Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom (3 page)

As I have developed more sensitivity to these patterns of health and illness, I have come to the conclusion that without a commitment to looking at all aspects of our lives and accessing our power to change them, improving habits and diet alone is not enough to effect a permanent cure for conditions that have been present for a long time. I’ve worked with many women whose illnesses could not be ascribed simply to what they eat and could not be cured solely through medication or surgery. Following a special diet or running three miles a day won’t make a woman feel well if her health is being adversely influenced by a subconscious belief that she isn’t good enough, or that she is the wrong gender, or that it’s a woman’s lot in life to suffer. If she has experienced incest and hasn’t allowed herself to feel the emotions that are often associated with that history, or if she was unwanted or abused as a child, then no prescription drugs exist that will heal that wound and the physical aftereffects that often result.

Much of the degradation of the feminine, however, is far more subtle and pervasive than outright abuse. Examples include being made to feel uncomfortable breast-feeding your baby in public, being afraid to look and feel sensual for fear that you will attract unwanted attention (and then be blamed for it), and feeling the need to hide any evidence of your menstrual period and its effects. This is why feminist writer Adrienne Rich wrote, “I know of no woman . . . for whom the body is not a fundamental problem.” Having internalized our bodies as a problem is at the heart of women’s health. Changing our perception of this, one woman at a time, is, therefore, at the heart of the healing process. Still, trying dietary changes and alternatives to drugs and surgery for problems whose origins begin with our perceptions is often a very powerful, nontoxic, and health-enhancing first step—a step that opens us up to new, more holistic ways of addressing our symptoms. The secret to thriving is the knowledge that we are never simply victims of our bodies. It’s very reassuring to know that we all have within us the ability to heal from anything and go on to live joy-filled lives.

This new edition of
Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom
is designed to help you not only stay healthy but also thrive mentally, emotionally, and spiritually as well as physically. I want you to know that it is pleasure, not pain, that is your birthright. When we finally make the connection between our thoughts, our beliefs, and our physical health and life circumstances, we find that we are in the driver’s seat of our lives and can make profound changes. Nothing is more exhilarating or empowering. Stories of such healings and awakenings are found throughout this book.

One of my readers once wrote, “
Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom
is a love letter to women and their bodies.” I love that. And it’s true. As you read this new edition, please know that it is designed to help you fall in love with your own body and to awaken to its divine processes. Let it help you become the physical embodiment of your soul so that you discover the woman you were always meant to be. Let it help you find the best possible solutions for your individual situation. But above all, let it fill you with the courage necessary to make radical and life-giving changes in your mind and body that will allow you to flourish on all levels. And remember, the most fundamental and radical of these changes is learning how to love and accept your precious body right now. It is, after all, the temple that houses your soul. This is the path not only for our individual healing but for the healing of the planet and humankind as well.

Part One

From External Control to
Inner Guidance

1
The Patriarchal Myth:
The Origin of the
Mind/Body/Emotion Split

The world we have created is a product of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.

—Albert Einstein

Belief becomes biology.

—Norman Cousins

C
onsciousness creates the body, pure and simple. Consciousness isn’t just in the head. It is far more vast than our brains and bodies and exists beyond time and space. On a practical day-to-day level, however, our consciousness is the part of us that chooses and directs our thoughts. Thoughts that are uplifting, nurturing, and loving create healthy biochemistry and healthy cells, while thoughts that are destructive to self or others do just the opposite. We are born with innate love and acceptance of our bodies. Over time, our bodies and states of health are molded by the habitual thoughts and beliefs that guide our behavior, thoughts and beliefs usually laid down in childhood. To improve our lives and our health and truly flourish, we must acknowledge the seamless unity between our beliefs, behaviors, and physical bodies. Then we must critically examine, name, and change any health-eroding beliefs and assumptions that we have unconsciously inherited and internalized from our parents and our culture. We must be willing to transcend what Gay Hendricks, Ph.D., calls our upper limits.

