As author Brene' Brown teaches through her best selling book, The Gift of Imperfection, "You must do your own heart work" She also states, " You cannot give from what you do not have ". This book, along with all her others on vulnerability should be right there next to Netter's Anatomy on every pre med student's book list .
How many times did I tell that to my client with "no time" to treat her fibromyalgia or discuss the scientific rationale behind persistent cognitive pain? How many strained bodies have I mended after suffering from the ill effects of being the perfect mom, the most dedicated athlete or the strongest CEO and then skip my lunch, fail to drink my eight glasses of water and beat myself up for hours after missing a show at my child's school? I still struggle but before 2001, I thought it was okay. I was happy to sacrifice my health in the name of taking care of others.
Where Do You Fit In?
Right now, I don't care about ICD 10 or who values me. I just want to help 100 more wounded healthcare warriors take the leap I did into healing themselves and using it to be a better version of themselves for others. I want to remind western leaders to lead with spiritual leadership and embody their authentic self. In the process I want to see if we can collectively shine and learn how to heal the broken western health care system. So Belly Guru 2.0 is focused on coaching the holistic health of any care giving leaders. There are just too many fellow warrior goddesses, just like the younger me out there. I know because they are coming to see me as clients under the illusion of being unable to perfect themselves. They are filled with things to do and drowning in their own abundant knowledge wisdom all the while they are dealing with unhealed strains or stress related bowel and gynecological dysfunction. I feel for them. I do because I know the painfully slow process of meeting the truth in their heart. I am 43 years old now but I began my similar heart work as a 25 year old, burnt out physio who was on a fast paced trajectory towards the top of my field. For the previous ten years I strategically navigated how not to be vulnerable and collect my value with awards on my wall so you can imagine my paralysis when I had the paycheck, the apartment, the man and the job I thought I wanted and was miserable. Tapping into my core connection felt like a shot in the gut.
Circa 1998: Realizing core values
I remember the unraveling like it is yesterday. The night before I was looking through some continuing education offers in a magazine wondering how I could better myself. It was before my Monday work shift at a fairly new "dream" job that had my schedule open for 18-24 patients per day, It was Sunday evening and I was already feeling nauseous going in. That Sunday morning I just about decided I was going to be adding an OCS credential instead of a SCS and for whatever reason I saw an ad about yoga training and started to cry. I wanted to do it but it was not on my list of things I HAD to do. At the time taking a fitness training and making it physical therapy was a step down and backwards in my monkey mind. Somewhere between the tears I fell asleep but the next day I called in to work , stayed in my pajamas and loaded on feeling guilty as hell. I was actually the bread winner in my newlywed family back then but within a week I gave my notice. I was gone. I was officially depressed for just over a month. My therapist said I must be tired of learning and doing and wanting to be so many things for so many people. All I remember is that at 25 years old I found myself crying day after day about my stressed out life while sitting on my balcony in a great apartment in NYC telling myself that despite a crap load of success on my walls, I was such a loser.
I graduated high honors from Physical Therapy School without a class in self compassion.
Can you believe not one of my medical friends dealing with death and disease all day feels he or she was ever educated in the value of self compassion? Outside of my yoga, I know I was not. I have such compassion for that ignorant linear minded girl without some real world tools of her own. She just did not have any mentors who understood what it means to be a heart centered creative in a western science based healing profession. She did not have any integratives around her yet and she DEFINITELY did not see the bigger picture or an alternative solution then to quit so she did and assumed she made a big mistake.
Blind ambition for a Bigger Voice
I needed to quit. It was the right thing to do and I did not make a mistake but at the time I was blind to the fact that I was sick (most likely adrenal fatigue) from the choices I felt I HAD to make. in 1998 I made a choice to align with my energetic integrity but sadly it still took me a few more years of fatigue (suffered on and off since a bad case of mono in 1994 being perfect- the first sign) and a second post-partum related depression in 1999( the second sign) and 9/11/01 ( knock number three) to get a clue that mind and body required a spiritual connector. Apparently my strategic timeline on how to become a kick ass everything was actually the part that was completely flawed. I felt like a hypocrite. I was not healthy nor valuing my mind and once my daughter was born, I just had very limited energy to meet the demands of that high traffic sports therapy practice I thought I wanted. I jumped off that trajectory and although I questioned my move away from athletic training I occupied myself trying to figure out how to use my birth experience to service "other families" in health. I seemed to have to take a class because I was not admitting that my interest in maternal health was actually all about helping me.
