Creating Health Series

Self-Care for multiple sclerosis (MS) is more than the anti-inflammatory diet and the exercise regimen. It’s an attitude and a very important one.  In this Creating Health Episode, we look at how to really practice self-care for multiple sclerosis.

Self-Care for Multiple Sclerosis

I wanted to do this presentation because it’s a theme that shows up often in my practice – how to do self-care correctly? To begin I wanted to talk about the two types of MS clients that come to my office:

Styles of Self Care

The first type of client, comes in with a lot of fear that they’re not doing enough. They’re hard on themselves because they can’t seem to stick to the recommended diet and what they’ve been told is good for them. They say things in the first sessions such as, “ Why can’t I stick to the diet?” and “I should be exercising more but it just hurts too much. Why am I not exercising enough?” There is all this guilt and shame and fear that they’re not doing enough. And that they’re not doing it right.

And on the contrary, I have other disciplines clients that are very frustrated with their bodies. They say things such as, “I am eating all the right foods and I’m exercising six day a week even if it hurts; even if I’m tired. I am doing everything I should.” They are mad and ask me, “Why am I not getting well if I seem to be doing everything right? Did I miss anything?”

The Story of Care

And so I always tell them the story about orphanages. There have been many studies in the early 1900’s on how young children in orphanages, hospitals, and institutions die at a rate of close to 90% even when the children are fed and get exercise.  This is especially pronounced in children that were two or younger.  And it wasn’t that these orphanages were terrible places that tortured the kids. On the contrary, they could be doing everything right, yet the children would not thrive and oftentimes would die.

What this research discovered is that these institutions were missing nurturing attachment. The children needed to be loved. To nourish is not only to take in food and to move regularly.  We need care to grow and be healthy.  Nurturing care is necessary for our physical and mental health.  It is also necessary for growth and creates resilience to stress and self-confidence

Turning Nurturing Childhood Style Care into Self-Care

I wanted to continue with a personal story.   When I was little, my mother taught us to be good professionals.  She would tell my sister and I that we were going to have to be tough and work hard to excel in the professional world of men. I remember as a child that she would never let me stay in bed on the weekends. She would tell me that I couldn’t stay in bed unless I had a fever.  Feeling melancholic, sad, like I just wanted to relax and listen to music, or just needing to recover from the week and sleep just a little longer, that wasn’t excuse enough.  I imagine many of you had different experiences yet similar.  Your mother was also not a super nurturing-permissive-caring-mother-figure in your life.  She meant well of course, by focusing on preparing us to be successful professionals, but she wasn’t teaching us how to nurture ourselves.  I remember the message I got from her indirectly was that I needed to be doing something all the time to have value in this world!

But as my mom got older and wiser, her stance changed. By the time I was in my mid-thirties, she had radically changed her tone with us.  I worked in a foreign country and I was working hard and had a lot of responsibilities. I would come to visit her one weekend a month and I would be exhausted. She could see how much I was working and how much I pushed myself. And she changed how she treated me completely.

I have this memory of going to her house one weekend, perhaps only a few years before she died. I remember her actually telling me, “Eva, why don’t you just sit on the porch, in the sun on a lounge chair. Just rest for a while.” And she poured me a glass of wine and made me a plate of cheese and crackers. And she said not to worry and that there was nothing I needed to do. She wanted me to just sit, enjoy, and relax some. My week was hard enough as it was.  And I sat there with my glass of wine, with my cheese and crackers, in the fall sun…. and it was blissful. And it was such a contrast to who she was and how she was with us as kids. And maybe because it was so shockingly different that I remember that moment so well.

Bringing Nurturance into Our Self-Care

It was so incredible, so special, that I now do it for myself.  I check in with myself and, if I am tired, I stop everything and lounge.  I have adapted that internal, older mother that I experienced those few rare times. I ask myself by the end of the week, sometimes even the end of the day, “how am I doing? Is everything okay? Am I happy?” And I bring that blissful nurturance to myself in as many delicious ways as possible because life is hard enough as it is.

