Wellness Blog
“We give too much authority to someone in a white coat.” – Dr. Michael Bernard Beckwith
A couple of nights ago, I was watching the documentary “Heal” on Netflix (which I highly recommend you check out!) and I was struck by this quote from Dr. Beckwith. I was immediately transported back to my own experience with the medical profession during my healing crisis back in 2004.
The whole story of that journey is something that I share in my book, “You Are Not Your Diagnosis,” but in this post I’d like to hone in on this point that I find to be critical for so many people– that we give too much authority and therefore too much trust/confidence to doctors.
When I went from thinking I was a healthy 24-year-old woman who was getting ready for elective surgery to discovering in the pre-op process that my labs looked alarmingly abnormal, I was immediately cast into the realm of doctors and Western medicine. I spent close to two weeks in two different hospitals going through a battery of tests and examinations to uncover what those abnormal labs meant and what was going on with my health.
In the end, the “experts” arrived at the diagnosis of Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia (CML) and I believed that diagnosis because I trusted the medical profession. Yet over the next several years as I was told that all my lab results were looking good and yet I felt horrible (and I was turning into a walking skeleton), I knew deep inside that something was not right.
Yet despite my internal knowing that something was off, I couldn’t get my doctors to listen to me. When I would share that I still felt very ill, one of my doctors would brush that comment off with “Well you look great!” which also was not true because people would tell me not to lose any more weight because I was wasting away…
I was beginning to question my doctors and their knowledge but I was caught in a web that required me to get a referral from my primary doctor in order to see a new hematologist and for several years, my primary doctor reassured me that the current specialist was “a great doctor” despite my own experience that he was, in fact, anything BUT that.
It was only after I left graduate school and got medical insurance through a job and therefore got a new primary doctor outside of student health that I was able to finally get the long desired referral to a new hematologist, who questioned my diagnosis at our very first appointment…
Looking back at this 15 years later, I am still angered by the fact that my doctors didn’t want to listen to me. And I’m also frustrated, on some level, that I didn’t make a bigger fuss when I knew that something was wrong.
I share my story because I believe it is one that is all too common, although it is something that we don’t like to think about. Doctors make mistakes and it is probably more common than we think about.
When I work with my clients, I am a strong advocate that THEY are in charge of who gets to treat them and be on their care team. I remind them that just because someone has the title of doctor or wears a white coat doesn’t mean that we have to blindly follow them against what we know in our own guts to be right for us.
In one simple sentence, Dr. Beckwith sums up perfectly how so many of us have become conditioned to defer to doctors as the “experts” and to discount what we feel or even know to be true based on our daily lived experience in our bodies.
If you are reading this and you feel that you are seeing a doctor who doesn’t listen to you, who brushes off your shared experience, or who you just feel in your gut is not the right doctor for you, don’t hesitate to get a second opinion or to even fire your doctor.
Since my own experiences in 2004-2007, I have fired a number of doctors for not listening to me and my concerns or because I had a knowing that they were not the right doctor for me.
We need to make this a normal thing to do… to question our doctors and to be in charge of our health and healing by choosing who is on our team (from doctors to alternative practitioners).
I’d love to hear from you in the comments if you’ve ever felt like a doctor wasn’t right for you but not felt like it was acceptable to question them or “fire” them. Let’s start to make it acceptable to talk about this subject and begin to help all people feel comfortable in questioning medical professionals.
In our modern world, it is easy to feel like we are constantly on the go, pulled from one activity to the next, and that there are so many demands on our time and attention. We can end up feeling exhausted, burned out, and spread too thin…
Today, I would love to share with you the top 5 reasons why attending a retreat is a powerful gift to yourself that you should consider investing In.
- A retreat provides you the opportunity to get outside of your day-to-day life and to spend time focusing on your own self-healing and self-development. It can also jump-start changes in habits that you are trying to make.
With how busy we are in our daily lives, it can be hard to prioritize things like our health, self-reflection, and our own growth as a person.
It can be easy to get caught up with the to-do lists, with taking care of our families, cleaning the house, and all the various other activities that call for our attention and time. It’s sad but we are often the last thing on our priority list!
A retreat provides a valuable opportunity to step away from your life, to have the spaciousness of time to reflect on what is and isn’t working in our lives (and to commit to changing that!), and to dive deep into learning about new topics to support our health and well-being.
