I figured it was time to give you a little update on my health. I am in a new phase of my recovery now and in some ways it’s a celebration – and I must admit that in other ways, it’s been a bit of a frustration. First, the celebration – my Genova/Great Smokies follow up test was done and I am candida free!!! Both strains of pathogenic yeast that were in my system are now gone. The major difference that I notice is no more cravings. At all. It is amazing – I am free of cravings for sweets, bread and other foods that used to contribute to blood sugar swings, wanting more & more and digestive upset that led to bingeing & purging. While these cravings were mostly allieviated by going on the Body Ecology Diet (BED), I could really see a major difference after the yeast was gone.
Emotional & Physical Hunger
As I’ve mentioned before, being on the BED has changed my experience of eating from feeling unfulfilled and needing more – to being totally satisfied with my meals and grounded in mind, body and spirit. While I do believe we eat for emotional reasons, I also believe we eat for physical reasons. I’m not sure how it all fits together, but from what I’ve learned about energy healing, I know that we have energy meridians surrounding our bodies. So when we have issues in our emotional, mental or spiritual energy fields, they do affect our physical body. This is one way that addiction and ill health occur. I’ll write more about this later. When you’ve done enough damage on the emotional, mental and spiritual energy fields, you may find – like I did – that you have issues lodged in your physical body. For me, it took shaking things up in the physical to heal the damage I did in the emotional and spiritual.
Lodged In The Physical
No matter how much emotional and spiritual work I did, the physical issues kept dragging me down. I think I must have needed to learn a lesson – a big one. And I believe that lesson is how to truly integrate a mind-body-spirit approach to healing. How to find where the issues are lodged and coax them out through an alignment process. I’m still working on it, which is why I am going to so many workshops with special teachers right now – but it’s starting to form and it’s so exciting!
More Lessons Disguised As Challenges
So now, as the universe always so kindly does, I have another new and challenging lesson. While my Genova/Great Smokies test showed that the candida is gone, I have lost all lactobacillus bacteria, which is a friendly “probiotic” bacteria (microflora) that helps with digestive health. Why? Well, I went through two months of RenewLife detox programs – 1 month of YeastMax and 1 month of ParaMax. Both are high quality, all natural herbal yeast and parasite cleanses. My doctor told me that sometimes, they will kill the good bacteria along with the bad (I’ll write more about doing detox programs…pros/cons later).
Bad Bugs vs. Good Bugs
On top of that, two new strains of pathogenic bacteria were found – one of which is tricky to get rid of and causes digestive distress. Without a good army of lactobacillus and bifidobacterium (I’m low on that friendly bacteria too), I have less “helpers” to keep the pathogenic bacteria at bay. So I’ve been experiencing a return of digestive distress that has been incredibly painful at times. I’ve been eating fermented foods and taking Primal Defense probiotics to build them back up again, so we’ll see how that goes. In the meantime, it sets off an internal war as my friendly microflora go to war with the unfriendly ones.
Returning Chronic Pain
That results in a type of chronic digestive pain that I’ve been free of for some time. And to be honest, it’s been almost unbearable at times. When Joel and I landed in Salt Lake City, UT last week, I was doubled over in pain in our rental car – thinking I had to go to the emergency room. Over the course of the last week in Moab, I’ve had many days where I felt uncomfortable, ill and boy did that affect my ability to feel joyful.
Pain Begets Pain…If We Let It
Pain is inherently negative. It makes us feel bad and that can affect our moods – pull us down and keep us there. I remember before my recovery, how much pain I was in all the time – from my digestive system, to my knees, my neck, shoulders, throat, jaw – just a subtle sense of pain that surrounded my body. I feared for my future health, thinking I was headed for a future of arthritis, osteoporosis or other ills that would plague me in my old age. That’s what pain, combined with fear energy can do. It kept me stuck. And my digestive pain – and even the kind of digestive malaise that created cravings or feeling the need to eat – was the worst of all.
