For the past five weeks, my family and I had a surprise Guest stay with us.   Guest arrived without warning and with no communication when Guest would depart.  Why had Guest decided to visit at this time and what was Guest trying to teach us?

Our questions were left unanswered until around day 21 of Guest’s visit I went for a run and the answer came to the surface.  Guest would stay as long as necessary and not a moment longer.

What the heck did that mean?

I dug deeper into the question.  I asked Guest, “Why would you stay for so long when we are really not very fond of you?  And to top it off we didn’t invite you.”

To which Guest replied, “Oh, but you DID invite me.  You ALL invited me, welcomed me into your bodies, each one of you.”

Allow me to blow Guest’s cover.

Guest started as a little cough and sore throat for a few days then progressed into a chest-rattling, gunk-producing, smoker-hack-sounding cough and none of us ever smoked.  I don’t recall in my life ever having such a cough.  No fever, no aches, no chills.  This Guest set up residence in each one of our lungs and got comfortable.

After using some mind-body tools, I discovered Guest’s purpose was to clean out years of toxins built up in the lungs.  I recently wrote another post about my son Ian, Ian’s Message About Toxins, where I began to put it all together.  He is my nine-year-old son with autism and one of my greatest teachers.

For the past six weeks, I’ve done a TON of work to clean out the toxic thoughts in my mind; clearing out painful, stressful thoughts using The Work by Byron Katie and Abigail’s mind-body tools.

What I’ve learned through my training as a mind-body coach and working with clients struggling with physical pain is that when you shift your mind, the body follows.  Sometimes that means there is quite a mess and that is just as much a part of the process of healing as any other part.  In my case, a four-week Guest setting up camp in my lungs.

Here are two additional golden nuggets.  Your thoughts create your reality meaning your view of life all begins with thought and according to quantum physics and string theory we are all connected on an energetic level.  Check out physicist Brian Greene’s TedTalk from 2005 on string theory.

So, it made perfect sense to me that as I cleaned out a Mack-truck load of toxic thoughts, my body would follow and rid itself of toxins as well as my family to whom I’m deeply connected.

I put out the welcome mat.

For my final week of “clearing”, rather than curse Guest I welcomed Guest with open arms and accepted the gift that my body invited.  My oldest son welcomed Guest two weeks after me so he continues to rattle and cough but I find it so fascinating that he’s not unhappy about it.  When he has trouble breathing, we do a breathing treatment and then he’s back to being happy.  He lives in the present moment, unencumbered by stressful thoughts about the past or the future.  And as I let go of the painful thoughts and release them from my body something amazing happens.  Not only does MY body heal but HIS body heals.  His healing has actually accelerated over the past year.

I share this story with you to invite you to consider the power of your thoughts and how they are connected to the health and healing of your body and even possibly your loved ones near you.  The power of thought continues to amaze and awe me.

I leave you with this thought.  At the core of every human being is love.  Some of us just have thicker layers of painful, stressful thoughts shrouding the view.  Let love and acceptance blow the view wide open.

“Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.” G. K. Chesterton

“Once you accept the fact that you’re not perfect, then you develop some confidence.” Rosalyn Carter

“The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.” Anna Quindlen

“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” Leonard Cohen

“Breathe.” Abigail Steidley

I  love pearls of wisdom and have never met a pun that I didn’t like, so it was natural to be thinking of favorite adages as I looked for inspiration for this week’s blog.  The sayings above, which came immediately to mind, share a common theme: living in self-acceptance, ease, and authenticity.

At the same time, the painful condition of anxiety was popping up in various aspects of my personal life like mushrooms in my yard after a rainy week.

A coincidence?  I think not.  My Inner Wisdom was tapping me on the shoulder, helping me notice that my intention of living in that place of ease, lightness, and love was being undermined by anxiety.  Interestingly, the usual suspects of fear, anger, or shame, which usually disguise themselves as anxiety, were fueled this time by a deeper layer of pain in the form of perfectionism. (Me?! A perfectionist?! The woman with the cozily messy desk, the person who suffers no embarrassment when obviously directionally challenged in exercise classes, the book group member comfortable having literally lost the plot and her words in discussions?)

Well, yes. My thoughts had started to skew towards unconscious perfectionism. I was laughing less and obsessing more. I realized that I was attacking myself with “shoulds” disguised as “wants”.  Wanting not to worry, to finish a project, to generally “get it”, to be a better coach/student/teacher/family member, to be understood and loved, were actually self-judgments. I was coming up short and it was bringing me down.

This friction between these edicts and my essential self is a setup for anxiety and a ticket into fight or flight. The accompanying freeze results in procrastination and the exhaustion of being revved up with the mental brakes on, particularly unpleasant to someone who is a doer by nature.

It’s not fun and definitely not peaceful, as anyone who experiences this cycle of spinning thoughts and feelings on a regular basis knows. Right now I am consciously embracing my messy learning curve of life as, dare I say,  “perfect”, and questioning what I can learn, why I have to get it right, who I need to be perfect for, and what the heck is perfect and who made that rule, anyhow?