If you are struggling to implement some new changes in the area of your health, a weekend away focused on this topic and learning new skills can provide a “jump start” to new habits, patterns, and routines.
If everything tends to feel overwhelming or if you are feeling life like is stale right now, taking an intentional getaway can lead to powerful shifts!
2. A retreat is an amazing opportunity to RECEIVE- support, nurturing, connection, and so much more.
For most women, we are busy taking care of everyone else and not very focused on taking care of ourselves. Just ask yourself, when was the last time you did something FOR YOURSELF?
When you attend a retreat, you will have the opportunity to have homemade nourishing meals cooked just for you, the opportunity to learn from and receive support of the retreat’s leader(s), a chance to make new friends and share your own struggles and challenges in an open and honest way with other women.
There will be spacious time for being alone if you want, for walking outside in nature, to take a nap if your body requires it.
3. A retreat gives you an opportunity to reconnect to the healing power of nature.
Many retreats are held at beautiful locations around the world. Places can include global destinations like Bali, Costa Rica, or Mexico or can be more local like the Oregon Coast or a mountain near you.
We have become a society that has become more disconnected from nature as we spend time indoors, in front of screens, and connected more to technology than to Mother Nature.
Yet nature holds tremendous healing potential and gifts for us and a weekend or week away in a natural setting can offer tremendous healing benefits to us.
4. You can make new friends that can support you on your life’s journey.
By spending a weekend away with a small group of women, you will have the opportunity to form new friendships. When we are in the space of getting away together and being present, we can form much deeper and more real connections with others and these are the kinds of relationships that can support us for years to come.
Although it might initially feel intimidating to spend a weekend away with a group of people we don’t know (yet), with the help of a skillful leader and a schedule of activities focused on growth, you will find yourself connecting deeply with other participants.
5. Attending a retreat can help you become a better version of you in your daily life.
When we allow ourselves spaciousness, receive nurturing and connection, and learn new tools and skills, we become empowered to grow and to develop into a better version of ourselves.
As a result, we are the able to show up in new ways for the people and the things we care about in our lives!
Imagine being able to take better care of your family, to have more energy and passion for your work, and to show up in the world in a bigger and brighter way…
Losing weight has never been a particularly easy thing for me to do. Even as a teenager who was very active (doing ballet for 90 minutes three times a week), I had a tendency to gain weight more easily than many of my peers.
I remember one summer that I decided to focus on trying to lose a little extra weight and to tone up. I spent that summer eating healthy (more fruits and veggies and lean meats, very little processed food or junk food) and working out very regularly.
And yet at the end of several months, there was no difference on the scale. Zero… Yes, I had possibly gained a little but of muscle and therefore offset any weight loss but I still felt like a failure on some level.
I remember from this relatively young age wondering WHY it was so easy for some people to lose weight when I was doing all the right things and yet nothing changed.
I knew the story of my mom’s best friend who also struggled with weight her whole life and it was only when she was in an in-patient weight loss clinic eating around 500 calories a day that her body could start losing weight. That was pretty messed up, I remember thinking, but I didn’t really understand WHY that was.
Throughout my adult life, I have continued to struggle with a difficulty in losing weight. Let me just say that I do not believe in crazy fad diets, miracle pills, and things of those sort (so please don’t come talking to me about those kinds of things- because I have ZERO interest). I have always just focused on eating well and moving my body, yet nothing has changed.
In fact, in the almost 5 years since I’ve been together with my husband, I have gained more weight and I have tried several times over the past 2 years to lose the weight but once I have lost about 10 pounds, if I don’t keep up a very focused way of eating, it immediately comes back again…
About a year or so ago, one of my mentors in the BodyTalk system, Dr. Laura Stuve, started talking about how she has had tremendous success in using BodyTalk tools (which she strengthens with her own background as a PhD scientist) to help both herself and her clients successfully lose weight.
I was immediately both excited and intrigued! While I couldn’t take her hormones of weight and metabolism class when she first offered it in 2017, I put it on my wish list for 2018 and I did take that course last October!
