The Question Only Your Body Can Answer

Image credit: Dancers (detail), Edgar Degas (1834-1917), 1899. Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Spain

This week, one of my clients blew me away. She's a high school kid with POTS, a debilitating nervous system disorder which causes tremendous fatigue, pain and dizziness. High school is hard enough for healthy kids, and this girl was making a slow and painful crawl toward the finish line of summertime. During our first session, she told me how piles of homework, dozens of absences and worried parents were making life feel very pressurized.

We spoke two weeks later. She told me she'd made a big, brave decision: "I'm dropping out. I'm leaving my private school. I'm going to take the GED and take college classes." she said. "I feel so relived."

Wow.

"You asked what my body needed most in order to heal. That was it - I needed to quit school."

Since she made the decision, her symptoms have improved. She's even talking about starting a business teaching piano lessons this summer. She's building a life she loves. 

What does your body need most in order to heal? 

I love that question. It's just as revelatory as it is terrifying to answer.

I learned about the power of this question from Dr. Lissa Rankin, one of my instructors from my coaching program - also one of my personal heroes. When Dr. Rankin asked this question to her patients struggling with chronic issues, they tended to blurt out answers that surprised them: 

I've got to end my relationship.

I need to move to Santa Fe.

It's time for me to quit my job and travel.

I want to fulfill my dream of opening my own restaurant. 

I need a break from my mother in-law.

Dr. Rankin calls this process "writing our own prescription for healing" - it means doing whatever we need to do to get our bodies out of stress response and into relaxation response. The body can only doing its deep healing work when it's not completely ravaged by stress hormones. The answer that bubbles up is usually accompanied by feeling of physical relief - your energy rises, you let out a deep breath, you can't help but smile. 

Interestingly, Dr. Rankin found that in most cases patients who fulfilled their own prescription for healing got better. When she asked those who didn't take the leap about what held them back, it always came down to the same thing: fear. 

Our bodies always tell the truth about what shifts we need to make in our life. Somehow they can see past the fear. Somehow dreaming about moving to Santa Fe immediately relaxes the persistent tension in your shoulders. 

I'm so inspired by my young client who chose to listen to her body and her inner wisdom for the sake of her health. She got curious about the possibilities, kicked fear to the side, and let her body speak its truth. Way to go, sister. 

What I'm Loving While I Heal

Artist: Henry Darger 

I've recently reached an amazing milestone! It's big news, and I want to celebrate with everyone in my web of healers, clients and supporters. 

But like any story with chronic illness, there's a deep low before there's a peak.

I spent most of February and March on the couch, the life totally zapped out of me. One week I was running and celebrating strides of improvement from heavy metal chelation therapy, the next I was at a yoga class and everything got really slow and really dizzy. I spent the next few weeks in a daze of disbelief that my body would once again slide this far down. Lots of time staring at the wall in delirium. Lots of boring TV. Lots of weeping.

But if March offered my anything, it offered me long stretches of idleness, time to think, and the invitation to be so, so tender with myself. I meditated morning, afternoon and evening. And instead of panicking, I tried to listen: Life, what are you trying to tell me with this breakdown?

My body knew before I did. I must have Lyme disease, I realized during meditation one day. That's the only unturned stone. Although I'd already tested negative for Lyme four times at conventional labs (ie, Quest, LabCorp),  my intuition told me that I should pursue results from a more expensive and precise lab (Igenex).

The rest was miraculous: a sobbing phone call a specialist who books nine months out, a fortuitous opening the next week!, a loving partner to support me, a mom to drive my broken body to Columbia, a three hour appointment that validated seven years of horrible undiagnosed illness, and encouraging parting words from my doctor: You're ahead of the game. Full recovery is more than possible. You're doing great. 

Two weeks later, I got the results in the mail.

Yep, I knew it.

I've been officially diagnosed with Lyme disease. 

Since getting the news, I have ramped by self-care into full gear. It felt SO empowering to get back home to St. Louis and dive into my treatment without needing to start from the beginning or read a million books. (Okay, I read three.) My kitchen counter was overflowing with with jars of bone broth, turmeric, raw garlic, loads of supplements, and organic coffee for enemas. 

