My Fibromyalgia Journey – Seeing a Specialist.

Speaking to the right people.

After reading some very depressing Facebook pages and websites that were all full of doom and gloom, I decided that I needed to see someone that could really help. A specialist.

However, that in itself was a bit of a problem, who do I see?

A neurologist or a rheumatologist?

After speaking to several people, I found out I should be seeing a rheumatologist, so I went on the internet to find my nearest private hospital. I found Dr Peddasomayajula.

He was such a lovely man. He spent time with me explaining Fibromyalgia, eliminating most of the fear around it. He also confirmed that I did have it but not to worry as … drum roll please… with the right treatment symptoms can lesson dramatically and even disappear completely.

Hooray!

Dr P prescribed the right prescription for pain management as anything like paracetamol or even morphine just won’t work.

He also suggested a good diet… so no more:

• Vitamin D and good multi vitamins as well as probiotics.

• Alcohol… makes the symptoms worse and it doesn’t mix well with the new medication.

• Too much caffeine …. makes the symptoms worse as well.

So not so much Hooray … however, if cutting back on a few things will take away the pain then I will try and it will also help with weight loss.

Stress is another big factor in Fibromyalgia. (The preferred term for Fibromyalgia is now Chronic Widespread Pain Syndrome.) Meditation, yoga and my love of Reiki will also help. Doctors are more and more in favour of their patients using meditation, mindfulness and other relaxing techniques.

Meditation doesn’t have to mean sitting crossed legged humming ‘OM’. You could also do something you love such as

• Walking your dog or just walking in nearby woods.

• Gardening.

• Colouring, painting and drawing.

• Listening to guided meditations

I hope you, my lovely readers, have found a little help in my blog. Please feel free to contact me if you would like a positive outlook on Fibromyalgia and help with meditation and Reiki.

Love and light Debs xx

My Fibromyalgia Journey – Diagnosis

In my last post I talked about not knowing what was wrong with me, today I thought I would share what happened next.

Off I trotted to the Doctors. I’m very lucky as I have a brilliant medical practice, the reception staff, nurses and Doctors are lovely and caring.

My nurse, Karen, had already emailed the Dr J so she knew why I was seeing her. Dr J explained that if all my blood tests came back alright then she would complete an online programme which would give a score. Over a certain number it would be highly likely to be Fibromyalgia.

To cut a long wait short, I went back to see Dr J and yes my bloods were fine, so I then had to answer a list of questions.

These symptoms are taken from the NHS website.

Do you have…. ?

Widespread Pain

The pain could feel like:

• an ache

• a burning sensation

• a sharp, stabbing pain

Stiffness Fibromyalgia can make you feel stiff. The stiffness may be most severe when you have been in the same position for a long period of time – for example, when you first wake up in the morning.

It can also cause your muscles to spasm, which is when they contract (squeeze) tightly and painfully.

Poor Sleep Quality

Fibromyalgia can affect your sleep. You may often wake up tired, even when you have had plenty of sleep. This is because the condition can sometimes prevent you sleeping deeply enough to refresh you properly. You may hear this described as non-restorative sleep.

Cognitive problems ('fibro-fog')

Cognitive problems are issues related to mental processes, such as thinking and learning.

If you have fibromyalgia, you may have:

• trouble remembering and learning new things

• problems with attention and concentration

• slowed or confused speech

Headaches

If fibromyalgia has caused you to experience pain and stiffness in your neck and shoulders, you may also have frequent headaches.

When I answered, yes to the above and more, Dr J diagnosed me with Fibromyalgia.

Thank F**K for that as I truly thought I was going mad! Now I know what is wrong I can look at ways to make me feel better and I now take time out …. When I hit wall with tiredness I stop and have a lie down… and meditate or fall asleep.

In my next blog I’ll talk about the downfalls of researching on the internet and finally seeing a Specialist.

My Fibromyalgia Journey – What’s wrong with me?

Moving out of Leigh on Sea and buying a piece of land caused a fair bit of stress. Three years on I realised something was wrong with me. Seriously wrong. Going backwards and forwards to the Drs didn’t help as all my blood tests came back ok. I was fighting fit! Or so they told me, how come I didn’t feel like it though? My symptoms include, poor memory, brain fog, restless leg, weight gain & pain …everywhere.

