The Body Doesn't Lie (27 page)

For the first time in sixteen years, Melissa was looking around for more entertaining and rewarding things to do. Her day-to-day existence just wasn’t as fun anymore. One thing on her often-forgotten list: Finally get the checkup, Pap smear, bone-density scan, and vitamin D level test she’d been putting off for . . . yikes, looks like it’d been a few years.

Her doctor visit was fine; her gynecologist visit, fine. Even her mammogram visit was quick and uneventful. “Geez, why didn’t I do this a year or more ago?” she thought. Took much less energy than worrying about it. But when she received a voice-mail the next day, asking her to come back to the breast imaging center for a second scan, she got a little nervous.

That night, she couldn’t sleep. All she could think was, “Why did I wait so long? What if I have cancer? How could I have been so stupid?” When she got up the next morning, she froze a smile on her face and went through the motions. When she got to the imaging center, a technician ushered her in for the second scan. “Any ideas?” Melissa asked brightly. No, the technician said; she couldn’t say anything—the doctor would call her later.

The next three weeks passed in a blur. The calls went from bad to worse:

“There seems to be a small spot, nothing serious. We’ll do a needle biopsy.”

“We found something, but we can get it out. It’ll be a really fast procedure: You won’t even realize it’s happening.”

“We took a few of the nodes, just to make sure. We’ll run the tests and let you know what’s next.”

After that last call, Melissa found herself sleepwalking through her day. The kids knew what was going on, and even though they were scared, they babied her the way she’d nurtured them for years. Her husband had flown back into town for the surgery but was expected in Hong Kong for an international conference right afterward.
I can handle it. Don’t worry—just go; I’ll be fine.
So he went.

In the couple of days it took to get the node results back, Melissa had a lot of time to herself. She took out the Positive Feedback packet she’d started a few months earlier but never completed. As she lay in bed with ice packs under her arm, she filled out her Body Family Tree and her Body Timeline, and she reviewed a few Time Audits she’d filled out months before. She was relieved to see in black and white that she was the only one in her family who’d had breast cancer—so hers was less likely to be the most dangerous kind. She kicked herself a little when the Body Timeline pinpointed the exact moment she’d given up exercising: eight years beforehand, with the birth of her youngest by Caesarean section. Her daily walk ritual had been interrupted, and she’d never gotten it back on track.

But it was the Time Audit that gave her the most pause. For each of the three days she’d charted, there was not a
single hour
for herself. She saw very clearly that her entire life was absorbed by activities for other people. Laundry, cooking, shopping, cleaning. Soccer and swim practice. School library, PTA. Entertaining work guests, in-laws. Nowhere in any of those three days were the words, “Worked on art project” or “Researched courses” or even “Had dinner out with Rob.” Lying alone in her bed, surgery wounds aching, Melissa started to cry. Somewhere along the way, she’d lost herself.

Melissa spent a sleepless night wondering what came next for her. She made a little deal with God: If you get me through this, I’m going to pull myself together.

When she woke up in the morning, she realized that she could use the Release program to help her recover from surgery. The timing was perfect, as the lighter meals worked well with her body’s healing processes to help nudge her back into Positive Feedback. Instead of diverting energy to digest heavy meals, her system could send the nutrients from the program’s health-supportive and anti-inflammatory foods straight to her wounds.

When she started feeling better, a process that was jump-started by an all-clear call from the doctor, Melissa resisted the temptation to jump out of bed and get right back into her demanding schedule. She forced herself to get more than eight hours of sleep a night, drank her lemon water, and did a modified Morning Glory routine, making sure not to get any water on her wounds, focusing instead on her meditations and visualizations. And she sat down to do Release the Time-Wasters on Your Time Audit and other Release exercises.

First, looking at all the pictures of happy children and the pieces of kid art she’d lovingly hung around the house, she forgave herself for “abandoning” her dreams for sixteen years—she had a pretty darn good excuse, after all—and started the process of letting go of any regrets about time she’d missed. She knew that this would be an ongoing process, but with her newfound gratitude—no cancer!—she was more excited than regretful. Then she set out a clear plan in her revised Time Audit: She was going to spend three hours this week researching the best school where she could finish her law degree.

