My Doctor Said WHAT?!

When I knew I'd be moving away from Philadelphia, one of the hardest things to face was the fact that I'd developed a pretty great team for my health and now I'd be leaving it (btw, if you live around Philly and you need people, hit me up - I'll tell who to see).

I'd spent years seeking out and finding people who could help me on my journey toward experiencing life as I longed to: feeling safe and healthy in my body.

The last five years in Philly had a LOT of rough spots.

I had a traumatic cesarean birth.
I delved into childhood sexual abuse.
I faced immense grief, including my mother's death.
I went through two miscarriages.
I developed chronic digestive struggles.
I had pelvic imbalances.

Plus, all the things that came before and were never addressed.

I needed help.

So I worked with regular MDs, integrative/functional doctors, movement teachers, naturopaths, acupuncturists, energy healers, midwives, physical therapists, somatic psychotherapists and body workers.

And not just that, but I read books and blogs and listened to podcasts and consulted colleagues.

In hindsight, all of this exploration right before I got pregnant with my son in 2010. 

I discovered the work of John Sarno, who posits that a lot of physical pain we experience is psychosomatic. Emotional and psychic struggles lead to physical adaptations that present as pain and dysfunction.

While Sarno's prescription for addressing this is not something I make use of, his general theories blew me away. I'd had a lot of inexplicable chronic pain and dysfunction and what I learned through his work paved the way for just about everything that was to come.

And you know how I found Sarno? Meditation. I was meditating on my health one day and asking for guidance and felt the strong insight to google. It was what I now call "intuitive googling." :)

So then I had my son and the birth was rough and I wanted to understand it and again I just followed my nose, allowing my explorations to be guided by my feelings, to be guided by my inner sense.

And that work led me to Katy Bowman. Who taught me all about movement. (And certified me to teach you about movement.)

But I still had so much work to do in my own body. 

So I kept following my nose. I kept asking around. I kept expanding my boundaries and beliefs. I kept trying new things because it felt right and made some sense even if I couldn't reason it out.

Which led me to my heart, to meditation, to breath work, to combining movement with heart-centered practices, to all those practitioners I mentioned, to study with new teachers. It's what led me into writing and dancing and an amazing ability to navigate my life on different terms. It's what's enabled me to feel trust in my body, to know what is needed and to respond to those needs. It's what led me home to myself.

Which brings me to today.

We've moved across the country and so I've left my team of people that have been helping me with my health.

But I'm still not entirely clear about what's going on with my fertility. And the digestive stuff is definitely not settled. And besides, if you've been following along, you know the transition has been a wee bit stressful for me.

So I need a new team.

I asked around and found a functional medicine doctor who is also an applied kinesiology chiropractor. Now I don't know much about AK chiropractors, but that's never stopped me before. Truthfully, I usually know very little beforehand about the work I seek out...I learn it through practice and by reading/talking later.

All that to say, AK chiros test your neurological function. At my appointment with her, she had me move through a series of movements to determine what parts of me were "on" and which were not. Turns out I have low vagal tone (unsurprising to me and likely causing/contributing to the digestive problems) and that my left bicep is "off."

She also tested my core and hip flexors and pelvis for function, and it was all on.

But here's the MOST AMAZING THING (well, to me, anyway!):

She told me that women who have had c-sections don't have this kind of function.

Something is always not working, especially their hip flexors or parts of their core. She was really, really surprised (and seemed a little baffled) that my body was presenting differently.

It didn't hit me until later how absolutely extraordinary this is.

I'm not a fitness rock star. Half of you reading this can probably do more interesting/challenging things with your body than me, be it pilates roll downs (or is it ups?) or longer planks, or more pull ups or run marathons.

I'm not some spiritual/emotional/belief rock star. I am neurotic and fearful and disbelieving a full 30% of the time. I tend toward anxiety and melancholy. I have asked my husband a thousand times if he thinks I will ever be really done with this "fixing." In other words, I am incredibly inconstant.

I also didn't follow some detailed prescription. No one said, "Hey, women like you don't have function here and you need to do x, y, and z in order to fix yourself." No one said that because, truthfully, it doesn't exist. Or it exists for some things in some ways, but not for all things in all ways. Health is, in so many ways, an n=1 paradigm. I had to cobble my own thing together

As I was meditating this morning (but not for the last 36 mornings - see I'm inconstant!), I realized the power of this.

I realized that I had done this. I had created the conditions through which my body could regain full function after major abdominal surgery. And I did this against the odds.

I had taken myself seriously. I listened to my body, I believed my heart, I paid attention where I had been taught to ignore.

I had explored every avenue that called to me, be it finding a new acupuncturist or exploring vaginal massage or creating a ritual or sleeping on the floor or touching the earth with my skin. I opened my mind and my heart and became willing to go new places.

I had worked my body. I put my hands on it. I moved it more and in different ways. I studied it and slowed down the movements and found where I get stuck. I worked at the edge of my boundaries. I did this over and over and over again.

I had gotten help. A lot of it. I spent a lot of money. I invested a lot of time.

I changed my life. My relationships, my habits, my geography, my food, my beliefs.

Most of us are going around with lots of ourselves in the "off" position. This is hard on our biology. Not having full function requires adaptations that can turn into disease and dysfunction. This happens because of stress, because of surgery, because of injury, because of sedentary living, because of too much blue light, because...

But here's the thing about my story: I didn't stay in the off position. Even though that's what normally happens. 

After meditating this morning, I felt so enlivened by my own story! I felt such excitement about the possibilities for what happens when you follow your intuition, when you move forward even though you aren't sure what you're doing, when you change your life even though you can't always see an immediate benefit. I felt so excited about MOVING.

For years I've been tuning into my body, getting support, educating myself, changing my habits, taking on new exercises. But you can't always see what's happening IN the body. And there's only so much I know about the body, only so many of its languages that I speak, so I haven't been able to quantify all of the changes, even if I've noticed them.

To have it reflected back to me in this doctor's visit was a delightfully validating experience.

I beat the odds.

I created something unusual.

I've taken my journey as an act of faith. I've done all of this as an act of intuition. I've kept going as an act of integrity.

Turns out, it was the right choice.