The Resilient Body
A patient profile I often see in clinic are clients who have moderate to severe symptoms, sometimes in multiple body systems and their bodies are so sensitive that even small changes to their routines throw their symptoms off balance. Finding any stability in their symptoms is a constant juggle and negotiation. These patients wind up exhausted, in my clinic and saying something like “I don’t know what I am doing wrong, but this keeps happening”. They tell me that they try to eat well, often having long eating, sleeping or exercise routines they employ to control symptoms but if an external circumstance means they are unable to adhere to it for one day, their whole body seems to go out of whack.
One concept I like to introduce in my treatments to this patient group is the concept of the resilient body. I like to say to these patients, you are not doing anything wrong, it shouldn’t be this hard. You should be able to eat a piece of chocolate cake for your birthday without have a week of bowel upsets, have a late night because you went to the movies without feeling terrible the next day, you should be able to tolerate some fluctuations in your daily routine. If the whole thing seems to go out of whack with one small change, it’s not that you are doing something wrong, it is a signal to me that your body is out of balance on a deeper level. If your body can only stay in balance with constant effort, then it is not in balance. The root cause of this imbalance actually needs to be addressed so that person can stop constantly compensating for it in their daily life. Otherwise, the symptoms might be controlled by lifestyle choices, but the fundamental imbalance is not corrected.
A way this is described in acupuncture is called a “bias”. If you are riding a bike, and the wheel is slightly tilted to the right, unless you constantly correct it by holding the handle bars slightly to the left, the bike will veer to the right. This tilt is the bias or the underlying imbalance. Your daily routine that controls your symptoms is you holding the handle bars to the left to compensate for the bias, but it is not correcting the underlying bias in the system that is leading to those symptoms the minute you stop re-correcting the handle bars.
What happens in acupuncture is that we balance the body, correcting those underlying biases so that the wheel is straight again. Finally you can take your hands off the handle bars, and you won’t go off track. Slowly we find the body becomes more resilient, it can handle small changes to routine, and it can even start to handle bigger challenges. This does not mean we are constantly well, but can bounce back after challenges. You might get a cold but instead of it knocking you down for two weeks and leaving you with a lingering cough and night sweats, you can recover more swiftly and more completely.
If this sounds like you and you are tired of having to work so hard to keep your symptoms on track, it’s not your fault, your body just needs some more support to correct the underlying imbalances so that you can start rolling with ease. East Asian medicine with it’s focus on health preservation and illness prevention has some wisdom on this. If you would like to learn more about it, come and see me in clinic to get started!
