Self Nurturing: Holistic Health

I am a firm believer in taking care of myself using everything available to do so.  I also confess to not using all those tools to the best of my ability.  I am a self-confessed stubborn, obstinate, procrastinating, pride-filled human being.  There are times when I take the “I can fix it in my time and in my way” mantra to the edge of insanity!

However, I do not live like that most of the time – thank God.  With a great deal of help and support from too many people to be able to name individually (although some of them were mentioned in my posting Mentors-  Along the Path of Life) , I have found many ways and many tools to help myself.  I have also come to understand that my schedule does not always align with God’s schedule, or the universe’s schedule, or friend’s or doctor’s schedules!  And along the way I have acquired a little patience and a little humility and learned to live in joy.

I know that I have mentioned in previous postings that I use massage and Reiki as part of my preventive health measures.  Although some massage some of the time specifically helps any physical challenges that I may be facing, massage can always help, as long as I am completely open to it, my mental, emotional and spiritual well-being too.  Reiki, I believe, works in the opposite way.  I find that Reiki always brings me comfort, healing, and alignment on the emotional, spiritual, and mental levels and can also help on the physical plain.  In my personal opinion Reiki is “God medicine”.

There are many other forms of alternative therapy and also different lifestyles that can be used to better our general health and well-being.  Here I mention just a couple because they are also my own “weak areas” (read: areas in which I procrastinate or am pridefully stubborn!).  We read frequently that we are what we eat, which means that in some way I eat too much fat/wrong carbohydrate content because I am about fifty pounds overweight:-(.

Please understand (and here come a lot of excuses masquerading as reasons, I’m sure!) that I do not “overeat” in the generally recognized fashion.  I do not attack all-you-can-eat buffet lines going back as many times as possible because it’s a “good deal” – although I have done that in the past.  I do not eat “junk” food: I may have one or two hamburgers a year and perhaps one hotdog a year at the church picnic. 

I do not eat chips frequently; I’ll have a handful with salsa if we happen to eat out at a Mexican restaurant.  My pantry is not full of Twinkies, or Ho-Ho’s, or chocolate chip cookies, or Oreos.  However, I do enjoy a good dessert when we go to a restaurant that offers them, and I will have a chocolate binge once in a while that usually lasts for about a week to ten days.  All my meals are made from scratch using fresh products – no frozen or canned or packaged stuff.

But what I have to admit to is that sometimes I could eat less than I do.  I could put half of what I eat on my plate and still be feeding my body enough.  I just don’t want to if it’s something that I really like.  I should stop eating bread and pasta and rice – but I love it too much, and so for right now I’m not willing to give those items up.

Along with the food lifestyle, and hand-in-hand with it really, is the exercise thing.  Do you know what my biggest excuse is in this area?  I don’t want to give up a whole hour exercising(even if it is broken down into small bite-size ten minute segments during the day!) when I have so much else to do.  And right now, this very minute as I’m writing that, I am feeling just the teenziest, weenziest bit guilty because didn’t I just write a posting (Reading Or Writing- It’s Still About Words) in which I confessed to spending all my time reading for about ten days straight?

So here I am, this imperfect human being making my best effort along life’s path.  But what brought this whole subject up in the first place is that right now I have an irritating tickle cough.  It came on some time over the weekend and was preceded by a couple of days of not feeling quite right.  I immediately started treating myself with Silver Shield, double dosing my Vitamin C, and taking Oscillococcinum (don’t feel bad – I can’t pronounce it either!), a homeopathic product made by Boiron.  The thing is it hasn’t blossomed into flu nor have I had fever or feel sick.

I do not like putting chemical medications in my body unless I absolutely, life-or-death have to.  I choose to take many different supplements and a whole food grain to support my health system.  I haven’t had flu or a really bad throat in a few years and I’m sure that’s because I preventatively take care of my health.  In fact, any real health issues that exist in me today (high blood pressure, cholesterol, reflux) could all be taken care of if I ate differently and exercised more!!

I also go to a  Board Certified Holistic doctor once every three months because I know that she takes into consideration my whole being (mental, emotional and spiritual as well as the physical) when she treats me.  There is also a level of compassion in my sessions with her that I do not experience with a “traditional” doctor.  If I could afford it I would go once a month but unfortunately insurance doesn’t cover my visits with her so that’s out-of-pocket expense for me.  But I care enough about myself to sacrifice in other areas to afford her.

Maybe one day we will be offered the freedom, under whatever health care we have, to choose holistic health care along side traditional health care.  Actually traditional health care through the ages used to be more holistically based until the last century or so.  And of course today, fuelled by greed and power, most of the big pharmaceutical companies will probably fight tooth and nail against that.