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1. You already know, and 
2. You can’t DIY.

 

They were on their way to a boutique recovery center hours away from home. The truck was loaded down for a long stay, and, as usual, they were running late. Being anxious and rushed are never great ways to start a trip intended to change life for the better. 

 

They had put so much hope in the work they had done to improve his health from debilitating, chronic, daily nausea and pain. Now, it was time to come off the analgesic medication to address the severe migraines that were finally starting to lessen the grip on his life. 

 

“I forgot the coffee,” his caregiving spouse said.

 

“You mean the brewed coffee you made for my enemas?” 

 

Yes, coffee you put up your butt instead of drinking it. People do all sorts of desperate things to heal their problems. His digestive system forbade him from drinking the stuff, which made him resourceful in finding another way to get it in. Besides, advocates of coffee enemas herald the increase of glutathione production by 400 times its normal release for liver detoxification, so it must be good for you, right? 

 

“We have to turn back around.”

 

“You’ve got to be kidding. We are hours from home. We can make more in the condo.”

 

They had rented a place for a few weeks with a full kitchen and multiple rooms to make the recovery more comfortable in case he needed to stay up and watch TV, as insomnia often occurs during drug withdrawal. There would be little time for that level of relaxation as the last round of medicine wore off and the sympathetic nervous system began raging out of control like an overstimulated toddler who will not be consoled when the candy is taken away from her. 

 

They arrived later than planned and the dutiful caregiver went straight to coffee brewing and unpacking the vehicle. It’s hard to go into the unknowns of drug withdrawal, and rushing around for something as significant as these coffee enemas made matters worse.

 

A late start made for a late end to the day, right before an early rise that would leave them with much less sleep than the body needed. Stress was mounting and the plans were changing in a way unintended.

 

They knew the coffee was a stimulant, and the decision was made to stop all forms of caffeine at the same time that they discontinued the opiate. They had already greatly reduced sugar intake and no longer ate sweets. The diet from the nutritionist they consulted months before was remarkably healing, clearing up some troublesome digestive problems and making the coffee enemas a little less necessary for treating symptoms of nausea, which the coffee resolved effectively and reliably among other things. The stuff worked in seconds, which most “natural” solutions cannot boast. 

 

And Knowing is Half the Battle

There wasn’t a lack of knowledge or experience in healing. They had received excellent professional opinions and advice. They knew to expect withdrawal symptoms from both the coffee and the medication.

 

They were aware energy levels would be erratic with crippling fatigue during the day, insomnia at night, and all other manner of vexation as they entered the “dark night of the soul” like sailing into a hurricane in the middle of the ocean. They preplanned the comfort meds and sought out this clinic particularly for their unique approach for dealing with these issues, one of those out-of-pocket places not recognized by health insurance policies. 

 

It Didn’t Work

It would have worked. The plan was full proof. Others had been there and raved of the results as near miraculous and life-affirming as they healed around a lake in the woods with a connection to nature and an IV of nutrients in the arm to aid the healing process. Counseling sessions to work through traumas of being sick for so long were excellent. The compassion and attentiveness of the staff was beyond reproach — 5 stars all the way. 

 

But, it wasn’t working. Yes, the cravings were gone. But it had been 14 days of little sleep and walking in the middle of the night through the property around the condo to the backdrop of bullfrog songs croaking.  These jaunts around the man-made pond would distract and lessen the extreme jitters and internal shaking in his limbs and brain for awhile. Unfortunately, the reprieve was short-lived and the akathisia symptoms returned.  

 

The will to endure the levels of exhaustion and restlessness was insurmountable. The tears of dysphoria were a deluge of defeat, and shame’s cruel hand was wagging its boney finger as the desire to take the opiate returned. 

 

Justified — Not Sanctified

The coffee enemas that they were going to stop we’re never ceased. They had convinced themselves that they would aid in cleansing the liver of the medication, keep the bowels moving, help lift his mood, decrease the head and neck pains that lingered, and give him energy to make it to the clinic on time each morning. They had a justification for using it. In healing work, where there is justification, there is usually relapse.