OUR CULTURAL INHERITANCE

Most modern civilizations are characterized by the belief that the intellect is superior to emotions, the mind and spirit are superior to and entirely separate from the body, and masculinity is superior to femininity. The work of cultural anthropologists and historians such as Riane Eisler, Ph.D., and archeologist Marija Gimbutas, Ph.D., have documented that our current worldview is only about five thousand years old. Before that, peaceful societies flourished for thousands of years. In these societies, women held high positions, art flourished, and religion included the worship of the Goddess.
¹

Over time, however, societies and the gods they worshiped changed. Dominator tribes in which authority was vested in men and fathers emerged. These societies were characterized by violence, warfare, and the subjugation of the masses by a relative few who were considered “chosen.” Native American writer and anthropologist Jamake Highwater says, “All human beliefs and activities spring from an underlying mythology.” Given this, it is easy to make the connection that if our culture over the last five thousand years has been “ruled by a punishing authoritarian father,” then our views of our female bodies and even our medical system have also followed male-oriented rules.
²
Yet patriarchy is only one of many systems of social organization.

I have been in the delivery room countless times, for example, when a female baby was born and the woman who had just given birth looked up at her husband and said, “Honey, I’m sorry”—apologizing because the baby was not a son. The self-rejection of the mother herself, apologizing for the product of her own nine-month gestation period, labor, and delivery, was staggering to experience. Yet when my own second daughter was born, I was shocked to hear those very words of apology to my husband come right up into my brain from the collective unconscious of the human race. I never said them out loud, and yet they were there in my head—completely unbidden. I realized then how old and ingrained is this rejection of the female by men and women alike. I also know that in the past four decades, our worldview has been rapidly changing, in large part because of the feminist, civil rights, and gay rights movements—and also because the Internet has decentralized and globalized communication. Individually and collectively, we are waking up to the ways in which we have been participating in and thus perpetuating our dominator culture.

Still, far too often girls are given the message that their bodies, their lives, and their femaleness must be apologized for. Have you noticed how often women apologize? I was walking down the street a while back when a man ran into a woman who was walking by, causing her to drop a package.
She
apologized profusely. Somewhere deep inside many of us is an apology for our very existence. As Anne Wilson Schaef writes, “The original sin of being born female is not redeemable by works.”
³
No matter how many degrees you get in college, no matter how many awards you earn, many women are left feeling that they can never measure up. If we must apologize for our very existence from the day we are born, we can assume that our society’s medical system will deny us the wisdom of our “second-class” bodies. In essence, patriarchy blares out the message that women’s bodies are inferior and must be controlled.

Our culture habitually denies the insidiousness and pervasiveness of sex-related issues. I first learned in my medical practice that abuse against women (and the feminine aspects of men, for that matter) is epidemic, whether subtle or overt. And I saw how abuse sets the stage for illness in our female bodies. At that time, back in the 1980s, when I suggested to my colleagues that chronic pelvic pain, for example, was associated with a history of sexual abuse, they often guffawed. One even said to me, “Well, maybe your patients have that history. I only see normal women.” I soon came to realize that the women I was seeing were no different from those anywhere else—and they were perfectly “normal.” Consider the following: More than 40 percent of women in the United States have likely been the victim of violence, including childhood sexual abuse (almost 18 percent), physical assault (more than 19 percent), rape (more than 20 percent), and intimate partner violence (almost 35 percent).
⁴
Some 6 percent of all pregnant women experienced violence during their pregnancies as well.
⁵
Despite the widespread violence against women, less than 10 percent of primary care physicians normally screen for domestic violence during routine office visits.
⁶

Yet if the violence is not addressed, it is likely to escalate, putting victims at increased risk for committing suicide, being murdered, and suffering a host of serious injuries (such as brain damage) and chronic health conditions (including contracting sexually transmit ted diseases and HIV/AIDS and abusing drugs and alcohol).
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Abuse against girls has been connected not only with early death and disability later in their lives but also with such diseases as cancer, diabetes, and heart disease, according to research by the Southern California Kaiser Permanente Medical Group and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
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The relationship, the researchers report, is cumulative.

A 2003 report from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) documents that more than two-thirds of the world’s 860 million illiterates are women, and that when societies are faced with limited resources, females are more likely than males to be deprived of basic necessities, including food and medicine, increasing the risk of physical or mental impairment.
⁹

Some of the abuse against women in other parts of the globe is even more shocking. Consider these findings:

The World Health Organization estimates that between 100 and 140 million females have undergone female genital mutilation worldwide and that each year an additional 3 million girls in Africa alone are at risk for becoming victims of this practice.
¹⁰