Multidimensional Healing: A 12-Week Program to Reverse and Prevent Autoimmune Disorders and Other Chronic Illnesses

Copyright © 2018 Dr. Toni Camacho.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

The information, ideas, and suggestions in this book are not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice. Before following any suggestions contained in this book, you should consult your personal physician. Neither the author nor the publisher shall be liable or responsible for any loss or damage allegedly arising as a consequence of your use or application of any information or suggestions in this book.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

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ISBN: 978-1-9822-1487-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-1488-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-1491-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018911620

Balboa Press rev. date: 06/06/2022

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part 1: Healing is Multidimensional

Chapter 1: Why a Multidimensional Approach to Health?

Chapter 2: More on the Mind/Body Connection

Chapter 3: The Role of Nutrition in Health

Chapter 4: The Role of Herbs in Healing

Chapter 5: The Role of the Environment in Health

Part 2: Understanding the Problem

Chapter 6: Who Gets Sick?

Part 3: The Solution

Chapter 7: How to Heal and Prevent Illness

Chapter 8: Gently Clear Toxins While Nourishing

Chapter 9: The Diet

Chapter 10: Restore Gut and Immune Health

Chapter 11: Minimize Environmental Toxins

Chapter 12: Improve Your Emotional Health

Chapter 13: Self-Love – The Heart of Healing

Part 4: Putting All Together – 12 Week Protocol To Health

Chapter 14: 12-Week Step by Step Program to Health

Appendix A: Five Element Meridian Stretches

Appendix B: Deep Breathing Exercises

Appendix C: Mindfulness Meditation

Appendix D: The Total Truth Letter

Appendix E: The Feeling Exercise

Endnotes

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work is dedicated with love and affection to my son, Daniel and to Gerhard, who inspired this book. Thank you both for your unconditional love and support and for believing in me.

Also with great gratitude, I’d like to acknowledge and thank the various teachers and mentors who have contributed to my knowledge and supported my development over the years, Seymour Koblin, Hugo Anguiano, John Finch, Jane Richmond, and Joe Guarino, amongst others.

Also thanks to the many others who had a significant impact on my development as well as inspired me in spirit through their books, seminars, and other work, Wayne Dyer, Jack Canfield, Pema Chodron, Dalai Lama, Rosemary Gladstar, and Louise Hay, to name but a few.

And finally thanks to my family, Mom, Dad, Ruben, Yideth, Santiago, Stacey, and all my friends, as well as those who assisted in making this effort a reality, Brenda De Hoyos-Aguilar, Melody Jones, Kallie Alderton, Denise Summey, and Fred Lalas.

INTRODUCTION

Macrobiotic living is the process of changing ourselves

so that we can eat anything we like without the fear

of becoming ill; it enables us to live a joyful life during

which we can achieve anything we choose.

—GEORGE OSAWA

In this book, I’m going to share with you the key elements to health, well-being, and longevity. I am a nutritionist, holistic health practitioner, Reiki Master, and doctor of psychology. I am also a registered herbalist and have been professionally trained on how to design and make herbal medicine.

Throughout the last twenty years, I have studied health and spirituality under many different teachers and modalities. I have also taken many classes and seminars and read hundreds of books. Therefore, many schools of thoughts and mentors have influenced me. My training includes eastern and western nutrition, herbology, energy medicine, Shiatsu, and Tibetan Buddhist and Clinical psychology. This book is a short compilation of the concepts I have learned and applied successfully throughout these years, as well as the experience I have gained while working with many clients in clinic.

The concepts I’m sharing with you can help you heal from chronic illness as well as prevent disease, just as they have helped my family, friends, over a hundred of my clients, and even me. On December 2004, I was diagnosed with adrenal fatigue and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A lifetime of stress, anxiety, overwork, and neglecting my body had finally caught up with me. My condition was severe. The activity of my adrenal glands was so diminished that I had difficulty staying awake for more than a few hours per day.

My body was significantly affected, and I had many other symptoms, such as weakened immunity, sleep disturbances, and an inability to handle physical or emotional stress. I saw many doctors, and all told me that there was no solution for this condition.

Not being a person who is known for quitting easily, I decided to look for an answer in natural medicine. Therefore, I turned to the knowledge I acquired over the years and started applying concepts of natural medicine to my life, including nutrition, herbs, energy medicine, and personal counseling, amongst others.

