True Healing

Body Mind AND SpiritIt can be difficult to heal the body without also addressing the mind and spirit – or, thoughts and emotions – especially when you are dealing with ongoing ailments. I’ve seen this over and over again, from autoimmune illness like inflammatory bowel disease to headaches to high blood pressure. The body speaks through symptoms to express how you are truly feeling and think, despite any attempt to bury your thoughts and emotions.Sometimes, a shoulder pain will resolve once a person embraces the grief they feel over a loved one. Or, belly aches calm down when a person can start to recognize the worry they feel. Or, blood pressure will normalize when a person faces their anxiety over an upcoming event.As Hippocrates said, “It’s far more important to know what person the disease has than what disease the person has.” In this way, your symptoms are personal. They are not just physical, but are intertwined with matters of the heart.Medically, most physicians understand that stress is the number-one precursor to illness. But we are not formally taught in medical school or residency how to actually help someone address stress. That sort of training came afterwards for me, and really through life itself. Just a few years ago, Dr. Jacob Liberman had said to me, “When approaching matters of the heart, I find it best to be gentle, like handling a baby.” I love this line because I find it’s a very loving way to approach yourself.When I was in medical school, I learned to be tough by suppressing any emotions I was dealing with, even if we worked in hospitals seeing life and death issues on a regular basis. In my third year of medical school, I started having burning reflux symptoms that would keep me up at night even if I was desperate for sleep. I was given some prescription antacids, which squelched the discomfort but didn’t address the stress I felt. It wasn’t until my second year of residency that this started to calm down on its own when I learned how to breathe again with yoga. Just simple breathing would keep me calm during the regular crises we faced in the hospitals.Over time, I also learned that being tough did not mean squashing my emotions but being OK with them. By not judging my own thoughts and feelings, and just letting my self BE… how freeing. And that having compassion for my fellow human being was definitely not something to bury.I’ll share with you next time some of the breathing exercises that helped me calm. Love,Dr. Arlene Dijamco