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.

People who looked at this item also looked at…

Related items