Is Your Body Screaming at You? Here's Why You Must Be Pro-Active

Barbara came ot see me a few months ago.  In the beginning, we weren’t sure exactly how we would work together so we carefully identified some of her challenges and mapped out some short and log term goals.  

Barbara described herself as pretty healthy but  a work-a-holic.  She finds it very hard, no, extremely hard, to “turn it off”.  The blessing and the curse in it all is she loves her work and loves her boss.  The problem?  That was about the only thing that was working right. She felt kind of lost on weekends, so she would dive back into her work at home and as a result, she didn't have any balance in her life. 

She wasn’t sleeping well.  She had an acid stomach most days.  She wasn’t moving much, sitting at her desk,  getting lost in work.  She had body aches and knew the food she was eating wasn’t healthy. 

Your digestive system's health is a reflection of your lifestyle

Your digestive system's health is a reflection of your lifestyle

As a wellness coach and bodyworker, I often meet people for the first time when they are hurting.  It’s always my hope that our first meeting happens when the body/mind/spirit is calling “hello” and not at the point of screaming for help. 

Things happen in life.  Everyone has their baseline, where you function at a steady level.  That baseline needs to be reasonable and within healthy limits.  Sadly, it is easy to creep over the line because of the many choices and unexpected emergencies that come.  When this happens too often, something will give.

A Measure of Stress

I personally have experienced several acute stress events in this past year. Acute stress occurs when one has little or no control over the event but it directly affects one’s life.  These experiences are not fun. I’ve been quite careful about choosing how and with whom I spend my time and how I eat so I can give myself some extra support.  It helps a lot. 

When you try to carry on at full throttle while experiencing difficult moments, something is bound to give, and it’s usually your health.  Have you noticed a highly stressed person may not be watching where they are walking and sprain their ankle?  Is that the body’s way of saying “slow down?”.  Your body is resilient but is also very sensitive.  If you do not slow down when you need to it will show you the way. 

Know What Your Body Needs

Back to my work and to Barbara.  Before we started working together, Barbara’s experience with health care had been reactive, not proactive.  She waited until she was sick to see her doctor where she’d get checked out and sometimes be given medication.  

But recently a friend of hers was diagnosed with lung cancer.  It frightened her.  She began looking at her life - work, and more work.  She noticed she wasn’t feeling all that great, and that’s when she decided to come for help. 

She said she had been dealing with  minor health inconveniences for quite awhile but wasn’t able to pay attention to them until her friend’s illness woke her up.

Where Did We Begin?

With Barbara, we started with her food.  You can’t  expect to get a good night’s sleep if your stomach is burning.  Her food had been grab and go with little attention to the experience of eating. When she began to appeciate that food becomes your body, she paid more attention to what she was putting in her body and how foods made her feel.  Within two weeks of eating better, her acid burn subsided. She was intrigued.  

We moved from food to other areas of her life that were out of balance.  Eating well is the foundation and everything else springs from the energy and awareness that quality food gives you and Barbara learned that by the changes she made. 

If you are tired of feeling just ok and want to talk about how you can feel better, contact me and we’ll schedule a complimentary consultation.  I have several program choices that make it easy to find one that fits your needs.