I’ve established a reputation for being the person to go to for “hard” or “mystery” ailments. Because I’ve taught energy medicine internationally for so many years, I get a lot of referrals for people who’ve been to see many doctors and other practitioners who haven’t been able to help. And I’m happy to say that I usually am able to help when no one else seems to be able to offer any hope.
So by the time people get to me, they are often desperate for answers and desperate for hope. Understandably, they have lots of questions. And the most difficult question to answer is also the most common and the most natural question of all: “How long will it take for me to heal?”
Recently, I had a new patient see me out of concern over a uterine fibroid or myoma. She had been recommended surgery, but was concerned that surgery would affect her ability to have a child later, so she wanted to explore natural options. And of course, she asked me if I had experience working with this issue, and how long did I think it would take to address her complaint. It’s a common condition, so you’d think it would be easy to answer that question, but it’s actually a larger question – read on while I discuss why.
Causes vs. Symptoms
It’s hard to answer because I help people heal – which is a lot different than covering up symptoms. And I don’t know how long that will take. I don’t know how many layers there are to the imbalances that are creating their symptoms. If I just focus on the symptoms, I’m not doing healing. I don’t give medicines to counteract symptoms, because that isn’t healing. And I don’t treat the symptom directly, I always work towards balancing the root of someone’s problems. Most problems don’t happen overnight, and the signs and symptoms develop slowly over time. Some of the signs we dismiss as aging, but bottom line is we usually wait until something is really wrong before we tell the doctor about it.
The other issue for me is that after working with patients for 25 years, I know everything is connected. The physical health problem someone is having is likely a case of the body losing efficiency in it’s natural healing and restorative processes. We are supposed to repair our bodies every day when we rest. If that goes well, we age very slowly and stay healthy. If stress keeps us from going into rest and healing mode, we get behind on healing. If we get stressed for a day, we’re a little tired the next day. If we stay stressed for a long time we get way behind on healing and restoration and we eventually develop disease.
So how we handle our stress affects the efficiency of our body. Our reactions to life stresses create emotional responses, which affect the state of our nervous system. And our nervous system controls the functioning of our body and how efficient it is. This explains why emotional imbalance is considered the major cause of disease in Chinese Medicine.
The Cause
So what’s the real cause of my patient’s fibroid? In simple terms, a fibroid represents blood stagnation from a Chinese Medicine perspective. This means that either there is not enough blood or that the blood is not flowing vigorously enough to prevent accumulation or stagnation of blood, leading to the kind of benign tumor that we call a fibroid. This blood stagnation can come from several causes.
The emotion that corresponds to blood is joy. So not enough blood implies not enough joy. In my patient’s case, she feels stuck in a job she doesn’t like, has a desire to do some other work, but somehow isn’t either manifesting or perhaps recognizing opportunities to create a change in her career. She also doesn’t have a steady boyfriend, which is another stumbling block on the road to her other life desire of having children. Hopefully a boyfriend would bring some more joy into her life and her body and her blood. And at least a few moments of joy would also be necessary for conception, if you catch my meaning.
When you don’t have strong blood, you feel tired and don’t sleep well or soundly. That fits my patient’s situation as well. She works late, but can’t sleep in because she’s a light sleeper (a blood deficiency sign) and noises wake her in the morning before she has rested enough. So she is always tired. When you are tired and depleted it is harder to make changes in your life – you are just surviving, which is depressing, which means no joy. It’s kind of like a circle where the lack of joy means weak of blood, which makes it harder to find daily joy, and so on in a continuous circle.
Feeling stuck emotionally also puts stress on the Liver meridian, and the Liver meridian is responsible for keeping Qi and Blood flowing throughout the whole body, and especially through the lower abdomen – where her stagnation is occurring. And I actually prefer to say stagnation rather than fibroid, because that makes it more understandable and approachable. Because the physical stagnation is always associated with emotional or spiritual stagnation. If we can shift the mind, the Qi and Blood will follow.
Our Path
The difference people who continually grow and evolve throughout life and those who don’t is that the people who do believe they can, and believe that they are worth it. We all know people of great talent who don’t achieve much, and others with average talent who nonetheless succeed in life. We all know people who are kind, personable, and attractive who stay single forever. It is our beliefs that determine whether or not we expect the universe (or the person you fancy) to say yes when we ask for something.
The Liver meridian is also responsible for helping us to see a path through life that leads to more opportunity and more growth. So the key to improving blood circulation in the lower abdomen relates to the same energy center that helps us to see our path in life. You can’t really separate the two issues.
Hope
If I am I going to help my patient reduce or eliminate her fibroid I’m going to have to help her body to do the job. Like most of my patients she is a distance patient that I treat over the phone. I can’t do surgery or even acupuncture at a distance. But I can help to shift her energy, and to address emotional states and beliefs that affect how her body makes blood. And that can change not only how her body works to improve circulation and health of her uterus, it can also affect the choices she makes in her life and the opportunities that are available to her.
That’s why “How long will this take?” is a big question. The challenge is that I don’t know how many layers there are and how ready she is to shift. So I simply can’t make specific promises. The good news is that whatever I do to help her fibroid is more than likely going to help her find more joy and opportunity in her personal and professional life. Finding a natural way to reduce the fibroid is great – if that same method helps to help her find a better job, a partner, and a baby then I’m really helping her as a person, not just treating her uterus. That’s my goal, because they are all related to the same quality of energy and mind.
So my hope is healing on all levels. People can change their mind in an instant when they are ready, then the energy and nervous system change and the body changes when the nervous system tells it to change. By the time people find me, they are usually ready to change their mind and ready to heal. Where there’s a will to change, there’s a way. There’s hope for her, there’s hope for me in my life challenges, and there’s hope for you in your challenges. Wish her (and yourself) luck.
Note:
I’m not against medications or surgery. Sometimes medications are really necessary. Sometimes surgery is really necessary. But medications don’t cure disease, they control symptoms. That’s important, because some symptoms can kill you, or make life very difficult. There are a lot of smart people who have dedicated their lives to finding better ways to control symptoms and to save people’s lives in an emergency. I’m grateful for all of those researchers and clinicians, and they serve an important need. I’m interested in healing, not covering up problems, so I write about non-medical options.