And that’s what my mom realized as she grew older –  life is hard enough as it is.  We don’t have to add to that hardness ourselves by pushing, forcing, demanding more of ourselves.  To deal with what life brings us, to deal with stress, to have resilience and confidence, we need nurturance.  And it doesn’t matter if you are two years old or 50 years old.  To stay healthy, we need to nurture ourselves as a mother would.

Louise Hayes on the Cause of MS

Louise Hayes tells us in her book, “Heal Your Body,” that symptoms are only the outer effect.  We must go within to dissolve the mental cause and that we’ve got to let go of trying to use discipline to heal because that is not going to work. She emphasizes on not falling into the mental trap of thinking that if you get it all done, then you will heal.  What I think is even more relevant to this presentation today is that, in the case of multiple sclerosis, she explains that the mental cause of MS is hardness – hardheartedness.  Are you continuing to be hard on yourself in trying to heal MS?

Self-Care is Self-Nurturing

To conclude, I want to invite you to think about and ask yourself, “Am I treating myself and my body like a child in an orphanage, just focused on doing all the right things? Or am I treating myself like Eva’s older and wiser mother because it’s hard enough out there, so no need to be hard on myself as well.” When you think about self-care and healing, think about how you are treating yourself, that inner child.  Self-care is really self-nurturing and self-loving. And that is far more important than the diet and exercise regimen you follow.

What is multiple sclerosis? To treat MS, we need to spend time really understanding what it is, what is happening in the body, and what is causing the body to continue to experience MS. This presentation is based on a paper written by Eva M Clark, “A New Treatment Protocol for Multiple Sclerosis Based on an Expanded Lens of Disease Etiology.” The presentation aims to increase the understanding of what MS is to better select an effective treatment that targets what it is. To do so, we will review how four different medical models understand MS: conventional medicine model, mind-body medicine, Tibetan medicine, and consciousness medicine.

What is MS?

Multiple Sclerosis does not fit the profile we would associate with illness. People diagnosed with MS are not old and unhealthy. Instead, they are hard-working adults in their prime. MS is not genetic either. The chance of developing MS if a family member has the disease is only slightly higher than the general population. Interestingly, the chances of getting MS seems to depend more on gender, culture, latitude, geographic region, and race than how physically healthy we are. The most common profile of someone diagnosed is an educated caucasian woman between the ages of 20 and 40, living in northern gradients of first world countries.

Currently, MS is a confusing disease. It is clear that it’s not a genetic disease, but it is unclear what environmental factors are key to its formation (virus? toxins? stress?). The number of myelin lesions does not directly correlate to the type, quantity, or intensity of symptoms. It is also not clear why some people relapse and remit and others slowly progress. MS might be more than one disease. Our current understanding is that T-cells cross the blood-brain barrier and attack the central nervous system leading to damage and lesions. It is not known what triggers the T-cells to do such a thing.  Even diagnosing can prove difficult, especially when symptoms are not typical or no myelin lesions are visible (10% of cases do not have visible lesions). Perhaps because of all these unknowns, conventional Medicine has been unable to find a cure, and current treatments only reduce exacerbations and temporarily slow down progression. That’s why we need to expand our view beyond conventional medicine.

Expanding Our Understand of What is MS

Biomedical Model

”Biomedicine views the body as a machine, of disease as the consequence of breakdown of the machine, and of the doctor’s task as repair of the machine”

In biomedicine, also known as conventional, allopathic, mainstream, orthodox, and western medicine, disease is thought to be caused by mechanical, hormonal, or genetic malfunctions in the body. This model assumes that disease can be fully accounted for by detecting abnormalities in measurements of biological markers.  Whenever you are ill and visit a conventional medical doctor, they will do a series of tests to find what measurements are unusual through blood tests, urine samples, x-rays, or MRI screening. Diagnosis is made by assessing the test results.  If the tests show no abnormalities, disease cannot be diagnosed (no matter how miserable one feels). Usually, that means more invasive tests are needed to be made to continue to look for the slightest differences. Once the unusual measurements are discovered and a diagnosis made, the goal is to correct those deviations through pharmacology or surgery. Why those deviations occur is not the target of treatment. This scientific model was born five centuries ago. It is the predominant model in hospitals and health centers in the US and most first-world countries today.

