It started with a lump on her neck and within four years, Anita Moorjani was overridden with cancer. After battling the disease for four years, in 2006, she found herself in a hospital in Hong Kong, literally on her death bed. Although she was in a coma, she was fully aware of what was happening around her. She could feel her husband holding her hand and the doctors mulling around her. She even heard one of them tell her husband she only had a few hours left to live.
It wasn’t just the hospital room Anita saw as she got closer to passing over. She saw her brother boarding a plane in India so he could see her before she died. She was aware of people everywhere and she began to feel the presence of a dear friend and her father, both who died before her. She knew she was having an out of body experience and she describes it as “A realm of clarity,” but as she began to settle into this new state, her father told her she had to go back.
She describes how she had no desire to go back into her ailing body yet, she realized that we are all “so much greater and powerful than we realize when we’re in our physical bodies”. Suddenly she knew why she had cancer and why she had to go back into her body and it was at this point she woke from her coma. Her family was so happy but the doctors around her were shocked and cautious. She kept telling her family she was going to be fine and within five days, her tumors shrunk by 70% and within 5 weeks she was released from the hospital completely cancer free.
“we are all so much greater and powerful than we realize”
Wow, right? I mean, is it really possible to be cured from cancer and return from a near death experience to find yourself cancer free within a matter of weeks?
When you watch her TEDX Talk, she recalls that clarity of her near death experience and in this clarity, she says “I felt I knew why I had cancer.” She figured out she made herself sick because she wasn’t living a healthy life. In her talk, she shares the five lessons she learned to ensure we live a healthy and happy life. I am summarizing (and paraphrasing) her lessons but I highly recommend you watch her TEDX Talk (click to watch) to fully grasp the experience she had and to learn how to adopt these lessons she lists below:
Lesson 1: LOVE
Loving yourself is the most important lesson of all. “If you love yourself, you value yourself. That means you no longer bully yourself and others and you no longer allow others to bully you or someone else. When you love yourself, you have more love to give others”.
I know I grapple with this concept of loving myself. In a weird way, it feels self-indulgent, but it’s imperative in order to live a healthy life! Do something to show you love yourself and you will find yourself doing more for others. (read more in “GIVING MAKES US FEEL GOOD”)
We practice love by making healthy and meaningful lifestyle choices for ourselves – being productive & active (read more), putting wholesome food into our bodies, creating good Feng Shui (read more), and of course doing activities that make us happy & fulfilled (read more)!
Lesson 2: Live Fearlessly
“We are brought up fearing everything yet, fear is not what keeps us safe. Love keeps us safe. When we love ourselves, we keep ourselves safe and when we keep ourselves safe, we keep others safe”.
Too many hours of my life have been spent being afraid to do something or worrying about something out of my control. Living fearlessly takes away worry and this is incredibly liberating. Ditch the stress & try it!
Lesson 3: Humor
“As children, we laugh more freely, feel love more deeply and live more fearlessly yet as we grow, these intrinsic values get driven out of us and we find ourselves with no sense of humor, fearful and unloved.” Laughter is “more important than any other spiritual activity and if we focused on laughter more than suppressing it, we’d have less use for hospitals, prisons and even war”.
Russ is good at making me laugh when I feel completely overwhelmed with anger, fear or sadness. Try it! Make someone laugh out loud. There’s nothing like a “my stomach hurts, almost-peed-in-my-pants laughing jag”. It will make you feel amazing!
Lesson 4: Life is a Gift
For Anita, it was cancer that made her realize her life was a gift. As she says, “life should not be a chore. Yes, we have challenges in our lives but those challenges are life’s gifts. If a challenge doesn’t feel like a gift, you haven’t gotten to the end of it”.
Kind of makes me rethink why running my own business feels so daunting at times. Owning Majamas Earth is my gift. (read more in “FOLLOW YOUR PASSION”) What are some of your gifts?
Lesson 5: Always Be Yourself
Embrace your uniqueness and love yourself unconditionally. This is something we tell our children all the time but do we practice this ourselves?
I know I’ve spent many sleepless nights internalizing decisions I’ve made about styles I’ve put into our collection or something I’ve said to a client but this lesson helps me to accept who I am. Kind of goes back to Lesson 1 and LOVE, doesn’t it? Are you beating yourself up for being who you are? If you’re acting out of love, then STOP doing that!
Anita Moorjani changed after her near death experience. She realized she wasn’t living her best life and that’s why she got cancer. If she could cure herself of cancer by being mindful and practicing these five lessons above, doesn’t that mean those of us starting in a healthier state could really benefit from practicing them?
Mental and physical wellness are connected more than we may realize. We often take our health for granted and get ourselves worked up when we get something as small as a sore throat forgetting to appreciate all we have to be grateful for. A strong mental perspective helps put the physical symptoms into perspective.
MIND OVER MATTER!
Next time you’re feeling under the weather, put on your comfy pajamas and re-think your response to life’s daily challenges.
Start loving yourself, accepting yourself & looking at life as a gift.
I promise, it works and you will feel better in no time!
Thank you to Anita Moorjani and TEDX for the youtube video. I paraphrased a lot of her speech in writing this blog. We recommend watching it to get the full effect of Anita’s amazing story.
– Germaine Caprio, Company Owner & Designer
Check out & follow our Pinterest boards MAJAMAS ESSENTIALS & MAJAMAS for MAMAS to get inspired of how to love yourself & feel beautiful inside & out!
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TO HEAR FROM YOU
How do you practice a healthy lifestyle?
Please share your own thoughts with us – let’s get a conversation started in the comments below! Your comment may even win you a free MAJAMAS garment this week!