A Healthy Person Has a Thousand Wishes, A Sick Person Only One
Health as a core value & exploring new healing modalities
After Chelsea and I got back from Kauai, we both pretty much immediately came down with Covid.
It’s been a rough week or so, as we’ve dealt with body aches, fever, and respiratory symptoms. I ended up having to cancel a couple of days worth of clients last week and only did a handful of online sessions. As you may have noticed, I also skipped sending out this newsletter last week—a rarity for me.
Getting sick has been a bit of a humbling experience, after the high of our recent vacation. It’s reminded me of a proverb I’ve seen floating around online:
“A healthy person has a thousand wishes, but a sick person has only one.”
As I’ve sat at home drinking herbal tea and nursing my symptoms, I’ve wished for nothing more than to feel as good in my body as I did just the previous week, on Kauai, when we were swimming, hiking, spending time with friends, and eating good food.
And I’ve looked forward to that day in the near future when I’ll wake up feeling good again. (Actually, I’m feeling much better today, apart from a lingering cough).
When we’re healthy (or at least at our baseline) we tend to take it for granted, and yet when we’re sick we’d give anything just to feel the way we feel on a normal day.
For me, health is one my core values, and I have a goal of staying as healthy as I can until I die. Sometimes friends question why I work out, or buy organic food, or spend money on nutritional supplements, and that’s why. Because health is one of my core values and because I want to stay healthy until I’m 100.
At the same time, I value mental, emotional, and spiritual health just as much as physical health.
And so, even in these weeks while I’ve been sick, I’ve been meditating, reading, and exploring new approaches to integrate into my therapy and coaching practice.
I’ll share a couple of them below in this week’s recommendations, and hopefully I’ll have some more in-depth writing to share with you in the coming weeks. Until then, I hope all of you are staying healthy and enjoying your summer.
Book I’m Reading
The Wholeness Work Essential Guide Level 1: Healing and Awakening. I’ve recently become interested in the work of Connirae Andreas, PhD, creator of Core Transformation and The Wholeness Work. Connirae was one of the original NLP trainers back in the 70s and studied with Milton Erickson, MD, the father of modern clinical hypnosis. Core Transformation is a form of parts work, similar to IFS, but with a different structure. The Wholeness Work combines therapy with a path to spiritual awakening of the kind described in Buddhism and nondual teachings, and comes with an endorsement from Tara Brach. As it turns out, the Kindle version of the Wholeness Work book is on sale for $1 (today only, and no, I’m not an Amazon affiliate).
Podcast I’m Listening To
An Invitation to Freedom: A conversation between Tara Brach and Connirae Andreas. More of an audio-visual learner? Check out this episode of Tara Brach’s podcast (on YouTube) featuring a conversation and short guided meditation with Connirae.
Quote of the Week
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
—A Course In Miracles (often misattributed to Rumi)
That’s all for this week! As always, I appreciate your feedback on Mind, Meaning, and Magic. What was your favorite thing I shared this week? What would you like to learn more about? Let me know by replying to this email or leaving a comment, below.
Thanks for reading,
Chris Cordry, LMFT
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So sorry you got hit with that Chris. I've heard this aphorism before re a healthy person has a thousand wishes and a sick person only one. It's obviously bang on when referencing physical health, but then it made me reflect and consider that almost the reverse perspective applies with my mental health. Having a thousand wishes, or desires, active in my mind/attention all at once is itself a kind of ailment or sickness in terms of my psyche. Having just one wish in my attention translates to things like focus, peace, commitment, devotion.
Chris, it’s so interesting to follow your journey into the nomenclature of core value for health. I never thought of health as a value per se, so your angle is both refreshing and sharp. I appreciate this.