Springtime Symphony by Dr. Svetlana Kogan, M.D.

Spring is truly the season from which inspiration is born. A yearning for a change: to be better, stronger, and healthier. The fragile young buds on the rough desiccated tree branches remind us of the coming of rebirth, rejuvenation, and revival.

This theme also permeates religious holidays of the season and awakens the hearts of your friends and neighbors. Here, in Florida – our bodies sense the coming of the Spring in many subtle expressions of nature around us: the locations of the sunrise and sunset shift, nights get less humid, and strawberries taste amazing.

Springtime is also a great season to start building up your best state of mind. It is almost as if nature itself were helping you off to a fresh new start. If you want to look and feel better – you may need to part with some compromising habits or behaviors which have been holding you back.

Scientists discovered that a human being has anywhere between 60-80,000 thoughts in a day with 95% of these thoughts being the same ones over and over again. Furthermore, 80% of our thoughts are negative. Every time we feel emotions produced by negative thoughts – there is a biochemical cascade of molecules coursing through the body
– creating corresponding feelings of anger, disempowerment, or shame. Every cell in your body – and there are over 70 trillion of them – gets to soak in those “juices” of anxiety.

Cells make up tissues and tissues make up organs and now we know from research that organs remember the emotions that you have felt at one time or another. In fact, if you speak to any organ recipients, they will tell you that they sometimes remember things that never happened to them but did happen to the organ donors instead.

So, once you have experienced an emotion – your body has memorized it and now will try to match everything you come across against it. So, let’s say that you have felt inadequate when your project at work went unnoticed and unappreciated by the management. Your body will subconsciously look for the similar matching cues in the future situations you encounter. If, for example you go on a date and have a bad time – your body will immediately suggest that it is your failure.

“It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want – oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!” – Mark Twain

This is a vicious cycle and the only way to put an end to it is to be like nature in the Spring – to be reborn again as a personality. In fact, the old you has to “die off ” figuratively speaking because it will always be in the way of your happiness. The old you has been molded for decades by thinking self-defeating thoughts.

If you imagine the old self as a computer program, you would literally need to update or upgrade it with the new better version of yourself. You have to have a clear picture of what your new improved self would look like, feel like, and what specifically would that person be passionate about.

It is so good to know that the real transformation does not come from augmenting your appearance. Rather, it is the newly found inner happiness that will be pouring out of you as an invisible glow – that will make people think like you have had some kind of amazing vacation or cosmetic enhancement. The journey into recreating yourself from within takes time and effort, but it’s worth all the riches of the world. May all of you be inspired and motivated to experience the real Spring symphony in your heart.

Dr. Kogan is a Concierge Holistic Internal Medicine Doctor in Naples. Her website is CustomLongevity.com