Tap into the Power of Self-Healing
If you’ve ever had an issue with your health, you know just how slippery that slope can be.
If you are one of the lucky few reading this thinking, “I feel great!” — you are exactly where I was before everything changed.
I got woke
I was your average 26-year-old woman; wearing uncomfortable high-heels, eating greasy pub food and not thinking twice about any decision I made.
Until one day I felt a pinch in my foot. Followed by the same pinch in my right foot.
I don’t think anything could have ever prepared me for the flurry of pain, inflammation, and sheer helplessness that I felt during that time.
My mobility was at stake.
I had no idea what was happening to me — and it seemed that the doctors didn’t either.
Their only recommendations involved overpriced plastic shoe inserts, hideous rocker shoes or injections; none of which I was willing to do. I knew they were only band-aid solutions.
I was without options — or so I thought.
Not being one to easily accept defeat, I fervently began researching all of my unanswered questions. I played detective, gathering breadcrumbs of information I had been collecting from each health care professional I saw and piecing them together.
One answer led to another question, and gradually as the story begun to unfold, I started to dig myself out of the black hole I had been in for 12 miserable months.
I felt hopeful.
What once seemed cryptic and confusing was suddenly becoming clear.
Small experiments led to bigger experiments and suddenly I was feeling better than ever — seeing progress I didn’t know was possible to achieve on my own.
I was self-healing.
What does it mean to self-heal?
In order to know what it means to self-heal, we must first eliminate what it is not.
Self-healing is not:
- A fad diet
- A boycott on Western medicine
- A reason to stop taking your meds or disregard what your doctor is saying (although it could end up that way).
Self-healing is a complete shift in mindset.
Going from passively living your daily life — quickly running errands, quickly eating lunch, quickly walking to work — to actively acknowledging yourself and the things you’re doing.
Observing your body as if it were no longer yours. Paying attention to the subtleties you would otherwise consider the norm.
And in order to observe, you must understand — no, celebrate — the human body. While they may look different person to person, bodies are all meant to function in the same way.
It’s our modern lifestyles that have created these new age health problems.
Respect your body and the way it functions
Our bodies are not a right, they are a privilege.
Okay sure, we are born with them so it certainly feels like we have rights to it, and in reality we do.
This is why I am calling it a mindset shift.
Nothing is physically changing.
Instead of taking the beauty of our bodies for granted, we will simply treat them as if they were on loan.
Have you ever borrowed a dress from your girlfriend? What about their favourite scarf? Chances are you will treat that item with the utmost consideration, being careful not to spill, stain or damage.
In this beautiful world of self healing, we treat our bodies as if they belong to our closest friend.
We consider every morsel of food we put into our mouths and how our complex bodies will digest it. We take into consideration how much exercise we’ve had or how little stretching we’ve done after a long day of sitting in a chair.
When you love and respect your body, you want to do what’s right for it the same way you walk your dog after its been stuck inside all day (you better walk your dog after its been inside all day!!!).
We feel accountable because we understand that when we respect ourselves, we flourish.
For some people, this shift can be difficult — sometimes impossible.
For me, it happened once I took the time to understand how my feet were designed to work. That made it easy to see just how detrimental my footwear was, and how inflammatory my diet had become.
This process didn’t happen overnight — in reality, it was very gradual. Each small change I made accommodating the function of my body, the better I felt and the more motivated I became.
Believe in the outcome
This is probably the area that needs the most work in our modern society.
We’ve been taught to believe that solutions to health problems must involve a doctor.
Doctors dedicate years of their lives to learning about the human body, and use technology that no ordinary person would have access to or know how to use.
They’ve seen it all.
Prepare yourself. What I’m about to say may sound counterintuitive, but it’s true.
Simply because a doctor has seen it, doesn’t mean they are any more equipped to fix the problem than you are.
Western medicine and our healthcare system weren’t designed for proactivity. They were designed to deal with crisis — influenza outbreaks, trauma, anything with urgency.
Solutions to the rise of autoimmune diseases and mental health tend to be “quick fix” — which always involve pharmaceuticals.
We all know that real solutions don’t just happen on their own. That just isn’t a very popular answer.
Our health care is not set up to identify warning signals — especially not when it comes to food.
In order to benefit from the power of self healing, you must first believe that you are just as capable of achieving improvements to your health as your doctor.
You have to believe or nothing will change.
Be a detective
This is the part I enjoy most — my boyfriend always pokes fun at me for how investigative I am by nature.
I am always looking for the deeper meaning — the hidden answer just waiting to be decoded.
This is also the key to self-healing.
We are constantly receiving a flurry of signals from our bodies attempting to communicate with us; headaches, stomach aches, diarrhea, kidney stones, fatigue, depression. These are all different signals.
The problem is, when we live passively, these signals just feel like a normal part of our life. We may even cling to them as a means of victimizing ourselves.
I’m so depressed. It doesn’t matter what happens in my life, i’ll always be depressed.
Everybody is different. Every body is different. That’s why it’s so important to pay attention to yours and what it’s trying to tell you.
When you listen, you can identify patterns that align with specific signals.
For me, I journal regularly which has made it easier to go back and identify specific triggers.
For example, I know that when I allow high levels of stress into my life, I get depressed, which also feels a lot like being sick. I know this because I was able to trace back to specific events that caused me a great deal of stress leading up to the illness.
Now believe it or not, this is only half the battle.
Most people say that being aware of the problem is 90% of the solution. In my world, awareness comes easily — it’s the preceding action that I struggle with.
Tuning in to my body made it easy to identify that my subconscious stress levels manifest into chewing on my lips, clenching my jaw and overeating.
26-year-old me would not have noticed these tell-tale signs (too busy stuffing my face with chicken fingers).
29-year-old me knows exactly what will happen if I don’t take a proactive approach to stress management.
I know this because I am completely attuned to my body and its function.
Feel empowered
When I look back on the relationship I had with my body before this all happened, I see the disconnect. I’m not surprised that my health faltered given the complete disregard I had for it.
While I may not have completely healed just yet, I wouldn’t change a thing about this journey.
I feel more in touch with myself now than I ever knew possible. As a result, everything that I place value on has changed — for the better.
It is my hope that you — friends, family, and strangers struggling with their health — will follow the same three steps and embark on their own self-healing journey.
It will completely change your life.