Healing Hike
So here it is back again. And while I sometimes cry in frustration, tonight I made a breakthrough. It was after speaking to some very inspiring women whom I hold dear in my heart. Our topics ranged from letting go, to strength through pain to the crux of it all – trust. With this conversation fresh in my mind – and a group intention to let trust be our focus for the week – Joel and I took a hike in the Wasatch Mountains. As we started our hike, I could feel the digestive pain coming on – building and getting worse. It was about a 7 on a scale of 1 – 10, but I pressed on because walking provides the kind of body massage that often helps my digestion.
My Alignment Process – Staring With Mental/Mind
What happened was I started to work on my mind-body-spirit alignment techniques – and how I did that seems to be the key for me. First, I admitted that I was in pain. Instead of getting frustrated, I started to talk it out and explore what was going on in the different emotional, spiritual, mental and physical realms. On one level, there’s a lot of change happening in my life – we are considering moving to Moab, Utah for the winter, my business is growing, I’m writing a book with a tight deadline and I’m traveling a lot. It’s all movement – all new. It would make sense that my physical body would be reacting to the movement – maybe even stirring up a little movement of it’s own!
Physical and Emotional
On the physical side, in addition to walking, I did EFT – only the karate chop part to keep it simple while hiking (you can do this easily while on the go). My statement was something like: “Even though I feel this digestive pain, I know my body is healing and I deeply love and accept myself.” I coupled this with deep breathing – including a diaphragm release, which is basically holding your two hands on top of each other and pressing them into your diaphragm while breathing deeply. If you recall my post on Maya Abdominal Massage – you know that our diaphragm is where we hold a lot of emotional armoring. Releasing it allows your energy, blood, lymph, nerve system, etc. to flow.
Also on the emotional side, I focused on letting go. I softened around the pain, instead of tensing around it. This allowed me to accept and surrender to the pain, without getting the rest of my body into pain by tightening up muscles around my abdomen.
Spiritual
And finally – I call this spiritual – was the trust. As I softened my body around the pain, I let go of the fear and frustration of this chronic discomfort. I let trust enter my mind, body and spirit. This trust told me that my body is healing, that I’ve been here before and it passes. That everything would be okay – and I can still be happy and enjoy my life. As we descended the mountain, I was already feeling relief. The pain had reduced to a 5. By the time we got to the car, I could feel the energy flowing in my body and the pain releasing – and by the time we got back to our hotel room, the pain was a 1 – just a mild, subtle feeling.
Getting To Choose
And guess what? I felt triumphant and grateful. Tonight was just one more opportunity for life to challenge me and for me to step up and choose how I wanted to feel. I loved that hike and what’s more, I loved the empowerment it gave me. That through terrible pain, I could still choose to be happy, to have a good time, to soften my body, to accept – and to trust.
Connection – A Ripple Effect
Dear women – you know who you are – this is just one more example of how we are connected. Words that emerge from your explorations are creating a ripple effect – showing us all that we can heal. That we can choose how we want our lives to be. If only we trust. I feel honored to stand beside you and grateful for this proof.
Final Words
We all have techniques that work for us — the important part is to practice…and to trust yourself to find your answers! It’s easy to get lost in feeling negative, whether it stems from physical, emotional or spiritual pain. We’re used to that path — we know the way by heart. Today, choose another path. Take everything out of your bag of tricks and just experiement away until you distract yourself enough to realize your focus has changed.
We can only hold one thought at a time — we get to choose. Is it a negative thought or a positive? Which will serve us best in this moment? Life’s job is to challenge us, just to be sure we’ve got it. The more we choose how we want our lives to be (and trust ourselves to manifest it), the more we live in the joy of each moment — no matter what the challenge is. We need no safety net, no armor in life, if we surround ourselves with trust.
I hope you pain goes away. i love the past paragraph. I need to learn to rid myself of the negative thoughts and keep the positive ones flowing.
Comment by Palmtreechick — September 6, 2006 @ 8:34 pm
Hi, Heather:
Congratulations on your new phase of recovery!
