Excerpt: 'Quantum Wellness'

June 3, 2008 — -- New York Times best-selling author Kathy Freston has produced a popular series of guided meditation CDs on relationships, healing the body and prosperity. But in her new book, she hones in on the mind-body-spirit connection.

"Quantum Wellness: A Practical and Spiritual Guide to Health and Happiness" acts as an instructive book to teach readers how to reach their highest level of health and contentment through small but focused changes.

On "Good Morning America" today, she talked about five steps you can take to acheive happiness:

Read an excerpt of the book below.

What Is Quantum Wellness?

Making the Body-Mind-Spirit Connection

IF AN OLD FRIEND WERE TO GREET YOU ON THE STREET AND ASK,"How are you?" what would it take for you to answer honestly, "I'mvery well, thank you"?

The truth is, many of us have no idea. We tend to think of beingwell as having no illness or trouble gnawing at us at that particular moment.We confuse wellness with an absence of something—a lack ofpain or bodily complaints. But is that really wellness?

Or is wellness something far greater, far more exhilarating andalive? With this book, I hope to convince you that wellness is a conditioninvolving every aspect of your being—body, mind, and spirit.That to be truly well means to be operating at full throttle no matteryour age or position in life; to be in a constant dance of pushing pastprevious limits and breaking new ground. You feel like you are inthe center of the vortex of life, filled with energy and a creative spark.You have a certain zip in your gait and a warm feeling of peace inyour heart, and it is as if there is some supercharged energy flowingthrough you. You feel brilliantly alive and connected to everythingthat is.

Is this too much to ask, especially given the state of the nation,the global community, the planet?

Absolutely not.

And it isn't all that hard to do.

As I will show you in this book, wellness begins with paying attentionto the little stuff, and then it swells in momentum until wefind ourselves on a whole new playing field. We start by taking a lookat our lives with honest eyes and then setting a few clear intentionsto change. We take a small step here, and another there, and beforewe know it, we are made new.

You see, wellness is not so much a goal as a process, a journey,a way of orienting yourself toward life. It's a feeling of total participationthat involves being in balance in the three key dimensions ofbody, mind, and spirit, and always looking at your actions and responsesto life as they affect these three dimensions and are affectedby them. It's about how you eat, how you listen to and take care ofyour body, how you process your feelings and connect to the largerworld.

Yes, it is possible to achieve this state of wellness. I have doneit, and I have helped or witnessed many other people doing it, too.In this book, we will start small but we will always be holistic inour approach. For example, when I talk about eating, I'm going to lookat food as a fuel that can support (or undermine) your body, your mind,and your spirit. I will also suggest a way of eating that does no harmto the rest of the planet. That may seem next to impossible. It's hardenough to get a healthy meal on the table without having to thinkabout the environmental impact of every single thing on your plate.And when you have no time to begin with, you sometimes want tothrow up your hands and grab a burger. But I will show you how possibleit really is. You'll take some comfortable, small steps, developa few new shopping and cooking habits—easy ones, delicious ones—and pretty soon you'll find yourself making healthier and healthierfood choices all the time, without much effort at all.

The same goes for making room for feeling your feelings or tendingto your spirit or your weight or your aches and pains. Smallsteps—simple changes to what you eat; a few new exercises; slightshifts in the way you perceive and resolve conflict, in the way youcommunicate; some gentle new practices to strengthen your spirituallife—followed by a few more small steps, and pretty soon you'lldiscover you've taken a quantum leap in how you feel and how youexperience life.

The term quantum brings to mind several meanings. Primarily, itrefers to very tiny particles and waves that are invisible to the nakedeye. It also brings to mind a sudden leap from one virtual state into anew manifest state, as if a particular result had been plucked out of asea of potentialities. And lastly, this leap, or spontaneous shift, is verymuch affected by the observer. So quantum wellness, to me, is aboutthe tiny little things that we invest our energy in every day and everymoment. These little investments of attention hold us in a steady andpredictable place. But when we make shifts—no matter how small andsubtle—we agitate the norm. And the more we turn our attention towellness—to eating consciously (both for ourselves and for its comprehensiveimpact; more on that later), to resolving our interpersonalconflicts, to reducing our footprint, just to name a few—the more westoke the fires of change. The momentum we generate through our actionsleads, eventually, to a tipping point, and then there is a breakthrough,a quantum leap. We get to breakthrough levels of wellnessby turning our attention to those things that add to the force field ofwellness.

Quantum wellness is not about imposing big changes but aboutleaning into wellness, comfortably, adding things here and there tothe thrust and taking baby steps toward the changes we want toachieve.

Think about it. This happens in life all the time. Maybe you aresomeone who used to be anxious all the time, relying on antianxietymedication to get through the day, and then one day realizedthat you hadn't taken your medication for a while and you were justfine. (By the way, I don't recommend going off any medication withoutthe help or advice of a health-care professional.) You aren'tsure if it was the exercise regimen that soothed your nerves or thenew friends you chose to be around or the fact that you gave updrinking caffeine. All you know is that you are not a wreck anymore.Or maybe you were like me and had acne for as long as youcould remember, but then woke up one morning with clear skin andnever had so much as another blemish. I'm not sure if I just grewthrough the hormonal period or if my skin looks better because Ichanged my diet and drink more water. In each of these examples,there were lots of little changes made, but something big and monumentalresulted.

