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Wednesday, 02 August 2006 03:03 |
| | Janese Johnson |
Our bodies are similar to a car in that when it needs something, it tells us beforehand.
If our car is running low on gas, the gas gauge tells us to stop and put gas in it. This is the same for the oil and temperature of the engine.
Those signs are pretty easy to tell but then the other signs that our car is having problems might be a little subtler. But after driving our car a while, hopefully we have become attuned to it enough to feel the differences when it is riding different and then go get the check up and the fix before it gets too bad.
This sounds fairly easy, but do we all do it with our cars and do we do it with our bodies?
A
very good friend of mine is just one example of many that I have heard
about that thought she had an overnight collapse, but under further
reflection realized that she had been receiving body signals long
before ?? but chose not to listen to them because it would have meant
changing her lifestyle.
Julie is a
dynamo woman. Everyone who has ever met her has come away impressed
with all that she has done throughout one day. She is 61 years old, but
looks 45; has been a healthy eater for more than 35 years; a
practitioner of yoga for at least 20 years; a therapist by trade; and
has not been sick for as long as she can remember.
Julie gets up
first thing in the morning and goes nonstop until she collapses in the
evening. She is there for everyone and doing multiple projects at any
given time. She has been recognized for many achievements and has great
respect from the community.
One day
recently, she noticed that everything she was doing was taking twice
the amount of time and energy than before and that she didn??t seem to
have enough time in a day to finish her list of things to do, even
though the list had the same amount of items as before.
She pushed
forward hoping that this would just pass away. Her husband started
picking up some of her responsibilities along with his own until one
day Julie could hardly do anything. In great panic, she went to the
doctor. The diagnosis was adrenal exhaustion. This has now become a
life-or-death situation, so now Julie has no other choice but to relax
and do very little. The doctor says that it will take awhile, but she
can still recover as long as she balances her life with rest.
I did not write
this because it has only happened to one person I know ?? there are many
people that are living the pace that Julie did for so long that might
not be experiencing the consequences yet. Julie is lucky she will
probably recover enough to have a life, but many people don??t make it
because they kept moving forward pushing and doing until something
gives out.
Our fast-paced,
super-achieving, society supports this kind of pace. Julie believed
that if she ate healthy, exercised regularly and slept, it would be
enough.
What she sees is
that she treated her body as if it was something that needed to work
for her and that she treated it well out of the need for it to
function. She did not see her body as something that she was in
relationship with.
This last
statement might sound a bit ?®whoo whoo?∆ to some of you, but if we read
what Hippocrates wrote about the body, we would see that this is not
only a old concept but one that was held by Hippocrates ?? who is known
as the founding father of medicine and was regarded as the greatest
physician during his time around 300 B.C.
Hippocrates
believed that ?®it is far more important to know what a person is that
the disease has than what disease the person has?∆ He believed that the
body needed to be treated as a whole ?? and not just a series of parts.
He believed in natural healing process of rest, a good diet, fresh air
and cleanliness.
By treating our
body as a whole thing, many have been able to feel or see signs of
trouble in the very beginning and shift what is out without coming down
with anything.
For Julie, it
would have been listening to her body to slow down and rest, and by
doing that she would not be laid up in bed for months at a time like
she is now.
Similar to our
car, if we put unhealthy things into it, run it nonstop or not enough,
treat it poorly, then we will experience the consequence of not being
in a healthy relationship with our body. It will in essence, rebel.
It really is up
to us which direction it will go. We can treat our body as if we are in
relationship with it and listen to what it really needs or we can treat
it as a machine and fix the parts when they are broken until they
cannot be fixed anymore.
?ÿ
Janese Johnson
has been doing intuitive counseling nationally for more than 20 years.
She may be contacted at janesej-at-buncombe.main.nc.us.
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