How to Heal Yourself When No One Else Can Read online

  The main concepts of this book are laid out in parts:

  • Part One: Surrender, Accept, and Flow. This will cover the importance of learning to be okay where you are in your journey. You will learn why it’s essential to surrender, how to do so, and how it can catapult your healing forward. From within the space of surrender, you have an opportunity to lay a beautiful groundwork for your healing. This will include simple shifts in energy and thinking patterns that will strengthen your foundation to support what is to come.

  • Part Two: Identify Blockages . This part will discuss exactly how to identify blockages through the use of muscle testing and learning the language of your body. You will be guided into learning exactly what you need to clear for your complete healing.

  • Part Three: Change Your Relationship with Stress . This part will explain what stress is and how your internal reactions to stress can be transformed in order to help you heal. It offers detailed instruction on exactly how to do that. For each of the techniques I teach you, I’ll offer suggestions to help you apply it directly to your own specific situation.

  Once you’ve covered each of the chapters in this book, you’ll essentially be going through all of these parts simultaneously during your healing. It is not a step-by-step process in which you need to go in perfect order and check each part off the list before moving on. Instead, this healing process is much like cooking a four-course meal. You don’t necessarily do one thing at a time, seeing it through to completion, and then start the next. The goal is for all of your steps to eventually manifest as a dish that you love (yourself !), but to make that happen, you are constantly stirring, turning, and attending to several things over and over.

  There is no rush or clock set for you. Instead, set the intention to create something beautiful and the universe will expand the container in which you’ll have to explore and grow.

  In Chapter Eleven , I’ll offer you a detailed illustration of the Healing Tree —an overview of the entire process you’ve learned. The Healing Tree illustration is a virtual map of you , the beautiful tree we talked about earlier. It is a snapshot that summarizes the four main areas of imbalance that you’ll learn about in this book, and the techniques to address them. I’ve placed the illustration at the very end of the book because it will be your best companion, but only once you’ve learned all the working pieces that go into it. You will then be able to step back and see its usefulness as your own personal guide map.

  Where Should You Begin?

  At first, in my own journey, I was determined to release all my “problems” in a systematic, pragmatic way. I tried to create a nice, neat formula to organize the way this healing journey would unfold. The good news is that it doesn’t work like that. The even better news is that you most definitely don’t have to attain perfect balance or release all your stuff in order to be well. Phew! The body does not need to be stress- or problem-free to attain deep and complete well-being.

  If you’re feeling like you’ll never get better unless you do it all and get perfect and get every little thing in order, here’s the answer to your worries: YOU DON’T HAVE TO FIX IT ALL. YOU DON’T HAVE TO FIX IT ALL. YOU DON’T HAVE TO FIX IT ALL. I still sometimes have emotional meltdowns, my body hurts temporarily, and I find imbalances and blocks in my energy system … but I’m happy and well. You can heal without doing everything. You can heal by just making a dent. YOU DON’T HAVE TO FIX IT ALL.

  Clients often come to me and say, “I have so many problems. Where will you start?” And I say, “Don’t worry, you really only have three to five core issues and everything else is likely connected to those.” Everything is so interconnected that, while focusing on one imbalance, we may also be unknowingly correcting others.

  For example, I was once helping a client with persistent digestive problems. She was experiencing acid reflux, nausea, and bloating with pretty much everything she ate. While our focus remained primarily on the goal of repairing her digestion, she got a very welcome surprise. After a few sessions, she noticed that in addition to her digestive symptoms improving, her phobia of speaking on the phone (something she hadn’t even mentioned to me) had improved as well. Because one issue can be connected to many others, we are often doing more extensive clearing than we realize.

  That experience is a perfect example of why we shouldn’t get caught up in doing things too methodically. We need only remember that the goal of becoming who we really are is the finish line. It isn’t some attaining of perfection, balance, or even always a physical healing. It’s just to release all that prevents us from living freely. It doesn’t matter how you get there; it just matters that you do.

  Healing is really just practicing. Each day of your life you have an opportunity to practice letting go of what keeps you from moving forward and closer to yourself. When it seems like it’s working, keep practicing. When it seems like it’s not, keep practicing.

  What to Expect

  While using the techniques in this book, you may feel immense relief immediately or it may require great persistence. Either one is fine. It has no bearing on your ultimate healing.

  When moving energy, there is always some “processing” that occurs—meaning your body is releasing that energy completely from your field, which extends far beyond your physical body. During this process, which can last a few days to about a week, you may feel an increase in discomfort, fatigued, or a little bit uneasy. An equal number of my clients feel lighter and better after sessions though, so that is highly possible, too. As you’re moving and clearing energy more consistently, you’ll become attuned to your body’s release process. If you feel you are having a difficult time with processing, I’ve provided some tools in Chapter Twelve that will help you.

