The Body Doesn't Lie (10 page)

My new patients sometimes ask me, “Why do you do this diet? Why are you so strict? Don’t you ever want to go and eat a big hamburger and a big chocolate cake with whipped cream?”

The simple truth is that now I truly
don’t
want to eat those foods. Healthy eating has become a part of life for me. At one point, the thought of never having Grandma’s orange cake again might have made me cry. But now, eating in a way that keeps me in Positive Feedback has become easy and joyful. I still like cake on special occasions—but now I choose gluten-free and Stevia-sweetened versions instead, because I know they treat my body better.

I love teaching people about eating things that are just as tasty as those that are bad for us, and that have the added bonus of anti-inflammatory properties. Foods that heal make all the difference. Your diet is your foundation. When you eat bad foods, you’re not feeding your body; you’re feeding bad bacteria, intestinal worms, and systemic inflammation.

You’re also feeding into Negative Feedback. When I finally learned this lesson, it changed every single thing in my life.

When my training was complete and I started seeing patients, I worked in the Royal Ballet School, treating the cast members of
The Lion King, Cats
, and other shows in London’s West End. My focus was strictly musculoskeletal. I was able to see each dancer for only about half an hour. At a certain point, after seeing so many women with the same complaints, I realized that these dancers were barely subsisting on ibuprofen and diet soda, and they were suffering when on stage. Yet my only job for them was giving them spinal adjustments (“clicking” their backs) and wrapping their ankles and sending them away—to them, I was Clicky Vicky, the Wrapping Queen. This was soon after I’d developed my own understanding of Positive and Negative Feedback. I knew could do a lot more for my patients.

I started with the ballerinas. I’d analyze their entire health profile, going far beyond my official assignment of clicking and wrapping, but then I’d go back to the basics and say, “Yes, you’ve sprained this ankle, so you need to take a rest.” I’d see the sense of relief on their faces, and when their defenses were down, I knew the time was right to dig a little deeper and help ease them into the Reflect phase, get them to consider where they were—and why.

Just as they were about to get up from the table, I’d stop them. “Now, let’s talk about what’s really going on: You’re working like a robot, and you’re taking painkillers to numb everything. You’ve already wrapped the ankle. You’re covering up the problem. But actually, the
real
problem is that you’re eating the wrong food and you’re feeding your emotions. I’m guessing you’re upset because your boyfriend left you or you broke up with someone. Am I right?”

At first they resisted.
Why is Clicky Vicky asking about my sex life?
But I persisted—I wanted to know more about the pain. And more important, I wanted
them
to know more about their pain—to ask questions of it, to seek wisdom in it. In my growth as a healer, I gained inspiration from Hippocrates: “A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings, and learn how by his own thought to derive benefit from his illnesses.”
The body doesn’t lie
—we just have to listen.

The more these conversations started to work, the more I could see my bigger purpose: I wasn’t there just to wrap them and get them back up on stage. I was there to help them heal themselves.

These conversations blossomed into a deeper, more connected practice with my patients. These dancers were making major breakthroughs, coming to life-changing realizations:
Okay. I’ve sprained my ankle, and God is telling me to stop, rest, eat well. Even get a period. If I’m underweight and eating the wrong food, I’m eventually going to collapse. I have to take control of my life. Empower myself and think, “Hold on a second—I’m not weak, I’m strong. I’m a good professional dancer, but I need to respect other aspects of my life. I can’t just be a good ballerina and not eat well and not meditate and not find time for me.”

Throughout my years doing this work, I’ve seen many thousands of people at extraordinary moments in their lives: During labor. After falling off a horse. Before a world summit or a major performance. I’ve treated women who were having trouble getting pregnant. I’ve worked in children’s clinics. And I’ve looked after many, many moms who have stopped looking after themselves.

I have seen repeatedly, during all these many experiences, that the trick to healing pain is taking the three steps to interrupt the Negative Feedback loop:
reflect
on the pain and how it got there;
release
the guilt, anger, and denial that are holding the pain inside you; and step out of your own shadow and
radiate
into your best life. Moving into the positive doesn’t need to be an epic life makeover. Just one small choice, made consciously, can take you toward a better life. All you need is the recognition that it’s time to start treating yourself as well as you treat everyone else—and a simple plan that can help you do just that.

Delicious food, centering meditations, healing movement, loving connections, rediscovered self-trust—all these help you liberate yourself from Negative Feedback and move into the positive. The Positive Feedback program isn’t complicated or expensive—but it is powerful. If you’re ready to make major changes, the program is here for you, ready to help in your transformation.

Listen, I know how hard you work. Throughout my life, and even now, I’m treating patients all day, often from 5:00
A
.
M
. until 11:00
P
.
M
. (or even, occasionally, until 2:00
A
.
M
.!). I’ve always been this way, taking after my hardworking mom and her mother before her. We Greek ladies pour ourselves into work as an expression of love for our families—and I know we’re not alone.

Regardless of the trappings of their lives, I find that most of my patients are women who are very busy, working, traveling. Dynamic women just starting their careers, or a bit further on, maybe with two or three kids. Passionate about what they do.

And all these women, no matter what their daily lives look like, are all on the path to learn the same thing: Healing can begin only when you have the courage to face the pain. In any pain scenario, you have to take a step back before you can take a step forward. No matter if the initial hurt was a simple childhood disappointment or a family scandal, the self-absorption that kept your mother at a distance or the fatal accident that took your brother from you—anything that’s painful, no matter how traumatic, can be faced and released.

Every muscular ache/pain has a story; that neuromuscular memory started with a single moment. Pain constantly pulls us backward into the emotional and physical pit of our unhappiness. But we can stop the cycle and restore our more natural and positive balance. We’re
meant
to be happy.