Through my journey to health, I learned the importance of the mind-body connection, the power of compassion, and how the food we eat and the thoughts we think affects our physiology. This experience helped me find my life purpose and inspired me to share this knowledge with others. I know now that my purpose is to empower and support people on their journey to health, happiness, and self-love so they are free to focus on creating the life of their dreams.

My goal for this book is to provide a brief overview of the concepts I have found useful and effective for my clients and me and to guide you through a twelve-week program that will improve your quality of life immediately and get you started on your journey to health, happiness, and overall well-being.

This book is not intended to be a comprehensive study of nutrition, herbs, or psychotherapy. Instead it provides a brief overview of many concepts that you can use as a springboard to engage in these topics in detail in the future.

I believe the power to heal yourself is within you. All you must do is incorporate these health concepts into your life. You will see a recurring theme in this book, balance. I intend to make the idea of equilibrium hip again, making it a new fad. We are a society of excess and extremes, and it is for our health benefit that we relearn the old adage of moderation. Balance is one of the critical elements of health. Like Oscar Wilde said, Everything in moderation, including moderation.

The majority of my work is based on the concepts of natural medicine, in particular, Eastern traditional medicine. In our society, traditional medicine is often referred to as alternative or holistic medicine. However, the World Health Organization (WHO) defines traditional medicine as the sum total of the knowledge, skills, and practices based on the theories, beliefs, and experiences indigenous to different cultures, whether explicable or not, used in the maintenance of health as well as in the prevention, diagnosis, improvement or treatment of physical and mental illness.

However, I am a firm believer in science. Therefore, I will do my best to correlate the concepts of traditional medicine with the scientific research that validates it. You will find a lot of science in this book. Nevertheless, there are some traditional medicine concepts in this book that I found useful that science has not yet investigated.

At the same time, traditional medicine has been around for thousands of years, and even if we do not have the science to prove a specific component, we have millions of case studies that can validate that it works. Like one of my Chinese medicine teachers used to say, Thousands of years of experience and millions of Chinese can’t all be wrong.

In part one, I will cover why a holistic approach to health is the best approach for health and longevity. I will explain the mind-body connection and how your emotions impact your health. I will also discuss the first and second secret to health and how balanced living is essential to health. This means considering all aspects of your life: diet, relationships, work, fitness, environment, and emotional well-being. I will also cover basic herbal medicine concepts, teach you how to use herbs, and make the best of the medicinal herbs you have in your kitchen. I’m dedicating a significant portion of this section to basic nutritional concepts as well as an explanation of how the food you eat affects your emotional state. This is the most substantial part of this book. However, I feel it is necessary to have a good understanding of these concepts to understand why I designed this program the way I did.

In part two, I will explain why people get sick. Even though my intent for this book is to keep it as positive as possible, it is worth taking a little bit of time to go over in some detail the main factors that are the cause of chronic illness and autoimmune disorders. I promise to keep it short but informative so you can have a better understating on what may be making you sick, and if you are well, you can take the necessary measures to prevent illness.

Once you learn in part two what makes people sick and what steps you need to take to heal, part three will provide a list of principles that can improve your health. It will include recipes, exercises, and suggestions of techniques to help you heal your body or emotions.

Finally, in part four, I will take you on a step-by-step twelve-week program where you will apply the concepts you learned in part three. I am keeping the process as simple as possible. All you have to do is follow the steps listed for each week. This is where you put all that you learn in this book together, and then your life and health changes for the better.

PART ONE

Healing is Multidimensional

By means of personal experimentation and observation, we can discover certain simple and universal truths. The mind moves the body, and the body follows the mind. Logically then, negative thought patterns harm not only the mind but also the body. What we actually do builds up to affect the subconscious mind and in turn affects the conscious mind and all reactions.

—H. E. DAVEY, JAPANESE YOGA:

THE WAY OF DYNAMIC MEDITATION

CHAPTER ONE

Why a Multidimensional

Approach to Health?

The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will

interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in

diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease.

