No Time to Rush

Autoimmune. When the body attacks itself. Isn't that strange? Every species on our planet is geared for survival, yet we humans develop conditions where our own immune systems turn against us.

In the last two weeks, I've seen three different types of autoimmune: psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, and lupus. Skin, joints, the whole body. What is interesting is that conventional medicine says that there is no cure, that you must live with the condition forever.

I believe that we are all born with certain weak links in our system, and adverse circumstances can trigger conditions those weak links. Part of my role when someone comes to see me is to identify that weak link so that, with the right care, one's health begins to improve.

Let's take the example of the psoriasis case.

In psoriasis, turnaround tends to be much faster than with other conditions, because while normal skin cells regenerate every 21 days, in psoriasis, that time can be as little as five days. What that means in terms of recovery is that, in as little as five days, with the right nutrients, we can often start to see improvement. And if you take away the things that aren't helping the body at the same time, there is nothing stopping the cells from being healthy.

But Charlie's psoriasis didn't want to play ball, despite him diligently following a gluten- and casein-free diet (the potential allergens in wheat and dairy), and taking an array of supplements. That's why he came to see me.

I used to tell patients: you are what you eat. As the years went on, I realised that wasn't quite true. A more accurate adage would be: you are what you absorb. And Charlie, despite seeming to be on the right track, wasn't absorbing what he needed to*.

As you may know, there are two states in the body: one is stress and survival, and the other is rest, integration and creation. Most of us live in the former. When we spend most of our days scrambling, most digestive processes slow down, because the old reptilian part of our brain thinks we are being chased by a sabre-toothed tiger.

And this idea reminded me of two concepts in the Bhagavad Gita: Action in Inaction and Inaction in Action.

The first is when, outwardly, you appear to be doing nothing — but internally you're extraordinarily, sometimes frantically, busy. Planning. Rehearsing. Anticipating. Worrying. Having conversations that haven't happened yet.

The second is almost the opposite. You can be extremely active — answering emails, making dinner, getting children where they need to go, dealing with whatever the day throws at you — but you're not mentally entangled in every activity. You're simply doing what needs to be done.

Charlie was doing an awful lot of the first.

Even when he wasn't doing anything, he was doing something. His mind was perpetually three steps ahead of his body. And when he was actually doing something, he became so caught up in every process that it would almost drain him.

So part of our work had nothing whatsoever to do with psoriasis: we looked at the structure and intention of his day. Charlie's challenge was to take a step back and let life work through him. Everything would be done, but he didn't need to be so identified with each task. He could do what needed doing — without his shoulders somewhere around his ears.

There was no emergency. There was no urgency. There was no time to rush.

Two months into our work together, Charlie's skin was almost completely clear. But what interested me more was that he was actually doing more than he had before. He had been able to take that step back, and it was a very freeing feeling for him.

So today, when you notice you're rushing, when you catch yourself three steps ahead mentally, stop for a moment and remember Charlie's mantra: there's no time to rush.

Sometimes the body doesn't need us to try harder. It needs us to stop behaving as though everything is an emergency.

* One of the clues was the teeth marks around the edges of Charlie's tongue. You can learn what I look for in the tongue in my free downloadable guide, Tired of Being Tired All the Time?.