Is your body screaming for help?

Follow your heart. No don’t, Listen to your mind. What does your gut tell you? What does it even mean?

As most of you know, I attended massage therapy school for two years. Body Wisdom not only focused on teaching us massage modalities but also self-care. Part of that is listening to your body.

I remember sitting in hot and cold stone class. I asked my teacher, Dianna, “How do you know if you should use hot or cold on an area or injury? Online it says cold for this, it says hot for this, but how do you really know? Her answer changed my perspective forever.

She looked at me, and in her calm soothing voice, she simply said,

“What does your body need?”

I was confused. I didn’t get it, what do you mean? Coming from a pharmacy/medical background, I like facts. Dead on, no questions asked, science proven facts. Listen to my body, what does that even mean?

Of course, she explained seeing the confused look on my face. She said while there is science behind cold and hot on certain types of injuries but she also explained, that’s not exactly the case. At the time I was having a lot of problems with my wrist and back, so she told me to close my eyes and visualize the area, what did it want.

So I did, I closed my eyes, I visualized the muscles, the fibers, diving mentally into my body. Then I imagine the heat on that area or the cold on that area and when I opened my eyes, it’s like I suddenly knew.

Modern Medicine isn't your only option. Sometimes, trying something else before going to a doctor can prove to help. Thought not in the case of major medical conditions. There are changes you can make for major medical conditions that can help. But I’m going to try to give you some tips that I learned through school, research, people and different types of alternative healing.

• Visualize- I recommend looking at an anatomy book, so you know where organs, muscles, tendons, ligaments, all the important stuff is located. It will make your visualization much more detailed and thus, I feel you can get a better idea. So let’s pick an area here. I’ll pick lower back, a lot of people have problems with their lower back. So close your eyes in a quiet room. You can lay or sit, whichever. Sometimes it can help to place your hands on your back so you can feel the tissue. Now focus, think about the muscles underneath. Also think about what you feel, does the area feel tight, is one side higher than another, is it warm or cold to the touch, if you move the area slightly does it feel odd? But you can’t just focus on physical feeling. You know what it feels when a muscle is tight or knotted or basically anything out of the normal. Then, imagine what different things and how the muscles would react. Consider your options of treatment. So, we’re back in my imagination, and my back feels tight, the muscles feel like they’ve been pulled tight and knowing my basic anatomy (you don’t need to know names, but it does help to know where things attach or what function they provide. So here’s the first things that pop into my head: stretching, heat, cold, alternating temperatures between heating pad and ice pack, hot bath, cold bath, pain relievers (ibuprofen and tiger balm/sports cream/bio-freeze/etc.), self-massage or consider a doctor. When I imagine these things, I imagine what will happen to each muscle and what it will feel like. For me, and my back hurts right now, I realize that stretching, not only my lower back, but my entire back, glutes, thighs, calves, IT band, and hip flexors. Anything that connects from my back muscles. But for you, during your visualization perhaps when you think of heat soaking into your muscles, even the visualization feels wonderful. So listen to that feeling and try it!

• Allow your feelings to happen: unless you’re in public where it would be frowned on, such as the mall, work, wherever. But let’s just say you’re at home since it makes it a lot easier, you can learn coping skills once you can understand what feeling is happening, because we don’t always know. You can feel so mad you’re going to explode, but really, you’ve been hurt and disappointed by someone and you don’t know how to express or even feel those feelings. There’s no wrong way to feel. Feelings happen as they do and there is no right and wrong. *Remember that when someone says you did something that made them feel (insert feeling here) you don’t get to say you didn't hurt them.* [endif] Give yourself permission to feel what you feel. You’re not wrong for having feelings so own them, do what you need too and move on. Why carry your baggage with you? But express them how you need to, even if you can’t understand it. I had permission from the co-owner of my school when I was having a rough time that if I needed to leave class to go walk outside to smoke, scream, cry, run, breathe, whatever. I’ve spent a lot of my life holding everything in to be strong and steady for everyone. When I gave myself permission to feel my feelings, things changed.