 

I’m not referring to scientific rationale that explains why one might pursue one path versus another. In addiction, justification is complicated as it can even have a scientific basis, but when there is an emotion attached to the justification, especially fear or anger at the thought of stopping something, the brain looks for any plausible reason to hold on to it: energy, mood, bowel movements, work, depression, anxiety, etc. 

 

It’s one thing to be an objective observer who tries things empirically like being his own scientist, recording data, and being able to freely stop it after whatever observations were noted. It’s another thing to develop tunnel vision and obsession around the subject. That’s what became of the coffee enemas. 

 

Better judgment told them to stop the stimulants; addiction found a justification to hold on to them. 

 

Learning Things the Hard Way

Essentially, at their core, they knew better, but fear centers in the brain convinced them otherwise. Consequently, they had to learn the hard way that stimulants are that — stimulating, regardless of how we think they will detoxify the liver or serve in some other capacity to aid us. They might as well have been pouring gasoline on the fire of withdrawal-related  hormones, which rage out of control as the brain goes haywire like a non-verbal toddler whose candy has been taken away abruptly. 

 

“It’s like saying goodbye to an old friend, isn’t it?” their health coach later said, rewriting the character in this story more amicably.

 

“Yeah. I guess so. I never thought of the enemas like that.”

 

Square One with Backstabbing Friends

He was back on the opiate 

and never stopped the coffee.  In addiction terms, he failed the jump. Months had passed before he was fully willing to reconsider the relationship to the coffee enemas, which he could rely on for relieving the head pain, knots in the neck, nausea, and bowel distress so effectively. 

 

In that time, he had come to realize that what he already knew was true: Coffee enemas were not the friend he thought them to be — they were the backstabbing kind. 

 

Like any stimulants, the benefits they offer were limited, short-term, and when hormones they released showed back up again in the system through the enterohepatic recirculation process, problems compounded. To learn more about stimulants and addictions, their negative effects on our health, and the enterohepatic process, schedule a coaching session and we can work through these issues. 

 

Deep down, he already knew this wasn’t good for him, but it took the health coach to connect the subconscious to the conscious. Sometimes in life, we need someone to be a mirror: “So what I hear you saying is that when you get stressed at work, you eat the donuts in the breakroom which is sabotaging your weight loss goals. Is that correct?” 

 

We All Need a Little Help from Our Friends

Whether the substance is an opiate or a chocolate-filled bon-bon or the symptoms are heartburn or bloating or pain or anxiety, the story above can be anyone of ours in some way, shape, or form. You don’t have to be going to a drug rehab facility to be prey to health problems fueled by known or unknown substances in your life that no longer serve you well towards your healing, despite a perceived rationale.

 

 “But, I love him!” said the drama-addicted teenager.

 

We have all fallen short of grace and needed someone to support, hold up a mirror to our reality, and love us back on our feet again. 

 

Can I Get an Amen?

Even the health coaches and wellness gurus need someone to speak into their lives. That’s why I still go to church, giving my minister and wiser elders permission to help me see the blinders I have under my own circumstances. We all need people in our lives to impart wisdom and guidance. 

 

We live in a society that values individualism over community, which leaves us bereft and walking in circles. We find ourselves stepping in puddle after puddle and missing the dry land in between or being pulled under the current of the fast moving stream of life.  Had we stopped and asked for directions and guidance, a helpful ranger could have shown us the steadier stones to safely cross over to the side of the embankment. 

 

“We” Can Overcome

The privileged entitlement of individualism finds us alone and isolated.  If you want to know the power of community, look for the African American grandma who fought through the indignity of the Jim Crow South hand-in-hand as a community across the Edmund Pettus bridge or other such historic moments in bringing civil rights to her people. Sit with her and learn how she is “too blessed to be stressed.” 

 

Sadly, even many of such icons have fallen prey to their own addictions as diabetes levels soar out of control in Black and brown communities. No one’s perfect. Take what you need and leave the rest, as the 12-step programs encourage. 

 

Where Are Our Sages? 

Regrettably, they are moved into nursing homes to convalesce until they die. We no longer have them in our lives to caution and guide us. Would we listen if they did? We much prefer a scientific study we found on the internet over the act of wisdom being imparted to us. 

