by Amy B. Scher
There are many ways in which we diminish our true selves. It is easy for me to say, “Be the true you,” or “Become who you really are,” but it can be difficult to recognize how we are not doing or being that. As we grow into adults, we can drift so far from our true nature that we lose our reference point for who that person inside really is. In an effort to conceptualize this idea for you, I am offering you my own very personal list as an example. These are the things that I now see caused me to suppress my truest, deepest light—and, subsequently, contributed to illness. I suggest you make a similar list of all the ways you think you are doing the same. You might be as scared making your list as I am sharing mine, but we are all born brave.
• Fear— I called it “anxiety” my whole life and never resonated with feeling “scared,” but I was fearful deep down in my bones. Here are some of the things I was scared of: fear of sharing and expressing emotion, fear of failing at anything, fear of people being upset with me, fear of trusting myself, fear of my parents dying, fear of getting in an accident or being hurt, fear of getting injured in sports, fear of making a mistake, fear of travel and small spaces, fear of crowds, fear of germs, fear of not being in control of everything, fear of not having money, fear of people disapproving of me, and the list goes on. We are most definitely not meant to live dominated by fear.
• Relationships— I found myself in relationships I knew weren’t right for me. The relationships themselves created situations where I would avoid speaking up and would incessantly worry about upsetting my partner, feel as if I wasn’t interesting or fun enough, and hold myself responsible for fixing my partner’s insecurities. Perhaps even more damaging, I wasn’t honest with myself about these relationships. I talked myself out of what my intuition was saying—that the relationship wasn’t healthy for me. Talking ourselves into anything that’s not true in our gut causes inner conflict and is harmful to our being. All of this tailoring and filtering of myself prevented me from being me.
• Challenging Myself— While in some ways I took too much responsibility for things, in other ways I copped out. From the time I started working, I rarely had jobs that felt good. I never enjoyed school or felt good at it, so I shut myself off from pursuing education that could have helped me find something enjoyable. I was so full of self-doubt about school and didn’t even try to go to a four-year college because I was terrified to take the required testing. I essentially limited the choices for my life because I was scared of a test . This is the silly stuff we do. I do not in any way believe that someone must have a college education to be successful (I still don’t have a degree and am totally content with that), but I do believe we must call ourselves to our greatness. We need to hold ourselves accountable to do hard things. We can’t shy away from scary things that would help us move forward.
• Self-Criticism— I was terribly hard on myself. In fact, if it had been someone else, it would have been considered abuse. I beat myself up over every little mistake and imperfection and always expected more of myself than was humanly possible. I had difficulty being able to just let go and have fun without constant monitoring of my behavior. Joy is part of our true nature, and suppressing it is extremely counterintuitive to well-being. Learning to be easier on myself was not only beneficial, but absolutely necessary.
• Self-Sacrifice— I had an intense opposition to hurting people’s feelings, even if it was unintentional. Because of that, I avoided it at all costs and I paid the price, emotionally and physically. I did things that I didn’t want to do, I put myself last, I never said no to others and yes to myself, I made sure I suffered for someone if I could spare them, and I was far too understanding of people who hurt me. Self-sacrifice shows up in many ways and is always detrimental.
I hope this list gives you some solid examples of how we block our true selves from coming forth. When I share it with clients, they often say things like, “Wow, I can’t imagine you could be that screwed up!” I laugh because I know there must be things missing from that list. But I am most definitely proof that one can come out of all of this on the other side, happier and healthy.
The most important thing is to move through it all and find a way to be unapologetically you. The more you can do that, the better your life will feel. It’s called being “in alignment” (with who you are, not with everyone else), and it’s more amazing than you can imagine. Your energy will flow, your body will be in full healing mode, and you’ll be on your way to miracles. As a bonus, life will also be super fun and a million times easier than it is now.
The biggest work of our lives is releasing anything that does not fit within that paradigm. It doesn’t always happen overnight, but as long as you are willing to “be here now” over and over again, I can say with complete honesty that this work is for you.
In fact, I live my life as an example to you of being healed—a combination of living a spiritual life in a body that feels good while also sometimes eating too much pizza, losing complete Zen-like perspective, and practicing being a beautiful human mess. This journey of true and lasting healing is not one that cuts you off from the world and reality. It’s one that integrates the best parts of you right into it all. “The big question,” as Joseph Campbell says in The Power of Myth , “is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.”
Now, are you ready to drop your bag of shit and take the coolest trip of your life?
[contents]
1 . “CDC Provides Estimate of Americans Diagnosed with Lyme Disease Each Year,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, August 19, 2013, www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2013/p0819-lyme-disease.html.
Chapter Two
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My Approach to
Mind-Body-Spirit Healing
Being yourself is hard. Living with the regret of having lived your life according to other people’s expectations is hard. Pick your hard.
