Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom (11 page)

In another of Dr. Langer’s studies, hotel room attendants in seven different hotels were divided into two groups. In the informed group, room attendants were made aware that their housekeeping duties satisfied the CDC’s recommendation for optimal exercise. The control group did not receive any information about their work constituting healthy exercise. All participants were told that the experimenters were studying ways to improve the health and happiness of women in the hotel workplace. So everyone was weighed and had their percentage of body fat calculated and their blood pressure taken. Four weeks later, in a follow-up questionnaire, the perception of the amount of exercise they were doing had increased among the informed group while remaining the same among the control group, even though the level of exercise had not changed for either group. But the informed group’s perception had changed, and that shift in perception showed remarkable improvements in health. After only one month, the group that was told that their job was good exercise had lost an average of two pounds each and had significantly reduced their percentage of body fat. The control group actually gained weight and fat over the same month. The informed group also showed significant drops in their blood pressure.
¹⁹
This is powerful evidence about how changing our minds changes our bodies.

Yale researcher Becca Levy, Ph.D., a former student of Langer’s, has also documented the profound effect that belief has on how we age. She found that older people with more positive self-perceptions of ag ing, measured up to twenty-three years earlier, lived seven and a half years longer than those with less positive self-perceptions of aging.

The most compelling part of this study is the fact that the increase in longevity for those with the more positive attitudes toward aging remained even after other factors were taken into account, including age, gender, socioeconomic status, loneliness, and overall health. The researchers used information from the 660 participants age fifty and older from a small town in Ohio who were part of the Ohio Longitudinal Study of Aging and Retirement. Dr. Levy and her coauthors compared mortality rates to responses made twenty-three years earlier by the participants (338 men and 322 women). The responses included agreeing or disagreeing with such statements as “As you get older, you are less useful.” These beliefs often operate subconsciously, without our awareness, often beginning in childhood. Commenting on their research, the study’s authors said, “The effect of more positive self-perceptions of aging on survival is greater than the physiological measures of low systolic blood pressure and cholesterol, each of which is associated with a longer lifespan of four years or less. It is also greater than the independent contributions of lower body mass index, no history of smoking, and a tendency to exercise; each of these factors has been found to contribute between one and three years of added life.”
²⁰

There isn’t a drug, exercise regimen, or vitamin that comes any where near the potential of our beliefs to add seven and a half years to our lives! And that’s why examining our beliefs critically is crucial to getting and staying healthy. Dr. Langer writes, “The regular and ‘irreversible’ cycles of aging that we witness in the later stages of human life may be a product of certain assumptions about how one is supposed to grow old.
If we didn’t feel compelled
to carry out these limiting mindsets, we might have a greater chance of
replacing years of decline with years of growth and purpose
” (emphasis mine).
²¹

If we have the power to reverse the effects of aging, what might be possible with health? The hopefulness that these data raise cannot be overestimated. It suggests that if we can see beyond our collective cul tural blindness, life holds possibilities that we’ve not imagined before. But before we get there, we must first acknowledge the dead ends that many of us keep falling into. Once we
see
the patterns we’ve been mindlessly repeating, we can create alternative routes.

HEALING VERSUS CURING

Freedom and fate embrace each other to form meaning; and given
meaning, fate—with its eyes, hitherto severe, suddenly full of
light—looks like grace itself.

—Martin Buber

There is a difference between healing and curing. Healing is a natural process and
within
the power of everyone. Curing, which is what doctors are called upon to do, usually consists of an
external
treatment; medication or surgery is used to mask or eliminate symptoms.
This external treatment
doesn’t necessarily address the factors that contributed to the symptoms in
the first place.
Healing goes deeper than curing and must always come from within. It addresses the imbalance that under lies the symptoms. Healing brings together the often hidden aspects of a person’s life as they relate to her illness. Healing is different from curing, though curing and the restoration of physical function may accompany healing. One can be healed completely and go on to die of her illness. This is a key understanding that is often missing from treatises on holistic medicine: Healing and death are not mutually exclusive. As a physician, I’ve been trained to improve and preserve life. But sometimes we need to let go of that training and accept death as a natural part of a process that is much bigger and more mysterious than we realize. Patricia Reis, who worked with many of my patients’ dreams and body symptoms, put it this way: “The bigger meaning of healing is a ‘wholeing,’ a filling out of the missing pieces of a person’s life. Sometimes this may even mean facing death in a more fully realized way. Certainly it is an opportunity to come more deeply and fully into life.”

Although our entire bodies are affected by our thoughts and emo tions and their various parts talk to one another, each individual’s body language is unique.
No matter what has happened in her life, a woman has the power to
change what that experience means to her and thus change her experience,
both emotionally and physically. Therein lies her healing.
There are no simple formulas for deciphering the message behind a symptom, and only the patient herself can ultimately know what the message is about. Sometimes a woman’s body, through chronic vaginitis, asks her to leave a relationship. Sometimes headaches that occur premenstrually are a sign that she needs to give up caffeine. In other women, these symptoms may be related to something entirely different. It is up to each woman to “sit with” her symptoms in a completely receptive, nonjudgmental way so that she can begin to appreciate the unique language of her body.

We don’t yet understand completely why it is that one woman who has been abandoned by her husband, for example, will seem to deteriorate emotionally, mentally, and physically, blaming this particular trauma for a lifetime of woes, while another woman with a similar background will recover fully and live a productive life. Some people can name an initially painful and traumatic circumstance as the stimu lus from which major personal growth later arose. Childhood abuse, incest, loss of a parent, and other traumas are not absolutely linked in a cause-and-effect way with subsequent distress in adulthood. The effect of trauma on our physical, mental, and emotional bodies is determined largely by
how we interpret the event and give it meaning
.

