Discover the ‘hidden key’ to physical wellness

by | Oct 11, 2025
Discover ‘hidden keys’ to physical wellness
    Innately, I had a felt sense of this information to be true, but hadn’t discovered any literature to support my belief, until now. Health and wellness have been a passion for most of my life. I have always pursued and practiced holistic approaches like good nutrition, supplementation, staying physically active, and naturopathic remedy’s as my wellness solutions (which have done me well). However, the trend among Americans at large is to turn towards managing ‘sickness’ through the medical community; ie. medical doctors, whom primarily offer pharmaceuticals and poking procedures to test and biopsy. Gabor Mate’, M.D suggests that the war on cancer has generally been a failure because it is looking for the cause of malignancy in cellular mechanisms.

As a Life Coach with Christian beliefs, I’m encouraged by scripture that emotes God’s intention for healing to be way of our mind, body, and spirit.

Philippians 4:6–7 (NIV)

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.
And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

God can heal supernaturally, however, when we partner with Him by becoming emotionally and spiritually healthy the chances of overcoming many physical health issues can increase dramatically for more of us.

World renowned author and Medical Dr, Gabor Mate’ shares personal stories from patients he has treated over decades in palliative care, unleashing insight from a developing perspective in his international best selling book “When the Body Says NO – Exploring the Stress-Disease Connection”. He has witnessed common threads in patients having various diseases and illness. He shares that so much of our lives are governed by our physiology; through the mechanism of stress, and how it modulates nerves, hormones, immunity, digestion, and cardiovascular function. He reflects that much disease could be prevented and healed if we embraced the evidence verifying the mind-body connection.

Physiological stress, he surmises, is the link between personality traits and disease. Certain traits – ie; coping styles magnify the risk for illness by increasing the likelihood of chronic stress. Common to all is a diminished capacity for emotional communication. When human beings are prevented from learning how to express their feelings effectively –  negative conditioning occurs. Emotional experiences are translated into damaging biological events.The emotional contexts of childhood interact with inborn temperament to give rise to personality traits. Much of what we call ‘personality’ is not a fixed set of traits, only coping mechanisms a person required in childhood.

He states, there is an important distinction between an inherent characteristic, versus a response to the environment which develops a pattern of behaviors to ensure survival. In his book he encourages self-examination, gaining insight and transformation of our auto-pilot patterns and belief systems. Mate’ recommends that MD’s and researchers take greater care to obtain patients’ life histories for much useful information moving forward.
An acute stressful situation can be motivating, as short-term increases in cortisol and adrenaline are both positive and necessary. However, chronically elevated cortisol levels from prolonged stress are unhealthy. When stress persists over time, the immune system can become overwhelmed and unable to perform its role in fighting off mutated or abnormal cells.
  • Who is the chronically stressed person?
  • What causes their ongoing stress, and where does it come from?
  • Why don’t they make the necessary changes for a more balanced life?
  • If this has become a way of living, how can they recognize they’re in a chronic state of stress?
  • Is this constant tension simply a personality trait?
  • Will it take a wake-up call for change to happen?
The most profound commonality among his patients that I found interesting – were certain personality traits; most specifically the trait of suppressing or denying emotions.  As a Life Coach this truly validated what I experience in many of my clients. Much of our early work is guiding people to give theirselves permission to ‘feel their feelings’ to get in touch with their emotions and where these feelings are showing up in their body. This is key to getting things to begin ‘shifting’ and opening up to new forward-thinking perspectives. I do alot of personality assessment in my work (intuitively, not always explicitly). It is well understood that people learn to suppress emotions (for survival reasons) and carry them into their adult lives, often through their attachment filters of anxiety, avoidance, or fear.
Appx 60% of the population fits into these categories. Though this is completely understandable, IF we desire to become the mature adults we were intended (before we needed to adapt to get our needs met), we need to establish and cultivate relationships that allow us to authentically be seen, heard and known, so that we can move towards more secure ways of relating with self, God, and others. THIS is a significant catalyst for personal and spiritual growth! Relational Spirituality and Attachment theory suggests that the filter we use to relate to others is correlated to the way we see/relate to God. Again, very profound concept to contemplate in our own life. How does knowing that your physical health is dependent on your emotional and spiritual health resonate with you?
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