Now, it's mid May. I'm feeling the love of my antibiotic, homeopath and detox protocol. It's a roller coaster, but I trust one day I'll be able to get off this wild ride. 

People often ask me what I do to be well, so I want to share some of my essentials. I love swapping ideas with other folks actively seeking health, and I hope these ideas are helpful for others. It's worth a try, right?

1. Insight Timer App

This is an amazing free meditation app I use everyday - especially during my afternoon rest time to soothe my rambling mind or when I’m going through a bad flare up and I need grounding. There are thousands of meditations to check out. I especially love the ones by Sarah Blondin.

2. Trusted teachers

I have been working with a fantastic coach to help me drop some of my limiting beliefs around my health issues and move forward with my coaching business. Coaching has helped me focus on everything I am healing for - a vibrant life with my sweetheart, mountain climbing and travel. Once again, I am blown away by the transformative power of coaching.

3. Far Infrared Sauna

I’ve been using this sauna everyday to incite a “fake fever” as part of my detox protocol. I usually get a good sweat on for about 30 minutes. It’s super easy to fold up, and a great party trick when friends come over. 

4. New Language

The body takes all its cues from the brain. For that reason, I'm extra careful with the language I use, making sure never to say “I have Lyme disease” or "I’m sick” but always “I’m healing from Lyme" or "I’m recovering from an illness.” My body is learning to disassociate from those identities with every positive spin. 

5. Work I Love

Over the fall, I went on an Enneagram Teacher Training retreat and spent the entire weekend in a ball of pain and fatigue. A beautiful, wise woman there saw my life so clearly: "Sweetie, you are getting a PhD in something you don’t know yet.” When I coach, I am cashing in on my seven year education in how to thrive with illness. Companioning people toward health - is there any better medicine than that? 

The 5 Things My Illness Forced Me to Learn — That Everyone Should Know

This story was published on Greatist, July 2015

For some, chronic illness descends slowly with intermittent aches and pains. For me, it came overnight: One week I was bouncing around Nashville bars; the next I was hunched over at work with headaches, fatigue, and body aches.

At age 22, I’d come down with the Epstein-Barr virus, commonly known as mono. It shattered my immune system and completely derailed my life. I was bedridden for the good part of a year, and I've spent the last five years dealing with near-constant chronic fatigue, pain, and POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome).

Before I was sick, I was a mountain guide. I was quick, strong, and carefree. Now I often wake to a debilitating fatigue that feels like the hangover of a lifetime—one that won’t fade away by the afternoon.

Such a dramatic onset of illness has required a lot of me: the maturity to accept loss, the courage to question my doctors, and a daily willingness to let go of the things that no longer add to my life.

It’s definitely a different way of thinking of wellness. So much of today's advice emphasizes addition as the path to health: Drink more green juice. Lift more weight. Sprinkle more chia seeds.

But I’ve found the opposite to be true. The practice of  offers a much better way to understand what my body requires to heal. In fact, it's helped me recognize five things in particular that I needed to drop to lead a healthier, more integrated, and peaceful life.

1. My Post-College Plans

By now I thought I’d have two master’s degrees and a tricked-out passport. I wanted the world when I graduated college: travel, independence, and a career in hard-nosed journalism.

Instead I was feeling nauseous at parties, waiting on hold with insurance companies for hours, and sleeping in my car after job interviews to recover from the exhaustion. The fatigue was bone-crushing, amazing in its power to suck out every ounce of life and spirit.

After I got sick, I still wanted to keep up old habits. I made plans to go camping. I stayed up late. I drank beer and ate pizza. Now I see that this was my way of scolding my body for what it simply could no longer do. I liked the way my story was going, and when the plot veered south, I spent years kicking and screaming for a rewrite. But my illness forced me to reframe my narrative.

Two years after coming down with mono, I was shopping at REI. I’d accepted a job on a farm outside of London—another endearingly sad act of denial. I was going to be a gardener—delirious with fatigue. As I struggled to try on boots, it occurred to me that my life wasn't going to be what I'd hoped. I thought, "Maybe I’m not up for this. Maybe this is bad plan." Finally, I realized it was time to let those plans go.