MS through the Biomedical Model

Through this lens, MS is said to be caused by an overactive immune system. Macrophages activate T-cells to break through the blood-brain barrier, destroy myelin sheaths, and damage axons. It is unclear what triggers the immune system. To diagnose MS, neurologists must first rule out other diseases with similar symptoms. They then test for abnormalities in antibodies in the central nervous system or for myelin lesions. Diagnosis can be trickier still when a patient has unusual symptoms or a progressive form of MS. Biomedicine has no cure for MS. Interventions, instead, focus on suppressing the immune system to avoid causing further damage.

Mindbody Medical Model

Mindbody medicine brings our thoughts, beliefs, and history into disease etiology. Mindbody medicine reunites the mind with the body (separated 5 centuries ago through Descartes and later Newton). This reunion is not sentimental. Instead, the mind has returned to medicine because we now have scientific proof of its effects on the body: psychoneuroimmunology and epigenetics have demonstrated the molecular link between emotions and our cells. Thus mind-body medicine understands that disease shows up in the physical body, yet its cause can be biological, psychological, and social in nature (known as the biopsychosocial factors).

MS through the Mindbody Medical Model

By expanding our lens to include emotions, beliefs, and life history, mind-body medicine has discovered that people diagnosed with MS have more negative emotions, anxiety, depression, obsession, phobia, and tense interpersonal relationships when compared to the general population.  People diagnosed with MS are much more prone to alexithymia (inability to express emotions) and have twice as much childhood trauma. Stress is demonstratively correlated to exacerbations in 85 to 90% of cases. In particular mild stressful life events are followed by exacerbations, while deeply stressful events might actually prevent them (for more details on this fascinating correlation, read Eva’s paper).

Thus through the mind-body medical lens, stress is a significant factor in the cause and progression of MS. Thus, stress management and treatments that address trauma, teach positive coping strategies, and increase social support, must accompany pharmacological and lifestyle interventions.

Tibetan Medical Model

In Tibetan Medicine, everything in life is energy. Therefore, the basic principle of healing becomes rebalancing the three main energies in our bodies. When these three energies are balances, we are healthy.  When they are out of balance, we become ill.

These energies, Rlung, MKhrispa, and Bad Gen, can become imbalances through both mental and physical factors. The leading long-term cause of imbalance, and long-term disease, are mental. These mental causes are known as mental poisons.  The short-term cause of illness is physical.  These short-term factors are usually caused by unhealthy diet, lifestyle, seasonal influences, and spirit possession.

The three main mental poisons or ignorances that imbalance the three main energies, are desire, anger, and close-mindedness.

rLung Imbalances

This energetic imbalance is related to the mental poison of greed, attachment, and desire.  Overthinking, worrying, anxiety, craving what you don’t have, and not being content with what you do can create havoc in our rLung energy.  This imbalance can cause movement disorders, digestive issues, insomnia, racing thoughts, and headaches. It can also lead to addiction.

MKhrispa Imbalance

This energetic imbalance is related to the mental poison of anger and judgment.  High levels of this energy are caused by excessive competitiveness, constant stress, and no time for joy.  This imbalance can lead to isolation and judgment of self and others. In addition, it can cause issues with body heat, inflammation, and metabolic or endocrine problems.

Bad Gen Imbalances

This energetic imbalance is related to the mental poison of delusion, confusion, and close-mindedness.  Healthy levels allow us to think and the body to slow down and rest.  Habits such as spending time enjoying family and friends restore the mind and balance this energy. Bad Gen, considered cold energy, balances Mkrispa, considered hot energy.