  While using these techniques, you might find your mind wandering. That’s a natural occurrence and is nothing to be concerned about. Often the mind is wandering to things that are somehow related to what you’re clearing. And even if not, no harm will be done. As you perform the techniques, you might yawn, burp, get the chills, have a runny nose or eyes, cough, feel emotions strongly, hear your stomach gurgling, sweat, or experience any number of sensations. All of these things are good indicators that your body is releasing. This means that it’s coming out of stress mode and moving into relaxation and healing mode. Specifically, yawning signals that your nervous system is relaxing. I have a number of clients who experience no signs of energy releasing during the process and benefit greatly anyway. When I am moving energy, whether for myself or with a client, I yawn a lot. If it’s something really big, I tend to sneeze. I always joke that one sneeze is worth ten yawns for me! Sneezing and yawning are my own body’s responses to shifting a lot of energy, but each person is different and you’ll get to know your signs, too.

  It’s equally important to remember that we all release energy at different speeds. I’ve done so many sessions where my client immediately feels better from the work. I call these “one-session wonders.” Almost instantly they see symptoms shift or feel a huge emotional relief. This is definitely not my pattern, though, and it may not be yours either. If for some reason you don’t feel anything at first, it may just not be your body’s pace, or there may be many more layers to work on.

  If your challenge has been long-standing, it might take a while of working at it from different angles to feel a shift. Your challenges did not show up overnight, even though that’s how it might have seemed. They were brewing in your energy system long before they manifested as symptoms that you paid attention to. The good news is that healing often works like this too. Nothing’s happening, nothing’s happening, nothing’s happening (you think) … and then, all that was happening inside suddenly shows up for you to see! Your healing could be right around the corner at any given time. Seeing the journey as an integrative flowing, weaving uncovering of your life is the most fulfilling and effective way to approach it. For deep and permanent healing, there is no quick fix. You have to surrender and let it all unfold. The universe
doesn’t give “no’s,” but it does sometimes give “not yet’s.” Just keep showing up and doing what you need to do. Healing never happens fast enough for us, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

  During my own healing, I didn’t keep meticulous track of what I was working on or how it was going; I just made sure to keep going . Most of the time I had no idea what I was doing, but I dedicated myself and I consistently used what I learned. It was a winning approach for me. If you consistently use the techniques, you will win too.

  I suggest that you keep a notebook, casually jotting down whatever comes to you during your own journey. While symptom-tracking and record-keeping of every past hurt and emotion will not be helpful here, it can be useful to have a place to write down ideas that you have, subtle shifts you see in your symptoms, and observations you become aware of along the way.

  How Much Time Should I Dedicate to the Process?

  Imagine a pot of vigorously boiling water with a lid on it. Eventu ally the water gathers so much steam that it bursts though the lid and overflows. You run to the rescue, lift the lid, and release some of the pressure. But you don’t then walk away and come back a week later. You tend to the water. You keep letting a little steam out in between doing other things in the kitchen. While you too can release “steam” (energy) from your body by doing deep work now and then with the techniques you learn in this book, it will be much more effective if you consistently release the pressure a little bit at a time. Keep on top of it. Dedicate time daily. It doesn’t have to be hours. Sometimes working on certain things will take longer. However, becoming frozen and doing nothing because you “don’t have time” or are overwhelmed is perhaps the biggest mistake I see.

  Sometimes clients will tell me at the start of a session that they’ve had a really hard time with something in between our working together. “What technique did you use to move through it?” I always inquire excitedly. Sometimes they reply, “Oh, I didn’t do anything.” That’s when I try not to cry myself ! Feeling bad is a grand opportunity to clear whatever is coming up and just begging to be released.

  If you are feeling strong emotion even outside of the time you’ve dedicated to your healing, use a technique to release that “steam” in the moment, lest it get added to the pot that you’ll have to tend to later. If you are feeling sad or jealous, have an upset stomach, or whatever it may be, use the moment to figure out what’s coming up for you (I’ve provided lots of ideas for this in Chapter Six ), and apply a technique that you’ve learned. Did you have a bad dream last night? Use that as an opportunity to find something to clear. Are you still stirring over something that happened at work last week? Deal with it. All of this is coming up because it has deeper roots that can be gently cleaned out.

  Five minutes, ten minutes, or however many minutes you have on a consistent basis can change your life. With this book, you will have the tools you need to do it. The techniques are gentle and effective. They work. As always, it’s all unfolding and happening in divine time. It doesn’t need to push or rush. All is well. You are healing.

  Important Chapters to Reference

  While each chapter in this book is important, there are a few in particular that you will want to reference often. I’d like to point them out here so you can quickly flip back and forth.

  • List of Exercises and Techniques following the table of contents—Here you will find a list of all the techniques and exercises that are in this book. This will allow you to flip quickly to where you need to go.