It is sad to hear that you are in pain and I know exactly how you feel. I am in 9th month of recovery, I had B/P for about 5 times within in the 9 months. Once Feb and 4 times in July. I felt very negative during the relapse. I wondered if it is possible to recovery. I felt I needed to make lots of efforts to rid the relapse, physically and emotionally. I feel all stomach distress just came back… To be honest, I was quite discouraged. Finally I regained the faith in myself because I do not like to feel so weak psychologically and physically and I feel weak when I B/P. I generally feel fine, but I sometimes have a subtle sense of discomfort in areas of my digestion tract. I am thinking about taking Primal Defense probiotics from Garden of life. The reason I am hesitating is because in part it is so expensive, in part I am not sure of the quality. It will be great if you could give me some thoughts on taking Primal Defense probiotics.
In order to help my constipation, I take 2 tbsp freshly grinded flaxseeds in the morning. However I read flaxseeds before soaking contain something that is enzyme inhibitable. Is that true? Should we soak it?
Thanks a lot. Hope you feel better soon.
Meg
Comment by Meg — September 7, 2006 @ 10:03 pm
Congratulations Heather!!
I am really happy to hear your success story in dealing with physical pain and am so inspired by this post. So many great reminders about breathing, abdomominal tension release, plus keeping in mind the knowledge that we are healing and not to get lost in the negative.
Looking forward to embracing trust…
With love, J
Comment by J — September 8, 2006 @ 6:44 pm
Dear Heather,
What a beautiful and inspiring post! I am so proud of you for working through the pain and chosing to be in the positive rather than the negative! You set such a great example! I am not as proud of myself. I went down the familiar path of negativity this morning… Thank you for reminding me that we have the power to choose and showing me how to face life’s challenges with your example!
The hike sounded beautiful!
As far as your potential move – I know that you will follow your intuition and that, whatever you end up choosing, there will be great potential for you in that opportunity! I know so very well, though, how challenging it can be to be in that place of limbo, and I acknowledge you for that. Just remember that you can always call on your guardian angels for guidance!
Know that you are deeply loved! I am just one of the many people and angels who send you their love!
~Emily~
Comment by Emily — September 8, 2006 @ 11:30 pm
Hi Emily, thank you so much for your kind words and love — it really helps! I think you are one of my angels!
As the children of old thought forms, we sometimes get dragged down — the more you use your power to choose, the faster you bring yourself up. Your old thought forms are afraid of your tremendous power — maybe even more so now with a new job where you are officially healing people. Just wait until you see what you are capable of — it’s amazing, I just know it!
Funny, about the move — we ended up setting an intention to have our NH house rented in order to pay all of our expenses in Moab (including new mountain bikes!!). It seemed like it wouldn’t happen, but guess what? A few days ago we got a call that we have a renter and all of our expenses will be paid — so we’re going to Moab! I just love the power of intention, the power of belief and trust. It is so incredible and beautiful!
With love,
Heather
Comment by Heather — September 15, 2006 @ 1:21 pm
Hi J, You have been an icon to trust, so I thank you for that! I am blessed with so many people who remind me of law of attraction!
With love,
Heather
Comment by Heather — September 15, 2006 @ 1:22 pm
Hi Meg, Congratulations to you for choosing to honor your faith in good health! You are amazing and I acknowledge you for your path. Regarding Primal Defense, it was created by the author of The Maker’s Diet, who is an ND and well-respected in natural health. Donna gave us his book in our training. I really agreed with his book and the ingredients in his Primal Defense product. It has a good spectrum of beneficial bacteria and HSOs, which are soil organisms that help us stay healthy. We spend so little time outside in this society, and we don’t get the HSOs that we are meant to in order to fight pathogens.
I’m using it each day, plus I use it as an implant after an emema or colema (it dissolves in water). High quality probiotics have a wide spectrum of beneficial bacteria, so that would be important to look for. Don’t buy them in the store — get them online. iHerb is one of the places — just do a search for primal defense and see who is having a sale or has low prices and free shipping. You can save a lot of money that way.
Body Ecology’s Essential Duo is also a great fermeted beverage starter that helps with constipation because of the bifidobacterium in it. I just bought some and am experimenting with it — I’ll let you know how it goes.
Good luck — keep me posted on how you are doing — I so love to hear from you!