How Tibetan Medicine Treat and Diagnosis Disease

Diagnoses are achieved through tongue, urine, and pulse analysis accompanied by an extensive and empathetic interview.  Treatment aims to rebalance the body’s energy.  As the mind is the root cause of long-term disease, meditation is a big part of treatment. This is accompanied by lifestyle and diet. Physical therapies are only used as a last resort. This medical model emphasizes the need to treat the root cause first.

MS Through the Tibetan Medical Model

The three primary energies defined by Tibetan medicine correspond to the three types of myelin lipids – phospholipids, sphingolipids, and cholesterol. MS is considered a disease with excessive rLung and deficient Bad gen. MS exacerbations seem to be caused by elevated levels of Mkhrispa. These imbalances cause the myelin lipids that correspond to these energies to become abnormal. T-cells break the brain-blood barrier and attack myelin to rid them of abnormal cells (T-cells are supposed to clean out abnormalities!). Thus, the focus of Tibetan medicine would be to heal the myelin lipids by balancing our energy. This would avoid additional cell abnormalities.  Thus, the physician would focus on helping the patient transform their thoughts, beliefs, diet, and lifestyle.

Consciousness Medical Model

The Consciousness medicine model expands upon Mindbody medicine to include quantum physics. In quantum physics, the mind is the building block that holds everything else together, including the material world and physical expression. Thus in consciousness medicine, our bodies reflect what is in our minds. This is supported not only by quantum physics but the ancient wisdom traditions of thousands of years ago. Thus, the root cause of chronic disease is no longer understood as a physical deviation in the body due to a mechanical breakdown but the manifestation of our psychological and spiritual wounding that distorts our understanding of the world and self. This distortion influences our physical bodies and can ultimately lead to physical disease and disorders. In this expanded medical model, consciousness is prioritized in both the cause of disease and its treatment.

MS Through the Consciousness Medical Model

This model understands that our lives, with their situations, attitudes, and beliefs, formed the premise of multiple sclerosis. Thus the goal is not to return to that previous life. Instead, the goal is to help transform the person beyond the level that created the MS. Treatment would include:

• working through trauma and negative beliefs about self and the world
• reconnecting to self, to joy, and spirit
• cultivating a positive mindset
• resolving conflicts
• removing oneself from toxic situations
• healing unhealthy attachments
• and creating a healthy (spiritually, mentally, and physically) environment for healing.

This post will look at the difference between managing your MS and thriving from multiple sclerosis. The idea of this post came from an experience I had some time ago with a client. This client had recently broken her leg, and the bones were not mending properly. She wanted to use hypnotherapy to speak to her cells and understand if anything was keeping her body from healing.  Her doctor had told her that if they didn’t mend soon, she would require surgery.

In hypnosis, her subconscious represented her accident like an embarrassing cartoon. She was a donkey that kept falling and falling and falling, slipping on a wet floor, while all the other cartoon animals were watching and laughing. What was keeping her from healing was shame and embarrassment! Her negative emotions regarding how she had fallen were blocking the healing process. This was a fascinating concept. What was it about her emotions that were keeping her body from mending her bones?

The Cells Response to Emotions

Some time afterward, I read the book “Biology of Belief” by Bruce Lipton and discovered why. Dr. Lipton is a cell biologist who studies human cells and their response to our thoughts and emotions. By bringing quantum physics to biology, he has really changed how we understand how cells work.  At the microscopic level, our bodies act much more according to the laws of Quantum physics than to the Newtonian Laws of science we are used to.

Coming back to our story on why the bones weren’t mending: In his book, “Biology of Belief,” Dr. Lipton explains that our cells have two main states: they are either closed and in protection mode and open and in thrive and growth mode.  Though protection mode has been called fight or flight, it’s not only during those extremes. Anytime we are tense in any way   – physically, emotionally, or mentally – our cells are in protective mode. This can be activated by constant urgency and busyness, by a tense relationship, by fear of not doing a good job, by pushing to keep going, by worry, etc. My client’s embarrassment was keeping her cells in this protective mode.

