Your body is your Temple

By Renee McLaughlin

When you came into this life your soul was gifted with one magnificent body in which to live and carry out its purpose. This body is essentially your soul’s house for the time you are here.

The human body is the most complex organism on earth. The number of processes that take place in it just for us to breathe, move, see, hear, digest, eliminate, think and simply stay alive is mind-boggling. And yet, as magnificent as our body is, so many of us hate it and treat it with complete disrespect.

We are at war with our bodies. We feed it dead, processed, chemical-laden food and wonder why we are heavy, tired and depressed. We tell the body we hate it. We hate our thighs, stomach, double chin, and cellulite. We forget that our cells are listening to everything we say and are responding to our thoughts by giving us exactly what we are complaining about.

We study the Law of Attraction and know we get what we focus on (and how we feel). Yet, somehow, many of us do not understand the Law includes how we think and feel about our bodies. Changing requires a paradigm shift in thinking.

Begin by feeling incredible gratitude for the body you were given. Sit and contemplate the awesome ability of your body to do everything it does. A powerful healer recently told me the feeling of gratitude is almost as powerful an energy as love. Because when you are feeling grateful for what you have, you can’t help but attract loving energy.

So, you start with gratitude and move on to loving your body completely. Tell it how much you love it, even the parts you want to change. This can be very difficult because we believe we are being dishonest. But remember; what you resist persists. Stop fighting against it. Instead, decide to love your body unconditionally and treat it like the sacred temple it is. Then watch it respond in kind.

Only allow fresh, clean food to enter it. Processed, chemical-laden food has no life-force energy to it. It is dead. The body doesn’t just need to get nutrients from the food we eat; it also needs to get the life-force energy. This is one reason why live, raw food is so energizing. It provides the life-force energy of the plants. Wouldn’t you want to nourish your temple with this kind of high resonance energy?

The body was designed to move, not to sit at a computer or desk for 8 hours straight. Movement allows the body to function optimally. You know you don’t feel good after sitting all day long. You feel sluggish and tired. Get up at least every hour and move. Take a short walk and stretch your muscles. Move more and notice how your body responds.

Sleep is an important aspect of health and one we Americans tend to ignore. Most adults need 6-8 hours of sleep every night to function optimally. When you don’t get enough good, restful sleep, the body doesn’t get the opportunity to regenerate and repair. You wake up feeling tired and groggy. Get into a routine of going to sleep at an hour that will give you the required amount of sleep. Take the time to relax before going to sleep by reading inspirational material or taking a warm bath. This allows the body to relax and know it’s time for sleep.

One of the biggest health issues we Americans struggle with is stress. Our lives are filled with stress and stress is one of the greatest destroyers of health. We can’t control the situations in life that tend to create stress. But we can learn to control our reactions to those situations. If we want to have a happy, vibrant temple, it’s imperative we build stress relievers into our day.

Taking a walk outside in nature is a wonderful way to relieve stress.

Meditation is also an effective stress-buster that has been practiced and studied for thousands of years. There are many books and courses that teach various meditation methods. Find one that appeals to you and do it. Your temple will thank you with a wonderful sense of calm and well-being.
Your soul came here with a mission and a purpose. Your body is the vehicle it was given in order to achieve that purpose. Doesn’t it deserve to be treated with love, gratitude and respect? Sometimes it simply takes a change in perspective to give you the motivation and attitude to change your lifestyle to one that is temple-affirming.

Renee McLaughlin, M.S. is a wellness coach and Senior T-Tapp Trainer with a practice in Roswell, and recently co-authored “Wake up,..Live the Life You Love” with Wayne Dyer and Deepak Chopra.