your illness is a portal of transformation :: PART I
everything your body does is as natural as birth
Dear friends of homeopathy,
How do you view stress?
We hear over and over again, that stress is a major factor, even a cause of illness and disease.
So let me ask you another question: how do you view illness and disease?
For most of us, the ideas of stress and illness have a negative connotation. We think of stress as something we need to manage, even eliminate. We think of illness and disease as processes to be avoided at all costs.
The war on cancer.
The eradication of disease.
Fighting a cold.
But what if some amount of stress were essential? What if some amount of illness were healthy?
Most of us here would agree that birth is a natural process, in most cases requiring minimal intervention. Not that emergencies don’t occur — but that for most healthy women, the stress of birth is a healthy, natural stress.
We could say the same thing about illness.
We could say that birth and illness, from the perspective of the organism, are essentially the same thing.
The only difference is the judgment we place on them, the lens we see them through.
Some people do see birth as a kind of pathology. That is not what I mean, when I say that birth and illness are essentially the same thing.
When I say birth and illness are essentially the same thing, I don’t mean that birth is always a medical emergency requiring medical attention — which is essentially the medical model of birth so many of us have tried to avoid.
I mean the converse — that illness, like birth, is rarely a pathological process requiring medical attention. I mean that most of the time, illness requires only a loving, supportive and informed container in order for the natural processes of the organism to heal it.
From a model of malfunction to a model of empowerment
But believe me, this isn’t how I always viewed illness. Far from it. This viewpoint is the result of coming full circle from a childhood inside the medical model of disease, when I was *begging* my parents to take me to someone who could medicate me out of my very uncomfortable seasonal allergies and chronic sinus infections.
I believed that illness was an expression of a malfunction of the body, and if I could just find the right doctor and treatment, we could stop the malfunctioning.
Instead, I got enough medication that the allergies went away, and an autoimmune disorder developed in its place. No one put that together at the time. I didn’t put it together at the time. It took me 10 years of alternative treatments, and starting to study homeopathic principles, to realize that, most likely, the suppression of my allergies caused the development of my autoimmunity.
I started to explore alternative treatments such as acupuncture in my 20s, but I didn’t really change my attitude about disease. I still saw it as something that was working against me, something that was in my way.
I was applying the the same principles, even though I was taking a different tactic.
When we are so immersed in a particular way of doing and seeing things, it can take awhile to even see that there is another way.
I didn’t really start to change my perspective around health and healing until I got pregnant for the first time.
I knew I wanted a natural birth, and after doing some research, I decided the best chance of avoiding interventions was to plan a home birth. So I found a loving, supportive and well-educated midwife, and spent the pregnancy meditating, doing yoga, and talking to myself and my baby about what I wanted.
And guess what? I had a beautiful birth. I was challenged in ways I didn’t even know I could be challenged. And if I had been in a hospital, and someone had offered me pain relief, I would have found it really hard to say no. The fact that I was able to dig inside and persevere — mentally, emotionally, and physically — through the process shifted my trust in myself. I couldn’t believe what was possible, what my body was capable of. I felt powerful and empowered.
Considering my history of chronic infection, allergies, and autoimmunity, a history of fighting with my body, that was a major revelation.
But that is not the end of the story.
Trusting our bodies
The next day, when the midwife came back to check on me, she said she was grateful that my birth had gone so well, because the birth right before mine had ended in a hemorrhage and an ambulance ride to the hospital. That woman was super healthy, ran marathons, was also educated and prepared, mentally, emotionally and physically.
And her birth WAS an emergency that needed medical attention.
So this isn’t about how birth is never risky, or about how illness is never an emergency.
It’s also not about how, if we just have the right attitude and preparation, we can control every outcome of every scenario.
I want to make that clear.
This is about a process of developing more and more trust in the healing capacity of our bodies, and the processes of our bodies, and at the same time sitting with the often mysterious, unpredictable way that those processes can sometimes veer into emergencies requiring medical intervention.
Just because sometimes we need medical intervention when we are pregnant or birthing (or ill), doesn’t mean that every time we are pregnant or birthing (or ill), that we will.
We can trust ourselves — and accept that sometimes, things go awry — even terribly awry. We can trust ourselves because even though sometimes things go awry, mostly, they don’t.
What is illness?
In the process of preparing myself for a natural birth, I heard a perspective on birth that helped me relax my fear: many, many processes take place in the body everyday, without the support of a medical team: digestion, elimination and respiration for instance.
And to take this a step further, these processes are sometimes uncomfortable. Sometimes, we get what we call “sick." We get nauseous, and even vomit. Our intestines cramp up. We develop a cough.
What if these, like the natural variations of the birth process, are just natural variations of digestion, elimination and respiration? What if these processes are highly evolved mechanisms for dealing with specific challenges — just like birth is the highly evolved mechanism for dealing with the challenge of transferring a baby from life inside of the mother’s body, to life outside of the mother’s body?
Of course, sometimes the challenges faced by our organism elicit responses that become dangerous enough to warrant medical attention.
But that is not a given.
Illness is an imbalance, just like getting thirsty, or overheating, or exercising to the point that your muscles are sore the next day. And in an otherwise healthy organism, most imbalances will correct themselves with the proper support, which may include but is not limited to: proper nutrition and hydration; rest, care and loving attention; and the guidance and reassurance of an educated professional.
When we shift into this viewpoint of illness as a natural process, we are able to relax. We reduce fear, and stress.
In birth, the less fear and stress, the more likely we will be able to birth without interventions.
It’s the same with illness. The less fear and stress we bring to the table, the more energy our organisms have to deal with the stress of the illness. We conserve our energy for the task at hand, rather than squandering it on fear. We are less likely to intervene out of fear with unnecessary, and often counterproductive, measures — and at the same time, more likely to know when it is time to seek medical attention.
We can discern.
When we release our fear, we are able to come into the present moment — and that is the highest level of health.
Shifting our perspective to one of partnership with and acceptance of our illness, in and of itself, is a healing.
Next week, we’ll take this a step further — and talk about how this idea of illness as a natural process can serve as an invitation to transformation.
Until then…let me know — what do you think? How do you view stress, illness and disease?
Love,
Chelsea
PS — Would you do me a favor? If you made it this far, (and you liked what you read), would you click the little “like” heart below? That will help me reach more people on Substack — and also, it just feels good to know you are there :-) THANK YOU for being here with me.
PPS — my online class, Homeopathy for Cold and Flu, is open for registration! We start next week.
It’s a series of videos which you can watch at your leisure, then we’ll have a live Q + A on February 17.
The class has three parts: fundamentals of homeopathy, how to use homeopathy for cold and flu, and descriptions of 10 remedies. You can read more about it, and watch two of the remedy videos here to get a sense of what the class will be like.
Thank you for sharing your journey with developing a deeper understanding of health and illness. Totally agree with your conclusions!
Love your beautiful words about birth! I just had my baby this week - an unmedicated birth at a birthing center. I feel that shift inside myself!