These shifts reshape our lives. Of course, they don't come out ofnowhere: they're not magic. We have to do the footwork to make themhappen. But it's the small, incremental changes that vault us to a newexperience of ourselves. Remember that as you approach this work.So how do quantum leaps happen? And can we help them happen?Can we be more in control of them so that we can create transformationin our lives? Good questions.

2. Set an intention.
3. Come up with a plan.
4. Make the move.

For example, I used to smoke a pack of cigarettes a day. I triedso many times to quit: I drenched the pack with water so I couldn'tretrieve the cigarettes. I did acupuncture to foil the desire. I wore apatch. I underwent hypnosis. Nothing worked. So I just gave up andsaid, "Okay, this is where I am now." All the while I kept readingabout what nicotine does to the body and how smoking hurts yourlungs and immune system. Not to mention how it ages your skin.I just listened and learned. I didn't resist the information; I simplytook it in (while still smoking) and let it settle into my mind.Then I set my intention to be a nonsmoker. I didn't know how Iwould get there, because I had failed so many times, but I just putit out there to the world that I wanted to be a person who smelledgood and enjoyed downtime without jonesing for the next drag. Ididn't beat myself up every time I lit up, but I did think about theinformation I had downloaded. And I began to feel my energy movingin the direction of healing, just trusting that I would get there.After a few months of this, I came up with a plan to attend a smoking cessationworkshop, which I would follow with a week's vacationaway by myself. Once again I put it out into the ether that I was readyand willing to act when the time felt right.

Three days later I was flipping through a neighborhood periodicaland came across an ad that seemed to jump off the page for a"stop smoking" class, and I made my move.

This whole process—from gathering information to going awayon a solo vacation—probably lasted six months, but it stuck becauseI simply allowed myself to be where I was and to go at my own pace.Had I tried to do it all in one grandiose move, I probably would havefallen back into my old habit, but since I saw myself on a path, I feltcomfortable just nudging myself gradually in the right direction.We are all at various points along the continuum of wellness; wearrive at and handle different junctures according to our own personalcomfort levels. We may be ahead of the game in physical fitnesswhile lagging behind in spiritual awareness, or very emotionallyand psychologically astute but lazy in the way we eat. It's all okay.We just have to be willing to be honest with ourselves about wherewe are and then work to bring ourselves up to speed wherever growthis needed.

We can hasten our progress by taking an honest inventory and thenmapping out where we'd like to go. For me and my nicotine addiction,I knew there was a better way to live, and I wanted to move in the directionof being free of the habit. At the same time I very much wantedto keep doing what I was doing. I loved the social bonding with othersmokers; I loved the ritual of settling into the day with a smoke to getmy adrenaline flowing. But I also knew I couldn't advance in my life—physically or emotionally—without dealing with my attachment to abad dependency. I knew where I was on my continuum and decidedit was time to press onward.

After I quit, my life took a leap forward. I began to work with cancerpatients, teaching them guided meditation and breathing exercises,not as a direct result of quitting smoking, but more as part ofa "grand plan" for my life. I certainly couldn't have taken that directionhad I remained a smoker. No one wants to smell smoke ontheir counselor; and who would have believed I knew what I wastalking about if I couldn't even shed my own unhealthy habit? Thepoint is, once I followed through on my decision to change in onearea of my life, other areas also experienced a major shift. I wentfrom being a barely working model to being a writer and counselor.Quitting smoking had always seemed nearly impossible, but I accomplishedit by staying relaxed about it, taking very doablesteps, and allowing myself to be directed by an inner compass. Ishowed up as a willing participant in my own conscious evolution,let the momentum build, and the rest unfolded with and for me.Our development is an unfinished and ongoing story. That's what isso exciting; we are creating ourselves and our world as we go. Andevery little move we make, each decision and perception we land on,makes a difference in how things unfold.

2. You will find within you the ability to bring light to allthose places that are wounded or unenlightened so that you canexperience magnificent multidimensional wellness.You see, the path of wellness is a path of transcendence. You willconstantly be brought to the walls that keep you stuck and you willbe challenged to overcome them. You will become more attuned toall the wonder and grace at work in the world today—the miraculouscures, the everyday heroes who have stepped out of their comfort zone and made a difference, the stories of human kindness that would meltany heart. As you undertake to become more and more well, you willfind yourself resonating more with that extraordinary energy. In fact,you will, through your own magnetic, amped-up vitality, draw to youevents, meetings, and circumstances that you might never haveimagined possible.

It is said that as you rise, the world rises to greet you. As youstrive toward greater levels of wellness, you will discover that youare not working alone or in a void; you are part of a larger whole thatis also leaning forward into life. You will intuit what is right whileat the same time being guided toward the next steps. You will be carriedalong even as you push yourself toward greater and greater levelsof happiness and health.

Each of us has a part in this process. We are all meant to becomefree, whole, and healed. A few steps along the wellness continuum andyou will no longer be at a loss for words when someone asks you, "Howare you today?"

Please join me as we explore the simple changes and small stepsthat will lead you to quantum wellness.