one stone too far out of balance, the whole thing crashes. All the stones depend upon the others for stability. They are strong and fragile at the same time.

Just like a cairn, your body is awe-inspiring strong and resilient, but at the same time fragile and easy to tip off balance. If your hole health is a stack of balanced stones, your body is the stone on top, the most precarious, the most likely to tumble if other stones shift.

Health Cairn

The foundation stone is your Inner Pilot Light, as Dr. Lissa Rankin called it, it’s the inner knowing, the healing wisdom of your body and soul that guides you back to better health. On top of the Inner Pilot Light lie all the other contributing factors that affect your health: relationships, work/life purpose, creativity, spirituality, sexuality, money, mental health and the environment. At the very top is where your body’s physical health rests. Everything is held in balance by Love from your family and friends but most importantly for yourself, Gratitude for what and who you have in your life, Service to help those around you and Pleasure to make the whole damn thing more fun and exciting!

This is not some mombo jumbo Zen healing BS … this is what worked for me and helped me improve my mind and body. And all the sceptics out there will quickly find out everything is backed up by scientific proof.

Now here’s our little exercise:

1. Print 7 copies of the Health Cairn above

2. Each day of the week, colour in the stones in the Health Cairn that you nurtured that day. For example, if you meditated or prayed, fill in your Spirituality stone. If you had good sex, fill in Sexuality. If you took good care of your physical body, exercised, ate healthily, fill in Physical Health. If you took time to be a good mum or nurtured a relationship with a friend, fill in your relationship stone. If all you did is work, fill in your Work/Life purpose stone, and so on.

3. At the end of the week, pay attention to where you are focusing most of your time and energy. Are you skipping the same stones every day? Which stones need your attention? Is your Health Cairn out of balance?

Believe me…I know! It’s a whole lot easier to ignore your body’s alarm signals and postpone taking care of yourself until you actually are forced by an illness to stop. And then, simply make an appointment to your doctor to “fix you” with a whole lot of useless treatments. That is, if he can still fix you…

Why aren’t we all more aware that more money, more cars won’t make us happier? Why aren’t we more aware of what truly is important in our life and what gives our whole existence meaning?

Find your purpose and work towards it! Without fail!