Healing – have you got the right tools for the job?
Tuesday, February 16th 2010 @ 12:00 AM (not yet rated)
If you want your body to stop sending symptoms, then make sure you have the right toolbox of techniques!
Yesterday I decided to take my wooden bedframe apart. The side and centre bars were secured to the bed head and -end with a nut and bolt system. Fishing around in my toolbox, I found an adjustable spanner and started to loosen the first bolt.
Frustration soon set in as it quickly became obvious that the bedmakers had left the bolting of it together to an after-thought. There simply was not enough room to get the spanner into the groove of wood. No matter how hard I tried, the spanner would not fit around the bolt.
The frustration and annoyance continued to build in my body as I realized that I was never going to undo the bolt with that particular spanner. As I sat there on my bedroom floor, the emotion turned to anger and then hopelessness, finally materializing into a mini-tantrum and “why does this always happen to me when there’s no-one around to help?”. Once the tears had subsided, I sat back to consider my options.
A thought popped into my head to see if there were any other spanners in my toolbox. Srummaging around I discovered a slimmer spanner which I then remembered had actually come with the bed, and I returned to the bedroom to give it a try. Voila! No Problem. The new spanner fitted perfectly inside the wooden grooves and within half an hour the job was done.
As this process had been occurring, I had also recognized the parallel this incident had in terms of finding the right tools for healing. If you are looking for ways to get well, you just have to have the right tools. No matter how hard you try or how strong your intention is, if you don’t have the right tools, you’re just not going to get the job done. And that leaves you feeling like you’re hitting your head against a brick wall, which of course is not a pleasant experience.
So how does that translate into finding the right tools to heal the chronic conditions of chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, stress and more – conditions that you may have been experiencing on for years?Because most people do not understand the underlying cause of these problems, they cannot find the right tool to deal with them. If you don’t know that the reason for your lights not working is because a fuse has blown, replacing the light bulb is not going to work.
Hence, sleeping more is not going to solve chronic fatigue, because it is not a lack of sleep that is causing the tiredness.
Telling yourself you will feel better and not to worry will not resolve uncomfortable emotions because feelings are not rational and can never be thought away.
Having weekly relaxation massages whilst maintaining workaholic habits will not reduce stress, because every time you go against your body’s innate needs, it aggrivates the state of stress inside your body.
The key then also understanding that it’s not the symptoms that are the problem. It’s what you are doing which creates symptoms which is the problem. And until you work that out, the symptoms will keep coming, because they are just doing their job – they are telling you something is wrong and something needs to be done.
So I’m glad to say that Mickel Therapy provides a set of tools to get you well from chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, stress, anxiety and more. And not just one tool, but a whole complete toolset, all nicely packaged like one of those fancy sets you buy at the hardware store. Whether you are needing a screwdriver, hammer, drill or spanner, you will be given the perfect mix of tools to do the job. Enjoy your house maintenance!
Why symptoms and pain may be a good thing
Tuesday, February 9th 2010 @ 12:00 AM (not yet rated)
While most people would agree it’s not pleasant, and sometimes even excruciating, to experience mental, emotional or physical pain, the fact is that the symptoms often serve a purpose. This is most definitely the case for sufferers of conditions such as chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, insomnia, anxiety, irritable bowel and stress.
So, really, symptoms may be a good thing? That will sound like a crazy thing to hear for some people, because it does require a radical shift of perspective. You know that symptoms of chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia are uncomfortable and inconvenient, often to the point of completely disrupting your life. However, the truth is symptoms are your body’s way of communicating to you. In other words, they are trying to tell you something.
The question is, do you know what they are trying to tell you? For most people with these conditions, the answer is usually no. They don’t have a clue. And if they did know, their body would not be needing to send them symptoms in the first place. Catch 22.
So this begs the question, how do you become aware of what it is that is going on inside your body so that you can actually understand the meaning of the exhaustion or pain? In other words, how do you become aware of what it is you are not aware of? Hmm…tricky..We know we need to become aware of something, but we’re not aware of what it is we’re not aware of.
So, to start with you begin to see symptoms in a different light. Instead of seeing them as ‘baddies’ that have to be ‘gotten rid of or eradicated’ as quickly as possible, you can say to yourself, ‘Oh, I have a symptom again – that means my body is trying to tell me something”. The first step in healing is ALWAYS to acknowledge how things actually are, rather than try to make them different. You cannot get from Auckland to Wellington if you don’t know you’re in Auckland when looking at a map of New Zealand.
