For years I have pondered what makes us sick and what heals us. What is the body's healing mechanism? Could we heal if we simply ate a superior diet? Would we heal if we got enough exercise and a good night's sleep? Would we heal if we cleaned up our emotional house all the while eating crappy foods and living a stressful life?

My conclusion in a nutshell and in order of priority is this: The physical, and tantamount being sleep, comes first and is the basis for anything else. Without a good night's sleep (sleep I said, not energy drinks) the body can't even begin to do repair work, be it physical or mental. Moving your body is secondary to sleep and it is essential to identify with the movement (think gardening, dancing, chopping wood, running around with your children, as opposed to going to a gym as a chore). Next is diet. A superior diet (no sugar, low or no grain, lots of greenies and raw stuff, no processed foods, only grassfed or no meat) is crucial for replacing damaged cells with healthy ones and promotes clarity of thinking and natural weight control. Without a healthful wholesome diet your damaged cells will simply soldier on. #1 and #2 are the easy ones to change, at least relatively; #3 is the one that requires hard work. This crowning element of the healing process consists of "checking under the hood," as author and coach Cheryl Richardson calls emotional spring cleaning. It involves examining and shedding self-sabotaging beliefs, limiting fears, dealing with emotional trauma - clearing your emotional attic. All this emotional muck creates stress and stress kills because it dumps too many stress hormones into your body on a continuous basis, which damages your cells. This work can be so profound and may need to be so drastic that you actually have to become "someone else," as researcher, chiropractor and author Joe Dispenza put at the recent Hay House conference I attended.

Ready?