Getting Well
By Judith Sullivan
There comes a moment when we realize that we are feeling better. What we do next is important for our healing or even, just coping.
My friend and acupuncturist, Cali Gaston, reminded me of an acupuncture point called “Walking on the Veranda.” This is a point that is used if a person is well enough to walk on the veranda, but not well enough to return to normal activities of daily life. The “veranda” is a wonderful image of a protected, safe, secure place outside of the house proper. The feeling is a sense of a lovely view, which can open us to new possibilities, but before we are ready to engage fully with the world.
There can be a downside to returning to work or activity too soon without the step-up quality of the veranda. Here are several examples.
Tom was 70 and loved to play tennis. Unfortunately, back pain had kept him from playing tennis for several weeks. When he got up from my table, he said he felt much better and felt no pain in his back. Later that week, I received a call from him and he said that he had ended up in the hospital because he had played five sets of tennis that day. The part of the body which is healing is delicate. This is a case where I think that the body had healed part of itself and been able to let go of some compensatory mechanisms. This was overridden by doing too much too fast. When the body gets rid of a compensatory mechanism, it means that the little cells that have been working or what I call being on welfare for quite a while have to get back to work again. They really like that but they don’t like to be overworked right away. Sometimes it takes a slow increase in activity before you can count on the body to be up to snuff.
Joanna was a young woman who hadn’t been feeling well for quite a while. I treated her for about two months maybe weekly or every other week. The last time I saw her, she said that she felt great and hadn’t felt so well in a long time. I got a call from her a week later saying she was in the hospital with a diagnosis of full lupus. On the day of the treatment she felt so good she went on a 15-mile hike. This totally overloaded her entire system from which she was unable to recover fully.
Then there is my story. I had had chronic back pain for over 30 years, and had treated it with chiropractic, craniosacral, and massage to keep it under control. One day I had a treatment from a close friend and craniosacral therapy practitioner and felt so much better. That day I had no pain and that night I slept, and woke up without any pain for the first time in years. The next day I opened the garage, saw my bike, and decided to take a short bike ride, which I also had not ridden in many years. I rode about a half of a block and something didn’t feel right. So I carefully walked the bike back to the house. From that point on my back pain intensified to the point that by that evening I couldn’t walk at all. This is an example of doing something I don’t normally do, which my body really wasn’t ready to do. It took about a week to get back to a manageable pain level.
My last example is Eileen, who was an opera singer. She came to see me because her coach said she needed cranial work. I didn’t really understand how cranial work would help her. I listened to her sing so that I could see what I noticed. I observed something that led me to work with her hyoid bone, which is the floating bone in her throat. After a while there was a big change in the left side of her neck. When I finished I told her to be very careful and not to sing that night. She said, “What do you mean by not sing?” I said “Well I don’t want you to sing.” She asked again “What do you mean by don’t sing?” (Which word was difficult here?) So I said, “Okay, I get it. You want to sing, so I recommend that you sing just a little bit. You can sing for 15 minutes but no more, otherwise you may have a difficult time singing for the next few weeks.“
She came in a week later and said “hi” in a very raspy horse voice. I asked her what happened, and she said, “I sang.” I asked her how long she had sung and she said, “Two hours, because it just felt so good.” It took her 6 weeks to get her voice back.
Getting well is a process and I feel a bit guilty about writing this because I am not a paragon of virtue when it comes to recovery. I like so many people, am chomping at the bit to get back into my “normal” routine. This is a complicated subject because the process of getting well, is so different for different people. And we need to look at the word normal. Do we want to feel well enough to continue doing the same things we were doing that got us into this trouble? Are we willing to look at that and perhaps make different choices that could lead to healing? Or maybe we just want to continue the way we were before—coping for the time being. (This can lead to a larger discussion that we are not having just now.)
There are some questions you need to ask. What are you healing from? Chronic illness? Chronic pain? Debilitating accident? Restricted motion? Cancer with surgery, chemo or radiation? Each of these ailments needs a different approach to getting well. As a result, it is difficult to make up a formula for everyone about how to do this. It needs to be done on an individual basis.
Another question is what kind of life are you returning to? Do you have a desk job? A physically active job? An emotionally demanding job? A mentally stressful job? All of these factors need to be taken into account and put into the equation with whatever your dis-ability is/was.
Personally, I’m fine staying in bed if I feel horrible and I can’t get up or I’m really sick. But when I start feeling better, I want to get back to work as soon as I can because working itself often helps my healing process. Working is therapeutic for me and for many others. I spend less time thinking about how horrible I feel, and feeling sorry for myself because I can’t do the things I want to do. If I return to work, I have made the right choice if I feel energized from returning to work and not just totally exhausted.
From my perspective of being a body worker and working in the healing arts, I have learned a few things. For one, if you rebalance a body back to a normal state, the body can let go of some of its compensatory mechanisms, and the little muscles, tendons and ligaments that have been on welfare have to go back to work. The good news is that they love it. The not-so-good news is that they need to take it slowly for a day or two. A person over-doing it can actually deplete their energy so much that they drop below the line where their body can continue to heal itself.
There is a difference between getting better from a structural imbalance and a deficiency in the immune system. A structural imbalance usually takes less time and a gradual increase of function. On the other hand we know so little about the immune system that we need to be more cautious with it. For instance, I don’t understand why certain people who have healthy immune systems are more likely to be targeted by some viruses. Why is that? That is like thieves knowing which stores might have the most money! I do know that immune systems are improved greatly by sleep and healthy eating. I also know that the immune system is responsible to search and destroy cancer cells. So a healthy immune system is essential.
It an old adage that 90%-95% of all ailments are caused by what we eat. I don’t necessarily believe that any more because of all the new environmental toxins that are around us of which we are totally unaware. But what we put in our mouths is vitally important to our health and healing.
We need to keep in mind that healing is complex. It is important is to have a relationship with our bodies so that we know when to decrease our activity (before we blow it); when and how much to increase it; what makes us feel best emotionally and mentally; and how to support our bodies as well as our minds and our spirits. Our bodies can’t be treated like slaves or servants to our wishes. In a sense, our bodies have a mind of their own—how else do they know how to digest food, keep breathing, pumping blood, and alerting us to changes in our environment? Not to mention, complaining if we overwork them. If we respect and treasure our bodies, they will do everything that they can for us.
I’d like to end with my favorite Dilbert cartoon. The first frame has the doctor talking to Dilbert and saying, “Apparently you ignored my advice and got no exercise.” In the second frame he continues and says, “But you’re in perfect health, which really annoys me professionally.” And in the third frame he adds, “I’m prescribing two packs of cigarettes per day… don’t cross me again.”
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