When we are in that state, our cells will close down to the environment, and they will utilize the vital energy of the body. In this state, we expend energy, but we do not generate energy. Thus, in this state, we do not repair, replace or renew our cells.  Thus, healing cannot happen.

Every day, however, millions of cells die and need to be replaced. But to regenerate cells, our cells need to move from protection to thrive. This is when the cells can take in nutrients, create daughter cells, clean toxins, repair damages, etc.  The interesting caveat is that Dr. Lipton’s book describes a difference between not being in protective mode and being in thriving mode. When we manage our stressors, we slip into neutral and avoid further damage to the body from the constant need for protection, but we do not automatically move into thriving.

Managing MS versus Thriving

One great example of the difference between neutral and thriving can be found in research done from the ’50s to the ’80s on institutionalized children (orphanages, children’s hospitals, etc.). These studies sought to understand why almost 100% of these children died even when all the basic necessities, such as food, sleep, and changing their nappies, were managed methodically. Everything was being ‘done right,’ yet the children were perishing. What was discovered was their need to thrive. And thriving only happens through touch, pleasure, play, laughter, and sensory stimulation.

In one of these studies, one thing that stood out immediately to the researchers was that there was barely a sound when they visited these large institutions with up to 500 children in them. That would be impossible to experience in a normal elementary school! A healthy children’s environment includes a lot of laughter, running around, and enthusiastic voices. However, the children in these well-managed institutes were not experiencing love.

Move from Managing MS to Thriving with MS

So if we look at these three areas to consider how better to manage MS, notice if what you are doing moves you towards tension and protection or openness and thrive. Ask yourself, “Am I in fear, clamping down, and in shame? Or am I welcoming, in the flow, or excited? Am I doing things that nourish me or only feeding myself the foods I “should” be eating?  Let’s look at a few examples:

A)   Sleeping eight hours of sleep? It is neutral. It is necessary to manage your MS, and less might cause the body to be tired and tense, but it will not regenerate myelin.

B)   Meditation. If you are enjoying sitting and being, it can be quite thriving, but if you push yourself and tell yourself you ‘have to’ sit 30-minutes a day, and you don’t enjoy any moment of the process, you can push yourself into protective mode.

C)  Eating an anti-inflammatory diet? If you are doing it to manage your inflammation, but there is no joy in the process and say to yourself, “oh my God, I didn’t eat my greens today!” You are putting yourself in protective mode.

D)  Watching the sunset? Thrive mode.

E)  Chair Zoomba or chair pilates? If you love it and the fact that it’s assisted with a chair makes it easier for you to follow, you are in thrive mode.

F)  Sitting on your porch and watching your garden bloom? Thrive mode.

G)  Watching someone else doing your garden and worrying they are not doing it, right? Protective mode.

H)  Getting two hours of exercise every day? If you are doing it to manage your strength, but it’s excruciating, you are in protective mode. I come across this every day. I have clients wanting to do certain exercises that they heard are good for MS, yet their bodies scream. That is not helping the body heal.  On the other hand, if they go out and canoe with friends for two hours and enjoy the experience tremendously, and their bodies are a little sore the next day but feeling good, that is thrive mode.

I)   What about stress? It actually depends. It’s usually protective mode. However, this great Ted talk called “How to Make Stress Your Friend” by Kelly McGonigal challenges us to think differently about stress.  She discovered that if you are stressing and believe that it’s bad for you, your arteries will constrict, and the stressors will be detrimental.  On the contrary, if (1)  you believe stress is exciting, (2) a challenge you enjoy trying to pull off and don’t feel any pressure to get it right, and (3) you welcome the racing heart and sweaty palms as your body meeting the challenge with enthusiasm, your arteries will actually expand and pump oxygen optimally. Thus, stress becomes good for you, and you are thriving.