  • Chapter Six : Learn the Language of Your Body—This chapter can be used as a kind of reference guide and will give you a deep understanding of what your body is saying to you through its symptoms. Each and every time your body appears to be malfunctioning is an opportunity to see it in a different light. Your body will be a great guide in your healing.

  • Chapter Seven : Clear Unprocessed Experiences and Chapter Eight : Release Harmful Beliefs—These two chapters present four of the main techniques that you will be using. For each, you’ll learn how to use it, apply it to your challenge, and see examples of how that’s done. Note: the fifth main technique is taught in Chapter Nine .

  • Chapter Eleven : Create Your Unique Map for Healing—This chapter offers a snapshot review of everything you learned throughout the entire book. It includes an illustration of the Healing Tree to help you visualize the process, along with directions on how to use the illustration to streamline your healing.

  You are now ready to get started. My parting words to you are short but important: Persistence and patience are not always natural virtues. The miracles they deliver, though, absolutely work and are definitely worth it. And so are you.

  [contents]

  Section I

  ***************

  An Introduction

  to the Energy Body

  and Self-Healing

  Chapter One

  ***************

  My Success Story

  It’s only when caterpillarness is done that one becomes a butterfly … You cannot rip away the caterpillarness. The whole trip occurs in an unfolding process of which we have no control.

  —ram dass , be here now

  I wasn’t doing anything noble at age twenty-five, like changing the world, but I was totally content making people smile with “Live To Ride” Harley-Davidson paraphernalia and meditating to the sound of rumbling bikes on my lunch break. In July of 2005, I had no idea that my dream life as a marketing director for Harley-Davidson was suddenly about to fold, although I see now that I had ignored many warnings of deteriorating health that came in the years before. At first I began having trouble walking up the gentle ramp from my office at Harley to the community kitchen. I had pain and tingling in my legs. Shortly after that I started to lose function of my arms. My dexterity slipped away, I couldn’t lift my arms above my head to wash my own hair, and I tripped and fell more times than I could count. Doctors were puzzled, I was terrified, and my neurologist ordered me not to return to work.

  I was in pain twenty-four-hours a day, with relief only when I was in a drug-induced sound sleep. Fierce, full-fledged body pain engulfed my being. There was not one inch of me saved; everything from my feet to the top of my head was screaming in agony. Because the disease was misdiagnosed and untreated for so long, the damage to my body was ravenous. Exposed nerves in all my limbs created firing pain with no rhythmic pattern to warn me when the worst was to come. Full-blown arthritis in my major joints left me unable to lift my leg high enough to step over the bathtub and into the shower. I often could not even sit on the toilet without assistance because my hips could not handle the pressure of lowering my body weight to the seat. I couldn’t use my shoulders to push myself up on the bed to get out of it when I wanted. The lining of my heart became inflamed, leaving it constantly racing as if I had just run a marathon. I was so fatigued that I could not move my lips to speak at times, and I had cognitive impairment so compromising that I couldn’t form words to get them to my lips anyway. A severely weakened immune system made me a host for recurring shingles so severe that they scarred and hurt for years afterward. My white blood cell counts plummeted so much that I was unable to leave the house at my immunologist’s insistence. No organ or system in my body was spared. My life as I knew it was swallowed away and replaced by a monstrous disease that any doctor had yet to understand. I was almost more terrified of living than dying.

  Trying to Heal

  Several years after a string of misdiagnoses and treatments that nearly killed me, I was finally accurately diagnosed. This is the jackpot moment in a chronically ill person’s life. Apparently, a tiny tick bit me, doctors explained—a tick that I had never even known about. It transferred to me bacteria called Borrelia burgdorferi , the causative agent of Lyme disease. Lyme disease is a bacterial infection transmitted from a tick bite that can cause serious health problems if left untreated. And it did. The diagnosis of Lyme disease carried with it a string of further diagnoses, inclu
ding autoimmune thyroid disease, kidney dysfunction, connective tissue disease, fibromyalgia, neuropathy, and more. I never had a visible bite, rash, or anything of the sort. I had been tested for Lyme disease before, but the testing for Lyme is so flawed and did not deliver a positive result until many years too late, when my blood was sent to a specialty lab. I took my late-stage L yme disease diagnosis like an oversized bag of groceries at the checkout stand; I wrapped my arms around it as best I could, and I moved on to find a cure.

  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that approximately 300,000 cases of Lyme disease are contracted in the United States annually—with a mere 10 percent being properly diagnosed. 1 That estimate makes Lyme disease twice as common as breast cancer and six times more common than HIV/AIDS. Some cases are never even reported. This leaves many with misdiagnoses such as fibromyalgia, lupus, chronic fatigue syndrome, multiple sclerosis, arthritis, migraines, learning disabilities, bipolar disorders, Parkinson’s disease, heart arrhythmias, and more.