When I saw her for the first time since her breast surgery—this was about two months later—she’d gotten a formal clean bill of health, and she’d already signed up to take the LSAT for entry into law school. She’d lost about ten pounds and had grown her hair out, gotten it straightened and colored—she looked ten years younger. While originally she’d considered a corporate law program, when Melissa did the Radiant Deep Dive (more on this later), she realized that her passion was immigration—she wanted to help people become American citizens. Her parents had come to the States in the 1960s and had struggled for years with understanding the system. She wanted to ensure that more low-income families like her own would have the chance to fulfill their dreams, just as she and her parents had.

“Vicky, I don’t know how to describe it,” she gushed. “I feel alive for the first time in a long, long while.” Melissa had faced the worst of her pain, both emotionally and physically, and had come out the other side with a renewed understanding of her purpose, her passion. She loved her husband and her kids—but she was ready for more. And now she stood before me, absolutely radiant with excitement for her next phase.

When people get done with an in-person, hands-on treatment with me, using cupping, acupuncture, cranial sacral therapy, or some kind of deep tissue or spinal manipulation, many say something like, “Wow, Vicky—I feel alive. I feel like my whole body is glowing.” They report later that friends told them, “It’s like you’re lit from within.” And they
do
have a whole-body glow—their cheeks are rosier, their skin is smoother, their eyes are clearer, their hair is shinier. The Positive Feedback program taps into those same effects, and the results are just as visible. By the end of the program’s three weeks, most people are getting the same kind of compliments. There’s a difference, though: When you stimulate radiant effects, the results last longer and have the potential to change the course of your life.

Let’s do a quick scan of where we are. You’ve been doing the Morning Glory ritual for two weeks, and it shows. You’ve released most of the toxins in your food. You’ve begun to let go of the stresses and distractions in your life and have started the work of refocusing on positive influences. As you’ve repeated this Release process over many days, you’ve gradually neutralized your body’s stress response so that you feel less pain. Perhaps it’s already become easier and more automatic to stay relaxed rather than get worried and anxious. While progressively toning the parasympathetic nervous system and the Adaptive Response, the Positive Feedback program has also been strengthening your resolve to maintain all the powerful, life-lengthening, beauty-enhancing changes in your eating, exercise, and overall wellness regimen.

As we’ve seen, the primary physical mechanism of Negative Feedback is inflammation. You’ve been doing everything you can to reverse inflammation and thus halt negativity’s progression. Through the first two stages of the Positive Feedback program, you’ve put the brakes on the negative spiral, halting the inflammation that’s causing your pain and giving your sympathetic nervous system a break. Your endocrine system has stopped churning out stress hormones that pad your belly and upper back with toxic fat. You’re starting to experience the Positive Feedback cascade, and those endorphins and other mood-enhancing neurochemicals are restoring your body’s healthiest settings.

Strengthening the parasympathetic system in this way not only allows you to release inflammation and anxiety—it also makes it easier for your brain to make good choices. Freed from the tyranny of the amygdala’s hot temper, your brain’s cool planning center, the prefrontal cortex, can help you do effective long-range planning. As you move into week 3: Radiate, your strengthened prefrontal cortex will help you summon even greater willpower to continue releasing harmful foods and toxic habits as well as help you cast your mind into the future, to see what comes next.

When you dive in and embrace the full scope of the Positive Feedback program and tap into your innate Adaptive Response, the results can be almost like a dream: The pounds fall off. Pain you’ve had for years resolves itself. You’re ready to let go of traumas that you may have been carrying around for most of your life—and your body is ready and all too happy to let them go as well.