Feeling a bit of a fraud… I help others to look after themselves. Life got in the way, building a house, working, looking after Mum, my wonderful grandkids and not forgetting dear ol’ Paul. I stopped looking after myself. I simply forgot. As a Reiki Master and teacher, I’m lucky enough to revisit my level one (Shoden) Reiki manual on a regular basis. Once I realised that I was stressed I reviewed my life and I went back to the basics of my Reiki training, which was really beneficial. I was treating myself better. Although I meditate and give myself Reiki I didn't remember to use some of the other brilliant techniques, however recently I’ve gone back to practising what I teach and have stopped forgetting me.

So now I’m,

1. Keeping a journal

2. Using Reiki

3. Reciting the precepts and meditating.

4. Repeating affirmations – I create the thought I want to achieve, using I am or I will as this detracts from the negative to bring in a positive light and attitude.

My last visit to see the practice nurse gave a glimmer of hope. She thought, after reading through my notes, that I may have Fibromyalgia. She advised me to go back and see my GP.

In my next post I’ll talk about what happened when I saw the Doctor.

Love and light

Debs

xx

Feldenkrais and the Art of Listening

My Guest Blogger this week is the amazing Yeu-Meng from Feldenkrais Essex

The Art of Listening

Do you feel sometimes that people don’t really listen when you’re talking? They seem to have their own agenda and steer the conversation to what they want to say and not listen to what you have to say. Do you think you might have that sort of relationship with your body? Do you ever properly listen to your body as it tries to tell you what it likes/dislikes or do you impose your will on it to do as you please?

Listening to Your Body

Feldenkrais® is not only about movement. It is also about listening; listening not only to interpret the teacher’s verbal directions during an Awareness Through Movement® lesson, but listening to our body as it responds to those instructions at the same time. For example, when we reach with the arm, we listen to how we perform that movement – what is the quality of the movement, is it smooth or jerky, how far do we go easily without stretching or straining and so on. We listen not only to what is happening in our arm, but also to how other parts of us react to this movement – how does our torso support the movement, are there any ripples of movement from the pelvis or the feet, how does the movement change your contact on the floor. How does one part of us talk and relate to the other parts?

We are so used to “shouting” at our bodies. Many of us perceive of our bodies as merely a physical vehicle that transports ourselves from A to B and don’t pay much attention to it until something goes wrong. We also have the habit of compartmentalising ourselves into arms, legs, torso and head without thinking about how they ‘talk’ and relate to each other. We don’t listen to what our bodies have to tell us until they begin to “shout” back at us. Literally it means pain and discomfort, limitations in our quest to get ourselves from A to B. The most common comment I get from people is “I don’t know how that happened. My back/neck/knee/ankle suddenly went as I turned round, or bent down etc”.

An Accident Waiting to Happen

I have a theory for this. Things rarely go wrong suddenly and without warning – when something goes, it is probably because it was an accident waiting to happen through years of moving in a particular way. Perhaps we had ignored earlier warning signs – a little throb, twinge or discomfort here and there, but we dismissed those sensations because it wasn’t serious enough to take heed. Our body was trying to tell us something but we chose to disregard it.

As an Ehlers Danlos sufferer I used to put parts of myself out constantly. My back would suddenly go as I lifted my hands up to wash my hair. I remember reaching across the passenger seat in the car to retrieve my handbag – something clicked or popped in my hip joint and I was limping for weeks after that. I have not suffered from these inexplicable sudden injuries now for some years since I did the Feldenkrais training. The odd occasion when something goes, the recovery time is much quicker – it lasts for days rather than weeks or even months.

A Different Way to Achieve Core Strength

I haven’t gone to the gym to strengthen my core or my muscles, neither have I stretched to free the tightness in my neck and shoulders. I simply listen to my body as I do numerous Feldenkrais® lessons and take this learning into practical application into my everyday life. This improves the way I use myself daily and herein lies the clue for our wellbeing. It is the way we use ourselves on a daily basis that has the greatest bearing on the health of our joints and muscles. When I reach for something now, my body is probably aware of what my neck is doing, how I am shifting my weight, whether I am holding my breath etc – these are all the things that are involved in making this simple everyday movement an effortless one. Some of this is conscious, a lot of it is unconscious, and the more Feldenkrais® I do, the more unconscious this way of moving and using myself becomes as the habits of good quality movement replace the not so good ones. It is the art of listening to your body, truly listening.