Since anxiety is a common factor in the physical pain of mind/body syndrome, emotional eating, and the straight-up, free-floating , whack-a-mole variety of suppressive suffering, I offer the specifics of the practice that I am playing with as return to living light, with hopes that parts might be useful to you, whether or not perfectionism appears when anxiety rears it’s unpleasant and informative little head:

1) Breathe – mindfully, slowly, often (being present and in fight/flight/freeze are mutually exclusive)

2) Notice the feeling of “anxious” and lovingly, gently, and thoroughly dig beneath it.  Find and greet the underlying emotions and experience them as physical sensations.  Or just choose to notice those feelings instead of focusing on Anxiety. Breathe. If thoughts or other feelings arise, notice them and work them if it feels right. Or just be aware of them as thoughts and feelings – not The Truth or the Essential Me – or You.

3) Practice taking a bird’s eye or long view.  Notice that what is a world of pain to you about your perceived inadequacies or less than perfect (fill in the blank) is just a blip on the radar of others’ awareness – they are busy worrying about how they appear or what is going on in their own worlds. (It’s not about you, even when it seems to be, which is great news unless you are a flaming narcissist.  Which you are not. If you were, you wouldn’t be anxious.)

4) If others do judge, in the grand scheme of things, who cares?!  Why do you?? Seriously.  Who made them emperor?

5) If you still care, go back to 2) and practice taking the long view. Another term that’s a useful reminder for me is “perspective” – like zooming out on Google maps – where did those houses go, anyway?

6) Practice smiling (the action affects your brain in a good way) and laughing gently at the “Wow” aspects of the world, yourself, others, or at a bad pun or funny story. (It’s impossible to sincerely laugh and be in anxious fight/flight/freeze mode simultaneously – see #1.)

7) Decide to lightly jump (or take little steps) back into living your life in the moment for just this moment.

8) And finally, here’s my not totally enlightened but sometimes helpful starter thought to get out of my lizardy and self-critical be-more/better mindset, courtesy of Bette Midler:

“_____ ‘em if they can’t take a joke.”

If your thoughts are a little higher on the food chain of empowerment, “Hug ‘em” might feel good and true, too.

May your heart and flight be light,

Ann

Once I decided to try the mind-body approach, I knew I was on the right track because magical things started happening.  I was led to Kathleen Barratt of Barratt Breathworks, where I first learned deep, diaphragmatic breathing techniques.  The sheer amount of deep breathing I did turned off my fight or flight response enough to drop me out of the fear/panic mode and allow me to settle into my mind-body healing process without desperation.  So that was step one.

Step two was to work with a therapist, (didn’t know about coaching at that point, otherwise I would have done that, too!) who helped me sort through my mental life, and even referred me to another therapist to work on past trauma.  (I plan to discuss trauma more in later posts – we all experience some, but some of us have experienced A LOT.  I am of the second category.)

Step three was to integrate the emotional work from therapy into my breathing sessions, because breath-work is a fantastic way to release suppressed emotion, if you’re working with somebody who knows what they’re doing.  Kathleen also works with energy healing, which is extremely powerful, and she was an important spiritual guide for me.  I added in acupuncture, because that also works with energy (chi).  I studied meditation.  (More on emotions, energy healing, meditation, and spirituality in later posts.)  I probably sound all organized with these steps, but I wasn’t.  I was just following my intuition.

I also worked with a nutritionist to support my body with healthy food, and to help me utilize supportive supplementation rather than random, advertised supplementation that promises to cure.  I implemented sound-healing therapy to help me sleep at night, and because as a musician, I was drawn to it.  I did guided imagery and art.  I went to physical therapy and did yoga, which I will discuss more in future posts as well.  I reached probably 85% health through this combination of approaches.

While I was engaged in this work with these different people, I was also reading about mind-body healing on my own.  I discovered the work of Dr. John Sarno.  It was at this point that I realized I could work with my mind to basically get out of the way of the healing process and let it happen.  (MUCH more on this to come.)  It was perfect that I read Sarno’s book when I did, because my husband and I were moving, away from my Healing Team.  I knew I was ready to let most of them go, and I knew I could replace the necessary or desired ones eventually, but this gave me a new piece in the puzzle.

When I read Sarno’s work, he discussed the idea of emotional suppression/repression, which I had already addressed through my breath-work, energy work, and therapy combination.  I already knew that piece of the puzzle.  I just needed some ways to get my mind on my side, to stop doubting, start believing, and stop thinking scary thoughts.  While it took more research and exploration to make this happen (and now, as a coach, I have even stronger tools), Sarno was the one who made me see and begin to understand.  For some people, just reading Sarno does not help, because they have no idea how to implement what he is saying, and they have no idea how to effectively release suppressed emotion.  Or, they don’t agree with the full approach. (You guessed it – more on that in later posts as well.)