In the Radiate stage, you’ll discover the strength and the clarity to live your life the way you’ve always hoped you could. You’ll eat a diet composed entirely of anti-inflammatory foods, foods designed by nature to soothe inflamed tissues, foods so delicious you’ll no longer be tempted by sugar or refined grains. Now that your Adaptive Response is once again fully engaged, and your diet is actively fighting inflammation, you can take your exercise to the next level, with a physical challenge that connects to your deeper purpose. This movement will rid you of any remaining accumulated pain and tension as well as help you firm your body and shed any excess pounds. You have done the work of letting go and preparing your body for an entirely new phase of strength!

Your entire body will soon radiate with health. You will look and feel the way you were born to be, the way you
deserve
to be.

The Radiate element is not only the culminating part of the Positive Feedback program, it’s the active state that you will live in now that you’ve listened and responded to your pain. By radiating, you show the world who you are and what makes you alive and glorious. You become a bright and shining sun in your own world, radiating rays of powerful light all around you. That golden-white light that you welcome in during your meditation will now start to glow from within.

Let’s see how you can help that inner beauty you’ve released radiate out to the world.

It’s time to turn your focus outward. You’ve done a lot of introspection in the Reflect stage, and a lot of self-focused cleansing in Release. Now it’s time to find your purpose and your passion, the driving force that will ground you and keep you happily in Positive Feedback for years to come.

Many of my patients say, “I have a job—
that’s
my purpose.” But is it? Are you truly satisfied and happy in your work, whether that’s in your home or at a business? Or have you defaulted into a victim role, becoming a slave to your child or your boss? If you stay in that imbalanced place, it’s only a matter of time before you slide back into the negative. Radiate work is about finding your anchor, your compass, the touchstone that will root you firmly in Positive Feedback no matter what life throws at you.

Discovering your purpose, your passion, your grounding is essential work—maybe even your primary task as a human being. Without this anchor, it’s all too easy to lose yourself in your kids, partner, job, addictions—and slip back into the grip of your pain. So let’s create a space for purpose that’s constantly renewed with positive energy.

As we did in the Release week, we’ll begin Radiate structure work by adding an additional element to your Morning Glory ritual. My hope is that by this time in your program, that ritual is set in stone in your daily schedule. Have you begun to understand what I mean about Morning Glory being a foundation to your life? Does the ritual help you orient yourself toward self-care and the Reflect * Release * Radiate process every morning? It should feel like a daily reset, a way to get in touch with yourself and get grounded before you go out into the world.

Since you began the Morning Glory ritual in the Reflect week, you’ve been ending your daily shower with a cold-water rinse. Now I’d like you to be even more deliberate about the use of hot and cold.
Alternating
hot and cold water stimulates your blood vessels to expand and contract, boosting your circulation. The changing temperature, along with the pressure of the water, triggers the same effect in your lymphatic system, which has no pump and thus relies on this type of manual stimulation to keep things moving.

After you’ve completed your hair washing/conditioning and body wash, turn the water as hot as you can stand it, making sure to hit every part of your head and body. Then turn the cold as cold as it gets. (Don’t worry: No matter how cold that water is, it can’t hurt you.) Your lungs will expand to take in a deep breath to deal with the shock of the water, increasing your oxygen supply. The cold water will also stimulate the locus coeruleus, the so-called blue spot in the brain, an area known for releasing noradrenaline, a natural antidepressant. The noradrenaline released from the blue spot also suppresses neuroinflammation found in Alzheimer’s,
¹
and it’s possible this mechanism may also be related to the glymphatic brain-cleansing system at work during sleep.
²

Radiate-Week Morning Glory Ritual at a Glance

Keep the cold on as long as you can; then switch it back to hot—again, as hot and as long as you can stand it. Do three to five full cycles of hot and cold water, each about thirty seconds long. Finish with a bracing, full-body cold drench. Studies have shown that regular cold-water bathing tones the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems and stimulates the Adaptive Response, ultimately
decreasing
levels of stress hormones and inflammatory cytokines.
³
Cold water also stimulates the production of so-called brown fat cells, the “good” fat that increases our base metabolic rate, so we burn more calories all the time and stay leaner.