 

Even sadder, many of our modern elderly didn’t do the healing work of overcoming adversity in their own lives and cannot bequeath their experiences in a helpful way. Instead, they pass down faulty genes and bad habits. They succumb to avoidable illnesses far too quickly under their own addictions, as do we at ever younger ages. 

 

We conveniently convince ourselves that it’s just old age and heredity for why granny is so bad off and why now our health ain’t much better with the type 2 diabetes, weight issues, arthritis, other pain conditions, etc.

 

Blame the genes! They did it, right? 

We know better, even when we look for every reason in the world not to face certain realities. The more we can face reality on reality's terms, we can unhinge ourselves from the burden of the addiction cycles that get us in trouble in the first place. Most health problems can be connected to the addictions to things we already know aren’t good for us. We don’t lack knowledge — we need a mirror to see ourselves and our situations more clearly. 

 

We already know that sugar will rot our teeth, inflame our bodies, feed cancer cells, make us hyperactive, etc. We already know we need to drink more water to stay better hydrated. We know to eat more vegetables and cut back on the carbohydrates we love so much. Knowing isn’t the issue. Taking the brave steps forward to overcome what feels insurmountable is what is needed. Having an experienced health coach as a guide can make all the difference.

 

Climbing’ Up That Mountain that I’m Climbin’ On

Some mountains in life take a team effort to summit. Going solo can leave us going in circles, not getting us where we want to be or find us cliff-hanging. Overcoming health problems can be such an Everest. 

 

Often symptoms can go from a molehill to a mountain in a very short amount of time, like a volcano forming an island in the ocean, leaving us stranded and isolated. Surviving these eruptions and making it safely home takes skill, timing, resources, and experience. 

 

Unless you are McGuyver on a TV show

where all the right things magically appear ever-so-conveniently for your escape bef

ore the whole thing blows up, you will need help. We all do from time to time. That’s where a health coach, like a resourceful Sherpa, who has been up and down these cliffs many times, can be such a guide.

 

Don’t Make the First Responder Your Last Call

Finding the partners skilled in this sort of rescue mission is crucial to your success on such occasions. I’m guessing you’ve tried going it on your own already and/or have been looking for your team to conquer this peak awhile now. If you are reading this post, you’ve likely been to a medical doctor, a specialist, naturopathic/acupuncturist/herbalist/nutritionist/chiropractor, or other alternative health guru. 

 

For some of you, you’ve researched your health condition until you know more about it than some healthcare providers. You probably deserve an honorary doctorate for your knowledge on the subject. However, despite your best efforts and theirs, you may be marginally better or not at all. For all your research and that of others, knowing hasn’t gotten you where you want. 

 

Watson Always Wins — Except That One Time

Put simply, you can’t Google your way to better health. You’ve already tried, haven’t you? You wouldn’t be here if you’ve figured all this out on your own, right? 

 

Consider this article a sign from God/The Universe/whatever those healthier things you already know to do — it’s time to do them. 

 

Getting To Know You, Getting To Know All About You

Or, if you don’t know what to do or did the doing and it didn’t work, let’s find out what’s lost in translation from the subconscious you, who regulates your metabolic and life-sustaining functions, to the conscious you, who worries too much, tries to connect with the world around it, and is figuring out how to survive this thing called life.

 

 

Neuroplasticity of Change

While you are not lacking in sources for more information, what reading interesting articles and blogs do is start us towards thinking about the action steps that do. This one you are reading now intends to help connect you back to you via the role of a health coach, someone trained in the transformative work that occurs when you learn to better understand what is communicated between your subconscious self and the one watching your hand reach into the cookie jar and bring it to your mouth repeatedly until it’s near (ahem) — completely empty. 

 

“I already know that eating all this sugar increases my risk of diabetes,” I said to myself when I was at the height of my binging disorder. 

 

How many avoidable diseases like diabetes do we knowingly eat ourselves into? Most all. We know better. Knowledge isn’t often what we are lacking. 