—jordan bach
When I was diagnosed with late-stage Lyme disease in 2007, I was shoved into a whole new world. It seemed the common consensus among patients was that even doctors couldn’t fix this . Growing up, I knew doctors only as heroes and my personal safety net. When we were sick, we’d go to them and they’d fix us. So now again, they would come through, I was sure. But after torturous years of failed medical treatments, I was finally faced with the truth: sometimes even a hero is gonna have to let you down.
It was then, and then only, that I ever even entertained the possibility that there was another way this all worked besides a simple equation of physical ailment equals physical fix. It turns out, there is way more to it than that.
In this chapter, you’ll discover the basics of the energy body, how certain kinds of stress affect the energy body, the importance of self-healing, and my three-part approach to healing. This will give you a strong foundation of understanding for what you’ll experience with this book.
The Body’s Energy System
Our bodies are so much more than what we see. Actually, everything is so much more than what we see. Everything is really just energy.
Let’s take a quick trip down memory lane to elementary school science where we most likely learned, and then forgot, that everything in the universe vibrates. Each and every atom has a specific vibratory motion. Each motion has a frequency (the number of oscillations per second) that can be measured in hertz. Frequency, simply put, is the rate of electrical energy flow that is constant between any two points.
Just as the universe operates on energy, we as human beings operate on an intricate energy system too, one that affects all of our organs, muscles, glands, and more. It is fueled by electrical impulses that run through us.
This energy system is at the core of how our brain functions, how our muscles and nerves receive messages from the brain, and how our moods and thoughts interplay in our lives. You may already be familiar with the concept of energy in the body because of the use of EEGs measuring brain waves, EKGs measuring the electrical activity
of the heart, and other diagnostic medical tools. Much energy in the body can be easily measured with tools like these, while some energy, often referred to as “subtle,” is not yet detectable by these types of tools. Some types of subtle energies include electromagnetic energy, magnetic vibrations, and biomagnetic fields. Subtle energy is something that has been seen and felt by healers and energy-sensitive people for thousands of years.
Many ancient medical systems, including Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda, are based on the body’s energy system. Within the energy system of the body there are various types of energy patterns, like chakras, meridians, auras, layers, and more. The two patterns we will be working directly with through techniques in this book are meridians and chakras. Meridians are energy pathways in the body. Each meridian flows through the body, delivering energy to the organs and tissues along its designated pathway. You’ll learn more about meridians in chapter 7 when you learn Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). Chakras are spinning energy centers in the body that hold old stories. Each chakra governs a specific part of the body and affects the organs and tissues in that area of the body. You’ll learn more about chakras in chapter 8 when you learn the Chakra Tapping technique.
When our energy fields are being disrupted, flow irregularly, or become sluggish and blocked, we can begin to experience symptoms. Energy disruptions can be felt in the body. They can feel like there is a knot in the pit of your stomach when you’re scared, burning in your chest when you’re hurt emotionally, or an achiness in your back or neck when you’re in a state of inner conflict. You are experiencing what happens when your energy isn’t flowing properly to your organs, glands, and muscles with the energy they need to thrive.
Energy flows through different areas in our bodies. If there is a blockage in one part of the energy system, it will likely affect some of the other organs, muscles, and glands connected by the same energy flow. For example, the stomach meridian (the energy pathway related to the energetic field of the stomach) runs up the front of the body and wraps around the eyes. If there is an imbalance in this “route” or pathway, a person may experience symptoms in their stomach but also their sinuses, because both areas share that energy flow. Another example is the gallbladder meridian, or pathway. While it governs and feeds the energy of the gallbladder, it also runs through the knees. It’s not uncommon to have knee pain while experiencing an energy blockage in the gallbladder.
Disease and illness may manifest as chemical or physical imbalances, but they originate as “kinks” in the energy system. In fact, imbalances in the subtle energy field can be detected before symptoms arise in the physical body. All the organs, cells, and tissues in the body have an energetic frequency. Our thoughts have a frequency. Your body’s energy system works in patterns that can be manipulated and changed. This means that by understanding and practicing with just a few principles, you’ll see how you can access, improve, and eventually optimize these energies for your healing.
While various factors such as food and pollution have been shown to affect the vibrational frequency of the body, my own research led me to the work of Bruce Lipton, PhD. Dr. Lipton is a cellular biologist and author of the New York Times bestseller The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter, and Miracles . He is a leader in the field of epigenetics, the study of how our biology, including genetic factors, adapt to our environment. His work is based largely on the effects of stress on the human body, and their link to disease and illness. Dr. Lipton shares a critical message through his work: the body’s physiology has the ability to respond and adapt to thoughts and emotions. You are not controlled by your genetic makeup. Instead, which genes are turned “on” and which are turned “off” is a process largely determined by your thoughts, emotions, and perceptions.
This offers incredible hope to all of us because it means we have more power than we ever may have believed to affect our lives. It is clear now that we are not hostages of our genes, bad luck, bad experiences, or fate. Our well-being is linked to our attitudes and perceptions.
