Numerous studies suggest that physical immunity can be enhanced by love. But what about resilience?
Move # 7—Enhancing Immunity with Love
(click above title to go to Laughing Heart website Move)
As noted in the references to Move # 7, numerous studies suggest that physical immunity can be enhanced by love. But what about resilience? We have an increasing body of research on childhood trauma confirming that a child’s sense of being loved and cared for by at least one person is essential in building life-long resilience. One study notes:
“When confronted with the fallout of childhood trauma, why do some children adapt and overcome, while others bear lifelong scars that flatten their potential? A growing body of evidence points to one common answer: Every child who winds up doing well has had at least one stable and committed relationship with a supportive adult.” Another concludes:
“You ask resilient people what has been most helpful to you, they talk about at least one person, one adult who really believed in them as a child and stood by them and offered them unconditional love. It is really hard to start… if you do not have people who love you. But the people who show you that love know that there are certain things that they can do. They accept you. …They find what your strengths are, and they really build upon your strengths. Once you start feeling that love, it is amazing to me how you are willing to take risks. How when adversity occurs you start to feel, “You know what there are people to help me. I can overcome this adversity,”…What really comes is a much more hopeful and optimistic attitude.”
But as the years drift by and we become adults we cannot rely on the memory of one loving person from our childhood. We must live and work with what we have.
BHI helps us to cultivate integral resilience by specifically:
- Activating the Heart energy field of qi and love.
- Seeing the Big Picture, beyond the small and frightened self.
- Developing a deep sense of connection, gratitude, and love to family, friends, community, the natural world, and the Universe.
- Expanding the role of play and joy and personal power through exploration and discovery.
- Understanding that giving love is even more powerful in cultivating resilience than receiving it. The last lines of St. Francis’ Simple Prayer express this idea beautifully:
- Master, let me not so much seek:
To be consoled, as to console
To be understood, as to understand
To be loved, as to love. - Since, it is in:
Giving, that we receive;
Pardoning, that we are pardoned; and in
Dying, rise to Life Eternal.
Here’s an interesting experiment. Send your love pouring from the cups in your hands (laogong in Chinese) out to the farthest reaches of the universe, way beyond our solar system; pour it out from your heart, and watch what happens. I have discovered the more love I send out, almost immediately a cascading beam of energy comes back, it seems with compounding interest.
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