• Listen when your body is screaming- So many people’s body is screaming, begging, pleading even for you to listen but it’s just not happening. We ignore warning signs constantly. We live in this busy world so why make an inconvenience such as taking time to ourselves or even seeking medical attention if needed when you could be working on a new proposal at work, hitting the gym, spending time with friends, whatever you do to kill your time. Example: Within the past two or three months I started medicine. Two new ones, and I started to encounter pain. I couldn’t even lift my own arm up until about half way through the day. My rotator cuff was killing me so I went to the walk in doctor. They said tendonitis of my rotator cuff. I would need to see my regular doctor and most likely have to have physical therapy. Went to my regular doctor, had x-rays and an MRI done, both were completely clean. I googled my medications which were contraindicated (not to be taken together unless under close supervision). I stopped one and I kept taking the other. I thought I was okay. But really, I was having constant suicidal thoughts. I thought I was just so sad and depressed by my current situations that I no longer wanted to live. Each day got worse and worse. Finally I decided to go a day without my medicine, and I didn’t feel suicidal. I went a few more days and I’m back to the happy person I was, the person I want to be. My mind and body were screaming, this is a mistake! Stop taking these medications, they’re not working together correctly, STOP!!!! *Reminder- Do not stop medications prescribed by a doctor without consulting them first

• Get to know your body- Do you know what palpating is or how to do it? Palpating is the physical examination by pressure of the hand or fingers to the surface of the body especially to determine the condition (as of size or consistency) of an underlying part or organ. There’s a proper way to do this too. It’s recommended to use your fingertips, since they are most sensitive, so place fingertips on area, then using your other hand, place on top of your “mother” hand, the one feeling with fingertips, use your second hand to apply pressure to feel. Here’s a video that shows someone palpating another but you can do it to yourself. https://youtu.be/LfTb0MP7e-8 Take time to palpate areas of your body, especially the areas you have trouble with. You want to typically do this first when you’re not having a problem or flair up, you should have an idea of what you’re normal relaxed muscle tissue feels like. Then, when that area hurts, you can palpate again to locate what exactly hurts. Say you work at a computer all day typing and your arm or wrist hurts, you can palpate the area, find where it’s bothering you, then google something like “muscles in arm”. That allows you to monitor the area, what it’s been doing or how it feels and for how long, in case you wanted to see a doctor. Or you could google massage techniques to relax the muscles.

So those are currently my best tips without making this post turn into a huge, long post you don’t want to read. You have to listen to your body, and somethings learning to tune in the hardest part. Self-care is so incredibly important yet constantly overlooked by people. So I’ll give you a few quick self-care tips that your body will thank you for.

• Stay hydrated– I love soda and sometimes I forget to drink water until I started school and we needed water. The rooms got hot, you were getting massed constantly, and your body was healing or even getting sore from all the work. Emotions got out of whack, I’m sure more than half of us cried at least once so staying hydrated is important.

• Get enough rest- Our body works on taking care of us and heal us when we sleep. It also increase brain function. Getting enough sleep is essential to staying healthy.

• Stretch More often- I rarely see people stretch, I’m always stretching, haha. I also studied it so that can make a different. But think about cats, they sleep curled up all day, they wake up, get up and first thing they do is a huge stretch. Check out this cool YouTube video to show you why stretching is important. https://youtu.be/VCfclmGrjMk

• Take time for yourself- Humans are social creatures. We like to be with other people, but sometimes we need to take a step away and recharge. Take a day or evening to yourself. Do whatever makes you feel good. A hot bath, facial treatments (they’re for dudes too), reading, writing, exercise, dancing, anything that makes you feel good.

• Gut feelings matter- A lot of times if we’re doing something new or about to go somewhere we get this weird feeling we can’t explain. Like something bad is going to happen. Your gut instinct is passed down from generations, think all the way back to cavemen and on. Bigger predators, danger around lots of corners. The gut feeling is an instinct of danger that we may not comprehend but that exist. Vibe Higher, Lobeless