Wanting a Voice & Finding it through the Silence of Yoga
All I wanted in 1998 seemed very simple. I wanted to offer what I went to school to do. I wanted to be respected by the entire medical community. I wanted to feel energized and alive with how I spent my energy and I wanted to be a good mom and work but just not in that typical clinic way.
Before I decided to make my bigger move into letting go of traditional perspectives, I was two kids in and down to three quarter working hours. I was doing all the right things but still getting burnt out. I said it was poor work life balance but now I know it was an internal imbalance of my 5 realms of being. I was very likely several years into adrenal fatigue and my psychosocial integrity of being mom was shot keeping up with the Joneses. The lack of energy I complained was being zapped by an overactive mind and misalignment of my personal core beliefs, I questioned my value way too many times and I realized it was actually an attempt to feed the realm of dharmic integrity.
In psychology we call this inner conflict cognitive dissonance. For a good two more years I labeled it "a phase" like PMS and jumped onto my yoga mat. I knew if I didn't work hard finding myself that someone would tell me who I was and provide me the evidence to medicate myself again for resolution. I worked too hard getting off it the first time. There would need to be another solution.
Luckily my yoga pill worked great but I need to keep consistent or down the slippery slope of perfectionism I would go. I moved to a better environment for work /life balance, bit my lip and stopped working on my career for a year just because I could. I used the time and dedicated more time to being home with the kids as my off the mat yoga practice. I began identifying myself as a yogi, with many roles and I began to use my own medication called getting real and dirty . Before long, with the roles of wife, mommy and all the other things , Belly Guru version 1.0 came out in a birth of beautiful, imperfect, professional health leadership.
Fast forward to 2015. I am the creator of the Belly Guru Yoga Training System which is an integrative system of yogic lifestyle coaching and teaching. It has evolved into a Registered yoga school, an entry level yoga therapy bridge program for licensed health care providers and a personal heal the healer system. Up until October of 2013 I owned an integrative free standing clinic with nutrition, massage, yoga classes, private therapy and counseling contracted in. I have never seen myself as other than an integrative PT but I grew muscles to angle the filters to my audience. Along the last ten years I feel I have come full circle and am creating again. I have enjoyed seeing how all the jagged pieces have became a bigger picture and I consider looking at that yoga ad in 1998 as my breakdown of divine intervention. Brene' Brown reported that 2007 it was her year and first step to the successful life she is living. Mine was a decade before.
Becoming a CEO is enough
Yes transitioning thru your own crap from an amateur perspective of success to a professional has a new level big league self care responsibility. It is a scary process but yoga helps. So does...
- Having a mastermind of collective weirdos lovingly K.I.S.Sing medicine like me
- Knowing how to blend coaching my clients and treating them
- Being there for that one client who needs more of a partnership than another prescription
- Creating enough revenue to make my own hours to make a healthy breakfast, pack nutritious lunches and get to my kids games and travel with my husband and son's lacrosse travel team
- Creating my own definition of success as an extension of the authentic me in a healthy balance between fire and resiliency is amazingly restorative in it's own right.
- "You do not need another letter after your name to feel valuable" you are plenty valuable already to me but you MAY need a coach to know and breath and sell your value in an abundant way everyday.
- Stop taking classes for a little while "You do not need another tool to help you have success now" but you do need a mirror sometimes to know if you are acting like a tool and could use some training on social connection.
- Become your best by being the CEO of our own life first. Soon you will naturally know if your happiness equals the need to be the CEO of a company but don't worry, you won't be wasting time. The second comes naturally by way of the first.
