Stop Fighting Your Body over Illness & Focus on Wellness Instead •Tara Springett • Ep 74
Chronic illness has a way of making you lose faith and trust that you can get better.And being sick without hope adds an extra layer of stress to the whole situation and may contribute to the disease itself.
In the face of chronic or acute disease, we need to stay as calm as possible.
Battling Disease Makes Healing Harder
Staying calm is not always easy, because of course we get anxious. The anger, the resentment, the fear, the depression, all of these emotions really contribute to our overall state of sickness.
This is where the common language around illness becomes a problem. When people have the attitude of battling their disease, really going against it like an opponent, that is something we should not say and should not do, because it is stressful. If you think you are living with an enemy, the disease, that you now need to conquer and fight and battle, can you just feel your stress level rising?
That is not a good thing for getting better. We need to be calm. We need to be in rest and digest and repair rather than in fight or flight.
The Wellness Hotel Approach
Instead of fighting, Tara suggests changing your life into what she calls the wellness hotel.
Think about how many people respond to a health problem. They sit for hours on the internet researching, going down all sorts of rabbit holes. They go from doctor to doctor to doctor trying to battle and conquer and wrestle down this inner enemy. That is not the right attitude. Yes, we need to do some research, but other than that, we should try to live our life as if we were in a wellness hotel.
Here is how that can look. You get up as late as possible as your schedule allows, and then maybe you start the day with some meditation or some contemplation or reading something inspiring. Then you might want to do some qigong or some yoga or a little walk in nature if that is accessible to you. Then you make yourself a very healthy drink, whatever you think that is. Maybe green tea or some amazing smoothie. And then you go on all through the day doing some lovely healing activity as much as you can and as your work duties or children duties allow.
The best part is that we can actually do this at home. It does not cost anything at all to sit and meditate and contemplate or to read a beautiful health book that gives us hope and does not confuse us even further. It does not cost anything to relax, to have a hot bath, to have a wonderful shower, and to have that on a schedule regularly every day until you are recovered. That is the foundation from which we should try to approach our health problem.
Why a Daily Routine Helps
Beyond giving yourself that daily spa kind of self-care experience, what this approach is also describing is adding in routine, which can be very important when you are going through an illness.
I know that when some people are feeling horrible, you do not even want to get out of bed. But if you can get yourself up and you know, okay, I am going to do my walk and I am going to meditate, and then I have tea, having a certain routine can help people get the oomph to actually get up and start their day.
So ideally, we have a schedule. Some people hear the word schedule and think that sounds stressful, but we should think about the schedule like a pajama, not as a corset. Something that is cozy, comfy, hugs us, gives us some structure, and also prevents us from doing stressful things.
Social media is a good example. If you are on social media longer than 10 minutes, you are going to get stressed. It feels depressing, or it evokes jealousy or bad feelings.
Rate Everything on the Scale
Alongside this wellness hotel, we should really look at everything in our life and reduce everything that makes us stressed.
Tara's method is to rate everything that you do on a daily basis from minus 10, which you do not like, to plus 10, which you really like, and then try to get rid of everything that is in the minus.
She shared a story about a client with burnout. He said his wife wanted him to come to a party, but he hated parties, and he asked what he should do. Her answer was don't go. He pushed back and said he could go for just one hour, couldn't he? So she asked him, on the scale from minus 10 to plus 10, what is this one hour? He said minus two. Her answer was still don't go. Make your health, your wellbeing, the wellness hotel as good as possible.
He kept going, saying it is just one hour, how bad can it be? But if you are stressed and your body is struggling and your mind is struggling, then one hour of something that you do not like to do matters.
We need to really get rid of all of these things that stress us and maximize healthy, wholesome, beautiful activity on a schedule, as if we are in one of those old-fashioned sanatoriums where you have your things on a schedule. At 8:00 you have your yoga group, at 9:00 you have your breakfast, at 10:00 you have a treatment. And you can do this by yourself.
