February 14, 2020

Going Deeper with your Healing

Are you ready to go deeper with your healing? Do you already do everything mentioned in the “Getting Started” post? These early journey steps are so important because they give us the confidence and courage to go deeper as we see incredible healing shifts occur.

The outcomes of going deeper are infinite. As each one of us is unique, so is our healing journey. Furthermore, there are many ways to start going deeper. I will mention the few major ways that have helped my friends, family, and I start to get at root causes for illness and also, how to heal from them. These are mostly based on Anthony William’s book, Medical Medium: Healing Chronic Illness but also where Chinese Medicine, Ayurvedic Principles, and Holistic healing practice all overlap.

Eliminating Viruses and Bacteria

The idea here is that at the root cause of almost all chronic illness and mystery symptoms are: viruses and bacteria. It’s possible to get an infection and after antibiotics the bacteria can seem like it’s disappeared, but really, it’s moved into a different location in your body where it can safely proliferate and cause problems. Viruses are the same as bacteria. They can hide out in your body and their waste, creates havoc on your body and on your immune system.

Here are two ways to start systematically eliminating bacteria and viruses from your body: by not feeding them and by killing them.

To speed up the elimination of pathogens, it can be very helpful to take some supplements that are natural anti-virals and antibiotics. Natural supplements create a more alkaline environment in the body which makes it hard for pathogens to thrive. Many supplements can also target pathogens directly. Celery Juice and Lemon Water are a fantastic start, but I have found that Ester-C, Lemon Balm, Oil of Oregano, Olive Leaf Extract, and Cats Claw have been radically helpful in boosting my immune system. My husband on the other hand, swears by Sovereign Silver, L-Lysine, and Lemon Balm. Listen to what speaks to you.

Macro ingredients such as Gluten, Dairy, Eggs, Soy, Corn, and Canola Oil all create acidic environments in the body that pathogens LOVE. Other ingredients to avoid are: Vinegar, Alcohol, Sugar, Nutritional Yeast, Citric Acid, Pork, and any other high-fat, fried foods as these interfere in the body’s way of staying healthy. This means, in order to heal, it’s really important to eliminate these foods for awhile. If you are really struggling health-wise, eliminating all grains for awhile is especially healing.

To be honest, when I first read the above list, I was pretty discouraged. I had no clue what to eat! I also couldn’t find any recipe sites with reasonable recipes. (Hence, this recipe website.) The bad news is that eliminating these foods is difficult but it’s critical for healing. The good news is that it can be done and you will heal! When you start to feel better, you will feel so encouraged and motivated to keep going.

Here are some tips for Eliminating Underlying Viruses and Bacteria

Tip #1: The more meal routines you create (i.e. Detox smoothie for breakfast, apples for snack, salad for lunch) the less time you’ll have for thinking about the “no” foods and stressing about meals. Create a really good menu for the first meals of the day and then you’ll only need to think about dinners.

Tip #2: Make sure you have LOADS of yummy, fresh produce on hand all the time. This will mean that any time you are hungry, you can grab a banana, an orange, some dates, seeds, or some apples.

Tip #3: Plan your meals! Aside from making sure you always have the food you need, use this website! Plan your dinners for a few days and make sure you have the ingredients on hand. As time goes by, you’ll almost start to memorize what foods you need to have on hand and you’ll be able to improvise. At first, it really helps to make a rough plan.

Tip #4: If you’re going grain free, I highly recommend buying a pressure cooker. Potatoes take too long to cook if you’re really hungry but a pressure cooker gets’em cooked in six minutes! For a year, I pressure cooked potatoes every morning for my lunch and again for dinner. Six minutes is nothing. I use the Instant Pot for pressure cooking or the cheaper T-fal one from Costco.

Tip #5: No need to go hungry here or suffer! Eat up! Find a yummy breakfast smoothie that you love, find some salads that work for you for lunches (my husband and I have radically different plant-based lunches), and for dinner, try to cook what everyone will eat and love to simplify your life.

Heavy Metal Detox

Did you know that most chronic illness involves heavy metals in the body in some sort of way or another? Thankfully, Anthony Williams mentions a simple, yet profound way of eliminating heavy metals from the body. In short, he recommends eating the five following ingredients within a 24hr period: wild blueberries, cilantro, Barley Grass Juice Powder, Spirulina, and Atlantic Dulse. You can eat these however you choose, but most of us find that popping them into a smoothie in the morning is best. Why not?

Tip #1: It’s really important that you buy good quality supplements. Vimergy is recommended for the Barley Grass Juice Powder (BGJP) and Spirulina. They have incredibly clean products and are a reliable company.

