So here's what I love about Katie's story.  She began living, really living, and loving her life.  Like me, she made that her entire focus.  She took the responsibility for the process of her own internal transformation into her own hands and worked on her own thinking.  She took the time to internalize everything from coaching and put it into practice into her own life.   She did it!  Here it is in her own words:

It's been a month since my life coaching with Abigail finished and now looking back over the experience, I truly feel that I have made great and lifelong changes to the way I think about not only my physical pain but also every aspect of my life. When I found Abigail I had been suffering from chronic pelvic pain for over five years.

Like most sufferers of this sort of seemingly never-ending and all-consuming pain, I experienced life under an almost constant state of anxiety and worry. My mind was cluttered with all sorts of negative thoughts about my symptoms many of which I am sure you'll recognize.

"I'll never get better."

"This is the worst pain ever."

"I'll never be able to enjoy my life."

However, through my coaching I was able to break down these negative thoughts and replace them with more positive and true alternatives. Where finding substitutes for these thoughts was too difficult Abigail showed me a way of removing labels from the thoughts to decrease the anxiety they produced. For example, if I was worrying about attending an event because I had decided it "would be too difficult" with my symptoms I simply removed the words "too difficult"; the statement "It will be" has become my own personal mantra as it allows me to accept situations as they come.

So maybe you're wondering where my pain fits into all of this mind work? Well the coaching works to change the way you think about your pain which makes the pain easier to deal with. I discovered that I was constantly checking in on my pain, constantly aware of it.

"Are you there pain? How about now? And now?"

When my "check-ins" concluded that I did indeed have pain, I'd freak out which when you have a chronic pain condition means you're spending an awful lot of time freaking out and putting everything else on hold. For me it was important to learn to accept my pain when I had it but also to accept and enjoy the time I didn't have it! This brings me onto another point. For years and years I had been missing out on things I enjoyed and loved because I was so worried that pain would show up and ruin everything. Although it was extremely difficult for me to realize at first, Abigail showed me that it was not my pain that was causing me to miss out at all but rather it was my thoughts about my pain. Looking back now I am sure that half the time all this worry actually caused the pain! What's more, where had I gotten this idea that I could not enjoy myself if I was in pain? Through changing my thoughts about this I made attempts to go out even if I was in pain and many times I was surprised to discover that because I was no longer checking in with my pain I was able to enjoy myself perfectly fine!

Another wonderful thing about Abigail's coaching is that it takes into consideration everything about the person and together you work on becoming an overall happier and more peaceful being. The coaching extended above and beyond my pain and anxiety to other areas of my life which naturally are all connected at the core. My extreme worry of what people think of me, my lack of confidence in myself, my reaction to the world around me; everything area of my life that caused negativity within me were worked upon to change the way I think and soon I was learning a new meaning to the word "acceptance".

For five long years I tried and tried to find answers and solutions to who I was and what I was going through but I know now that the most important thing is to have trust in myself, that I have everything I need to make my own recovery and that right now I am alive, strong and ready for wherever my future takes me.

It will be.

I knew Katie had truly grasped the concept of her ability to create her own life when I read her story and her accompanying email.  You'll notice that her story mentions nothing about pain reduction.  The reason?  That's no longer her focus.  And here's what Katie said in her email:

Dear Abigail,

I'm sorry it's been such a long time since i've been in touch. I just wanted to drop in and let you know how i'm doing. I hope you're well, i've been checking your blog frequently and i'm enjoying the recordings so much, it is really great to hear your voice. Life is going wonderfully for me at the moment, i'm really happy and still incorporating everything you've taught me into daily life, i'm finding that i'm having less and less negative thoughts and that when I have them i'm able to turn them around much quicker and easier than before which is wonderful. My anxiety levels are at an all time low, I feel so much more confident I even spoke up in a room full of strangers at training at the weekend which is something I would never have done before. I haven't had any pain for a few weeks.

The absolute last thing Katie mentions is her pain. 

Congratulations, Katie, for all the work you have done to reshape your thinking and change your inner life.  I am quite impressed, as we only worked together for two months.  My hat goes off to you, and thank you for sharing your story so that other women can see that it is, indeed, quite possible to love your life, yourself, and just allow the pain/symptoms to be there and not rule your every moment.  It seems counterintuitive, but allowing the pain to exist while you work to re-shape your thinking is often the very thing that allows it to finally dissipate.  Taking the focus off your pain and putting it on your inner world - the well-being of your psyche - is the key.

So what's the real measurement of success?  To bring joy, happiness, and peace into your mental and emotional life.  You, just like Katie, can do it.

We have just added a great Beck album - Modern Guilt ! Check it out!

So, happy listening!  You can look forward to many new interviews and other audio posts in the upcoming weeks.

Since this interview is long and the file is large, you may want to download it to your desktop rather than listen to it online.  To do that, right click (control click for Mac users) the link and select "Save Link As."

If you tried to download this link earlier and had trouble, please try again.  I have uploaded a new version that should be much smaller and will hopefully work much better!

Abigail's Story Interview Link: Interview with Susan Bilheimer.

For a while, my subconscious regularly churned out inspiration. Then it didn't. But, not wanting to be lazy, I have now decided to write whether the muse descends or not. I have to tell you that the writing has been terrible, but at least it's down on paper and I can rework it at a more inspired time.

I'm sure that, by now, enough people have blogged about the "Shitty First Drafts" chapter of Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird. It probably requires no introduction, but this is the section of the book where Lamott shares these kind words:

For me and most other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts...The first draft is the child's draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later. You just let this childlike part of you channel whatever voices and visions come through and onto the page.

So, with this wisdom in mind, I can say with pride rather than low self-worth, "I wrote a shitty first draft today." Well, I'd like to say that with pride at least. My inner critic keeps roaring, "You're on bad paper with the world as it is. And you're getting older. You can't afford to so much as split an infinitive. No one will ever pick up anything you write ever again." Well, I guess this voice will always be in my head. The point is not to believe it.

Shitty First Drafts are the essence of kindness for the writer.

Other wisdom instructions come from one of my all-time favorite people Martha Beck. Seriously, she's one of the smartest, funniest, wisest popular authors alive today. She is also a columnist for Oprah Magazine and the one reason why I, as a male, buy that magazine every month (well, I also use it for the collages I make). I've read her books and listen to her audio CDs almost every day and I cannot exaggerate my love for them. Recently, I went back through her personal-growth classic, Finding Your Own North Star, in search of wisdom for the long haul through the rest of my novel. Here's what I found just at a cursory glance:

1. Turtle Steps: From Pages 320 to 323, Beck discusses how she managed to write her PhD dissertation in just 15 minutes a day. Well, the first draft of it anyway.

The whole assignment was a sword dangling over head. Yet, for months, she hadn't done a thing about it. She went within and asked her "essential self" if it would agree to doing six hours of writing a day, which was half of what she felt she should be doing. Her essential self was appalled. She said, "Okay, three hours?" It damn near laughed at her. "Two hours?" Still nothing-doing. "90 minutes?" Nope. "Okay, okay. One hour! Please! A chimpanzee can do one hour." Her essential self would not budge. "Half hour?" Still nothing.

"Fifteen minutes?" All of a sudden, she and her essential self had a deal. The first day, she spent 15 minutes just digging out all the notes she'd need to start the process. That might not sound like much, but it was more than she'd been able to get herself to do for months. The next day, she called her adviser for direction on her thesis statement. Slowly, she began to write. Momentum began to build. Within a year, she had over 300 pages written.

Now, the first draft of the dissertation was no masterwork. She sent it to her advisers at Harvard and they failed it. But she reviewed all their notes and critiques, re-crafted the manuscript, and sent it back to them. After a few tries, they accepted her dissertation. All her turtle steps paid off (eventually) due, in part, to her willingness to fail. This brings us to her another jewel of wisdom that she offers to us slow steady-goers:

2. "Do A Terrible Job." You could imagine my relief this week when I came across the title of this teaching. I'll reiterate the first paragraph of that subsection in full:

I believe with all my heart that if a thing is worth doing, it's worth doing badly. Almost all my clients are willing to work very hard to do things well. That's a laudable approach to life. However, it also means that once we've amassed enough life skills to get by without daily egregious mistakes, we stop growing, experimenting, and learning new behaviors. We limit our whole range of activities to things we already do well. Refusing to do a bad job is a leading cause of North Star Deficiency Syndrome [or, self-sabotage].

For the perfectionists among us, Martha Beck prescribes the following exercise:

Find a turtle step you've never done before, or something that's difficult for you. Do this thing really badly. Misspell words. Draw stick figures. Get hopelessly lost. Ask for instructions, then forget them. Then, instead of scolding yourself, give yourself a reward for trying something new and being brave enough to mess up a few times. Now you're living like a hero.

This is exactly what I've been doing with Chapter 12 of 85A, nay, all of 85A thus far. What can I say, it's ego-leveling but it's good for me.

I think she understood for the first time that this was true. Her needing a reason was her excuse not to let go and behave in the way she did. We talked about it for a while and she came through the conversation amazingly well much to my relief!

This is an extreme example of ‘if you keep doing what you’ve been doing, you’re going to keep getting what you’ve been getting’.

When I became my mother’s mother at 6 all I knew was that she was unhappy and it was my job to make her happy. It was 20 something years before I stopped and thought about this and I asked myself some questions… is this working for me? Is she happy? Did I succeed?

I had felt like a failure for the first 20 plus years of my life because I failed to make her happy, not my fault of course, as it is impossible to ‘make’ someone else happy. Sure you can bring them happiness but the choice to be a happy person is theirs. So my mothers thinking and choices did not work for her and mine had not worked for me.

I have found since that there have been many areas in my life that I needed to ask the question, ‘how is this working for me?’

If you have been angry with someone for many years ask yourself the same question. How is it working for you, has it changed anything about the event or events that made you angry, has it changed the person involved? Anger is a choice, what you do with the feeling is your choice. My anger only hurts me, it has no affect on anyone else except that it probably makes me not so great to be around.

Look at relationships, does the way I treat or speak to my boyfriend get the result I am looking for? Is my relationship working for me and if not what is it I need to change, (let’s leave him out of it for now,).

Is the approach I have to my boss changing anything to the way I think it should be? Is my complaining at work making any difference?

Is it my thinking about situations that is the problem?

If you keep doing what you’ve been doing you’ll keep getting what you’ve been getting!

Time to change the way you think?

Angela Sharp
Living Life Design
angela@livinglifedesign.com

Interestingly, the Editor - Maureen Rice - talks about our emotions (such as the way we feel about our bodies), affecting our thoughts.  This is quite different to the Martha Beck model discussed in a previous blog about our thoughts being the root cause of all behaviour.  However, Maureen explains that the chain of cause and effect works in both directions.  I.e.  Our emotions affect our thoughts, which affect our actions, which affect our emotions and so on.  A cycle that as we know, once on is hard to get off!

Based on research from the Social Issues Research Centre (www.sirc.co.uk), tip number 26 explains that women feel more dissatisfied with their bodies during the pre-menstrual phase (the 2 weeks before your period).

I feel relieved I've read this!

I know personally, every now and again I'll have a week where I feel totally frumpy and clothes I thought really suited me the week before look totally wrong.  I wouldn't be surprised if this correlated with my cycles.

Hmmm... and I thought my clothes must have somehow changed shape!!

For more research findings on what we see and how we feel when we look in the mirror take a look here... http://www.sirc.org/publik/mirror.html

When I first started researching interstitial cystitis and vulvodynia on the internet, I had a severe panic attack.  I sobbed hysterically to my husband about the terrible stories I had read, the impossibility of ever returning to health, and the general knowledge that I was doomed.  He was, of course, less than enthusiastic about my internet research.  He watched me become obsessive, reading everything I could find for hours on end, day after day.  He watched me search for one more clue, or one more resource, or one magic answer.  He watched me think myself into a state of utter confusion and despair.

Had I not discovered my Inner Healer, I might have truly gotten lost in that quagmire of theories, forums, suggested supplements, and detoxifying plans available via the internet.  I might have kept spinning from theory to theory, trying everything.  As it was, I tried many different things from a variety of detox plans to thousands of dollars worth of supplements to antihistamines to anti-depressants.  I visited forums and left them behind, too overwhelmed by the amount of fear and despair I encountered.  Forums terrified me.  I focused on research, looking up doctor after doctor, reading book after book.

Right before I picked up A Headache in the Pelvis by David Wise, PhD, I discovered another theory regarding pelvic pain called pudendal nerve entrapment.  When I read about this idea and the surgeries available, I literally could not breathe for a moment.  I felt like my heart was frozen in my chest, I was so very afraid.  Even now, the whole concept brings a shot of adrenaline to my system.  I did not want to have surgery, I did not want my pudendal nerve to be damaged or trapped, I did not want any deep, underlying cause for IC or vulvodynia to surface and take over my life - or what was left of it.

When I remember all of this, I say a fervent thank you to my Inner Healer for reading A Headache in the Pelvis, for embarking upon the mind/body healing journey, and for directing me to all those people who helped me learn how to steer out of the fear and stop panicking, obsessing, and generally freaking out.

So if you are feeling this fear - if you are reading scary things on the internet and feeling like you do not know where to turn, let me share with you the secret of the Inner Healer.  She is your ally, she is your guide.  She will tell you what is right and what is wrong for you, personally.  No one else can do that - not someone in a forum, not a doctor, not an alternative practitioner, not a life coach!  Everyone can offer help, but your Inner Healer must be your navigator as you travel toward health.  Otherwise, you will take every last side road and be forever lost - with fear as your guide and constant companion.

Martha Beck has a great question you can ask yourself every time you are considering a new medical theory, a new procedure, a new medication, or a new alternative therapy.  All you have to do is stop, take three breaths, and allow yourself to access your intuition.  Then, you can look at what is in front of you and ask: shackles on or shackles off?  In other words, does doing that treatment give you a trapped feeling inside, as though you are a prisoner in shackles?  Or does it give you a sense of freedom, of moving forward, as though you were just released from prison?

This question can help you bypass the confusing signals fear gives you as you do your internet research.  Fear is easy to spot once you realize it comes at you in masses of words - scary, awful words.  Words such as: "maybe this is the one treatment that would help and I'm going to miss out." Or, "I should probably try everything because otherwise my life is ruined and I can't stand it."  Those are the words of fear, and fear is just fear.  It is not the inner ally guiding you toward your healthy life.

When I read the section in Wise's book about catastrophic thinking, I recognized my own, fear-paralyzed self immediately.  That was the beginning of my ability to hear my Inner Healer.  She was awfully fond of A Headache in the Pelvis, for one thing.  That book was shackles off, all the way.  Pudendal nerve anything - shackles on, times ten.  Detox diets - shackles on.  Deep breathing - shackles off, freedom, health.  This was how I steered myself through the internet, though I didn't have that language at the time.  I felt immense freedom every time I bought a book on Amazon about mind-body healing.  So that was all I bought.  I stopped buying supplements, stopped detoxing (thank God, because let me tell you, all that did for me was add hemorrhoids to the equation - can a person have any more pain in the personal areas than IC, vulvodynia, and hemorrhoids, for crying out loud?), and stopped freaking out.

So stop your surfing for a moment, take your three focused breaths, and ask yourself: shackles on or shackles off?  If this blog is shackles on, then run, run, the other way.  If a forum is shackles on, then get out, fast.  Follow your shackles off feelings, follow your Inner Healer, and follow the feeling of freedom, always.

Brooke and Martha believe that thoughts drive all behaviour.  Thoughts are responsible for our feelings, which cause our actions and our actions determine the results.

Brookes' example is that being overweight is the result of over eating, which is the action.  What this model is saying is that every time we over eat we can trace back to particular thought(s) that drove us to eat.

Although a little confusing at first, this concept is revolutionary!  For so long I've been attempting to run off the fat and follow stupid diets without success.  Treating the result (and even small amounts of weight loss) have done absolutely nothing to help change the way I feel about my body.  It makes sense that until we address why we're feeling a particular way our behaviour will not change long term.

After years of beating myself up about the way I look and my inability to change my body to look the way I wish, I've become totally disconnected with my body.  Not only can I NOT tell when I'm physically hungry I'm also not sure I even know what I'm thinking half the time!

Another amazing concept that I learned from this seminar is that our beliefs (such as 'I'll never be thin') are just thoughts that we keep thinking and become fixed in our minds.  It follows that if we can change the way we think, we change what we believe and how we feel.  It is only then that our behaviour will change.  Brooke refers to this as "reprogramming your brain."

Brooke's first step for Clients is listening in and acknowledging your thoughts.  It all sounds too easy but after only 24 hours of trying to hear my thoughts and be more aware of what I'm thinking I can honestly say it's not easy!  After being disconnected for so long I can see that it's going to take time and I'll really need to be super focused.

Give it a try and let me know how you go!

The seminar (presented by Martha Beck Inc) can be purchased from http://www.marthabeck.com/telecourses_detail.php?class_id=17&cat_name=Recorded%20Telecourses

For more detailed information relating to the Thought - Feelings - Actions - Results model, refer to Brooke Castillo's book, "If I am So Smart, Why Can't I Lose Weight?" available from www.amazon.co.uk

Brooke Castillo assures us that it really isn't that hard.  Her theory is that 90% of the food we eat should be "fuel" - natural, high energy food that the body needs to function efficiently.  The key is eating the "fuel" as soon as you feel hungry and stop when the hunger is satisfied.

I'm not sure I remember what it's like to feel physically hungry.  Do you?  I tend to eat too much, too often!

Brooke emphasises how important it is to really understand what it feels like to be hungry so that you ensure you eat before you get so super starving that you eat everything in sight!

In Brookes' words, we "need to retrain ourselves and listen to our bodies."  The physical sensation felt when hungry is the way our body communicates its needs.  We should be feeling hungry every 3 hours or so and if we're not we're either over eating or not tuned into our bodies.

The remaining 10% should be food that you eat to enjoy.  Excellent!

This is where Brooke's definition of overeating comes in.  Anything that you're eating outside of the "fuel" and 10% enjoyment food is "over eating".  It's when we eat this additional food that we need to be asking ourselves why.  Becoming more internally focused will help us identify the cause of our overeating.

After listening to Brookes' wise words my goal for the week is to pay more attention to my body and how it feels.  What does it feel like when I'm hungry?

The full seminar audio can be purchased from http://www.marthabeck.com/telecourses_detail.php?class_id=17&cat_name=Recorded%20Telecourses.

I'm too scared to count!  I'm not sure I've ever had a New Year goal that wasn't, 'this year I WILL lose 5kg and I WILL get super fit.'

Brooke Castillo and Martha Beck believe that when we set diet and weight loss goals we're setting ourselves up to fail.

In the 'Why Can't I Lose Weight? (You Can!)' seminar (http://www.marthabeck.com/telecourses_detail.php?class_id=17&cat_name=Recorded%20Telecourses), Brooke explains that the minute you go off your diet or have an exercise free week, in our minds we've already failed.  The goal is thrown aside in frustration.  Another attempt yet again not completed.

Brooke teaches her Clients that dieting is not a one off event.  The relationship with our mind and body is life long and therefore must be seen as a long term process.

Rather than focusing on the weight (the symptom, not the cause), what we should be doing is asking ourselves two important questions:

"What do you weigh and why do you weight that?"

We all know that if we eat more energy than our bodies need to function then the excess will be stored.  Hence the extra weight we don't want.

What's important is that we start taking notice of when we are over-eating.  Brooke recommends keeping a food diary to help track your eating patterns.

For example, do you overeat during work?  Are you bored at work?  Perhaps you're not feeling challenged?  Or do you overeat when you're with friends?  Why?

For me, when I'm with friends I'm so worried about what they think that I tend not to eat enough.  Sounds like a bonus but it's definitely not!  By the time I get home I'm starving and it only leads to me binge eating.  I think I need to follow Brooke's advice and try and be more conscious of my thoughts rather than worrying about others.

Working through why you're over eating leads you to the root cause of your eating habits.  Brooke suggests that through this process you will learn more about yourself than you would ever anticipate.

The seminar (presented by Martha Beck Inc) can be downloaded (at a cost) from http://www.marthabeck.com/telecourses_detail.php?class_id=17&cat_name=Recorded%20Telecourses

Yesterday I had the amazing experience of listening to a weight loss seminar taught by Brooke Castillo (presented by Martha Beck Inc - www.marthabeck.com).  The seminar, titled Why Can't I Lose Weight? (You Can!), combines tools from "The 4-Day Win", by Martha Beck and Brooke Castillo's book, "If I'm So Smart, Why Can't I Lose Weight?" 

*Note: both books are available for purchase through www.amazon.com

The seminar focuses on four key areas:
1.  How to eat
2.  What drives behaviour
3.  How to stop eating when you can't
4. Self Care - Why it's not optional

It's truly opened my eyes and I'm already finding answers!

Over the next week I'm going to review some of Brooke and Martha's fabulous advice.  Blog titles to include:

• Be thankful you're overweight!
• What do you weigh and why?
• Setting yourself up to fail... New Year Resolutions
• How to eat... it's simple.
• Controlling your behaviour.
• Put the food down! (how to stop eating more than you need)
• The key to success... looking after yourself

The audio of the seminar is available for download (at a cost) from http://www.marthabeck.com/telecourses_detail.php?class_id=17&cat_name=Recorded%20Telecourses.  Highly recommended!

I know I've been lifting stuff off from here and there but I really prefer to keep these valuable readings (well, to me anyway) as how I read them the first time.  And as I give myself an opportunity to read them in another time, I know that I will interpret it differently again.

Also, I try to avoid being too preachy about stuff like these. Because people have different truths and different ways of looking at things. Something as important as this is bound to be interpreted from so many angles. I don't want be a know it all. I really just want to share this information kept in it's original form and I leave it t you to find its value in your life.  It's that important to me.....

LOA: AM I DOING IT WRONG?

Millions of people have now heard of The Secret, a theory which brings phrases like "positive thinking" and "the law of attraction" to everyday conversations. Although the The Secret is a fairly recent phenomenon, spiritual thinkers say they've been studying the concepts for years.

Acclaimed author Louise Hay is considered the mother of positive thinking. She is back to continue the conversation about the law of attraction, which is the basis of The Secret. "The law of attraction is that our thinking creates and brings to us whatever we think about," she says. "It's as though every time we think a thought, every time we speak a word, the universe is listening and responding to us."

Louise says negativity can keep you from obtaining the things you want in life. "We don't want to put ourselves down," she says. "We don't want to say, 'Oh, it will never work for me,' or 'I'm not good enough.' Because that's what the universe hears and returns to you."

Instead, Louise says you can transform your life by staying positive. "You have to start saying things that you feel really good about yourself. 'I love who I am. I love life. Life loves me. It's going to be smooth and easy. Life works for me.' And you just start doing that—it's planting seeds. You're not going to get it the first day, but you plant a seed and you water it and you continue the affirmations, and things start to shift and change in your life."

Author, life coach and O, The Oprah Magazine columnist Martha Beck says the law of attraction doesn't work at the snap of your fingers—at least not at first. "At the beginning, you have to be careful what level you are on in your consciousness when you're making your requests of the universe," she says. Martha says it's important that your thoughts are not coming from a negative place. "If you're in a fear-based place where you need and you want and you're going to die and everything's scary, none of your intentions or desires has much power."

People hoping to use the law of attraction are told to write lists of what they want to obtain, like a "love list." So why is it that some people still don't get what they want? Cheryl Richardson, life coach and author, explains that negative energy could be the cause. "I think sometimes it can be exactly what Martha said—that we're asking from a place of desperation," she says. "When you put desperate energy out into the world, you don't get back what it is you want."

Cheryl says the items on your list may not come to you right away. "I know that there's something called divine timing," she says. "Some of the most amazing things that have occurred to me in my life took longer to occur than I wanted because I needed to grow as a woman. I needed to evolve in some way."

For people who are more concerned about being able to pay their next bill than they are with the law of attraction, it's hard to think that keeping a positive attitude will change anything. Louise says that just hearing the ideas behind the law of attraction can help a person begin to make small changes in her life. "When the student is ready, the teacher appears," she says.

Martha says she noticed the law of attraction at work in an unlikely situation—while coaching homeless heroin addicts in Phoenix. Martha says they lived on the street because they couldn't afford apartments. "Then, I found out they were spending an average of $180,000 a year on heroin," she says. When Martha asked how they got the money for their addiction, she saw a change. "They would become completely different when they were talking about the one thing they believed was necessary. And as I've worked with them, I've seen that what they believe and expect is what they get."

Before Karen had ever heard of the law of attraction, she was going through a very frightening time in her life. "A year and a half ago, I thought I was having a heart attack, and I literally thought I was going to die," she says. "My heart was beating really fast. I had a burning sensation throughout my chest and into my stomach. My whole body went numb."

After that experience, Karen says she started having panic attacks and didn't leave her home. "I always felt like something bad was going to happen to me," she says. "I didn't leave the house for close to a month and a half. I had to have someone by my side at all times."

Karen says her healing began when she started reading about the law of attraction and began saying affirmations every day. "My two biggest ones are 'I feel safe' [and] 'I deeply and profoundly love and accept myself,'" she says. "I would say them over and over again, and I think that instead of just saying it, it became the essence of my life. It's what I believed in."

Louise says affirmations help the law of attraction work. "It smooths your mind so the universe can work out the answer."

Now, Karen says she is in a completely different place in her life. "Everything started to fall into place, and I became more positive," she says. "I started to love myself, and I stopped thinking with regrets."

In addition to affirmations, a vision board is a great way to visualize the positive things you want to bring into your life. When creating your vision board, Martha says you shouldn't expect a straightforward process. "I get in a really calm place. I go to my core of peace, and I taste what is delicious in the future. It could be something I've never heard of, or it could be just the essence of something. I'm not sure what it is. And then I go through magazines or on the Internet, and I find pictures of things that represent that to me. It could be the actual object or it could be something that has the same feeling."

Some of the things Martha put on her vision board were money, friends and spirituality. Martha says she also included pictures of people on the board—poets Mary Oliver and Maya Angelou, author Alice Walker and even Oprah! Martha says she wasn't looking to meet these people, but instead put them on her board because she admires their spirits.

Martha says you need to be careful that you really want what you put on your vision board. She says one day she pasted a picture of puppies on her board because she thought they were cute. "Now I have a yellow lab and a golden retriever," she says. "They need so much walking, it drives me nuts."

Joking aside, Martha says has received many of the things she hoped for on her vision board, including a visit to Africa. "I have to say, as I was putting it together to bring here, I realized that I have to add more because everything on this board has already happened," she says. "It happens so fast now I have to keep making new ones."

Since Cheryl made her vision board 15 years ago, she says much of what she's wanted has come true. At the time, Cheryl says she was looking for a partner—and now is married to a man who looks like the picture of the man on her vision board. Other than love, Cheryl says her vision board has also brought her success. "Phil Donahue was on here, and that's the first national show I ever did after I put him on the board," she says.

In the center of her board Cheryl has the word "God." She says a vision board shouldn't only be filled with material objects like fancy cars and expensive jewelry. "It's not just about getting things," she says. "It's a spiritual principle, which we've said a million times. But, yes, these work. And they're kind of cool to look at."

After welcoming the bounty of good things from your vision board, Louise says it's important to have proper gratitude for all you've received. This will keep those positive gifts coming. "The more grateful you are, the more you get to be grateful about. It's that simple," she says. "The universe really loves gratitude. And the more gratitude you have, the more goodies you get."

When should you show this gratitude? "Morning, noon and night," Louise says. "Be grateful when you look in the mirror at your own face. 'I love you. I'm so grateful.'"

"What God loves most is appreciation," Oprah says. "So when you show appreciation, you get appreciated."

Wendy says long before she had heard of the "law of attraction" or The Secret, she knew she could change her life by picturing exactly what she wanted. "No one has ever taught me this," she says. "I have just known that in my soul. It's so awesome because it's not something that we have to go get somewhere. It's something we all have within us."

After years of bad relationships with men, Wendy says she decided to focus attention on herself. "I deserved something better," she says. "I was not going to waste my time anymore. And the moment I made that really clear decision, I met the greatest man I've ever known in my life."

Cheryl says though everyone wants good relationships, bad relationships don't have to be all bad. "The gift of the bad relationship is you get very clear [about] what you don't want anymore," she says.

While Wendy found what she was looking for almost immediately, Cheryl and Louise describe finding things they were looking in stages or in waves.

"You're always being steered." Martha says. "If I start to go the wrong way for myself, my body starts to hurt and I know immediately [to] pay attention."

It's easy to feel gratitude when good things happen…but what about dealing with a devastating blow? Denise says she was once a very positive person with what seemed like a charmed life. "A supermom, a wife, beautiful boys, a nice home," she says. "Just a really good, good life."

When her son was diagnosed with cancer, she says everything changed. After about a year and a half of fighting the disease, he died at age 18. Shortly after that, Denise's husband left. "He wasn't happy, and he wanted to start his life over and felt it was too much pain," she says. "When he left, just everything crumbled. And it's surreal. You just almost can't believe that it's actually happening. I felt like I was just waking up from a nightmare."

Denise says her despair was so bad that she was on the verge of suicide. "I literally had his pain medication, a bunch of pills, in my hand," she says.

Then, Denise says she felt the pills being knocked from her hand and heard the words of her late son in her head. "He said, 'Mom, I was here as a gift for you, and you have to go on with your life,'" she says. "I felt his presence around me—that warmth, that comforting feeling of someone standing with you."

Denise says dealing with the twin blows of her son dying and her husband leaving left her with so much pain and so many questions. "It's hard to see that you can do something more with your life. You think God doesn't love you, and why are you going through all these things?"

While watching the movie You Can Heal Your Own Life, based on Louise's book, Denise says she found herself relating to the main character—a woman who was completely withdrawn from the world. "I saw her and I thought, 'Oh, my God. That's me,'" she says.

The film made her realize that she needed to forgive her husband, which she did on his birthday. "I said, 'Good morning. I just want to wish you a happy birthday and hope you're having a beautiful life because I know I am. And I know I'm on that path,'" she says. "It was like a weight lifted from me."

Louise says Denise should prepare herself to live again. "You have no idea what's in store for you," she says. "The most wonderful adventures are coming."

Susan from the audience asks for clarification on the difference between an intention and a wish or dream.

Cheryl says the biggest difference between the two is how they originate. "A wish is often coming from what isn't working in your life. Like, 'I wish I would win the lottery because I'm in debt. I wish I would meet a partner because I'm lonely and I don't feel comfortable living alone.'"

"An intention is a soul goal, not a head goal," she says. "My prayer is always, 'If this is in the highest and best interest for me and those around me, then please allow it to happen.' And that sort of is a humble way of saying it's not just about me and what my head thinks because I'm a physical being and I'm having a physical experience. It is also about me and this greater energy, this greater creative force, and that's where an intention is set from."

Martha says she has an even simpler way of knowing whether something is a wish or an intention. "What I found is that if you really want something, it makes you feel physically stronger," she says. "And if you think you want it but you don't really want it, it makes you feel physically weaker."

One thing many parents wonder is how they can raise children to grow up living with of the law of attraction.

Twelve-year-old Dominique and 9-year-old Brittany are sisters already are! They've even created their own vision boards. "The law of attraction is a way of life. The way you think. The way you react to situations," Dominique says. "If you're a positive person, you get positive results. If you're a negative person, you get negative results."

"On my vision board are some of my long-term goals," Brittany says. She's included things like becoming a fashion designer, visiting the Great Wall of China and meeting Johnny Depp.

Dominique says the law of attraction is good for more than just long-term goals. "During school, I try to keep a positive attitude with my friends," she says. "Because I notice that if I'm negative, then I'll attract negative things and negative people during the day. So I try to keep a positive attitude."

Dominique's vision board includes places she would like to go in her life, like Rome and England, and people she wants to meet, like the Dalai Lama. One of her vision board goals just came true…she wanted to be on The Oprah Winfrey Show!

~Elizabeth Lesser

I decided this weekend to make myself a vision board. It's like a poster, or mind map, where you put words, symbols, and images that represent things or states of being you would like to realize. I've heard so much about how these boards helped people to clarify their thinking, and realize their goals. Notice I said realize instead of accomplish. This isn't necessarily about accomplishments. Somehow, when we get ourselves in alignment with what our deepest self desires, amazing things start happening. It's more like a process of co-operating with what's happening, rather than gritting our teeth, flexing our muscles, and determining to make things happen.

As Stanislav Grof said, “Each of us can manifest the properties of a field of consciousness that transcends space, time, and linear causality.”

That's an incredibly powerful statement! And I don't know about you, but when I hear such statements, they intensify my desire for a deeper sense of consciousness, a greater openness to possibilities. The vision board seems to be a practical method of interacting with the "field of consciousness" in an intentional way. And some people I really admire say that vision boards work. Martha Beck, for instance. Many years ago, I read her book called "Expecting Adam." It made me forever interested in what she has to say, because she was so honest, intelligent, and gut-splittingly funny. Quite a few books later, and I am still interested. This Harvard graduate is now a columnist for O magazine. She's also a life coach.

Martha says she sees two reasons the vision board works. One is something called "selective attention." "If you repeat the word, 'blue, blue, blue,' and you start looking around the room, all the blue things will start popping out," she says. "Part of it is quantum physics. … We know now, scientifically, that consciousness brings matter into being where there was energy. So it's not even necessarily that it draws it toward you. The conclusion is you're literally creating some of this stuff."

That quote comes from the Oprah site, and a show called Go Beyond the Secret. The three women on stage with Oprah for that show, Cheryl Richardson, Martha Beck, and Louise Hay (author of "You can heal your life"), had many insights into how we can hone and achieve the visions we have for our lives.

Back to the vision board: it will be my first. I've written goals, but never actually put them in visual form. I'm a visual artist. How do I interpret that, now that I see it written in black & white letters before me? Surprising? Ironic? Hilarious? Perhaps I should engage the services of a life coach. Or, perhaps I'll just revel in the fact that my river of energy has carried me to this point, now, and made me aware of this new tool to utilize in my life!

I welcome experiences or comments you might have to offer on this process.

Anti-Anxiety Breathing Technique

I started reading the book one afternoon and put aside everything else immediately. I read the whole book in one sitting and heard the faint but distinct voice of my Inner Healer. The book spoke to a deeper part of me than my logical mind or my emotionally stressed heart. I took in everything Wise wrote and absorbed it thoroughly. I was interested in the physical therapy techniques for dealing with pelvic floor dysfunction. However, it was the other message in the book that drew my Inner Healer to it with a magnetic force.

To me, the core message of A Headache in the Pelvis is about relaxing both the body and the mind through relaxation techniques, breathing techniques, and cognitive therapy or learning to truly understand how thinking shapes our emotional lives. (This goes far beyond "just relax and you'll feel better," by the way. This is relaxation in a way most of us don't truly utilize or even understand. It is powerful and extremely healing.) I knew without a doubt I needed to learn and apply everything about these mental techniques. I studied the book itself and then worked my way through the recommended reading, making trips to the library and bookstores regularly. I knew I was onto something right for me - my Inner Healer was dead certain.

I told this to Dr. Wise yesterday and the ensuing conversation included an important point that I felt was necessary to share with you, no matter where you are in your journey to health. As we talked about the mental/emotional concepts addressed in A Headache in the Pelvis, Wise told me many of the people who come to his clinic or read the book do not take those ideas to heart. He was excited to learn of the healing effect they had on me, and correlated the healing process for pelvic pain to the process of losing weight. Many people want the quick fix, the magic pill, or the instantaneous result. Lasting weight loss takes time and lifestyle changes. The body cannot be rushed. Likewise, healing must include digging to the root of the problem to eliminate it forever.

This has absolutely been my experience. Had I simply done physical therapy, I know I would not have healed. Five seconds after I left the physical therapists' office, I was taking my freshly relaxed muscles straight back to square one with each passing minute. The constant process of storing stress and emotion in my pelvic muscles was just that - constant. To undue the tension during an appointment was just a miniscule moment in time compared to the ongoing tension that wasn't being undone in those muscles. It wasn't enough.

My Inner Healer was extremely wise, as usual. She knew I needed to undo the process of storing tension in those muscles and really learn new ways to approach every aspect of my life. Only then would I be getting to the root of the problem. I am always so impressed with my Inner Healer when I look back and see her genius in retrospect. She took me through the somewhat long (roughly six months) and not entirely easy process of changing myself, and how I deal with life on the very deepest level. I won't say it was a simple or quick process. However, the payoff was far greater than I could ever have imagined. Not only did I heal completely but my entire life changed for the better. My depression lifted, my creativity skyrocketed, and I became a version of myself I had only dreamed of previously.

The quick fix may have the allure of instant gratification, but the deep fix has the allure of complete health. I am grateful to Dr. Wise and his incredibly valuable, enlightening, and calming writing for starting me on the journey to this place of absolute, whole, mind-body health.

Anyhow, I'm back again to tackle the July issue--and hopefully finish it before the August one shows up in my mailbox.

Martha Beck is a regular O contributor--I think she may have written something for every issue, but I'm not exactly sure.  I haven't talked about her articles much because they haven't always applied to me.   This month she's got a great article about regret and how to deal with it.

We all have regrets, but Beck says you can stop being paralyzed by regret and take some action to not make it such a negative feeling.  Although you may not think this is true, you can change the regrets of your past.  Beck says, "The past doesn't exist except as a memory, a mental story, and though past events aren't changeable, your stories about them are.  You can act now to transform the way you tell the story of your past, ultimately making it a stalwart protector of your future."

Wow!  I never thought of it like that!  Beck details six steps to help you change your way of thinking about regret.  One comes with an interesting story about a potential Olympian who had a horrible meet that ruined her chances of competing.  Beck asked what she would've gotten out of being in the Olympics, and the girl gave a few words.  These adjectives helped her realize what kind of job she was looking for, and she learned to channel that regret into a new passion.  Her Olympic dream didn't matter anymore.

I like articles that help me see my feelings in a new light.  It's articles like these that keep me subscribing.

If a minor cold or childhood illness can derail me, imagine what interstitial cystitis coupled with vulvodynia (and throw in a kidney stone or two) could do! My symptoms began in college, when I absolutely did not have time to worry about my body. I visited the student health clinic every so often, thinking I had a yeast infection or bladder infection, depending on the symptoms. I rarely actually had an infection, but the doctors would often prescribe something "just in case" and to alleviate the symptoms. I felt these symptoms were like a mosquito buzzing around my head, pestering me and annoying me but not really interrupting my determined focus.

It became harder to ignore the mosquito as the symptoms increased in severity. I remember sitting in the restroom and missing out on parts of my husband's college graduation ceremony as I waited for my pelvic floor muscles to relax. The pain and frequency were becoming serious interruptions in my daily life. By the time I attended his Naval Officer Candidate School graduation ceremony six months later, I couldn't be anywhere without a restroom. I drove back and forth between the restroom and the graduation ceremony several times, suffering the embarrassment and frustration simply because I had no choice.

I started seeking doctors and trying to figure out what was wrong with me, but it would be five more years before I truly found relief. Meanwhile, my symptoms grew steadily worse, until my life was no longer just interrupted. My illness became my life, and I stopped doing everything else.

I resisted my illness at first because I thought it would just go away. I didn't like it, but I didn't think it would hang around - it was just something to get through. I resisted my illness even more when I found out it had a name and was chronic. I resisted my illness with all my might when I had visited every doctor I could find and had not found relief. My mind kept saying, "I should be better by now. This shouldn't be taking over my life. I should not still be dealing with this after so many years."

I realize now I had a strict health timeline in mind. I could be ill with, say, a cold - for a week. I could suffer the stomach flu for a couple days. I could even put up with a more severe illness for a couple of weeks. But months? Years? Absolutely not. I had a life to live! I had things to do! I had important things to do.

The thing is, reality just doesn't always line up with what I want. The reality was my illness had not gone away, and no amount of thinking "I should be better by now" was going to help. In fact, it made it worse. The more I thought that, the more upset I became, and the more upset I became, the more my anxiety affected my ability to heal. My illness had its own timeline, and until I surrendered my schedule, I was going to be very unhappy.

Interestingly enough, when I did stop fighting and allowed myself as much time as I needed to heal, I stopped feeling so much panic and fear. I decided it simply didn't matter how long it took to heal - I was going to stop pressuring myself to be better, NOW. What a relief. From that mindset, everything felt much easier to handle. I could explore a variety of healing modalities until I found what worked for me. Without a self-imposed timeline for improvement, my body felt much more relaxed and my symptoms dropped a notch in severity. I was actually able to do more and feel less anxiety.

I still find myself railing against reality when I get the flu. I think of all the things I need to be doing, all the normal routines that are being interrupted, and I resist the experience like crazy. And then, I remember. Oh yeah - I've taken this class before, and clearly I need to dig out the notes and review. I stop fighting and just allow my body to do its thing. I give myself the gift of time, and in doing so, the gifts of peace and health as well.

Author: Martha Beck

Publisher: Crown Publishers, 2003

What a great read! This approach is very simple, easy to follow and makes total sense (you'll probably be thinking "Why didn't I think of this). If your looking for ways to improve or just enhance your life, this is perfect for you! Martha recommends that you read one chapter a week until you're fully comfortable with a step and then move on to the next. This is a great approach, I think if you tried everything at once you'd totally fall off of this diet, but the one step a week works for me.

The 10 Steps are:

Nothing - Not as easy as it sounds

Truth - This step is amazing and clicked right away for me. I never realized how many stories I made up in my head when there was absolutely no truth to them! Example of my internal voice: "My Sister hasn't called me lately, I bet she's mad at me, probably because I couldn't watch the kids for her last week, what a bitch, I have a life too you know..." this could go on and on. But now I simply ask myself "Is it true that your Sister is mad at you?" The answer is "No! I have no idea why she hasn't called!"

Desire - Pretty much a chapter of finding what you desire.

Creativity - Creatively reaching your desire

Risk- Take risks in your life. You've probably heard it before, "do something scary at least once a day"! I live a pretty risk-free life, so I had a hard time incorporating this step. But finally I just sucked it up and now I'm taking baby-risks and I'm so proud of myself! I'm actually looking forward to taking some big risks soon!

Treats - Reward yourself with 3 treats a day. 2 for no reason and 1 for taking a risk! I'm not very good at this step yet. I do reward myself when I do something risky, but I haven't been very good at rewarding myself for no reason. I just don't remember to do it! That's my goal this week is to figure out a way to reward myself and not see it as a chore.

Laughter - What a great thing to incorporate into your life everyday. After reading this chapter you'll realize that you actually laugh more than you thought you did, but it still isn't nearly enough to be on the Joy Diet. I'm lucky, I have a pretty funny family so I usually have a few good laughs throughout the day and although I didn't really pay attention before, I do feel better after laughing at my family members :-D

Connections - This is a tough one for me! I've shut down in most of my interactions with just about everyone I know and I haven't figured out the source of why yet. I'm someone who is always there for everyone else, but I never (and I mean never) open up about myself. I can't say this chapter was a major breakthrough for me, but it least got me to recognize my issues and get me excited about reconnecting with people.

Feasting - 3 times a day! What I took away from this chapter is relish all the good that is in your life! I surprised myself on this, I do "Feast" several times a day (at least for the last year or so). For me running through "Gratefuls" is the best feast! I try to do this several times a day especially when I'm in a rotten mood or when I'm trying to focus my mind, little did I know I was mastering a Martha Beck step!

I recommend this book for everyone. It doesn't have to be for someone who's trying to "find themselves" as in my case, but for anyone who wants to celebrate their day! Every chapter I'd think of a new person who I think should read this book and when I was done with the book my list included just about everyone I know.

To truly begin to unravel the complicated puzzle of my own physical illness, I had to open my mind to a new way of perceiving my whole being. I liked what I was reading from all these various books, but I had yet to fully grasp the truth of it within my own self. Luckily, experimenting with techniques that come from the mind and result in mental strength is a win-win proposition. I decided it couldn't hurt to explore the power of my own mind and venture into new areas of understanding - it wasn't like I was mixing medications. I set out to experiment with my own body and my newly awakened mind.

Needless to say, as you might have surmised from the general message of my blog, the results were astoundingly successful. From where I sit now, on the other side of the process, I can fully see and understand the true power of mind-body healing. I have more than just my excitement, conviction, and hope. Now, I have the final piece of my own learning puzzle: experience. From this perspective, I can share clear and hopefully helpful information with you. Having blazed the trail in front of you, I hope to shorten your journey by sharing the tools and understanding I gleaned from my own experience.

The whole equation begins with emotion. Many of us, my past self included, do not deal with negative emotion in a helpful, effective way. I spent most of my life trying to avoid negative emotion as much as possible. I hated hearing about misfortune, tried not to cry or "break down" in public, kept my emotions on a very short leash, and in general ran like hell from facing anything emotionally uncomfortable. Unfortunately, what I did not realize was the impossibility of truly escaping negative emotion. Emotion is part of the human experience, and negative emotion does not leave me just because I don't want to face it. In fact, by trying with all my might not to feel it, I actually trapped it in my body.

Now before you shake your head and label me crazy, let me promise you this is not just a theory. Many very scientific, smart people are studying this concept and incorporating it into their understanding of healing. One of these is Les Fehmi, PhD, author of the book The Open-Focus Brain. He gives an excellent description of how emotions remain in the body, which I'll summarize here. To keep from feeling an emotion, to keep from letting it enter your consciousness, there is only one thing you can do. You must tense and tighten a muscle or group of muscles somewhere in your body. Though this works like a charm - you won't be dwelling on the negative emotion anymore - it has a major drawback. The very muscle where you are holding that tension becomes a holding spot for the emotion. You can think of emotion as having an energy - it is not "nothing." If processed, that energy flows through your body and leaves. If it is not processed, that energy has nowhere to go. It remains locked within you, usually in the region of the body you have unconsciously chosen to clench.

As you might imagine, after many years of doing this, day in and day out, your body reaches a limit. First of all, holding a muscle in a contracted position for extended periods of time is clearly not healthy. Nerves lose precious blood and oxygen flow, muscles fatigue, skin does not receive the nutrients it needs to remain healthy, and pain settles in to stay. Your body has to work hard to keep up the emotion avoiding pattern because it actually responds to the negative emotion as though it is under attack. If you are afraid to feel a negative emotion, you are signaling your body to move into fight-or-flight mode to escape this perceived predator. So, muscles tense, heart-rate increases, hormone production is altered, and the nervous system remains on high-alert. None of this is conducive to health and healing - in fact, this is your body in breakdown mode. It takes massive amounts of energy to maintain the fight-or-flight state. Every system of the body can be affected from hormones to nerves to skin to muscles to mental acuity.

When I finally understood this connection, I could immediately see evidence of it everywhere in my life. To avoid negative emotions I spent every waking moment of my life in fight-or-flight mode, which, while adversely affecting my health, also led to constant anxiety. The negative emotion did not leave my body but remained trapped, building up to toxic levels. My body was begging me to accept negative emotions, allow them to be a part of my life, and in doing so, let them go. I was already working with Kathleen Barratt (see her website in the blogroll) and learning how to re-train my breathing patterns to allow full, oxygen-rich breaths back into my body. I discovered that breathing these full, complete breaths helped me draw my focus into my body, realize the places where I was holding tension, and release myself from the anxiety and fight-or-flight trap. Breathing also helped me to allow those emotions to surface, move through me, and leave my physical self at long last.

When I reached this level of understanding regarding my mind, body, and emotions, it was literally only a few weeks before my body began to show signs of healing. I knew my experiment was a success - I could feel it in every cell of my being. I could feel the healing in every breath I took, in every anxiety, tension-free moment, in every emotion that came bubbling up and out to be released. Soon, the vulvar pain and burning sensations faded away, the constant itching disappeared, the urinary frequency lifted, the unusual skin problems vanished, and my hormones returned to normal levels (my previous test results showed up as menopausal even though I was only 26). Now, I am equipped with the knowledge that remaining intimately connected with my emotions, my physical body, and my inner sense of self is the perfect formula for long-lasting health. The experiment continues and I constantly fine-tune my ability to be a whole person, not a mind distanced from its body. I can't imagine living any other way now that I've discovered the fulfilling, energizing, and vivid life available to me.

Since we've been going through the process of dealing with Josiah's autism, I still find myself cycling back to the idea that this was not supposed to happen to us. It happens to other people--not us. I'm only able to stay in the present for so long before I get dragged back in to the whys, hows, and disbelief that this actually happened. The author wrote, "As long as you're thinking, That shouldn't have happened or I shouldn't have done that, you're locked in a struggle against reality... That thing you regret? It really, really, really shouldn't have happened. But. It. Did. If you enjoy being miserable, by all means, continue to rail against this fact."

FACE YOUR SADNESS

So, Beck goes on to say to think of something right now that your regret, and finish this sentence: "I'm sad that __________." Here goes. I'm sad that I got to experience over a year and a half of a delightful existence with my son only to have it ripped away from me suddenly. I'm sad that my son can't play. I'm sad that at 14 months my son was saying the word "no" so often that I thought we've got a pip on our hands, to today when my son never says "no" or "yes," or even understands the concepts. I'm sad that I won't get to experience the same joys of early childhood as typical families do. I'm sad that my husband isn't able to play catch with his son now like he had hoped to. I'm sad that my son might get made fun of when he goes to school. I'm sad that he has to practically work a full-time 40 hour "job" just to learn how to do the things that should just come naturally. I'm sad that Josiah can't have a conversation with me, or ask tons of silly questions about the world like other kids his age. I'm sad that he knows songs, but he can't just sing them. I'm sad that he doesn't know how to engage with other people who talk with him at the store, and I have to end up answering for him--secretly weeping inside because I could tell him he has autism but that's an awkward thing to tell a stranger, so you just say he's tired. I'm sad that we can't even go to the local ice cream joint and enjoy a child's cone like we used to because dairy and wheat are off limits, possibly forever. I'm sad that I don't know that everything we're throwing into him now will give him the future that we dreamed of for him.

I'm sad that our joy and moods are tied to how Josiah's doing that day, ever the rollercoaster. I'm sad that I'm afraid all the time. I'm sad that the questions so far outweigh any real answers. I'm sad that I dread both the present and the future, when I used to bound out of bed full of optimism. I'm sad that my husband and I have lost some of our playfulness, humor, and carefree attitude because as much as we want to take a break from autism, it's still ever present. I'm sad that we live so far away from our families and right now there's no way out of that quandry.

DEAL WITH YOUR ANGER

Then, Beck says, "When you've fully itemized your sadness, make another list, beginning each sentence with the phrase, "I'm angry at ___________." Here's my laundry list: I'm angry at myself for getting my child fully vaccinated, not knowing the potential risks. I'm angry at the government for not protecting us from toxins, pollution, chemicals, and pesticides. I'm angry at the medical establishment for sacrificing or turning their backs on the health risks of some kids to the onslaught of live viruses, antibiotics, and preservatives in the interest of the greater good. I'm angry at the insurance companies who won't cover the treatments and therapies to the extent that these kids need, causing parents to be put into compromised financial situations that add stress to their lives, pocket books, and marriages. I'm angry at God for not protecting my son even though I specifically prayed every moment of the pregnancy and every day of his life for his health--body, mind and spirit. I'm angry at not getting delivered out of this through quicker healing and progress. I'm angry at the toll this has taken on my friendships, marriage, work, self. I'm angry at the lack of understanding or concensus of what autism is and how to fix it. I'm angry at the fact that I'm still angry.

NOW, MOVE FORWARD WITH LOVE DRIVING YOUR CHOICES

Next, Beck says to grieve what is irrevocably lost, and that you're finished grieving when you see someone gaining what you regret losing and feel only joy for them. Like getting to the point when you can see other families who are living the life you always wanted with two little perfect kids, and be glad for them instead of envious. Like hearing people talk about the simple things that they get to do with their families and not thinking that they take for granted the beauty of their normalcy.

Finally, Beck advises to reclaim the essence of your dreams and learn to lean loveward. So, as I go forward, I need to dream new dreams. That's not to say that I'm giving up one bit of the faith and hope that I have that our son will recover, but somehow I need to come to terms with that process, and realize that the future may not plot out the way that I desire or expect. But, I can't let the fear of risk and failure derail my perseverance. Like Beck says, "Every time life brings you to a crossroads, from the tiniest to the most immense, go toward love, not away from fear. Think of every choice in terms of 'What would thrill and delight me?' rather than 'What will keep my fear--or the events, people, and things that I fear--at bay?'"

Everything based in love is worth doing. And I love that little boy with every ounce of my being. I love him enough to face into the fear, disappointment, and uncertainty of this path we're forging in order to know that one day it will all be worth it. No matter what, we'll have no regrets because we will have done everything we could for him. And, with that, we will have also invested in the lives of others in some way through our experiences.

Psalm 34:4-5: I prayed to the Lord, and he answered me.
      He freed me from all my fears.
  Those who look to him for help will be radiant with joy;
      no shadow of shame will darken their faces.

This is the beauty of working on the mind, emotions, and mind body connection - it only brings positive and good changes into your life.  You feel better mentally, feel more relaxed, and have more tools to use for difficult situations throughout your life.  This can only enhance the healing you are seeking from medical professionals.  It's exciting to consider all kinds of treatments coming together as a whole to create healing.  When I was journeying toward health, I explored every possible healing modality and created a combination that worked for me.  I truly believe each person can find the right mixture of treatments, and I don't see any single treatment as the magic bullet for everyone.  You are an individual, and your healing process will be completely your own. 

I'm going to continue discussing the mind body connection because I do think it's important for you to know about it.  Perhaps you'll read my posts and find some sort of relief from the constant anxiety, fear, hopelessness, or panic you've been feeling.  That is my hope for you, and the reason I am sharing every tool I've learned - both as a woman who worked through her own emotional pain and as a trained life coach.  I love sharing these powerful and life-changing tools, and I love writing.  This blog is a passion for me.  I am passionate about spreading a positive message regarding these painful health issues.  When I was wading through the internet, trying to figure out why I was in such agony, I read many scary things about these health issues.  At the time, I did not find anything written by someone who had returned to health, and much of what I read talked about the chronic nature of these diseases.  Every time I sit down to write, I imagine a woman combing the internet, looking for hope and something positive.  I remember the fear and hopelessness I felt, and the resonating sense of connection I experienced when I found someone with a positive message. 

The mind body connection has been explored by many different people, from medical doctors to psychologists to musicians to patients to writers.  Its origins lie in the Eastern healing modalities such as acupuncture, yoga, and ayurveda, to name a few.  Many people consider it an essential part of healing, and many people consider it hogwash.  There's even quite a discrepancy about how to write the word/words mind body.  I've seen mind/body, mind-body, mindbody, and mind body, all used in published texts.  I haven't yet decided my favorite, though I'm leaning toward mind-body or mindbody.  

I'm certainly no expert in the mind-body connection field, but I do study it constantly.  It is perhaps the single most fascinating subject to me.  I love the feeling I have when I live as a whole being, mind and body merged as one.  I love the messages my body gives my mind when they are communicating freely.  The whole concept has helped me with every aspect of my life, from physical pain to mental pain to emotional eating issues to musicianship (I'm a violinist and Irish fiddler).

The mind-body concept sometimes gets a bad reputation as another one of those "fluffy," new-age ideas originating in California and slowly moving east.  This couldn't be further from the truth.  The mind-body concept is probably as old as humanity, and has been a part of many cultures including Celtic, Asian, and Native American cultures.  Though different cultures had/have different ways of utilizing the connection, the similarities are often astonishing.  Healers have traditionally incorporated mind, body, spirit, and Earth to help people return to health.  

I'll be exploring the details of the mind-body connection in future posts, but today I wanted to introduce some of my "friends" who have published material regarding this topic.  As I unearthed more and more helpful information in my own healing journey, I came across many experts whose works became central in my own mind-body connection process.  If you're interested in researching and discovering more on this topic, you might enjoy the works of Dr. Andrew Weil, Dr. John Sarno, Depak Chopra, Dr. Ted Grossbart, and Dr. David Wise, to name a few.  Of course, my teacher and mentor Martha Beck has also written extremely useful information in her book, Finding Your Own North Star.  Her discussion about the Essential and Social Selves reveals a fascinating connection between our health, body, and mental happiness.  Happy reading!