These types of findings brought me to the conclusion that stress could be the single most influential factor of many disease processes and psychological challenges we face. In an effort to heal fully, I had tried every detox, diet, and medical treatment, and I eventually realized there was nothing left to correct except myself. Since wildly chasing bacteria, viruses, mold, parasites, and my own unruly cells didn’t seem to be effective, I integrated what I learned from Dr. Lipton and focused instead on my energetic and emotional health. I knew of many people who had been bitten by ticks or exposed to similar things, yet they were not experiencing the same deep level of illness. I knew deep down, in spite of all other factors, that if I could get my mind, body, and spirit strong enough, it would be my best defense against all else.
The Stress Mess
Stress is something I used to think of as running around trying to get my to-do list done, working hard, and dealing with the ups and downs of life. But I learned how very inaccurate that perspective is. The types of stress that create the most impact on our bodies does not come from rushing to get to work, having too much laundry, and more. It comes from physiological stress. Physiological stress comes from the body being in a heightened state of panic or fear, often called the fight, flight, or freeze pattern.
Sometimes, new clients come to me and say they are experiencing panic attacks, illness, or other challenges from doing “too much,” working too hard, and running on empty for too long. And while this pattern of pushing ourselves past our limits is certainly an energy drain, the “doing” isn’t the real problem. The reason we are pushing is the problem. Forcing ourselves to move at a pace that clashes with our spirit, or who we really are, is the core issue. The reasons we are living this way are where the true work lies.
I’ll use myself as an example to demonstrate this point. I love to do, do, do. Part of it is my personality and that’s just fine. I love to have a few projects going, read two books at once, and sometimes become completely lost in something. But this aspect of my personality is not what created unease and illness in my body. The reasons that I pushed myself too hard did. Back in the day, I often pushed because I wanted to be successful, perfect, and in control of everything in my life. These reasons are what catapulted me into the fight, flight, or freeze response. These reasons caused illness.
Humans are pretty darn resilient creatures. We can do a whole lot before we break. But we cannot clash against our spirit or the true nature of who we are. We just don’t get away with that for too long.
Stress, or the fight, flight, or freeze response, is governed by a specific energy force in the body called the triple warmer meridian. I like to think of the triple warmer meridian as an inner protective “papa bear.” When we hold unresolved emotional experiences in our bodies, we can become suspended in a place where the triple warmer meridian is in a state of panic or overdrive. It is not the stress itself that is necessarily a danger, but our bodies’ reactions to that stress. In this fight, flight, or freeze state, the triple warmer meridian is doing everything it can to protect us (like a papa bear does for his cub), but it drains energy from the spleen, which supports the immune system. The triple warmer meridian also governs habits. When the triple warmer meridian is on high alert, it resists change in an effort to keep us safe. This is one reason that when we are in a state of stress, it can be so darn difficult to change habits. We often find ourselves resisting help, rebelling against things we know would be good for us, and abandoning self-care. It is because our triple warmer meridian’s resistance to change is working as a form of self-sabotage, perceiving anything new or different as more stress.
When this energy dynamic is at play, the following physiological stress reactions are also taking place:
• Blood is shunted away from the gastrointestinal tract, spleen, and other non-vital organs.
• The body makes additional glucose.
• The immune system becomes
suppressed, in part through the production of high cortisol levels brought on by the release of adrenaline .
• The areas of the brain related to short- and long-term memory are affected.
• Heart rate and blood pressure increase.
Stress hormones have been found to inhibit the production of anti-inflammatory cytokines and increase the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines. Cytokines are specific proteins that are responsible for signaling between cells to trigger the inflammation process in response to danger and decrease the process when the stress is over.
While stress is usually seen as a negative, it’s important to point out that stress can be beneficial if we need the surge of chemicals to help us fight (defend ourselves), flight (escape the situation), or freeze (blend in or hide) to avoid danger. A great example of how the stress response should work is what happens in the wild. Animals exhibit this behavior (tigers “fight,” rabbits “freeze,” and antelope take “flight”) but then shake, tremble, or otherwise let go of that state so they can continue in their environment. This pattern actually helps them stay alive. However, many of us get caught in this perpetual state, never releasing it from our system and returning to neutral.
A big challenge is that our systems cannot determine the difference between stresses due to an actual threat and those stemming from unresolved emotional conflict, unprocessed trauma (experiences), or an unhealthy emotional pattern like using negative self-talk.
Triple Warmer Meridian
If we do not resolve these types of emotional patterns, our bodies may react in a harmful way. In my experience, physiological stress can be caused by anything that keeps us from relaxing or feeling safe in this world, emotionally or physically. This absolutely includes, above all else, not feeling safe to be our true selves. These are things we might not even realize are affecting us, and probably definitely not to the extent they are. In fact, it is completely possible to be stressed at a deep level but not feel stressed, as you would normally identify with it.