By Rena Greenberg
I was 25 years old, dragging myself all over New York City, from doctor to doctor, searching for relief from debilitating fatigue.
From cardiologists to neurologists to endocrinologists, one by one, medical experts scoured my chart with a puzzled expression on their faces, only to look up at me, before scurrying out of the room, and mumble, “There’s nothing physically wrong with you.”
“But it isn’t all in my head,” I would cry in frustration to anyone who would listen. “My body is physically exhausted.”
A year later, in the emergency room of Brooklyn’s Methodist Hospital, I was finally diagnosed with an irregular heart rate that had slowed down to a near-death 30 beats per minute. The next day, a hospital chaplain came to my bedside in the critical care unit to comfort me, and he encouraged me to talk to him about my feelings. “This must be devastating to you,” he said compassionately.
The young chaplain reeled back in disbelief when I confessed that I actually felt relieved by the diagnosis. He challenged me, “But you’re only 26 years old and you need a pacemaker implanted into your heart for the rest of your life to survive. You almost died!”
“Yes,” I whispered, weakened by my condition. “But for a year they were telling me it’s all in my head. Finding I have a sick heart proves that it’s not.”
As I look back on that experience 30 years later, I find it interesting that for so many of us when we are ill, or when our loved ones aren’t well, the greatest crusade in the forefront of our mind is the need to prove that it’s not “all in your head.”
After I was discharged from the hospital with a permanent pacemaker implanted into my chest, to my dismay, I continued to feel exhausted—the pacemaker wasn’t the miracle cure I had hoped for.
At first I continued to seek help from doctors. Often I was sent to various medical facilities for further testing, due to “irregularities,” or other red flags related to my mysterious “condition.”
Before long I realized that this trajectory I was on could very well become my life story. It dawned on me that I was slipping into the identity of a “sick person”—always weak, always compromised.
I knew that if I continued to see myself and carry myself in the same weakened condition that I had been operating in for the previous 18 months, most likely this would be the same way other people would relate to me as well.
At the time, it didn’t feel like I had any other choice. I didn’t want to be a victim, but that was how I felt—it seemed that life had dealt me a difficult fate since all my attempts to find a “cure” were in vain.
But was it fate that then moved me in a new direction? It was about that time that I discovered biofeedback therapy and hypnotherapy, through the recommendation of a dear new friend whom I had just met (and who later became my husband).
The discovery of a deeper power in my own subconscious mind opened up my whole world, as I was exposed to the power and magnificence of the right brain—the ability to let go of limiting beliefs, expand awareness, shift perception and take steps to build a new reality in my physical world.
After a few months of using the tools I had learned, I was able to heal and break free from the debilitating fatigue and, in the process, end all my addictions, including my unhealthy compulsive relationship with food.
I learned how to tap into my right brain and expand what my left, analytical brain would never believe to be possible. My dream of helping others became a reality when I started a hospital wellness program that was reviewed and sponsored in over 75 hospitals and attended by over 100,000 people.
The Intricate Connections
So what does this have to do with figuring out if your illness is in your mind or your body? Everything. Because what I’ve discovered over the years may surprise you and truly makes the whole question irrelevant.
That’s because your mind and body are intricately connected; they cannot be separated. Think about it. When you feel angry, check into both your mind and your body and you will no doubt realize that the two are inseparable. Can your mind be angry while your body is calm? This is impossible.
When you are overcome by thoughts of anger in your mind, at the same time, inevitably, your stomach will be grinding in a knot, your shoulders, jaw and neck will be tense, and your breathing will be quick and shallow. This is inevitable.
Can your body be sick and your mind be well?
Imagine you are having a day where you’re feeling achy, sluggish and lonely. Nothing is going right and you feel as though there is little support for you. You go out to your mailbox and find an attorney’s letter informing you that you are the sole recipient of a $5 million inheritance. Skeptical at first, your research proves the letter is authentic and that this sum of money is indeed yours.
How do you feel now in your mind and body? Still sluggish? I doubt it! What happened to your aches and ailments? Still feeling lonely? Most likely, your joy and excitement immediately transports you to a realm of exuberance and gratitude where physical and emotional pain can simply not coexist in this moment.
There is no separation between your mind and body. Therefore, it’s a moot point whether your ailments are in your mind or in your body. They have to be in both. This does not mean that your issues are “all in your head,” or that they are your fault. Far from it! If you are feeling pain in your body, you are bound to be feeling discomfort in your mind and vice versa.