J)   What about disease? Multiple Sclerosis? If you believe that disease is bad and it means you’re unhealthy and you have failed, then you are contracting and in protective mode. On the other hand, if you believe that disease is life-giving you permission to live it better, an opportunity to make real changes that will make life more authentic and worthy for you, disease can help you thrive. Thus, disease can make you healthy! This is something experienced by those that have had spontaneous remissions of cancer.  If someone embodies that when they are diagnosed with cancer is a loving wake-up call (their bodies are loving them and telling them, “darling, you’ve got to stop. You know, you’ve got to open up to something better. You’ve got to focus on yourself”), they will actually thrive through the experience.

K)     What about hope? Again, hope can be in any one of the modes, depending on how you hold it.

How are you Hoping?

If you are hoping someone will find a cure and you sit back and don’t worry about it, you are in neutral.  If you are saying to yourself, “oh my God, I hope someone finds a cure! I pray I am saved from this. Please, please, please go away!” Your cells are in protective mode. But if you’re are hopeful thinking, “well, you know, there’s a possibility. I’ve read accounts in books and articles, I’ve watched interviews of people successfully healing their MS. I believe there’s a chance, a real chance!” That moves the cells into thriving.

Hope can Heal

There is a famous story of a man with an advanced stage of cancer. He was desperate to find a cure and went to his doctor seeking to take a new cancer medication that was still in trial. He was sure that it would help his cancer.

His doctor tried to tell him that he was not qualified to participate in the trial because of his advanced condition. But Mr. Wright was so persistent about taking it that the doctor pulled some strings and was able to get his patient the medication. And his patient thrived!  10 days after beginning treatment, Mr. Wright’s cancer was gone.  Sometime later, the results published regarding the new drug were poor. When Mr. Wright learns of this, he quickly returns to his doctor’s office, worried. The medication does not work! His cancer promptly returned. Thus the doctor, wanting to help his patient, decided to bring him hope again. He tells his patient that it was not the medication but how it was administered, resulting in such poor outcomes in the studies.  The doctor, however, had a very pure batch of the medication. He promptly gives his patient a placebo (water injection). His cancer, once again, disappeared. When the study’s final results determined, only a few months later, that the medication was useless, the patient lost all hope.  Two days later, he died.

Having genuine hope is important for healing. Thirty years ago, the outcomes from having MS were much worse than today.  Today we have many different treatments, including nutrition, supplements, neuro physiotherapy, medications, homeopathy, acupuncture, and hypnotherapy, to name a few powerful tools to manage MS. And 30 years ago, we weren’t aware of the importance of thriving!

Regenerate Myelin through Thriving

There is one more thing to understand regarding the importance of thriving rather than managing your MS:  Our myelin is constantly regenerating. Unlike our peripheral myelin formed by the age of two, our central nervous system myelin continuously regenerates throughout adulthood. So when you are thinking about, “what can I do to heal or improve?” focus on helping your myelin regenerate. To do that, they need to be in a state of thriving!

Thriving through Multiple Sclerosis

Thus, to move from managing your MS to truly thriving, you must prioritize moving your life, behaviors, emotions from tension, pushing, and fear to thrive. The body can take care of the rest.  Think about my client and her broken leg. She is not responsible for physically mending her bones. Her responsibility is to stay in thrive, and her bones mend on their own. So, stop trying to manage the body’s job, stress over how many hours you exercise, and if you ate enough kale today, and focus on creating the most optimal environment for the body to heal – by thriving.

Remember the institutionalized children – don’t just manage your food, supplements, sleep time, and amount of exercise. Instead, increase the number of things you do for the sole purpose of connecting with another, being in joy and laugher, sensory stimulation and creativity, and be in the flow because that is what will truly nourish your body and regenerate myelin.

This mini-series is about healing through becoming your authentic self.  This forms the last area to cover in the Wheel of Health. In previous presentations, we’ve talked about nutrition, detoxing, leaky gut, sleep and address the psychological factors such as the need to forgive, negative emotions such as guilt, repressed emotions such as grief or anger, and our inner critic.

download the graph here.