 

As much as I love Maya Angelou’s writing and sayings, her statement of “When we know better, we do better,” is suspect when we consider how many smokers willfully ignore the Surgeon General's warning on the packets of cigarettes. Maybe the calorie counts at fast food restaurants have curtailed a few French fry orders. The raging pandemic of obesity shows otherwise. 

 

Health Coaching, The Bridge Over Troubled Waters

Knowledge isn’t our problem. We need help applying this information in a way that makes sense for us. There is a disconnect between knowing and doing, and health coaching can bridge that gap. Click here to learn what Harvard Medical School says about health coaching.

 

A health coach can help as a guide on that path to more productive activities, choices that better serve you, and the accountability you can’t do for yourself. Left on our own, we may at best yo-yo or toy with the idea, but not actually transform our lives from the slothful, binging caterpillar to the radiant, soaring butterfly we could be. 

 

Just Do It

Are you ready to say goodbye to those habits that no longer serve you well? Do you want to look better, feel better, be a better version of yourself?

 

Of course you do. Or, otherwise, you wouldn’t be reading this article. 

 

Love Is The First Task

Don’t get me wrong. I already love you for who you are now and where you are on life’s journey. And, I hope you can love yourself in any state you are in and become an objective observer to this grand experiment in life. 

 

Say to yourself, “Well, I’ve tried being fat/scrawny/sick/miserable for a while now. I wonder what healthy feels like. Let’s give that a try.”  

 

I know. Sounds so simple. And it was super simple to type, but I know it’s a challenging endeavor. Having gone through my own transformation, I know how the brain doesn’t like a change in routine and needs a lot of self-talk to get up the gumption to even consider it. 

 

“But what if it doesn't work? What if I spend all this money and I’m still fat/scrawny/sick/miserable?” you might ask.

 

Can I Get A Price Check On A Case Of Suffering? Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained. 

Sometimes in life, we have to try things. There are few guarantees. But, I can promise, if you do the work, something will change. If you don’t like the change or half-ass the work, we can always refund your misery. 

 

No one regrets getting healthy, and a good health coach can help you work through what’s blocking you from achieving your goals. Click here for a research study showing the efficacy of health coaching on chronic health conditions. 

 

Resistance Is Not Futile — It’s Where Change Begins

If you are feeling a tinge of resistance towards change or can look back at times when you were presented with the idea of modifying a behavior and felt a bit rebellious despite knowing how it would benefit you, that’s good. That’s where we need to get to in order to make any progress. Don’t worry — we’ll go gently and slowly. 

 

The brain looks for the path of least resistance. That couch and bag of potato chips are a much easier way to spend an afternoon than some type of fitness routine with all those perky people running around in circles with their egos sweating all over you. 

 

Good news! We won’t be starting there — and we may not even go there unless you want to. Calisthenics, cardio workouts, and weight lifting aren’t the only ways to move our bodies. 

 

Exercise Doesn’t Solve Everything 

Depending on the health of your adrenals, which if you are in couch potato mode, exercise in general may cause more problems than it helps at first. I know that sounds counter to the conventional wisdom that all the TV commercials and news segments glorify when it comes to physical activity. Healing has to be done in stages. You wouldn’t expect a person with a broken leg to get up and dance a jig, would you? Your body will tell you when you are ready to shake your groove thing again. 

 

Tapping into Your Hidden Superpower — Your Intuition 

A health coach can help you learn to be more intuitive to what your body is telling. No, this is not an excuse to continue sofa surfing, but it is a start of a conversation to figure out what is going on to drain your energy and keep you from doing what you are called to do on earth — which is not binge watching another Netflix series in your comfy pants and shoving junk food in your face. 

 

Baby Steps 

A health coach loves you for who you are and where you are on life’s journey — and coaxes you through the process with gentle, incremental steps. The doing is more important than the reading about them or about being convinced with one more research study of the best route to take. 

 

Prepping the Brain for Change

In some ways, going from article to article to YouTube video to podcast is preparing your brain and telling it that you are moving towards a change in routine, which it stubbornly wants to hold on to, but at some point, the doing must be done. 

 

What if the path you take isn’t perfect and doesn’t lead to the results you want? 