Soon after I resigned from the job, I started to rethink my dream. If I couldn’t farm in England, I’d plant seeds in my backyard in St. Louis. It was a heartbreaking compromise at the time, but it was also my first gesture of acceptance. I’d made a slow turn toward reality, and my body was thanking me for slowing down.

Although I can’t control the disease, I know now that I have the responsibility to determine its effect on my life. To some degree, I’m still the narrator, the one who can name what is good and beautiful about a hard situation.

2. My Doctors’ Authority on My Body

“Your body is your business.” Those words from Lissa Rankin, M.D., have been a wonderful encouragement to reclaim my body from the misguided information I’ve received from so many specialists. My family physician, for instance, did more harm than good when she wrote me a steady supply of antibiotic prescriptions for a year to try to manage chronic sinus infections—drugs I now know appear to be detrimental to healthy gut flora and to open a floodgate of issues like leaky gut syndrome. 

I’m my body’s best caretaker. Every day I decide what’s going to be the most nourishing form of medicine—whether that’s a hefty dose of ibuprofen or a few glasses of wine shared with girlfriends.

I love this approach because it empowers the patient to take a more active, participatory role in their healing. I’ve seen more than 20 specialists, and not one asked me about my thoughts on my body, illness, or recovery. It was only my functional medicine doctor who emphasized that diet is a medicine stronger than any drug. We know our bodies best. Who’s to say that someone in a white coat gets to have the last word?

3. My Favorite Foods

A black bean quesadilla: That’s what I ate regularly for lunch before a friend urged me to think more critically about food. While it wasn't the most unhealthy choice (I was adding vegetables! The tortilla was whole-wheat! The salsa organic!), the quesadilla era of my life was more about consuming food without thinking about its nutritional properties, the ethics of its sources, or what kind of environment it was creating in my body.

After much research and talking with other food-conscious folks, I’ve found the foods that work best for my body. I avoid gluten, dairy, sugar, and all processed foods because they promote systemic inflammation in my body. I try to eat slowly, mindfully, and locally. I know the names of a lot of people who grow my food and can make a mean salad from my own backyard garden.

Interestingly my roommates were unaffected by the quesadillas we had for lunch everyday. They didn't become post-quesadilla zombies. Now that I’m studying to become a health coach, I see the wisdom of bioindividuality: The idea that one person’s food is another person’s poison. What makes me feel energized may have deleterious effects on someone else’s health. We should all pay attention to what our food is offering our bodies, whether it's energizing nourishment or a post-lunch slump.

4. The “B-Word”

Busy! My journey with illness has forced me to rethink how I choose to relate to time. I learned the beauty of embracing a slower life from Brené Brown, a researcher and professor at the University of Houston. In her book Daring Greatly, she writes about how exhaustion has become a status symbol and a metric for self-worth. “’Crazy-busy’ is a great armor, it’s a great way for numbing,” Brown writes. “I see it a lot when I interview people and talk about vacation. They talk about how they are wound up and checking emails and sitting on the beach with their laptops.“

I think I used to be like that: frazzled, overcommitted, waving around my to-do list like a flag to say: “I’m doing important things.“ “I don't have time for you.“ “I’m too busy to help out.“

But now because I simply can’t keep up with my former pace of life, I enjoy so much more by doing less. I’m more available to the people in my life; I often cook long, leisurely meals; and I wake up early in the morning to write. I know my priorities. I work hard to get them done. The rest is for gardening, yoga, and cooking for people I love.

5. An “Average” Workday

Because fatigue gets the best of me, I have to nap every afternoon. It happens every day around 3 p.m.: I’m writing, I get sloppy with brain fog, and I start to plot my stopping point.

My daily siesta has made me particularly sensitive to the cultural stigma around the afternoon nap—and rest in general. I used to make myself miserable with guilt every afternoon. With the sun still shining, I’d tuck myself into bed and think about how I should be working, creating, producing—anything but sleeping. It felt really bad. 