In the class, we learned a great deal about things like:
- how traditional diets actually mess up our metabolism MORE, making it even harder to lose weight
- how the calories in, calories burned model that has been dominant for years is flawed because it doesn’t take into account the QUALITY of the calories you are eating
- how the experiences of our ancestors (like food shortages and famines) can actually affect our metabolism today, making our bodies think we also need to be prepared for food shortages
- how imbalances in the gut microbiome (that community of good bacteria in our digestive system) can contribute to weight gain or difficulty losing weight
- and so much more…
I have been diving into using the new tools I learned from Dr. Laura with a small group of clients for several months, and also I started getting BodyTalk sessions on this topic from Dr. Laura herself.
It is my intention to blog a bit and share my own journey with this process and so this is the first entry in that documentation.
Since my first session with Dr. Laura on December 30, 2018, I have already lost about 6 pounds in 2 weeks.
This isn’t through some crazy restrictive diet but instead through making a few key tweaks in what I’m eating (which was customized based on what MY specific body is requesting) and also adding more exercise into my life (with the requirement the exercise must be FUN, not something I don’t enjoy).
So I am working out now 6 days a week, many days doing NIA videos since I love dancing and this way of movement feels fun and also good to my body. I’m changing what I eat for breakfast and cutting way back on eating potatoes to only once every 2 weeks, per my body’s request. I’m eating less sugar and more fiber, again per my body’s request.
It feels good to finally be shifting this long pattern of mine, which for me actually runs back through my mom and that side of the family. I’m doing this in a healthy, balanced way, and a way that honors my unique needs, which will make it sustainable.
Through BodyTalk, Dr. Laura is helping reset underlying imbalances in hormones, the brain centers that know whether we are safe to lose weight or if we are in danger of starvation (including those ancestral patterns I mentioned above), my gut microbiome, and so much more.
I look forward to writing another update in a few weeks!
And if this is an area that you are interested in exploring support and healing for yourself, reach out as I’m launching this as another focused offering of my work. I truly believe that losing weight shouldn’t have to be hard, require starving ourselves (that actually won’t help you lose weight), and it isn’t “your fault” if you’ve tried things and haven’t been successful. I’d love to help you have a different experience.
How many times have you judged your emotions (or even if it is a specific emotion, like anger) as being a “bad thing”?
In our Western world, many of us have been raised to think of various emotions or being “too emotional” as a negative thing and therefore we judge ourselves and get frustrated when we feel emotions, or instead we are driven to suppress our emotions.
I’d like to share a little mindset shifting philosophy with you, in case you hold this all-to-common belief that emotions (at least some of them) can be “bad.”
Emotions are just energy and they are meant to be in motion… They actually are quite powerful forces that our bodies can use as fuel for action, healing, and many other things. It is really only when our emotions get stuck or when we push them down and suppress them that they become a problem.
In the Chinese Medicine philosophy, each emotion is seen as designed to help with a particular movement/action in the bodymind.
The emotion of worry, for example, is designed to help us think and problem solve. It is only when we get stuck in it that we can fall into confusion, which often results in anxiety.
The emotion of anger is actually designed to be fuel to move forward in our lives (when coupled with the planning energy of our Liver, it is powerful at this). However, when anger becomes imbalanced or suppressed, that is when we get to the explosiveness stage that many people are familiar with and often afraid of.
Grief is all about letting go of things. It serves the energy of releasing what we no longer need but if we don’t allow it to move, then we often fall apart.
The next time that you find yourself wanting to label certain emotions as “negative” or “bad” or you feel the desire to push them down, remind yourself instead that they are fuel for your body to use and each one has its own intelligent purpose.
Allow the energy of the emotion to move, as it is intended to do, and see what happens.
When we allow the healthy movement and expression of ALL of our emotions, our bodies don’t have to also find places to hold onto them, to store them in our tissues, which is often what causes pain in areas of the body that seemingly comes “out of nowhere.”
Recently I was guest on the “Learn True Health” podcast with Ashley James! We had a GREAT conversation about listening to the body’s wisdom rather than always reaching for a medication to silence symptoms and so much more!
Other topics include:
- my own story of chronic illness and my misdiagnosis with leukemia at age 25
- my exploration of alternative healing including biofeedback and therapeutic yoga
- my discovery of BodyTalk
- my book, “You Are Not Your Diagnosis”
- a simple technique to help YOU listen to your body
To listen to this episode, click on the image below!