That can happen, and like in all adventures, that will happen. One tangential diversion may not get you where you want to go, but now you can check that off your list of things to try: acupuncture, chiropractic, reiki, deep breathing exercises, calorie counting, Zumba, qigong, that miracle worker you saw on TV, that new diet fad, that new probiotic blend, that trip across sea to the guru in India, the medical specialist who worked on some superstar, etc, etc etc. 

 

We don’t suffer from a lack of options. My job as a health coach is to mentor you through the course of action that best meets your needs.

 

Coming Home, Coming Home, Never More to Roam

Health coaching bridges the gap between the prescriptive, take-two-pills-and-call-me-in-the-morning approach to health encountered in a medical or naturopathic doctor’s office and the changes needed to bring our bodies back to homeostasis, that calm place where we can think more clearly and have the confidence and resources in our bodies and life to forge the future we want for ourselves. 

 

As a coach, my role is to help device strategies and game plans, whereas you are the player on the field of your life. I help hone your intuition so you can make choices that move the ball down the field and around obstacles towards your goals. 

 

In coaching sessions, I pull you to the sidelines and stretch your self-awareness like a tight hamstring so you can be more flexible and limber as you get back on the field of life. Like a good yoga pose, the most transformative work is done when we find the point of resistance and gently give it focus, let gravity do its work, and spend some time on it with consistency over days, weeks, and months.  Before long, you're standing on your head or at least able to touch your toes again, if not wrapping them around your head (or something like that).

 

What To Look for in a Health Coach? 

Personal transformation and the fundamentals of caregiving: compassion, patience, and motivation. If they haven’t lived it, they can only talk about it. This process is not a mental exercise or an academic conversation debating complete proteins and efficient ones or which supplement is whole-food enough or has the highest ORAC score in the universe. For some of you, it’s more life and death — or at least joy and misery. 

 

My Butterfly Effect

My own transformation was s

low and arduous. Years of dealing with food addiction held me back from what I wanted out of life. I grew up an overweight child who yo-yo dieted through my young adulthood with my share of body dysmorphia along the way. I learned the hard lessons of overcoming the addictive chemicals in my brain and how to use food as a tool to better serve me in life in order to have more energy, better self-image, and the confidence of successfully reaching a personal goal. 

 

Love Your Neighbor As Yourself

Amidst my own transformation, I learned the art and spiritual practice of caring for others. Loved ones would become sick with sometimes temporary colds and short term ailments and other times with chronic conditions lasting for years like Celiac Disease, GERD, colitis, Gastroparesis, gallbladder diseases, Sphincter of Oddi dysfunction, SIBO-associated symptoms, Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, migraines, Occipital Neuralgia, intracranial hypertension, protracted drug withdrawal with akathisia and dysphoria, UTIs, interstitial cystitis, drug addiction, alcoholism, and many other problems. 

 

I also watched the ravages of terminal cancer and diabetes from a caregivers perspective. This work isn’t for the faint of heart. 

 

Becoming A Sherlock Holmes of Health 

In trying to help restore quality of life to those loved ones who were living in chronic pain, unable to eat or drink without fear of nausea and severe digestive distress or whose immune systems and energy levels were crashing, I became a symptom sleuth. 

 

 

Hours were spent researching on the Internet and in doctors offices of all stripes from internists to ER physicians to specialists to functional-integrative and naturopathic ones, too. I dutifully took notes, kept health journals and food diaries, created spreadsheets for protocols, administered medication schedules, cooked meals for all manner of diets, took shifts sitting with loved ones in the hospital, slept in chairs by their bedsides, stayed up all night to be with them through the worst of an attack, drove them to the ER at 3am, traveled cross-country for surgical procedures by highly-esteemed surgeons, crashed my adrenals in the process and recovered them to stay in the game, and all while working a full time job. 

 

I’ve read the research studies, navigated the various modalities in health care, participated in the online forums and health groups, debated dietary theories, crowd-sourced our way to wellness, and am here to tell about it. 

 

There is hope. Whatever your situation, the body wants to heal. My job is to help you interpret what it’s trying to tell you it needs and determine a path forward to those ends. 