With love,
Heather
Comment by Heather — September 15, 2006 @ 1:29 pm
Hi Meg, I forgot to answer your question about flax seeds. It’s a really good question and I’m not sure what the answer is, so here’s my guess. First of all, when you soak flax seeds, you may have seen how viscous they get. They are so sticky, that I can’t imagine soaking them. So the next idea would be to grind them and then soak them — but I wonder if it would end up in a sticky mess? I’ve never tried it before. A third alternative is to soak, then dehydrate and then grind.
I had never thought about the fact that they should still be soaked, but I think they should be in order to remove the phytic acid. I say this because some health gurus claim we should even soak flour to remove phytic acid. However, I also think that once ground, we can get the benefits of flax sees that we might not have been able to get in their whole seed form, if not soaked. I’ll have to dig a bit more and see what I find out — I’ll let you know.
You’ve given me a good puzzle to look into!
If anyone out there in the blogosphere knows the answer or has some good guesses, let us know!
With love,
Heather
Comment by Heather — September 16, 2006 @ 10:30 pm
HI, Heather:
Thanks for asking this questions. I was also wondering if we will lose some nutrition by soaking flaxseeds.
It is actually not hard to deal with soaked flax seeds. Yes, it gets really viscouse, but you can just drain them and then use blender instead of grinder to blend them with a bit liquid. ( It is just like you are making smoothie.) You will notice the soaked flaxseeds is grinded this way. I have done this a couple of times. Let me know if it works for you.
Thanks again.
Mei
Comment by Meg — September 17, 2006 @ 12:02 am
Heather, how wonderful that you found renters and will have all your expenses covered in Moab! Just another example how, when you put out your intention and trust that something will happen, it does!!! How amazing!!!
I was a little confused with the flax seed conversation, but just wanted to let you know, I always grind my flaxseeds, and I make the flaxseed tea you had recommended with the ground up seeds. In fact, I have a cup of it sitting next to me right now. I just put a little flaxseed in my cup and pour hot water over it. I’ll sometimes let it sit over night, but, usually, I just wait until it cools down enough to drink. It has a delicious nutty flavor, and there’s no sticky mess at all. I not only drink the liquid, but eat the flaxseeds in the bottom of my cup as well.
I also eat them raw. I put them in my smoothies and yogurts. Not sure if that’s ideal or not, but it doesn’t seem to bother me. I usually make a combination of ground flaxseeds and black sesame seeds. In terms of Chinese medicine, black sesame seeds are good to nourish the Yin and Blood. Good for vision, too.
with love,
Emily
Comment by Emily — September 17, 2006 @ 1:25 am
Hi Mei, Thanks for your idea about using soaked flax seeds — I’ll have to try that. I’ve been buying flax meal insead of making it myself and I typically add it to salads. Your original question made me wonder if they soak the flax seeds before making the flax meal — they probably don’t! So doing it yourself is probably better.
Actually, you get more nutritional value if you grind them. The hard outer coating will just go right through you and you miss all the great omega 3’s and heart-healthy benefits that way. I so make crackers with flax seeds when I want something crunchy, but you have to chew them well or you miss all the healing properties.
Looking forward to trying your trick!
With love,
Heather
Comment by Heather — September 24, 2006 @ 6:35 pm
Hi Em, Some great suggestions for flax seeds — thanks! They are great in smoothies — smoothies can sometimes be assimilated very quickly into your body, depending on what’s in them (e.g., if there is a lot of fruit), so the ground flax seeds can make sure it avoids an insulin rush by taking longer to assimilate. There are ground flaxseeds in the Vitality SuperGreen that I take every morning, so that’s how I’ve been getting them in drinks. Dairy actually combines well with seeds — pretty naturally on target, huh?
You reminded me about black sesame seeds — I haven’t strayed much off of stage 1 BED yet and sesames aren’t on the diet. But, now that I’m Candida free officially (yeay!), I’ve started to have tahini again. And after reading your comment, I ordered some black sesame tahini. I’d heard great things about it and have been looking forward to trying it. Someday I’d love to visit with you and learn more about Chinese medicine — in addition to having my first acupuncture session. I really want to try it — how fun would that be to have my first session with you?
With love,
Heather
Comment by Heather — September 24, 2006 @ 6:42 pm