Part I:  Healing Through the Authentic Self (watch part I here)

Part II: Healing Through Cultivating Your Strengths (watch part II here)

These videos were recorded at the National MS Society Self-Help MS Group in Santa Cruz, CA. If you would like to receive these videos in your inbox each month, please sign up for our newsletter.  Don’t be left behind. There is help.

For individual sessions to create your personal journey back to health and become symptom-free of MS, don’t hesitate to call me at (415) 699-2574 or contact me here.

If you are following any of our series please share your experience with others. Everything is easier together!

A lot of clients, when they first come to my office, will say, “I’m supposed to do these lifestyle changes to heal MS, but I’m not exactly sure what that means?” They comment that they’ve done changes in their diet, they’ve detoxed, they’ve worked on their gut health, tried to improve their sleep, and they are doing everything possible to continue to exercise. And they tell me that it’s making some difference but they are wondering and concerned if there is more to the lifestyle changes necessary to manage multiple sclerosis.

Lifestyle Changes to Heal MS

I would like to explain in this month’s presentation, that it’s not just about what you are doing, but, most importantly, about how you are doing it – the ‘style’ in lifestyle. I want you to explain this with a story. This is called the story of Awakening the Muse.

The Story of Awakening the Muse

Once upon a time, there was a young woman who was very responsible and very dedicated to her work. She always gave it her all. That meant doing 110% everywhere, every day. Quotes that described her way of living would be “Rest is rust.” She was always busy, busy, busy and she was allergic to the word ‘lazy’. Another was “Pull yourself by your own bootstraps”. She was very independent and didn’t like to ask for help because it meant she didn’t know how to do something or wasn’t good enough. If we could describe what she was attracted to in books (though she never had time to read, but they reflected her way of living), they would be books titled “Smarter, Faster, and Better”, “The Art of Working Hard”, and “The Checklist Manifesto“. She loved checking things off her checklist and was always striving to do things even better. Her goal was to be successful and to do things perfectly. She wanted to have a successful looking career, marriage, home. Though she was most focused on career achievement. She was always climbing the ladder at work and expected to get a promotion each year because of her efforts. She wanted to be the perfect picture of success. Because, deep down, her biggest fear was that she was unworthy or not good enough. She was terrified of failure. And these fears motivated her to work even harder, to get even better, and to never ever rest.

Life becomes Unsustainable

And this way of living became very unsustainable for her body. And times of struggle began. And all that the young woman wanted was to return to the lifestyle she had been living. Gut her inner muse wouldn’t permit it. And so for years and years, the young woman and her inner muse fought. Until, one day, she realized that her muse was her soul calling her back.

The Muse – The Inspiration of Artists

Muse comes from Greek mythology.  It is the goddess of poetry, art, and song. Artists are very familiar with the concept Muse – it is the source or spirit that inspires them in their art.

And so when the young woman started listening to her muse, things started changing. She put down her struggles and began to follow what the muse was trying to tell her. And her whole life changed with her muse’s guidance.

Lifestyle Changes to Heal MS

Her Muse completed changes how the, not so young anymore, women lived her life. Instead of this insatiable drive for success, she paces her efforts. She gave 80% of her energy and made sure she was never the sacrifice (if you’ve watched our video on neurophysical therapy, you’ll understand the concept of doing no more than 80%). The quotes that she began living by were that “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” And she also adapted the quote, “If I don’t fit in, then I’m actually doing the right thing” instead of trying and trying to fit in and trying to do things that would make everyone happy. And the books that she started reading, and I recommend these books highly to anyone struggling with their MS, were “The Joy of Not Working” and “The Artist’s Way.”