BodyTalk Access is a powerful, one day class where you will learn a simple but highly effective routine that you can use on a regular basis to help support your overall health and well-being.
Today, I’d like to share my top 5 reasons why you need BodyTalk Access in your life.
1, Learning the immune system balancing technique is worth the cost of admission alone!
Think of how many times you end up with a cold each fall/winter/spring. Think of how easily you pick-up any bug going around or if you are a parent, how often your kids pick it up and then bring it home to spread it throughout the household.
How much do you spend on Nyquil, cough medicine, cough drops? How much do you lose on sick days and time off? Or taking time off work to take care of sick kids?
No one likes to catch every bug going around and with this technique, you will learn how to help your immune system stay optimized so that it can easily and effectively fight of what is going around– and you can use it to help your whole family do the same!
If you do start to come down with something, using this technique frequently during that time can dramatically help your body recover faster!
2. You might think you are staying hydrated by drinking your 8 glasses of water a day but you might not actually be absorbing the water into your cells!
This is a fascinating thing to learn, right? We can drink PLENTY of water and yet still be dehydrated!
You might even be thinking of times when you have been drinking enough water but you still feel dehydrated. I know I’ve felt that way many times- like I just can’t drink enough water to feel good.
With this technique that you will learn, you can help all of your cells take in the water that you are drinking daily. Sometimes, due to a variety of reasons that you’ll learn more about in the class, we can drink water but it doesn’t actually get into the cells! With this technique, that is a problem no longer!
3. You will learn one of the most effective ways to balance and optimize how your brain is functioning on a daily basis!
Do you sometimes lack mental focus and concentration? Do you find it hard to do certain cognitive tasks? Want to be able to better concentrate for important meetings, phone calls, or other activities?
When you learn the cortices technique in the BodyTalk Access class, you learn a technique that you can use daily to help give your brain’s functioning a boost!
This technique also has the added side benefit of helping to diminish cold spots, which are areas of lower blood supply in the brain. If we have a physical injury or illness, this issue is actually reflected in our brains as a cold spot so by helping decrease cold spots, we also help the area of illness or injury.
4. You will learn how to optimize your response to stress
Many of us find ourselves feeling stressed out and overwhelmed on a daily basis. Our brains and bodies shut down from reacting to every little stressor in our daily lives and with a simple technique called Switching, you will find yourself less reactive to stress and more able to use challenges as a fuel for success!
I’ll also be sharing cool new research about how stress doesn’t have to be bad for us- that part of it is our mindset about stress!
5. Learn a quick technique to help with minor or major emergencies
Maybe you stub your toe on something… Or one of your kids falls down and scrapes up a knee… Maybe you just witnessed a horrific car accident and you find yourself in a state of shock…
With the Fast Aid technique, we can help the physical, mental, and emotional parts of ourselves handle anything from a little cut in the kitchen to experiencing a life-changing trauma.
For example, I’ve used this technique to help a family member who banged her hand and had it swell up to at least double its normal size quickly reduce inflammation and pain and by later that day, there was no pain, swelling or bruising! It is AMAZING!
If you think that this sounds like something you need in your life, I invite you to sign up for my upcoming BodyTalk Access classes in the Portland, OR area or find a class near you at www.bodytalksystem.com/seminars/
Check out my recent interview on the Awakening to Life Podcast here now!
We chatted about my new book, “You Are Not Your Diagnosis,” how to listen to the wisdom of your body, and how to not have your diagnosis control your life!
Last week I was interviewed by Kole Hansen on her Warrior Women with a Purpose Podcast and it was SUCH a great interview that I wanted to share it with you all!
Kole is also a healer with an amazing story (which she tells on one of the podcast episodes) and we really jammed about the wisdom of our bodies, how things like illness are a wakeup call from the universe and more.
I hope you’ll take a listen and if you enjoyed it, leave a 5 star review on iTunes for the podcast!
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/warrior-women-with-a-purpose/id1234340783?mt=2
Find out the answer to this fascinating question in my latest video!
Check out this interview I did with Simone Mitjans where I share part of the story of my misdiagnosis, I talk about my new book, and I share some simple ways to make sure that you take control of your health when dealing with your doctors.