And although there is plenty of research in praise of the power nap, my issue was more about the shame of not being able to live in the flow of a “normal” life with its 9-to-5 workday, post-work happy hours, and time allotted for exercise and errands.

But that just can’t be my way—and frankly, I’m not sure it would be if I were perfectly healthy. I’m introverted and bookish. I’m always nursing a cup of steaming tea. Perhaps I’ll always gravitate toward a quieter, slower life. Maybe happy hour isn’t really my thing anyway.

This notion also applies to those whose bodies don’t need a daily nap. It’s about relaxing into the inherent limitations in your life instead of forcing a better reality. It’s about accepting what is honestly available to you and embracing what may never be: a fertile body, wages commensurate to talent, or a functional relationship with your family. Instead of lamenting what I've lost, I’m learning to simply love what is.

Words That Heal

San Juan range, @benjoyment

I’ve asked for the help of my two dearest companions living on this steep road. I asked for their feedback on this question: What words have been healing and which have been hurtful over the course of your years with health issues and chronic pain?

My companions are Britt and Mark. We all were mountain guides in southwest Colorado. For Britt, her always-present and often disabling headache entered the scene after her years on the trail. Mark suffered a traumatic brain injury when a ball slammed into his head during a soccer game. He has experienced excruciating, unrelenting pain every single day for over ten years, and somehow manages to live with a big, silly smile and more energy than the rest of us. Mark and I have become accustomed to texting each other choice words on our harder days and gold star emojis on our better days. We do it acknowledge that, yes, we are still going through our journeys with illness and pain, and the other always understands. It's often a good fix.

I think it's something divine that the three of us to call our common ground the majestic San Juan Mountains, a range just as severe and rugged as it is overwhelmingly wild and beautiful- much like a life with pain and illness.

As a friend to someone who hurts, you may be at a loss of words. What can you possibly say in the presence of tremendous pain if you live in a body that rarely calls attention to itself? You’re not to blame.

These lists are intended to bring everyone – the healthy and the weary – in on the language that bears the power to heal. They might also help you see that perhaps well-intended words that cut deeper than you think.

What are some words or comments from others said in response to your situation that have been healing or helpful?

• “You are not a burden.”
• “I enjoy you just as much when you’re feeling well as when you’re not.”
• “If you never recover from this, it won’t matter to me. I’ll be here with you through it all.”
• “You’re making an impact. Others are growing from your experience.”
• “There is meaning to your suffering.” (and not following that up with a trite theological explanation)
• “This day doesn’t need you, but it sure could use you.”
• “It blesses me to help you. Serving and caring and showing up for you brings me life. SO LET ME HELP.”
• These are the specific ways I see you becoming stronger / more admirable / etc.
• “You’re story helps me understand/ handle/ face my own.”
• “You’re not too much. You’re not too much. You’re not too much…”
• “What can I do to understand your daily experience?”
• And, mostly, just remember us. "Those who make it clear that they know or remember or think about the fact that I have a headache or that I don’t feel well make me feel like I’m known, like I’m home. So it’s subtle questions or remarks that let me know that they know. Others simply remembering has been the most powerful of all, for all of us."

What are some words or comments that have not been helpful or you wish would rather not be said anymore?

• “It’s hard to believe you’re sick when you look so normal." or "You don't even look sick!"
• “How about we do (enter activity that would be really taxing, being in a loud concert, going for a long run)…?” (general forgetfulness of ongoing illness or pain. Even when it’s a good day, the burden never leaves us and is likely not going to be over soon)
• “Why don’t you drink coffee to wake up?”
• “I could never do what you do.” “How do you do it?” (disbelief)
• “So like you have a headache right now? So you’re fatigued right now?” (forgetting or just not comprehending)
• “I would never have known you had a headache/didn’t feel well. You’re always so ______ : positive, strong, happy….”
• “Have you ever tried ________?” (ideas for treatment—this is often the most overwhelming thing people say!)
• “Well compared to (some other illness or pain), it’s not that bad, right?”

