Five years ago I was newly free of chronic symptoms and went on a hike in the woods with my husband. It was the first time in years I was able to walk that far. When my symptoms were at their worst, I was often homebound, hardly going anywhere except to church or my friend’s house for tea.
I desperately missed the woods so we began to discuss how to get back outdoors. My husband looked up handicap accessible trails in nearby state parks and I followed up with my practitioner’s suggestion that I consider getting a wheelchair to increase mobility.
For my birthday, my husband gave me a mural of a wooded scene that we hung at the head of our bed. “If you can’t get to the woods,” he’d said, “I’ll bring the woods to you.” I spent so much time resting in my bedroom because of chronic fatigue, dizziness and body pain and that tree-filled wall brought me such comfort. (photos in gallery above)
I feel most relaxed and myself when I’m outdoors. Being in the woods awakens my senses with the crisp scent of earth and growing green, chickadees echoing back and forth to each other, the crunch of fallen leaves on the path. All of it helps me feel present and alive, a feeling that felt so distant when I was overcome by symptoms and trapped inside.
This walk in the woods was dreamlike for me. These pictures above can’t fully capture how surreal it felt to be able to use my body again, to go where my body wanted to take me. I was living inside a real life miracle. Neither my husband nor I had believed I could ever be free of the debilitating chronic fatigue, the dizziness of POTS, the swollen and painful feet of CRPS, and the shooting sciatic back pain. During those hardest years, I wasn’t able to walk very far due to full body pain I thought was caused by hEDS or Fibromyalgia. These very physical symptoms and diagnoses felt permanent, and I was a slave to all they demanded because they ruled over me.
But mind-body science, based on Tension Myositis Syndrome (TMS) taught by Dr. John Sarno and Dr. Howard Schubiner, among many others, taught me that I had a choice in the matter. There’s a little more to it than that, but the mind-body approach isn’t just another modality that can relieve a few symptoms. Mind-body healing based on cutting edge neuroscience is the pathway forward to fully recovering from very real and debilitating symptoms we are often told are permanent. Stress and repressed emotions affect the body, they are experienced and felt in very real symptoms. But when emotions are repressed, we don’t know they are there, nor do we have a way to process or release them. Emotions get trapped within our bodies, creating a host of chronic symptoms.
There was a time I thought my symptoms would never leave, but I am incredibly thankful to be celebrating five years of freedom! I’m still taking hikes and am amazed at this “second life” I get to live. I can say yes to what I want to be and do and leave the constant worry of symptoms and diagnoses behind. This approach helps me be present to myself, my family and my community. And as I have healed and keep on healing (we’re always on that path!), my creative voice rises up and gets stronger within me. I know this approach works, not just because it has utterly transformed my life, but because I see my brave students and clients healing and transforming as well.
It feels important to pause here today and reflect on how far I’ve come. I am grateful for my long and winding health journey that has brought me to this moment. This healing path that keeps asking me to go deeper and step out to take bigger risks. That’s really what mind-body healing felt like to me at the start– a huge leap of faith. I’m so glad I jumped. I hope you might too.
Are you thinking about taking the mind-body leap?
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Praise God. I get teary just thinking about how you have healed! And getting to see it first hand in February was such a gift! Big hugs to you.