This also reminds me of episode 68, when Ira was here and talked about how when she got breast cancer, she decided to treat chemo as if it were a retreat. She was doing at home a lot of the things described here, using the time to relax, and sleep, and meditate, and do yoga, and all the things.
The Personality Type That Gets Sick Most
There is a certain personality type and relationship type that is prone to more disease, and this is where the conversation gets really interesting.
It is those very conscientious people, the ones who want to do the right thing, who really go out of their way to help others. Those people get sick more often. At least in the sample of Tara's clients, she finds this very much disease contributing, particularly to autoimmune diseases.
But why is it that these nice people get these sicknesses? The reason is that they deplete themselves. In their effort to help everybody and please everybody, they neglect themselves. And if you do that year after year, decade after decade, it will take its toll.
This shows up particularly in people at the age of 50 or 60, when we have to look after our elderly parents. People take that on, and then they have all these appointments, and their own health is maybe not very good, and it really takes a turn for the worse. Tara's book includes studies showing that this situation, where people work as carers for their spouses or for their parents, contributes to their own ill health.
So that is another thing that we really need to look at. How much do we deplete ourselves with over-caring, being enmeshed with other people, feeling guilty all the time, bending over backwards, and exhausting ourselves in that process?
How Caregiving Can Deplete You
When you are a caregiver, it is not just that you are physically neglecting your health. There is also what is happening emotionally.
The situation is particularly dire if somebody had a bad childhood and then their parents are old. The child who was mistreated, now an adult, feels very dutiful and thinks, I need to now look after my elderly parents, and the parents continue to be abusive. That really cuts into the old wound of childhood abuse.
This is not about refusing to help anybody. It is about doing what you can. Use the scale. If looking after somebody gets you into the minus area, you do not have to do that if you are struggling with ill health.
And I would add this: even if you are not sick, this applies to you. People who tend to be givers and people pleasers and who try to make everybody happy often either cannot or just will not say no, and they get themselves into doing all these things that they do not want to do, eating up their time, eating up their energy, and neglecting their physical and their own personal needs.
So I am going to say don't wait until you are sick. Take Tara's advice and know when to say no. Look at that scale, and if it is a negative three for you, don't do it. That would be what I would say.
How Pain & Resentment are Related
Another doctor who found out about the same dynamic, and who is quite famous, is Dr. John Sarno, author of The Body-Mind Connection.
He treated people with pain syndrome, and all he ever did was tell people about the connection between being overly conscientious and pain syndrome. That was his entire treatment. He gave them a lecture and said look after your emotions, don't be so over-caring and deplete yourself in that way. And they got better. The pain subsided.
The reason is that if you always help others so much, underneath the helpfulness is resentment that boils, because you don't really want to do that. Unless of course you genuinely want to help somebody, in which case this is a different story. But if you do it with one side of you saying I don't really want to do it, I just do it out of duty, then you have boiling resentment within yourself. That resentment and that anger really contribute to pain syndrome, pain that basically has no organic reason or cause.
Treating Emotions First
As a psychotherapist, Tara has always treated people's emotions first. That is the job. The work is reducing anxiety and depression and anger, and there are very simple exercises in her book for how to do this.
What she noticed is that when people reduce their negative emotions, all of their illness and symptoms go down.
Everything gets rated on a scale from zero to 10. When clients first come in, they might say anxiety is eight out of 10, depression is five out of 10, pain is seven out of 10, tiredness is nine out of 10. And then the work begins. Anxiety comes down. Depression comes down. And then pain goes down, tiredness goes down, illness symptoms go down.
That is really the discovery here. No disease was treated directly. The mind was treated, and as that happened, the physical symptoms seemed to disappear. And it is not just pain and tiredness. It is also things like clinical high blood pressure, hypothyroidism, and all sorts of problems that get better with this approach.
Reducing Inflammation in the Body
Because so many clients had all of these health problems, the book also includes more of what makes us healthy, including a chapter on diet.
There is a diet that reliably reduces inflammation in your body, and this is very important as an anti-aging remedy too, because as we age we accumulate all sorts of inflammation. A bit in our intestines, in our left shoulder, a little bit of arthritis in the neck, a little bit in our fingers and so on. Everywhere there is inflammation. This actually has a word. It is called inflammaging.