So, as you can see, mind-body healing isn’t just a one-man job. If you have been working on mind-body healing and are feeling lost, think it doesn’t work, or can’t seem to get results, there may be a couple reasons.

1)    You need a Healing Team.  No man is an island.  We all learn from each other.  No one person, therapist, healer, whatever knows it all.  Kathleen always said she is a spoke in the wheel.  It takes immense knowledge and in-depth training in just one area of mind-body healing to be able to effectively work with others.  Don’t expect one-stop shopping for pain relief.  Any approach that promises to be the cure, or bring pain relief singlehandedly gives me an immediate “shackles on” feeling.  Not to say that it doesn’t have something to offer, because it probably does – sometimes invaluable help.  But I know one thing for sure – nobody knows Everything.  And they don’t know you, as an individual.  We are all unique beings with unique past histories, unique habits for dealing with stress, and unique bodies.  The danger then becomes that you will try the program, read the book, and not end up with absolute pain relief.  Then, you might assume that you can’t do it, or that it doesn’t work, when really you might just need a little more help, direction, or guidance, because it’s SO easy to get tripped up by your own thoughts.  So it’s important to try a combination of modalities you’re drawn to and explore different resources.  For instance, I work with clients who have gone through Dr. Schubiner’s program, find it really helpful, but also need help with negative thinking, so are now working with me.  Many of my clients are seeing a therapist concurrently to help with past trauma.  One client is even lucky enough to live near Kathleen, so is doing the same breath-work I did while also being coached.  Don’t take on the responsibility of “healing yourself” (I see it as getting out of the way so the healing can happen naturally) all alone, because it’s ten times harder.  Reach out in different directions and explore.

2)    You might not be implementing mind-body healing tools effectively, for a multitude of reasons.  For instance, if you are constantly getting sucked into doubt regarding mind-body healing, that will pull you off-track and slow you down immensely.  (This is where feedback from others is invaluable – people working with me, for example, have a place to share doubt and release it, and people in Dr. Schubiner’s program can re-read the sections dealing with doubt.)  Or, maybe you have a lot of emotional work that needs to be done, and you aren’t working with somebody who can help with this, such as a therapist or body-based emotional release practitioner (such as someone trained in breath-work or other modalities such as EMDR).  Maybe you have worked on emotional release, but still are having trouble putting together a mind-body plan for yourself that really works (that is what I do with my clients as well).  Maybe you are having trouble really working with negative thinking on your own.  Sometimes this can be difficult, because you are looking through the distortion of your own negative thinking, trying to change it.  Since this is my area of expertise, I see it often with clients – it’s not always a quick and easy process.  Besides, just the fact that you can’t step outside of yourself makes it harder.  I coach myself, of course, but always trade coaching with fellow coaches to get an outside viewpoint.

And, mind-body healing is not an easy thing to learn from a book.  If you’re putting the pressure on yourself to learn it and do it alone, that’s just one more stress on yourself.  It’s great to learn, but give yourself a guide, a teacher, someone to lead the way.   I still stay in contact with Kathleen.  I learn from Martha Beck and other coaches.  I still seek out energy healing, because I love it, and I learn more about myself every time I go.  I reach out to other people dealing with mind-body healing and bring their wisdom and knowledge to this blog, for you, and to further my own understanding.  The teachers I love are the ones who remain students forever, and I plan to be a student of mind-body healing until the day I die.  I don’t know it all, but I’m always willing to learn more.

Part Two coming soon…

Which it is not.

The body is not just the body.  It cannot be separated from the mind, the emotions, and the soul.  So, even though we long for linear, logical connections, they just aren’t always there.  Sometimes, the body hurts because we aren’t feeling our emotions.  Sometimes the body hurts because we aren’t listening to our true selves.

This can be hard to conceptualize at first, but the great news is that science can indeed explain much of these processes.  Which is where the resources come in – I LOVE it when doctors write about the mind-body connection, because they can speak to our linear, logical selves and help us believe in something that seems “out there” or woo-woo.  I love any book about the mind-body connection, pretty much, and this month I’m reading a great one.

This month’s book is a short little book called Breathe Smart, The Secret to Happiness, Health, and Long Life by Aaron Hoopes.  I love this little book for many reasons.  First, it’s little!  It’s short!  It cuts to the chase and gives you great information about breathing and its connection to health.  Second, it describes a bit of the science behind the connection between breathing and health.  Third, it hammers home the points I am always trying to make with clients about the power of the breath.

It’s so easy to overlook the breath and just dismiss it as another banal, old topic.  Don’t make that mistake!  Investing time and effort to truly understand and applying healthy breathing techniques will take you much further than you can even imagine.  If you’re looking for a short, concise book about breathing, this one is it.  I highly recommend it.  Then, take yourself to a yoga teacher, vocal coach, or breathwork specialist and learn how to take a full, diaphragmatic breath.  Your body, mind, and soul will thank you!

Don’t forget to check out the June telecourses offered in last week’s blog post!

Anti-Anxiety Breathing Technique