We don’t expect babies to lift weights to strengthen themselves in order to learn to crawl or walk. They learn to organise themselves through sensing their skeleton through movement and their relationship to gravity. In turn, their musculature develops to support the function of crawling, walking, sitting, running and so on. I am now stronger because I am better organised skeletally, and my musculature has developed to support this. In the past, years of physical therapy did not have much effect on me as those exercises did not support how I used myself in my daily activities – it did not address the issues of how I was walking, sitting, using my arms – these were all actions which I was doing which were threatening my whole being through not being aware of healthy organised movement.

Feldenkrais® for Optimum Functioning

In short, listening to yourself and how you organise yourself to do various activities could be the key to your wellbeing , to healthy ageing or to your pain management. The next time your bend down to tie your shoe laces, turn round to talk to someone behind you, or reach up for that object on the high shelf, listen to how you are doing that movement. Develop the art of truly listening to your body before it shouts at you.

Yeu-Meng

http://feldenkrais-essex.com/feldenkrais-and-the-art-of-listening/

Dowsing

Have you lost something….

If you are anything like me then I often put things down somewhere only to lose them as I can’t remember where I have put them!

Using a Pendulum is a quick and easy way to locate lost items.

The Ancient art of dowsing has been practiced throughout time, and the oldest evidence was found in a massive system of caverns, the Tassili Caves in North Africa dated to be at least 8000 years old. Among the many fascinating wall murals, there is a remarkable large wall painting of a dowser, holding a forked branch in his hand searching for water.

Also known as "water witching", dowsing was originally used to find underground water sources, but most recently used for a wide range of other purposes.

Most common uses of dowsing are: seeking out hidden things like minerals, oil deep underground, locating lost objects, missing persons, sources of geopathic stress, and to diagnose illness.

Dowsing is done by using a forked stick or rods, mainly for the physical search of a site, or by using a pendulum. When we work with a pendulum for a crystal healing session we are working directly with our Higher Self/Soul. The information is being sent from the soul directly to our conscious mind via a yes or no answer to questions we ask. We can dowse anything.

In Crystal Therapy we dowse the chakras and energy field to see what the flow of energy is like. We then dowse to ask which crystals are to be used on each chakra to correct the flow of energy bring the chakra back into balance.

Begin your crystal journey with my Crystal Training Courses and Workshops in Essex.

For dates and full details click here

So how stressed are you?

Please take a minute or two just to think about it, then, score it 0-10, 10 being the worse.

 Ideally our stress rate should be between 0-2 but life can sometimes throw us a curve ball or two. 

“Hans Selye coined the word ‘stress’ in 1936, he first defined it as a non-specific response of the body to any demand in change, later changing this to,
Stress is the rate of the wear and tear of your body.
”

As a Reiki Master a couple of my favourite ways of helping me to release stress is using Emotional Freedom Technique and of course, Reiki.

EFT
In 1995 Gary Craig, streamlined the practice of Thought Field Therapy (TFT) to develop Emotional Freedom Technique or EFT for short.

The basis of EFT is in Chinese acupuncture and psychology but instead of using needles, well-established meridian points on the upper body are tapped with the fingers. 

Many times we are affected by stress, bad relationships or traumas. Depression, interpersonal problems and anxieties also affect our health. These negative emotions block the flow of energy in our system and have a detrimental effect on our health. EFT helps in releasing these negative emotions and resolving the problem.

EFT is a unique and simple exercise that calms you so that you can think more clearly.  Since it only takes a minute or two to complete each round of tapping this makes EFT a quick, convenient and highly effective process which can be used on any issue and anywhere to good effect.  

EFT is a therapy that puts you back in the driving seat.

If you would like any further information on EFT, Reiki, Crystal Therapy and the courses I teach please take a look at my website.