A two year journey healing from chronic pain and how I healed with self love

For anyone who has suffered in silence from chronic pain it can be a depressing and all-consuming experience. For the past two years I have been dealing with a back problem that started as a small tweak and at its peak became so debilitating I couldn’t sleep through the night and would dread dropping things on the floor. It was one of the reasons I had to give up one of my loves, teaching yoga.

My mental health is, like for so many of us, tethered to my ability to exercise, play sports and be active. Once that goes, things slowly begin to decline. I don’t sleep well, I care less and less about what I’m eating or use food to cope and feel better and I lose confidence in myself as a leader and in my relationships.

As someone who had helped lots of people heal from their own injuries and ailments over the past decade it was so confounding that I couldn’t get to the root of the issues on my own. It felt humbling, defeating and very frustrating.

I began to employ the help of different healers. I tried acupuncture, chiropractors, physical therapists, energy healers and scoured the internet for folks who were experiencing this similar debilitating pain. I bought courses, watched hours and hours of videos on youtube, bought books and would experiment for hours a day with different techniques.

Knowing what I do about the mind-body connection I also suspected that something was way off in the way I was thinking about my body and myself. I’ve been critical of myself pretty much throughout my entire life. I have struggled with my weight, once losing almost 100 pounds but never being fully satisfied with how I looked in the mirror. I can remember folks commenting on my weight throughout my adolescent years and even as recently as this last year.

Since I couldn’t sit still for too long I had also lost the ability to go deep in my meditation practices. Meditation had taken a back seat as I felt like I needed to be both feet into the physical healing journey. I began to think about when Joe Dispenza broke his spine and how he spent weeks without medical care just focusing on gratitude and the healing he had to believe was going to happen. He would struggle day and night to mentally rebuild himself from the inside out and would visualize himself healing.

I knew I had to make an investment in self love. I had to mentally and emotionally embrace and become the person who felt worthy of his healing. Through my study of quantum mechanics and laws of attraction I know that like begets like and there is a frequency to all things physical. I had to energetically shift to help clear the path towards the physical manifestation of the healing I wanted to experience.

I went back to practicing the Joe Dispenza meditations that I felt like I had “grew out of” and did them daily with a sincere effort for the process, not the healing. I’ve found that while a clear intention of why we engage in anything is important, it’s the effort we give to the thing that produces the result. I knew my healing and the path to it would become clear if I could just get past myself and my own self-limiting beliefs.

I was already working with a physical therapist and paying out of pocket for weekly sessions and massages. I would get short bursts of improvement but at $500+ a week it wasn’t feeling like enough and it wasn’t sustainable. Then my massage therapist said to me, “you know, only you truly know how to heal yourself. You’re the only one who can get you healthy.” During that session I used a self hypnosis technique while he was working on me with the intention “let me see the path to healing.”

He had been giving me some of the best relief I had found in anything I had tried but in this session I could feel almost schematically what wasn’t working in my body. As soon as I got off his table I knew I was on to something. I began working in the next few days on a mobility routine I had used with people suffering from hip issues but in a way I knew would take the pressure off of my back. My body went into an almost euphoric state and while I was stretching and working one area, the area of my back where the pain was would immediately start to radiate as if to say “YES, THIS, YES, THISSSSS!”

During a meditation in the days to come a friend popped into my head. I knew he had healed from a spinal injury after a surfing accident and I immediately had the thought, you need to talk to him. I reached out and he too was on a healing journey from mold exposure. He had literally gone blind for a period of time and couldn’t go outside yet offered to work with me. During our session it was like the missing puzzle piece slid into place. He immediately showed me postural issues and a low back weakness that was causing me to slide back into discomfort. It was another, YES, THIS, YES, THISSSS moment.

After the session he refused payment and said he was just happy to help. I was so touched by this gesture. I was reminded in that moment of how my journey into teaching yoga and wanting to help people began without worrying about money or what I could get out of someone. I felt healed on multiple levels.

My retreat offerings have always been a reflection of my own journey, where I am and where I have found my own growth and healing. For February, we are focusing on self love and how to heal from the inside out. Science now tells us that over 90% of physical ailments are nurture, not nature, meaning they usually stem from something that is off on an energetic level. We will use breathwork and meditation to explore this connection and also dive into attachment styles and how we are showing up in the world.

I’m excited to share my renewed love of yoga that will have a heavy emphasis on using it as a healing and self-awareness tool. We will also be adding in acupuncture and hormone health with Dr. Kara as a way to boost your bodies ability to heal from the inside out.

Our food menu will be the perfect mix of healthy and yummy. Upon arrival you can expect to be greeted with a welcome grazing board with a variety of cheese, crackers and dark chocolate bark with cacao nibs and fruit. After our first welcome circle we will enjoy a grounding chef-prepared dinner. Each day on retreat, the food will be used as an opportunity to nourish and love oneself! Indulge in a culinary experience designed to celebrate and nurture your inner self.

If you’re feeling called to come back to yourself, if you could use support in your healing journey, it’s my honor to invite you to join us for the Self Love Retreat.