Health is defined as the state of being free of illness or injury. Illness is defined as a disease or period of sickness affecting ones body or mind. I think it’s incredibly rare to find an adult that is healthy according to that definition, and increasing now in our kids too. But perhaps we can see our illness as a gift. A gift that tells us that something we are doing is not in alignment with our mind, body, and spirit.
If you step on a nail, it hurts, then you know to remove your foot from that nail. You wouldn’t take a pill, you wouldn’t get a test, you wouldn’t get surgery, you wouldn’t go running around asking everyone what is causing your pain, the first thing you would do is get your foot off the nail! Some of those other scenarios may be helpful later on, but the first thing that is always necessary is to remove the object.
What about chronic, everyday illnesses? Yes, sometimes it can be hard to determine where that illness is coming from once it becomes chronic. But the same rules apply.
Say you have chronic stomach pain. Could be something you are eating, something you are doing, someone that is annoying you, an unfit job, an unfit school, etc. Something in your life is an insult to your mind/body/spirit and showing up as an illness, a gift to remind us that we are not on the right path. The longer we wait to remove that nail the worse the pain gets, probably turns into an infection, and spreads to other parts of the body causing more illness. The more time that passes the harder it becomes to determine where the source of the injury was and we forget that one injury or illness turns into a cascade of other illnesses.
What if we were more in tune with our mind and body and determined where we are out of alignment instantly?
Does it seem weird that an irritating mother in law or a stressful job could cause you stomach pain? Remember that we now recognize that stress can be the cause of headaches, so of course it could be the cause of a stomachache too! Scientific research is very slow, but your mind and body and it’s intuition speaks quickly. Don’t wait around for research to catch up to what you already know.
What about a more serious illness? Same rules. We get a heavy diagnosis and the first thing we do is let the fear set in and turn to everything and everyone outside of ourselves to fix the problem.
Have you ever gotten quiet enough and asked your body what exactly is causing your illness? The answer may come in a form that you weren’t expecting. It may come on the radio, or a saying on a billboard. You’ll know the message was for you because you’ll get that aha! moment, goosebumps, a good gut feeling. So often I hear a new patient say, “I’ve been dealing with this illness for so long and one day someone mentioned they were going to acupuncture, and I knew right away that I needed to try it!”
Here’s the most important part. No treatment or therapy can remove the nail for you. Only you can do that. But what acupuncture will do is help you get quiet enough to determine where that nail is coming from. Acupuncture will calm down your system, open up the channels, free the stagnation, and tonify the body so that you can hear it fully and completely. And that’s what I love about holistic healing. You are still the driver, the decision maker, the nail remover. Without that you may never be healthy, you may always find yourself looking outside of self for answers, and it won’t work. Or the illness will just move to another part of the body.
When illness arises again, what is the first thing that you will do?