 

My Approach 

My approach to working with clients as a health coach is with a similar level of compassion as I grew into as I went from being my care-free self to being thrust into the worrisome storms of life impacting those individuals who mattered most to me. 

 

Short of moving in and holding your hand through the process, I am here for you and your caregivers to coach you through what healing looks and feels like. I can’t promise cures or that I know what’s behind every turn in the bend of this road we are on towards health, but I have traversed them many times with many others. Some parts are more predictable than others and when I am uncertain, I’ll be forthright, as trust is paramount to this relationship we are establishing. 

 

Climb Every Mountain

The more you trust and believe in the work you are doing, the more doors to better health will open and the path made a bit clearer. I’m not saying to not question things as you go through this experience, but I am encouraging you to ask the question and let the steps reveal the answers. As the old African proverb says, “When you pray, move your feet.”

 

This Is How We Do It

The coaching sessions are phone based and via emails. Some calls are longer than others, depending on the nature of the call. Initial conversations are naturally longer. Follow-up calls will tend to be shorter, check-in opportunities to see how things are going, make some tweaks, and hold you accountable to your goals. Group sessions are available (based on participation) and centered around topics with time offered to share and ask questions with others with similar challenges. Click here to read the research study that shows how health coaching can save you between $286 and $412 per month on health care.

 

Let Me Do What You Can’t Do For Yourself 

We all need someone we can trust to help do for us what we haven’t learned to do for ourselves yet. There’s no shame in admitting it as it is somehow hardwired in us as humans to need each other. 

 

Transcend Instead of Buckle

I can be your Sherpa on the way up your mountain of problems to help you reach your summit to a better experience of life. Think of the feeling when you saw something beautiful, expansive, and awe-inspiring like the vista from the top of the Grand Canyon or similar height. Feel the feels and hold on to that emotion so your brain remembers what it was like to be transcendent rather than stuck in a moment you want out of. 

 

During the calls, we will review your health history, establish a starting point with 1 or 2 areas to improve as goals, and work incrementally through recommendations so as not to overwhelm the system, and more specifically to move you gently through the transformative process towards a more sustainable approach to wellness. 

 

Beyond Nourishment to Wellness

We will discuss both the food related substances that sustain and nourish us as well as the non-food related things that do likewise. Whether we eat it, hear it, touch it, smell it, see it, or perceive it, the outside world coming into our inside world either is serving us as nourishment to our end goals of wellness, or they are not. It’s as simple as that. 

 

The complexity is in the reason we are allowing unhealthy things in our lives in the first place. Sometimes it is simply a lack of awareness. Other times there are coping mechanisms and survival instincts that may have served a purpose at one point but no longer are needed. 

 

Addictions (whether to foods, substances, or other stimuli) are invariably somewhere in all of this discovery process, which I approach nonjudgmentally and compassionately through the lense of survivalism and the biochemistry that comes with it. 

 

“What does my heartburn/autoimmune disease/genetic disorder/symptom complex have to do with all of this mumbo-jumbo?” 

Everything. Don’t worry. It’ll make sense in time as we work together. A measure of trust is necessary to start the process. No question is too insignificant to not explore and we will make time for them in one way or another either on the calls or over emails. 

 

My approach is a bit different from other healthcare providers. Not only am I working to get to know you better, I’m striving to help you get to know yourself better. As we uncover your needs, wants, and hopes, we can address them as best we can and see what healing takes place. 

 

“But I want my pain/nausea/bloating/fatigue/weight gain/weight loss/etc to stop. How’s this going to help?” 

I want your suffering to calm down as well. We will work through what the root cause of these issues are and start the process of figuring out which direction the body needs us to go. A Health History will help as a starting point.

 

We will look at diet, using a food diary. Sleep hygiene will be explored. Daily activity schedules examined. Stimulants will be approached carefully. We will review the systems of the body effected by the condition, the role food plays in our life, energy management, emotional balance, etc.

 

There will be practical recommendations to consider and help you experiment with food, lifestyle activities, and perhaps even questions to take back to your doctor for temporary “band aids” to discuss using, while your body needs more time to heal. Nothing wrong with using a pain cream for a while until the body has enough time to heal the underlying inflammation, or whatever the appropriate palliative care needs to be. 

