Better Than Before

By the end of 2022, I was doing pilates daily, hot yoga Wed nights with a friend, 10 minutes of Sensate every day and starting to wean down on my therapy appointments. The desperation was fading. I am still on the prescription medications and have been told that since my body started to heal, it could be another six months to a year until all the little muscles and joints, ligaments etc let go and get back to their healthy state. With every passing week I felt myself standing taller, feeling stronger and getting my sparkle back. To this day, I still have the nerve sensation in my teeth, tongue etc, but that is fading and sometimes I don’t notice it at all. It was explained to me that my brain has been so hyper focused on this part of my body for so long that it will take time for it to stop putting its attention there, even if everything is healed. Our bodies are such a wonder.

My son’s 14th birthday party was another pivotal time for me in that I reconnected with an old friend who had recently undergone Neuro-Linguistic Programming and it had changed her life for the better. With all the coaching work and wellness awareness, my interest was piqued. I met with her coach Cristian, an Argentinian who lives in Mexico, and he explained how our subconscious creates our reality and is the captain of our ship. This captain speaks another language, let’s say “Greek”, and therefore I can try really hard to give directions in English, but it’s not going to understand. With his work, he helps you to communicate what you want to your captain so you can redesign your reality. Hello! Sign me up! Not only was I interested because of my recent health challenges, but as a coach, I wanted to experience and understand how he did this. This is ground-breaking work!

In the first session we tackled stress. His technique had some elements that reminded me a lot of my process coaching, but had many other elements that were new to me. After that first session I felt so relaxed and could tell I had been in a meditative state. Within a few days, I noticed how calm I felt. I felt very little to zero stress or anxiety. This entire year whenever my husband shared his challenges from work, I would feel the tension building in my body, neck and face and after this session that was all gone. Zero. After just one session, I noticed a remarkable transformation that had happened to me. I had to make a long highway drive with my kids to Burlington. Seven years before, I had had a panic attack on the highway and ever since had been so anxious with highway driving and had even taken pills to help make it manageable when I had no other choice. This lasted for 7 years and after one session with Crisitian that was GONE! I felt like I was 20 years old again and loving the freedom of my highway driving. I was truly amazed.

In my second session we tackled anxiety. The results after were again incredible. It wasn’t until a few days later I realized the impact. When my naturopath recommended I write about my health journey I felt absolutely compelled. There was not one ounce of fear or hesitation. The best words to describe it would be I felt FREE, FEARLESS AND UNSTOPPABLE! My husband also could not believe how fearless I was watching a Netflix movie called FALL. Nobody else in my family could stomach the movie, but I was loving it. Who was this new version of me?? I like her a whole lot :)

By the end of January, I noticed something significant shift within me. I am now standing taller, I am feeling stronger, and calmer than ever before. I can feel some sensations in my neck and back that feel familiar….like they were the things I had before this all went down but I just lived with them. Not any more!

I have since done another session with Cristian to do some Reiki which also felt amazing. My osteopath now has me doing some neck stretching by running my teeth along the surface of my teeth as there is still quite a bit of tension in my right neck. Who knew that tongue exercises could stretch neck muscles? The things I have learned this past year blow my mind.

The journey is not over yet, but 2023 is the year of getting better than ever. Mentally, physically and spiritually. To this day, I still feel discomfort with my nerves in my cheek, teeth and tongue. My right leg and arm still feel funny nerve-wise, but are far better than they used to be. Looking back it seems as though I went into the end of 2021 with a whole lot of stress, on to a body that was already unstable. My sense is that my C-section scar from 14 years ago, slowly over the years started to pull the fascia in, tightening it and curling the right side of my body inwards. This instability then got angry when I had a sinus infection, flew with a sinus infection, got covid shots and let’s not forget the stress of two years of lockdowns. My whole system went through the ringer. My healthy and happy left side was always a reminder that my body knows how to be that way and that my right side just needed a whole lot of love to get back to its happy, healthy state.

There have been so many silver linings from this dark time and I know more are still to come. For now I am so grateful to be reminded of the following:

• Healing takes time and is not linear - be patient

• Pilates can be life changing - movement is medicine

• There are always silver linings

• Advocate for your own health - nobody else is coming to save you

• Positive affirmations - you always have a choice on what thoughts you are having

• Try all the things - we have so much to learn and you never know what may help you

• Talk about it - processing our feelings is so important

• Do the work - therapies and drugs alone are not enough. Your lifestyle and practices most likely got you to where you are, so you have to work on making changes to sustain your health.