As you begin to increase your awareness of what is going on between your mind and body, you start to ask yourself what is it your body has been trying to communicate to you about how it feels about what is going on in your life. In other words, you start to notice how you feel rather than what you think.
Unfortunately in our society, years of training go into developing our intellect, and whilst there is nothing wrong with this, it is not the only intelligence in your body. You also have other intelligences, such as gut feelings, intuition, practical intelligence and more. So what is being required for you if you have developed symptoms of chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, anxiety, stress etc is to start developing your emotional intelligence. Yes, you are going to have to start feeling.
As you start to investigate yourself and become more aware at a mind-body level, what will be revealed are the behaviours and habits you have set up during your life which it turns out are not particularly beneficial. These include things like putting everyone else first, ignoring your feelings, being a perfectionist, working too hard, driving yourself into the ground, seeking approval, putting yourself down and more.
What is important at this stage of becoming aware of your habits, is not to start judging yourself as bad or wrong. There were very good reasons for these behaviours being set in place, and at the time you were only doing your best. So, let yourself off the hook and give yourself a break. It’s OK! YOU are OK.
It will become apparent that how you live your life has an impact at a physical level, ie, it does affect what goes on inside your body at a physiological level. In other words, everything that happens in your life has an impact at a cellular level, and since your body (organism) is just a group of cells, organs and tissues, this will affect the functioning of every body system. Whether it be digestion, elimination, breathing, heart function, nerves, immunity, how you live your life is written in your body. Hence, these patterns and behaviours will, if continued long enough, lead to a state of ‘dis-ease’ in the body, which then means your body will start to send you symptoms.
Once you start listening to your body and what it is trying to tell you via your symptoms, your body will no longer need to manifest those symptoms. Once you truly see this, you wonder how you could ever have missed it. It’s not rocket-science – it’s just about awareness. It’s actually very simple, although not always easy at first, and will require training and practice. The good news is, it will work! Go well.
Is Chronic Fatigue Syndrome caused by a virus? Letter to the NY Times
Tuesday, February 2nd 2010 @ 12:00 AM (not yet rated)
Is the Earth round or flat? Reality can take a while to be accepted.
Yet again the medical community is publicising research which proposes that Chronic Fatigue is caused by a virus. Whilst it is true that a virus is often present in people with symptoms of Chronic Fatigue, what seems to be ongoingly missed is the events that have happened in a person’s life before the virus took hold.
Here is my letter to the NY Times (which they didn’t publish, maybe because it doesn’t match their story?) Dr Mickel has always maintained that a virus is not the initial cause of Chronic Fatigue – check out Dr Mickel’s explanation again on the underlying causes of Chronic Fatigue on the Mickel Therapy website. And if you want to read the NY Times article, see the link at the bottom of this blog.
“It seems to me that the medical community is still stuck on focusing on a virus being the CAUSE of Chronic Fatigue. Yes, we know there is often a virus present in Chronic Fatigue, but maybe the virus is actually a red herring.
Maybe it’s time to ask the question WHY has the person’s immune system been weakened enough in the first place to enable the virus to take hold? After listening to the life history of numerous chronic fatigue clients, there is little doubt in my mind that their immune / endocrine system has become compromised over time as a result of a number of factors, in particular traumatic life events and, more to the point, how these events were perceived and dealt with (or not), at the time. How one deals with or responds to these events then leads to certain habits, behaviours and stress patterns being set in place.
At a quantum level, cumulative stress from difficult life events affect all levels of a person’s being. Cellular integrity is compromised resulting in chemical changes at a physiological level. Usually, people with Chronic Fatigue will come to discover, upon deeper investigation and understanding, that their body’s nervous system is in a perpetual state of stress (sympathetic mode), from where it is difficult, nigh, impossible to heal from.
It is only when we look at the body-mind of a person as a whole that we can ever start to truly understand Chronic Fatigue and what is actually required to heal. What people really need to do is understand WHAT it is that has happened in their life which has brought them to this point . And more importantly, what it is that they are still doing now which is keeping their body in a perpetual state of stress. This requires work and commitment, and a true understanding of healing, (becoming whole) rather just fixing or curing symptoms.
Unfortunately, having people contemplate a different perspective on this subject seems to be a bit like telling someone who thinks the world is flat that it is actually round. And we all know how long it took for that misperception to be cleared up! The first postulators of that theory were considered insane. However, for those people who understand their life history and how every little thing that happens to them during their life affects them on a physiological and psychological level, they will agree that the cause of their Chronic Fatigue goes far deeper than a virus”.
Link to article in NY Times ‘Virus is found in many with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome’