“This is the health in you.”
Is he crazy? Did he just say I was healthy? I am lying in an ICU bed with fever spikes of up to 106, fighting a sepsis (generalized blood infection) between 2 rounds of chemotherapy treatment to treat my pretty rare cancer and my doctor is telling me I have health in me? Doesn’t feel that way…
It took me days, or weeks, I don’t remember, to understand what he meant; when you have weekly chemotherapy treatments the fog turns days into weeks and weeks into months, I lost the sense of the acuteness of time. I could have died, 3 times in about 3 weeks, 2 massive hemorrhages and one very treacherous sepsis which can cause organ failure. But I didn’t.
My body was healthy despite the cancer and had the resources to rebound from the blood loss; my organs did not fail, my body fought the infection – with the welcomed help of 4 daily doses of antibiotics – but it did. My body fought the infection before we could figure out what was happening to me and those hours were the most precious.
That’s when the health manifested itself.
I do not drink in excess, I do not smoke, I eat organic when I can, but I am not what some people refer to as a “health nut”, I like chocolate and bacon and coffee. I exercise most of the time, but sometimes I don’t. I am a normal human being who is trying to take care of her body. Rolfing®, which happens to be my profession, is just a part of it.
When your body is unhappy, stressed, in pain, it affects all systems in your body not just your musculo-skeletal structure. It affects your hormones, thus your mood, your digestive tract, your lymphatic system, your nervous system… It’s all related as we like to joke, but it’s not a joke. It’s a universal truth.
When I am feeling down, my posture changes, my shoulders round forward, my back slumps, my head falls down, that mechanically impacts my nerves- they become taught in my neck; my fascia– the back gets long while the front is shortened; my organs- my rib cage compresses my liver, stomach and intestines… and it in turn affects my mood even further.
Enough research has shown the effect of posture on self-confidence and mood. But to summarize, as one mother put it talking about her boys getting Rolfing®: they stood straighter and it made them think straighter.
I believe in Rolfing®Structural Integration as a cure for a lot of aches and pains. Allowing your body to use gravity as an ally instead of fighting it as an enemy uses far less energy and lets you use that energy for other things. I don’t believe Rolfing® can cure cancer, but if your body already has a stable and healthy foundation to rely on when something as bad as cancer happens, you already have a leg up and can start fighting instead of starting in damage control mode.
My office is in North Portland, come and we’ll talk more about bringing the health out of your body.
