As a society, we often look outside ourselves for solutions to our health concerns. But paying close attention to our own bodies and taking charge often leads to the best possible results!
Hi there, it’s Elaine Gardner, the founder of DesignYourHealthyLife.com. Today I want to talk to you about being the driver of your own healthcare, of your own health experience; being the expert of your own body. And by being an expert I don’t mean that you have to go to medical school or study anatomy and physiology to understand how your body works. But more about being in tune to what’s going on with your body and not relinquishing control of your healthcare to anybody else.
Getting support is one thing, and we’re going to talk about that, but you don’t want to give up your control. And I’m going to encourage you to, anytime you have something that doesn’t feel quite right in your body (whether it’s a symptom or a discomfort, or just an internal knowing that something’s not quite as good as it could be), pay attention to those little signals that your body’s sending you. Consider all the aspects of your lifestyle that could be potentially playing into what’s not feeling quite right.
Some examples of what that could be are just, your digestion’s not quite right, or you don’t have enough energy, or you want more strength or more stamina or more focus. And then consider all of the aspects of your life because it’s not common that there’s only going to be one thing that’s contributing to that issue. It’s common that it’s going to be a bunch of different things. Or it could be something that you think that you’re doing right, but because you think that you’re doing it right, it’s not on your radar to actually examine that it’s something that you could be doing incorrectly.
For instance, a lot of people come to me and say, “Well I’m eating all the right things so I don’t understand what’s going on with my body.” And, “I’m sleeping well and I’m happy in my life and I’m using non-toxic personal care products and household cleaning products so I feel like I’m doing all these things right and yet still something’s wrong.” So it could be something simple. We have this tendency to think that this is what is healthy so this can’t possibly be what is wrong with me or contributing to this issue with me. But the things that we think are healthy aren’t always healthy because it can be very complicated.
For instance there’s just so many issues with produce and how it’s processed, and how it’s shipped, and how it’s picked when it’s not ripe and then sprayed with gas to ripen it. And so the food isn’t as healthy as it should be even though you’ve been told that it is. There are those kinds of things, but also something might just not be right for your body. Even a healthy food like broccoli isn’t going to agree with everybody.
So I don’t want you to leave any stone unturned or to think that just because it’s healthy, that it couldn’t be problematic for you. It’s a complicated issue because it’s going to be different for everybody. You are the expert of your own body. Please pay attention to what your body is telling you, all these subtle things that you’re feeling, and to your gut instincts. And you need to experiment with things, even if you’ve been told they’re healthy, please consider that they may not be healthy for YOU or that you’ve been misinformed.
So you want to explore all of those things. And also, when I said before not to relinquish your health to anybody else, what I mean by that is you can partner with people and there’s lots of great practitioners who can support you in your healing process, but you don’t want to give up your care to anybody else. You don’t want to let somebody else take over and direct the process for you. Even if you work with trusted practitioners, you want to make sure that you not only understand everything that they’re telling you and are recommending for you, but also consider if it’s the right thing for you.
So let me just give you a couple examples of how this has played out in my life. You may or may not know my healing story, but I struggled with significant health issues for more than two decades of my life. And back in December of 2000, I made a commitment to find a way to get healthy no matter what. I started taking exercise classes and those exercise classes then led me to a woman who gave me a recommendation for someone who did muscle testing and supplements. That led me into getting body work. So once you have a commitment to something, all kinds of resources tend to show up and present themselves in your life, and you need to pay attention and listen because it’s not always going to be a direct, oh yes I need to pay attention to this.
For instance, a lot of people have been coming in lately and telling me that they’ve been hearing about lectins and they want to ask my opinion and what I know about that. And I’ve had the subject of lectins presented to me on three different occasions from three different sources, so when I hear three different things from three different people, that’s a signal from the universe for me to start paying attention and doing some research about what everybody’s talking about, and what that information is for. So again, these are subtle things that could be easily overlooked, but I know that’s a signal for me to pay attention to something.
And as I went along in my healing process, sometimes I would hit a plateau or I’d have to re-examine if that particular practitioner I was working with was still being supportive of me, or the best supportive healing method for my needs at that particular time. And so I’ve changed different modalities through the course of my healing. So this is how I’ve taken control of my own health and in the driver’s seat, or at the helm, and in control, listening to my body, trying new things, paying attention to the signals that come my way and adjusting not only my lifestyle choices, but the healing practitioners that I’m working with.
What I want for you is never to get stuck. Even though it can take time for health issues to resolve themselves, you have the information or you have the ability to access all the information that you could ever possibly need to get you where you want to go. So I just want to encourage you to be open minded about that. Once you make a commitment to finding an answer, it will show up for you. It may not show up quickly, it may take time to resolve, there could be many steps involved, but the answers will come. And I always want you to have the best health you can possibly have so you can live the life that you deserve.