Inflammation contributes to every known disease. Small diseases like a little bit of arthritis in your fingers, but also heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. Inflammation contributes to all of them.
The two big things that get rid of this inflammation are an anti-inflammatory diet and movement.
Exercise & Movement Without the Gym
You do not need to go to the gym at all. Simply some walking, particularly if you have that in little bits. Park your car a little bit further away from the shops. Walk a few hundred meters here, a few hundred meters there.
And then of course there is qigong. There is a lot of scientific evidence that qigong can massively contribute to curing illness, and the studies are in the book. Qigong is really a very pleasurable form of exercise.
Make that an important aspect, that every day you get some form of exercise in there. It could be doing gardening, or going for a swim, or just walking somewhere. It does not have to be the massive, strenuous, vigorous exercise that most people think exercise is. Just don't sit all day. That is basically what it is.
How Qigong Helps You Feel Better
The other thing with qigong, besides being really good exercise, is that it helps your breath. It helps with your breathing.
And I don't think you can be stressed out when you are doing qigong, because it is very meditative. It is meditative without having to sit silently and still and meditate. When you are doing qigong, you are so focused on where your arms and your legs are moving and how you are breathing in and out that I think it serves as a meditation as well. So it is very good for keeping you calm.
Qigong really brings everything together that we have talked about. It calms your mind. It brings your energy system in order. Our energy system is things like blood flow in the limbs, our digestion, our heartbeat, our breathing. Everything that moves in the body. If you get all of that right, and qigong is helping us to do that, it happens while we are feeling good, or through feeling good.
Qigong should also always be done with a smile on your face. You move your hand as if you are gliding through some beautiful water. You smile. And gradually, as you do so, you will start feeling the energy moving in your body. Then you think, oh, that's what it's all about. And then you feel streams of nectar going up and down your body, and you think, oh my God, that is so wonderful.
I personally love qigong. I try to do it every day, but I don't. I aspire to. I think I am more serious when I am doing it, and I hadn't thought to smile. Even when you are not feeling particularly joyful, if you put a smile on your face, it gives your brain that signal that you are happy, and it does this magical thing where then you start feeling good even though you didn't feel good, just by smiling. So I am glad that came up. I will start smiling when I do my qigong. I don't know why I didn't think of that before. That is a good tip.
Create Your Own Personal Path to Wellness
Think of this book like a basket full of stuff. You can pick one thing out and start with that. You might want to start another thing. A third thing you might be doing already. And everything covered here can be done with under an hour of practice every day.
You do not have to do it all. Everybody can just pick and choose and gradually build their own personal path to health, and that is how it should be. There is not one size fits all. One person likes to go for a walk. The next one likes to do qigong. The next one really focuses on diet. And every road is correct. So gradually we are building a whole picture, an integrative model where mind and body and emotions and energy all come together.
That is an important reminder. There are so many wellness tools, wellness modalities, and practices. We are going to find some that we like a lot, some that we like a little, and some that work better for us. So I am glad that came up. Pick and choose. Try them. Try the exercises in the book, and then pick the ones that work for you.
The other thing I want to say is that I don't want people to think of wellness as a to-do list. Like, I have to meditate, then I have to do my qigong, then I have to do my whatever. I would like you to think of it as a blessing and a joy when you get to do whatever practices you choose. And also don't feel the pressure of, oh, I didn't do my qigong today. Oh well. I'll do it tomorrow.
Learn More with Tara
Tara's book, The Seven Pillars of Health, explores how emotions, mindset, and the placebo effect shape recovery, and how to combine nutrition, qigong, and Intercom for health.
Tara Springett, M.A., is a psychotherapist, Tibetan Buddhist teacher, qigong teacher, and award-winning author of numerous self-help books. Under her guidance, hundreds of clients have regained vitality and moved toward a healthier, more energetic life. Learn more about Tara & her books at taraspringett.com
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