Remember that these lists are intended to heal, not judge or point out wrongdoing. I think we can all use them as a challenge to be more gracious, selective and compassionate with our words. 

My advice? Spend some time with your hurting friend, look her in the eye and offer her sweet words she can drink like medicine. She longs to hear them.

The Practice of Being Enough

Image from hotblack

Together with my wonderful book club, I'm reading Tara Brach's 'Radical Acceptance.' Last night we gathered to talk about the first few chapters and Brach's concept of the 'trance of unworthiness." She says we are all living under the shadow of feeling like we are not enough: not successful enough, not desirable enough, not calm enough. 

We all agreed - and we're tired of it! We're ready to wake up from the trance. What good is it to live under a spell that keeps us from loving ourselves as we are? Still imperfect, but so lovely and needed in this aching world. 

"Can you guys think of a time when you did feel worthy?" one friend asked. 

"It's a good question," someone said, and we were quiet.

In our circle, there are some of the strongest and most beautiful women I know. A hospice worker who rests with dying people all day and then eagerly wants to know about your day when you see her. 

Another friend joined us straight from work, where she holds leadership positions beyond her years. She once wandered Northern India by herself for two weeks and she's doing the most courageous thing of all: trying (and waiting) to get pregnant.

The third is my kindred, Cristina. I often think of her in my most self-critical moments. I try to connect with her serene way of calming me down. "Hey, Linds, it's okay." She lives out her values better than anyone I know, from the type of environmentally-friendly soaps she chooses to the gentle way she teaches me to knit.

Oh, not to mention they all hold master's degrees from the county's #1 social work program. They all are doing amazing work in the world.

Let me tell you: These women are worthy!

So why is it so damn hard to end the self-hatred and love the goodness of who we are ?

Brach identifies a few ways that we try to "manage the pain of inadequacy." I share them with you in the form of questions meant to probe your thought patterns and unveil little opportunities for growth: 

• Do you embark on one self-improvement project after another? Are you on a perpetual diet, always making lists, always researching, enrolling in classes to make up for a feeling of not knowing enough? Brach points out that these are all worthwhile endeavors, but less so when they are motivated from not being good enough, when they are frantic attempts to reject how we actually are.
• Do you hold back and play it safe rather than risk failure? That means backing down from invitations to gatherings, avoiding intimate relationships, putting your art projects to the side out of fear of saying what you really mean, or living how you really want to live.
• Do you withdraw from the experience of the present moment? If you're like me, and you're constantly checking your email at red lights out of momentary boredom, the answer is yes.
• Do you keep busy? Like too busy? Think about the last time you filled a gap in your schedule by lying on the couch, enjoying classical music, or paced through the park for the joy of it - and not to get your heart rate up? Are you afraid of the loneliness you might encounter without plans on a Friday night?
• Are you your own worst critic? Self-hate is seeing our weaknesses as deep character flaws.
• Are you focusing on other people's faults? Perhaps that's your way of shifting the weight perceived failure onto others when it gets a bit too heavy to carry on your own. 

The point of this self-inventory isn't to shame or create a guilty response. It's about spinning the self-critique on its head to see that, yes, you are enough. You've always been enough and you're always going to be enough. 

It just takes a daily ritual to shake us from the trance - a practice I find to be some of the most beautiful, enriching part of the work I do with my clients.

I call it "the practice of being enough."

I'll pass on one simple exercise to get you started.

Take time to think about one word or image that grounds you in your true self- the purest, innermost part of yourself. The part that you know is whole and worthy.

I like to share the words of my spiritual director, who developed a mantra in response to a hurt from his father. He was an excellent athlete, and one day finished first in the running and swimming events at a triathlon. But, as his father reminded him at the finish line, "Yes, but you were only third in the cycling event." That comment made his self-confidence sink - and it also inspired him to take back his power.

He began to heal from his trance by creating this mantra: "I am beautiful, I am precious, I am important."

He recites it to himself in moments of feeling sucked back into old thought patterns.

I encourage you to do the same. Respond to the most gripping messages of your trance with a mantra that embodies the truth of who you are. It will always be there for you and it will always bring you back to peace.