 

Credentials and Personals

As for my credentials, I am certified as a health coach through the Institute of Integrative Nutrition. Loved the lectures from the top brass of the medical, naturopathic, and self-actualization worlds like Dr. Mehmet Oz, Dr. Andrew Weil, and Julia Cameron, but the real work has been done with people like you who are suffering and need answers to their problems. 

 

I stay abreast to the ever evolving science of epigenetics, neuroplasticity, nutritional theories, the role of movement and posture in our lives, as well as the impact of relationships and beliefs on health. 

 

More about me: I like puppies, playing my saxophone, taking long walks on the beach, drinking Pina Coladas without the Pina or the Colada, and getting caught in the rain (not really, but it looks relaxing outside the window). I’m sort of into yoga but more into Egoscue, and like making love before midnight, as I value my sleep. Here’s to your health! Salud! 

 

Not a DIY Project

“It takes a village to raise a child,” according to another old African proverb. I think the same is true for an adult and their inner child. Just as you can’t Google your way to health, you can’t do the work of healing by yourself. Though it is internal work that you need to do, we need each other in the “iron sharpens iron” sort of away, or as a mirror reflecting you back to you to see yourself more clearly. 

 

We are better together, as a community instead of stuck on the island like Robinson Crusoe. Together we take information from our heads to our hearts, legs, arms, and other body parts needed to enact the habits of becoming healthy and better connected to the world around us in acts of community. 

 

Information is only a starting point. You need someone who has “been there, done that” and can help walk you through the steps to a better, happier, healthier version of yourself. The ripple effect then leads to your family, friends, neighbors, their loved ones, and eventually Facebook and social media posts, where we present our best selves, apparently. 

 

Back To The Show In Progress 

As for the coffee enema guy, he finally kicked the habit. During his healing, he let go, finger by finger, through a slow taper process. 

 

His adrenals crashed as they begged for rest and recuperation. He dabbled in other stimulants and learned some hard lessons he essentially already knew but needed to re-learn before his brain would let go of its perceived justifications. 

 

Once out of his system, he slept and slept and slept some more. His adrenal glands went through their mitotic events, following the normal 90-day turnover cycle with new cells being generated and working better than the old ones. By the end of month 3, two naps a day shorten to one. 

 

Another cycle passed, and some days he didn’t need a nap. He prepared himself more carefully this time and began the slow taper off his opiate of choice. Even while on the medication, he was able to experience remarkable healing with even less days with pain.

 

“Just imagine how much better you will feel when you aren’t doggy paddling upstream with the opiate in your system,” his health coach told him. 

 

He is on his way to breaking out of the crusted cocoon and taking wing to the air with his healing. He now has the strength he lacked before and will likely make a full recovery. 

 

His story is unfolding and being re-written, as is yours. He is no longer the scared, sickly, worn-out person who started this journey. He is standing straighter and ready to take on the next challenge with a greater level of confidence as his adrenals are being restored. He can see himself on the other side to the point that he can feel what it is like to be well again even before this last piece of the puzzle is completed. 

 

This story will not be a Moses at the Promise Land moment. He is crossing over the Jordan to the land of milk and honey (without the milk or the honey -- just think pretty gardens, instead). 

 

What? You wanted to hear that he was completely healed of all his problems after all this hard work and doing back flips? Healing is a long, slow process. I’m confident he will get there. It was more important to show you the transformation. I’m in the butterfly business of transformative healing. Click here to learn about the stages of healing.

 

I could have told you about the gastroparesis patient who can eat safely again. I could have talked about the one whose GERD got under control without needing to stay on Nexium. There’s the one whose yo-yo dieting, weight loss problems finally stopped and the body returned to a healthy weight. The several stories of those individuals with debilitating Sphincter of Oddi dysfunction and other forms of post-gallbladder surgery complications are extremely compelling as they were able to go back to a better semblance of normalcy with being able to eat without inducing excruciating pain. One SIBO-associated story after another as bloating, gas, diarrhea, and constipation improved. Other powerful stories include the Occipital Neuralgia clients who struggle to rest from the head and neck pain, or those with Chronic Fatig

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