—THOMAS EDISON

A traditional holistic approach to health is multidimensional. It consists of medical aspects of traditional knowledge that developed over generations within various societies before the era of modern medicine. It emphasizes an equilibrium of the mind, body, and environment, and its focus is on health rather than disease. Furthermore, the emphasis is on the overall condition of the individual rather than on the particular illness or disease from which an individual is suffering, and the use of food and herbs is a core part of all holistic systems of medicine.¹

Traditional medicine has successfully applied this multidimensional approach for centuries, and in the late twentieth century, science began to recognize the value of herbs, a proper diet, and the interaction between psychological processes and the nervous and immune systems. Now, not only is more and more research demonstrating the importance of herbs and diet to our health, it also shows how changes in human consciousness produce changes in the human body. This research reveals how our bodies respond to each of our thoughts and feelings and create cascades of biochemicals in our bodies and how each experience produces a positive or negative change in our cells.²

Likewise, science is showing us that genes determine physical characteristics such as eye color and height. However, our environment and consciousness—including our beliefs about health and aging, prayers, thoughts, intentions, and faith—contribute to our health, happiness, and longevity more than our genes. In fact, Genes account for about 35% of longevity, while lifestyles, diet, and other environmental factors, including support systems, are the major reason people live longer, states Blair Justice, PhD, in his book, Who Gets Sick.³

This is clearly seen in identical twins when one develops a condition such as rheumatoid arthritis or cancer and the other does not. While identical twins share the same genes, researchers in epigenetics and gene expression are discovering that environmental factors influence how each of their genes is expressed.

Such is the case with Josephine Tesauro and her identical twin. At ninety-two, Josephine had a straight back and was vibrant and healthy. She lived alone and worked a part-time job in a hospital gift shop. Josephine drove herself to work, bridge clubs, church, and the grocery store.

On the other hand, her sister, at the same age, was incontinent. She had a hip replacement, suffered from a degenerative disorder that destroyed most of her vision, and had dementia. Josephine and her sister have identical genes, and yet they have completely different health paths. This seems to be a prevalent phenomenon observed in identical twins.

In his studies, Mario F. Fraga of the Spanish National Cancer Center has observed that, early in life, identical twins’ genetic expression is indistinguishable. However, older sets of twins show significant differences in their gene expression and medical histories, and this is more noticeable in twins that have spent the most time apart,⁴ leading scientists to conclude that lifestyle and the environmental factors play a significant role in the development of diseases.

Additionally research in epigenetics now shows us that genes only produce potentiality, a foundation, and not a specific phenomenon. According to Gary Marcus, PhD, it is more precise to think of genes as providers of opportunities or sources of options than as rigid dictators of destiny.⁵

At the same time, researchers report that our thoughts, feelings, and external environments—such as social networks, food, and toxins—turn our genes on and off. (This is called genetic expression.) Therefore, the science of epigenetics supports what traditional medicine has said for thousands of years: our actions, feelings, and environment contribute to our health status. We are not victims of our genes; instead the condition of our health is in our hands. For this reason, to prevent or to heal from an illness, it is necessary to create an environment that supports our health and healing processes. And this environment must include activities that encourage an equilibrium between and within our mind and body.

INTEGRATING WITH NATURE

Traditional medicine has long encouraged lifestyle practices that prevent disease and guide us to live long, healthy lives. In fact, Chinese doctors used to be paid to keep their clients healthy. If a client became ill, the doctor would not be paid until the patient’s health returned. Their focus was on prevention, and the majority of healing traditions assert that the key to prevention and healing comes from awareness. The purpose of awareness is to quiet the body and mind, unify body and spirit, and find inner peace. They believe that a strong, bright spirit leads to improved health and increased longevity.

Additionally a fundamental view of traditional medicine is that a human is a part of nature. Humans are an intimate part of our environment, and we depend on it as much as we influence it. As a result, traditional medicine maintains that the microcosm of a person’s health is reflective of the macrocosm of life and the universe. For this reason, traditional medicine is highly concerned with how the environment affects our health and urges us to live in accord with nature rather than try to adapt nature to us. The focus is on how to maintain harmony within the body and between it and the outside world, and emotions and lifestyle are also considered as contributory factors in health and disease. As a result, practitioners of traditional medicine believe the first secret to longevity is to flow with the rhythm of nature, and they encourage us to live each day fully and actively. This means living lives that are rich, full of experience, and without limits to our personal nature.

For this reason, from the perspective of traditional medicine, health can be defined this way: where there is movement and free flow, there’s health. Likewise, blockages, stagnation, and fixation in the human body energy flow cause disease, or a lack of ease.

Many examples in nature reveal this principle. Such