Tip #2: If you have a lot of metals in your body, which you might not be aware of, you might have a huge detox response to these supplements. My husband had enormous muscle twitches and spasms when he would take BGJP so he needed to work his way up slowly. My other friend would get tingles and go numb, so she also worked her way up from a pinch of BGJP/day to a full teaspoon. I had no problems with the HMDS (Heavy Metal Detox Smoothie), but had more troubles with Celery Juice. Everyone is different. Go at your pace and increase to the ideal.

Build up your Body

So as you start to heal and learn to listen to your body again, you might find that your body wants to do a hard, intense cleanse and can handle lots of detox symptoms, or you may already feel quite worn down and need a gentler approach. Either way is good! Do what works for you. One part that is important though is to be feeding your body the nutrients it needs to actually repair itself!

Eating a variety of fruits, veggies, and leafy greens will ensure that most of your vitamins and minerals are covered. However, taking high quality vitamin and mineral supplements does wonders. Everyone should be taking a good quality B12 as well as a good quality Zinc. Our modern diets are so low in these two nutrients, that it’s imperative to supplement. (Even if you only eat organic and only eat fruits and veggies!) B12 and Zinc are key! I’ve also slipped into low-iron occasionally so I also take a plant-based iron supplement. You also may feel pulled toward taking Neuro-Magnesium, Liposomal C, vitamin D, or another kind of vitamin or mineral. Again: listen to your body and watch for the kinds of veggies it’s craving. This will let you know sometimes what nutrients it wants. (Women should be mindful of their iron levels and take an iron supplement though.)

Cleanses

As you add healing protocols to your life, you will feel amazing but then you will plateau a bit. I notice this a lot. Drinking more water, drinking more celery juice, eating less fats and more fresh fruits and veggies ALWAYS will give you another healing boost, but another way to get really deep and yield different results is by doing a cleanse.

Cleanses offer you and your body a chance to become aware of what’s really going on and perhaps what needs to be worked on. I personally LOVE the Liver Rescue 3:6:9 cleanse! I have done it six times already and every time have had such profound emotional and lifestyle revelations! Your intuition and ability to understand what’s going on inside will dramatically improve. After the last Liver Cleanse, I actually felt my body tell me that it didn’t want to do any more cleanses for awhile, that it didn’t need to detox any more for a bit because it wanted to focus on rebuilding. A few weeks later, I found out my iron levels had dropped to 11! Well that makes sense. Now that my iron is up and I feel more energetic than ever, I feel the pull to do a cleanse again. In the meantime, I’ve been focussing on adding in lots of vitamins, minerals, and a variety of foods.

Meditation and PRayer

Plant-Based eating is only part of the healing picture. If you truly want to look, feel, and be your best, it’s necessary to engage in emotional and spiritual healing. (Ugh, I know! Who wants to cry, right?) I am currently working on my Masters in the area of Contemplative Approaches to Education. The science is all there to support that fulfillment in life is directly related to our ability to be aware and to be still. There are many ancient paths that teach us how to live a Good life, a Whole life, that I journal about in-depth in the Living Brightly section of this Blog.

At first, I thought I was “fine” spiritually and emotionally and felt like I needed to focus more on the physical: foods, acupuncture, chiropractor, cranio-sacral therapy, etc. In the end though, I ended up wasting a lot of money and setting myself back because I wasn’t taking time to be aware. It is so, so important to sit still so we can listen and watch our thinking without judging.

One simple way is literally just to sit. Try it! Set your timer for 5 minutes and sit up tall. When your mind wanders, acknowledge it and return to just sitting. Do away with expectations or assumptions. Just sit. (This is an abbreviated version of Zazen.) Slowly work your way up to 10+ minutes. I can not explain how incredibly profound this practice is. My favourite part is that this is easy to add and very complimentary to any other routines that you may have (prayer, yoga, etc). I noticed an immediate difference to my prayer life by adding in 10 minutes of just sitting.

Connection with the land is also deeply healing. In fact, many health leaders are starting to recognize that it’s next-to impossible to heal ourselves and our relationships with each-other without first addressing our relationship with this land. 100% plant-based healing comes not only from consuming plants, but also from being with plants and spending time with them. Spending time with animals, plants (either through gardening or being with trees), surrounding yourself with rocks, looking at the moon, the sunsets and sunrises, the stars, and spending time beside water or swimming in wild waters like oceans, lakes, creeks, and rivers are all life-changing. Natural sounds and rhythms re-set us in a good, good way. They are medicine and often the medicine that we truly yearn for.