The Positive Feedback approach simply reinstates your innate inner strength, your natural ability to heal yourself, and your daily desire to be happy and whole. As I always say to my patients: It’s not what happened to you that matters—it’s what you do with that experience that will determine the quality of the rest of your life.

In the coming chapters, I will show you what an incredible positive force this resilience can be, and how it can transform pain into a powerful, healthy, pain-free radiance that lasts a lifetime.

3

How the Positive Feedback Program Works

When you give your full attention to your knee or your back or your head—whatever hurts—and drop the good/ bad, right/wrong story line and simply experience the pain directly for even a short time, then your ideas about the pain, and often the pain itself, will dissolve.

—Pema Chödrön

D
r. Andrew Taylor Still, the father of osteopathy, was ahead of his time. As far back as 1892, he believed that the human body was its own apothecary, that each body held all the chemicals and neurotransmitters needed to help a person fight disease and injury. Dr. Still believed that the body’s ability to heal itself rested on the interplay between structure, function, and motion. Health started in the bones and was totally dependent on the open flow of blood in the body. Blockages equaled disease, so all healing began with an exam to find the blocks and a targeted release to get the blood flowing once again.

Here we are, over one hundred years later, and these ideas are still not mainstream—but we see them working every day. I see the validity of Dr. Still’s approach when my patients are lying on the table and the acupuncture needles practically jump out of their shoulders or back; when they fall asleep on the table and are completely peaceful and relaxed; when they get up from the table and their whole demeanor is changed—the rosiness is back in their cheeks, and they feel alive again, at home in their body. They describe the feeling of energy moving back into their hands and feet, the sense that their mind seems clearer. They say things like, “I feel lighter,” “My shoulders have dropped,” “I feel more space in my body,” “I feel grounded.” “I’m ready to take on the world.”

The same core mechanism that drives these osteopathic treatments powers the Positive Feedback program, because the Reflect * Release * Radiate sequence taps into the same biochemical responses in the body. Whether you have acupuncture, get a massage, or do your trigger points or dry brushing or Tibetan Rites, your body releases lymphatic fluids and your brain and central nervous system release natural painkillers, beta-endorphins. Just like osteopathic modalities, the Positive Feedback program also helps to soothe the hypothalamus—the part of the brain that links the nervous system to the endocrine system, the site of appetite and love and sexual energy and sleep—and quiet the panicked energy of the amygdala—the site of fear and stress and panic in the brain. Any of the program’s activities will help you tone your parasympathetic nervous system and build your body’s capacity to thoroughly relax and bounce back from stressful experiences.

That’s the ultimate goal of each stage of the Reflect * Release * Radiate sequence: building your body’s capacity. Both Positive and Negative Feedback start in a moment of stress, be it an acute injury or an exciting challenge. In Negative Feedback, rather than rise to meet the challenge, you shrink in defeat and get stuck in lethargy. You attach yourself to negative thoughts. You surround yourself with negative people. You either never, ever stop running—or you sink into inertia.
(A body at rest stays at rest.)

Glucose builds up in your blood; plaque builds up in your brain and in your arteries; toxins build up in your liver. Your body responds to this systemic congestion with chronic inflammation, muscle atrophy, insulin resistance, and cognitive decline. Negative Feedback feeds on itself, keeping you trapped in pain.

But you have the power of choice. When faced with a challenge, if you rise to meet it, you become stronger going forward. Positive Feedback, as with negativity, also feeds on itself, so once you escape Negative Feedback, every second you spend in Positive Feedback strengthens this biological response: Your lymph nodes release accumulated waste. Your brain releases neurotoxins. Muscles build back up, insulin sensitivity increases again, and blood sugar drops. As blood sugar drops, chronic inflammation recedes and brain fog lifts. Circulation improves and blood pressure drops, putting a halt on cardiac risks. And all those improvements started with a simple choice—to meet the challenge, to feel the pain, and to move all the way through it.

A recent study of the Jewish Polish population that immigrated to Israel before and after World War II found that, compared with their contemporaries who’d been spared, men who’d been imprisoned during the Holocaust lived an average of ten to eighteen months longer than their peers who had not had that harrowing experience. Researchers believe that this “post-traumatic growth” is a perfect example of the Adaptive Response. Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist who spent time in Auschwitz, and whose wife was killed in a different concentration camp, wrote
Man’s Search for Meaning
, in which he argued that even in the most painful and horrifying situations, our lives and our suffering can have meaning. He wrote, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

If people forced into the worst situation ever experienced by humankind can take a breath and choose their reaction—and choose to thrive despite the unspeakable horrors—we
all
have that power. All human greatness and resilience comes from this place of challenge and growth.
What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.
Your Adaptive Response not only helps you heal from injury in the short term, it also improves your body’s future healing potential. With a well-functioning Adaptive Response, you develop greater resistance to stress. Your endocrine system floods you with pleasure hormones, to congratulate you on a job well done. And while all these biochemical reactions to stress are going on, your neurological pathways are changing on a more permanent basis: Healthy choices become ingrained habits; healthy thoughts become empowering attitudes.

The biggest stumbling blocks that have thus far prevented you from entering Positive Feedback are these neural pathways. You must consciously and deliberately
choose
good habits at first. Making these choices can be a struggle sometimes—especially when you’ve been accumulating a ton of those unhealthy Band-Aids. But eventually, with enough physical and mental practice, they will no longer be choices; they will have become instincts.

To train yourself, rely on structure. Instead of seeing that structure as a jail that confines you, try to view it as a delicious and nourishing recipe for a better life. In order to ensure that your entire being is well cared for, I’ve organized all the self-care techniques of the Positive Feedback program into four categories, based on Dr. Still’s work: