According to the author, international trainer in the field of energy psychology,  mental emotional and spiritual health is all one and the same, and dis-ease or disturbance in any of these levels can cause physical pains and symptoms in the body too. A mind body spirit detox retreat could therefore be a new way for helping people with mental health and healing.

The Human Spirit is the Key to Mental Emotional and Physical Health

The key to understanding the connection between all these parts of our self is the energy body, the subtle energy system, the missing link to health, happiness and freedom, on all levels, a real existing part of us that is totally ignored and unaccepted as reality in conventional approaches to mental health, and yet, the energy body, the spirit person, the human spirit is the key to health on all levels.

The Mental Health Foundation has defined a mentally healthy individual as one who can:

• Develop emotionally, creatively, intellectually and spiritually

• Initiate develop and sustain satisfying personal relationships

• Face problems, resolve and learn from them

• Be confident and assertive

• Be aware of others and empathize with them

• Use and enjoy solitude

• Play and have fun

• Laugh at themselves and the world

So how did we develop mental health issues and problems?

Let's explore this from the point of view of the human energy system, the human spirit.

We have an energy body. We can't see it, though some technologies do allow us to see energy fields of living things. Some talk about the aura, chakras, and meridians for energy to flow in the energy body. Many successful healing therapies are based on the existence of the energy system and restoring flow when it is blocked. And this is the key, finding blockage and restoring flow in the energy system.

So how does it get blocked in the first place? Ah well, that's life. Our energy system is processing life events, people, nature, things in through and out of the energy system, in the same way as the physical body processes food in through and out. We eat, digest, circulate, metabolize, get energy from, and are regenerated by, then eliminate the food that we eat. That's in through and out, changing us in the process. When everything is flowing well, we body processes are healthy. If we get blockage in any are problems and symptoms start to develop e.g. indigestion, colon problems, liver problems, arteries, lymph. It's all about circulation and getting the nutrients to the right parts. After that the body knows how to be healthy.

So how does flow and nutrition relate to mental health?

We process the energies of life in the same way, in through and out. We compare this to acceptance, understanding, compassion, learning, releasing, forgiving, transformation and evolution, and delight and enjoyment in the process. All our positive emotional experiences we can now see as the flow of the energy of life through our energy system. It feels good. Positive emotions arise from flow of these energies of life through our energy system and energy nutrition is the learning, the feel good factor, the growth, the transformation we get from that aspect of life. This is healthy flow. This is in fact how we are designed, just as the body is designed to be healthy. This is our natural starting state, until life happened!

What are blockages in the Energy Body?

So, as we can get blockage in the physical body, we get blockage in the energy body. For example, we avoid because we can't handle something, we cannot accept, we resist, or we hurt if we do accept, we hold on, we don't understand well, we don't see clearly, we can't forgive and we feel bad. These are our painful emotions and we feel this in the body too.

In fact, where we feel it in the body is where the energy is stuck.

Events of Life Stuck in Processing

So when we are not in that state of mental health that we defined above, it's because something happened to us, an event that we processed through our energy system, but it got stuck along the way. Maybe it was too big to handle for a young energy system. So there it stayed, that energy forever attached to the thought or memory of that event, held in the energy body, at the physical location that we can feel, when we recall it. And life continues to happen, events upon events, stored causing further blockage and behaviors that arise from these blockages because somewhere along the way, the support wasn't there to help that person process and release those events in life. So growth and learning didn't happen. Nourishment of the spirit to bring confidence and strength didn't happen.

Furthermore a blocked energy system, has reduced ability to process future events, coping ability is impaired. We emotionally react. Eventually the discomfort of handling life can be so great that disconnection is required, numbing out the feelings and ongoing pressure leads to depression.

It's all Energy and Only Energy

It's all a form of energy indigestion, energy constipation, and energetic injury of some kind.

Understanding this is really great news.

Now that we have energy release techniques in the growing field of energy psychology, such as EFT, EmoTrance, TAT and more, we can locate and release the blockage, restore the flow, and heal the energy system. Once more in flow, the state of health returns. We feel relaxed and free, we see clearly from a new perspective, we have new resources we didn't have before for this situation. We have learned and grown. We are back to mental emotional and spiritual health. We can do this for all life events that got stuck in processing through the energy system and these techniques allow us to release the energy without having to talk about these events over and over again.

So, energy healing, also called healing the spirit, is a key to facilitating mental healing.

Why Come on a Retreat for Mental Healing?

By the time a person is depressed, suffering chronic anxiety, has low confidence and self esteem, is numb or disconnected, there is a lot of life events stored in the energy system that need releasing.

A number of therapy sessions are recommend, using EFT or EmoTrance or TAT and there is unequivocal evidence gathered over many years from thousands of people of the effectiveness of these techniques to create mental healing and change. This can be a challenge to those who follow more conventional talk therapies and medication approaches, and so we find resistance from that sector, but thankfully, not from everyone.

A healing retreat is the perfect opportunity to spend time in a supportive environment and receive a number of healing sessions, tuning in to key events and releasing them, creating increasing flow within, increasing relaxation, lightness and clarity. It's a chance to make some real progress in creating change and forward movement, improvements in mental health.

Other studies show nutrition also has an effect on our mental health. How much sugar and refined foods we eat play havoc with our blood sugar levels and moods. The lack of specific nutrients in our diet has been shown to lead to vital processes not working well. The brain is an organ that needs food just as much as the rest of our body. When we are in a low mental state, we often don't take care about our diet.

It is easy to understand the benefits of combining energy healing with optimum nutritional support for mental healing. A mind body spirit detox, cleansing out the old, restoring flow and putting back in optimum fuel in terms of food and in terms of what our spirit feeds on: nature, life, people, relationships, love.

So in fact, by a complete mind body spirit detox healing retreat could be a great way to help mental healing or form a new kind of mental health retreat.