Emotional factors are usually involved in common gynecological problems, along with diet, behavior, and heredity. I have found that most women with persistent genital warts, herpes, or ovarian cysts have experienced or are continuing to experience emotional and psychological stress or unrest. In these cases, a history of sexual abuse, abortions that haven’t been resolved emotionally, or some conflict involving relationships or creativity is almost always present. These con flicts live in the body’s vibrational field until they’re resolved—they are healing opportunities simply waiting for our attention.

One of my ob-gyn colleagues, Maude Guerin, M.D., illustrates this beautifully by using the example of a woman named Joan who had severe endometriosis and pelvic pain. Dr. Guerin “cured” Joan with a total abdominal hysterectomy and removal of both ovaries and fallopian tubes—a standard treatment for her problem. Following surgery, however, Joan developed back pain, depression, and incapacitating hot flashes, requiring many times the regular dose of hormones. Although her pelvic pain had been “cured,” in many ways she was no better off than she had been before. Instead of being healed, she had simply traded one group of symptoms for another. The surgical removal of her uterus and ovaries had not resolved the emotional conflicts in her body’s vibrational field that were the root cause of her problem.

Dr. Guerin discovered that Joan had been sexually abused at the age of six, had lived through the death of her sister at the age of sixteen, and had turned to workaholism to avoid her feelings. Despite these major traumas in her life, she had never been able to cry. Dr. Guerin writes, “This patient has been a wonderful teacher for me. Although I never discounted the concept that thoughts and feelings in fluence physical health, I had always perceived that influence to be rel ative. This patient taught me that consideration of the mind-body link is obligatory in the case of every patient, no matter how cut-and-dried their course seems to be.

“I certainly felt that I had cured this woman, and was proud of my self at her six-week checkup. It took the two of us years to learn that although she had been ‘cured’ by surgery, she was not healed by it.

“Looking back on her first visit with me, which I remember vividly, and her subsequent course, there were many, many clues to a much larger picture that I was unable to see at the time. On her initial office visit, she was sitting on the examination table while still wearing her panty hose. Not only did she have trouble getting undressed for the exam, she also had a great deal of difficulty even getting her body in the examination position. Once she was there, I found that placing the speculum in her vagina was nearly impossible because of her extreme anxiety and muscle tension. Since then my patients have continued to help me see the big picture, for each of them. I know that you can ‘cure’ many patients without acknowledging the mind-body link, but I also know that you will ‘heal’ very few.”
²²

One of my own patients had an abnormal Pap smear. She already knew that simply removing the abnormal cells from her cervix (“cur ing”) would not address the underlying energy imbalance in her body that was at the root of the abnormality. She began working in her jour nal every morning with the intention of affirming her inherent ability to be whole and healthy. At the same time, she became receptive to what was necessary for her healing. She meditated on what this symptom was trying to teach her so that she could release any patterns that no longer served her. After she had been engaged in this inner healing work for several weeks, she uncovered a key belief that she felt was im portant to her. This belief was that the abnormal cervical cells were a punishment for her sexuality. Having discovered and named this belief, she proceeded to schedule standard medical therapy so that her healing and her curing would be in partnership. On her way to the ap pointment to have laser treatment for this condition, she experienced a wave of forgiveness toward herself and her sexuality that moved her to tears. She even felt a shift take place in her body. When she was examined at the office, all traces of the abnormality had gone, and she didn’t require the surgery. She is very grateful for the physical cure, as well as the psychological and emotional healing that took place.

In this society, when a physician acknowledges a woman’s innate healing ability, she or he often seems to be saying that the patient
caused
her illness to begin with. But our illnesses aren’t based on simple cause and effect. It is simplistic and potentially harmful to believe that we consciously and intentionally create illness or any other painful life circumstance. Our illnesses often exist to get our attention and get us back on track. Feeling that we are to blame keeps us stuck and unable to move forward in our healing. The part of us that “creates an illness” is not a conscious part of us, but it can be affected by our consciousness once we put our healing process to work. When it comes to taking responsibility, there is a balance. We must learn to take responsibility for the things we caused or are perpetuating. On the other hand, it is equally important to let go of responsibility for those things that have nothing to do with us.

Many physicians, however, equate taking responsibility for illness with being to blame for it. Our culture in general assumes that taking responsibility means you are to blame. At the opposite extreme, other physicians feel that since their patients didn’t cause their disease, they should not be overly involved in their own treatment. It is important that you have a doctor or health practitioner whose beliefs can reinforce your healing. Recent studies have shown that the expectations that physicians have about their patients’ healing potential are picked up consciously and unconsciously by their patients and do affect their ability to get well. Of course all relationships, including those with our doc tors, are two-way streets. As Phil McGraw, Ph.D., says, “We teach people how to treat us.” When women become more empowered and able to ask for what they need, they find that they can evoke the healer that lives within the hearts of most doctors, whether conventional or alternative. And they get better care.

All relationships begin with how we treat ourselves. We can begin to heal our lives at the deepest levels when we begin to value our bodies and honor their messages instead of feeling victimized by them. Trusting the wisdom of the body is a leap of faith in a culture that fails to acknowledge how intimately the mind and body are connected. By
wisdom of the body
I mean that we must learn to trust that the symptoms in the body are often the only way that the soul can get our attention. Covering up our symptoms with external “cures” prevents us from healing the parts of our lives that need attention and change.