Inner Muse’s Favorite Books

In “The Joy of Not Working” the author explains this misconception in our society. We think we are supposed to work, work, work, work, work, work. Trying to get as much money as possible during our working years until we’re 65. And then we’re supposed to retire and enjoy ourselves. But the problem is when we get there, we don’t know how! We get restless, and bored, and uncomfortable with leisure. So, we start taking volunteer work, and we start making ourselves as busy as we can because that’s all we know how to do. And so in ‘The Joy of Not Working”, talks about learning how to enjoy the time that you are not working. To actually train ourselves to enjoy life. The book invites the reader to take mini-retirements throughout their careers to really understand what it’s like to not work. It doesn’t invite you to quit your job. But it does help you transform your mindset and invites you to learn to enjoy leisure time and to find hobbies and discover things that you love outside of your work.

In “The Artist’s Way”, Julia Cameron gives us the steps to awaken our inner muse and learn to do things simply for the delight they bring.

And so returning to our not so young any more women’s story – the goal she began to live by was that “It is not selfish to love yourself, to take care of yourself and to make your happiness a priority, it’s necessary” (quote by Mandy Hale).

Multiple Sclerosis is Your Inner Muse

I don’t know if you have figured this out already, but, your MS with all those body symptoms that are keeping you from doing 110% at work, is actually your muse. And when you awakened and listen to your muse; when you actually stop struggling with what the body is trying to tell you, that’s when you begin to heal.

Lifestyle Changes are not What you are Doing but How

So as you compare these two lifestyles, it’s not just about diet, detox, gut health, exercise, and sleep. Because, if you are still living as this woman was originally when you begin changing your diet, you try to do it perfectly and beat yourself up if you don’t. You don’t detox, you uber detox, giving it your 110%. You don’t improve your exercise, you drive yourself to exercise almost daily, even when so much is a struggle and you are tired.

You can’t improve your body by doing those healthy things in an unhealthy way.

The word pushing is not in the muse’s lifestyle!

What Do You Propose to Do to Really Change the Style in Your Lifestyle?

So when you think about your own lifestyle changes to heal MS, what do you propose? When you think about exercising, check-in, are you doing the exercise as this young adamant go, go, go, way? Or do you do your exercises for the pure pleasure of movement?

Lifestyle Changes – A Story on Exercise

I’ll tell you a second nonfiction story. One of my client’s inner muse (we talked to her inner in hypnosis) asked her to give herself time every day to enjoy a moment to herself. And so every day after she taking her kids to school, she would swing by her local beach and spend 15 minutes taking a nice walk.

The first few days were difficult for her physically though pleasurable mentally. As the weeks passed, it got easier and easier physically as well. She found she could walk farther and farther with no fatigue. And her mind started to get excited. She wondered “perhaps today I can get all the way over there to the stoplight” and then, “perhaps today I can walk one more block…” After three months, she was walking four miles a day briskly. And what happened? The inner muse put her foot down. And suddenly she was back to barely getting a 15-minute walk in with a lot of physical struggle. And when we talked to her body in trance once again, her inner muse and asked the muse why my client had suddenly gotten worse again.  And the inner muse responded, “Because she wasn’t doing the exercise for self-enjoyment and self-care, she was doing it to try to get faster and better. It was now a competitive goal to improve herself.”

Lifestyle Changes is about Nurturing

So the lifestyle changes to heal MS is not about perfecting your diet. It’s about nurturing your inner muse. And I think it is one of the most surprising and unique aspects of multiple sclerosis. Those with MS that truly change their lives around, and with it, their symptoms, start making dates with themselves, some daily, some weekly, to really nurture their inner muse. They write science fiction novels, they start bird watching, they write poetry, journal, create beautiful jewelry, go on nature walks, and truly explore what creates joy in their lives outside of job success.

Lifestyle Changes is about Creating Balance

Your inner muse, your MS, is trying to create more balance in your life. And to create balance, we need to find those things that feed our souls. Those pleasures that are not for anyone else, but for ourselves.

I invite you to have a date with this inner muse. Explore the things that you used to do as a kid, those things you really loved that you somehow grew out of, bring them back, and nurture them.  And when you do, you will notice a lot of things begin to shift. As counterintuitive as it seems, playing, craft making, and stopping to enjoy a beautiful ray of sun, will give you more energy and mental clarity than pushing yourself to do more exercise.

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