I believe that health and wellness are created by a balance in five realms: the spiritual, energetic, psychosocial, emotional, and physical. Our bodies are wonderfully able to adapt to imbalances, and often this occurs without any conscious awareness. Our bodies often get our attention by creating physical manifestations of these imbalances, and give us an opportunity to listen to the underlying messages. My approach is to go beyond the symptoms to explore the root causes, understand the downstream effects, and discover what is needed for each person to create a deeper level of healing. By combining the art and science of medicine with the wisdom and intuition of the inner healer, true balance can be restored.
Janice (not her real name)first came to me complaining of fatigue, a lack of energy and a need for caffeine to get through the day, not sleeping well despite feeling exhausted at the end of the day, feeling stuck, and overall just feeling “off” without any specific reason she could identify. She also was frustrated with the weight she gained around the middle, and nothing she did seemed to help. She had been to her regular doctor, who told her everything was “fine” with her exam and routine blood work, and that she was probably just depressed and a pill would fix that.
Does this sound familiar? Have you had a similar experience? You are not alone.
Needless to say, Janice was quite frustrated and wanted better answers. Her intuition told her something was wrong, and she just needed to keep searching until she found the answers she needed. During her first visit we spend more than an hour discussing her health history, her concerns and her goals. She had had a stressful past couple of years, with the death if her father and taking care of her aging mother. Her daughter had recently gotten married and now lives several hours away – Janice doesn’t see her as much as she used to. Janice has been at the same job for 10 years with increasing frustration, no real sense of purpose, and feeling a lack of support for all the work she’s expected to do. She knew she should exercise and eat well, but would find herself craving chips and sweets, and was too tired to exercise with an regularity. She felt her marriage was okay, had not had sex much lately but neither of them seemed to care as they were both exhausted and overwhelmed with daily life. When asked about passion in her life, she drew a blank. Come to think of it, she couldn’t think of a time in recent years when she felt much of anything else other than the rollercoaster of anger, frustration, anxiety, hopelessness, and the tears that would spring up out of nowhere.
As Janice and I worked together to get to the underlying causes,it was clear that many systems were stressed, and as a result her health was suffering. She did not need a pill to ‘fix’ her; she needed a comprehensive plan to heal. We looked at all five elements to help her identify the stressors that were creating the imbalances, then changed what she had control over, gave her tools to modify her responses to the ones that she could not change, and restored her health.
Here is how we did that:
Emotional:
We explored the fact that she did not like to feel angry, and with her increasing frustration she just kept pushing down the feelings she judged as being bad. She learned to recognize her different feelings and acknowledge them with less judgment, and in doing so she was able to feel them without being overwhelmed by them; they no longer had so much control over her. Feelings just are; they do not need to be explained. She found herself feeling much calmer and when she did get angry or sad it wasn’t so scary.
Psychosocial: : She often tended to everyone’s needs but her own, and in doing so developed behavior patterns that did not support her own growth and health. As she began to see how putting her own needs last did not serve her or anyone around her, she slowly began to shift. This initially created more difficulties at home, and although it was complicated at first, she found it freeing to be able to change and not be responsible for everyone else. She developed more intimate relationships with her husband and girlfriends, as she allowed them to see the real Janice. This helped ease the sense of loss she felt since her daughter moved away, and she was able to create a social network that supported her.
Energetic: : Her first and third chakras were out of balance, and this was related in part to some of the recent losses in her family. We worked with her chakra fields, both with energetic healing as well as the yoga and meditation. Colors and sounds also helped support healing of the chakras and energy bodies. The energy flowed more smoothly, and healing followed.
Spiritual: Janice had many belief systems that she had developed over the years; many from childhood that were not even in her awareness. As we explored these, she chose to shift several that no longer served her highest good. We also supported reconnecting to her higher self, her core essence, and the knowledge that she is not alone. Life was not always hard, and was meant to be lived with joy. As she began to trust this inner knowing, her stress levels decreased and she felt much more at ease.