This is not a reason to judge yourself or a loved one who can’t seem to shake loose a dire medical diagnosis. Instead, the realization that the mind and body are one can act as a doorway to walk through for true healing to occur.
Typically, when a person gets sick, the first course of action is to employ the expertise of the medical community. After all traditional medical options are exhausted, often the individual will then seek “alternative treatments.”
This could include acupuncture, chiropractic, nutritional supplements, hydro-colon therapy and massage therapy. Often, many of these treatments or combinations of modalities prove to be helpful.
But if illness and/or fatigue persist, often our last resort—incorporating a spiritual solution—is what may help us most. The option I am speaking of is opening to the awareness that an aspect of the “problem” is neither solely in the mind nor in the body, but may also include a disease of the spirit.
What is a disease of the spirit? In my case, through deep self-reflection and what I call self-hypnosis work, I came to realize that even though my problem was diagnosed as a low heart rate, which the pacemaker indeed solved on a physical level, the true cause was likely my physical heart broke down as a result of a pre-existing weakness in my energetic heart.
It is said that all physical disease first begins as a frailty in the energetic body. Each of us has an energetic form that our physical body overlays. Psychics who can perceive the energy field often “see” illness in one’s field even before it is physically evident.
By tuning in to your own mind-body, you can also get information as to what your life experience is here to show you. Most often, our challenges are there as potential catalysts to help us evolve.
However, it’s always a choice. Generally, the longer you dig your heels into the ground, refusing to explore inner healing in addition to seeking a physical cure, the more likely it is that your pain will not only continue, but that your life situation or illness may go from bad to worse.
As difficult as personal change often feels, not making the changes we are called to make—whether these changes are dietary, environmental or a shift in perception—is always the much more arduous path in the long run.
We aren’t meant to be victims or defeated by life; we are here to learn valuable lessons that can guide us to becoming a much higher expression of ourselves.
When sickness or difficulty turns our world grey, it’s an opportunity to let go of habitual ways of thinking and being that no longer serve us. In the journey of healing, we are required to examine ourselves. We may ask our self: “Am I fearful or controlling?” If so, “Can I open my heart in compassion to myself and others?”
You may gently inquire, “What am I afraid of or angry about?” “Do I need to be perfect? If so, why?” Or “What am I ashamed of?” “What beliefs am I holding on to that may be keeping me stuck or feeling alone or small?”
We may try to avoid these questions or we may push them away as insignificant according to our left, analytical brain. However, it’s only when life pushes us down on our knees that many of us become willing to look deeper within and truly witness both our own actions and the emotional and cognitive drivers of these behaviors.
Healing from sickness can be a long road. In my experience, it’s a journey that requires a great deal of self-awareness, patience, acceptance and self-love on many levels.
Of course, there is the level of realizing which toxins in your food and environment you are personally sensitive to, and making the required dietary and lifestyle changes. It may be necessary to have surgery or take medication or nutritional supplements.
Beyond that, the breakdown of your physical body or mental health can be an opportunity to see how and why you may have cut yourself off from your greatest support: the deeper, spiritual power and strength that is always within your infinitely intelligent subconscious mind, beyond the limitations of the conscious, analytical mind and any outdated belief systems.
With this new awareness, you can give yourself permission to plunge deeper than your physical and emotional pain. You may go beyond the question of whether your ailments are in your mind or your body—and connect to the deeper Truth in your essential core.
It is at this level that you can experience yourself as whole, healed and perfect exactly as you are. Incredibly, this is often the moment—as you take a break from seeking the “cure”—when your life force energy begins to rise again.
Higher and higher, your vitality comes alive, with every breath you take, as you begin to reclaim your inner power and true healing potential, transcending all limitation in both your mind and body.
Rena Greenberg, a Hay House author, can be reached at EasyWillpower.com. Her weight loss and gastric bypass hypnosis success has been featured in 150-plus news stories including USA Today, Woman’s World, The Doctor’s, CNN, Good Morning America and Nightline. PBS stations nationally aired Rena’s show, “Easy Willpower,” in August 2015. Her wellness program is sponsored in 75 hospitals and 100-plus corporations. She conducts hypnotherapy sessions with people all over the world on Skype and in Sarasota, FL.