Ana Clavell

Are you giving others the power over your wellbeing?

We have let others take over our wellness for too long.

I remember the first time I took a homeopathic remedy. It was almost 20 years ago. I had developed a headache that would not go away – the by-product of a relentless, aggressive chronic condition not fully understood and, at the time, not properly diagnosed. It was not budging, not with painkillers, not with anything I had come to trust as the sure-bet way to deal with physical maladies. Stepping out of a business lunch near Fountain and Vine in Hollywood, California I saw a little European pharmacy/imports shop on the strip mall where the restaurant was.

I went in to grab whatever over-the-counter medicine they had, hoping against hope that they had something to cure the headache.

The kindly shop owner, an elderly Russian man, suggested I try Sinusalia, a homeopathic compound made by French company Boiron. Having nothing to loose at this point I gave it a go… and the headache was gone for good in less than five minutes. “How can this be possible?” I thought to myself. “How can a product like this exist and me not know about it?” For the first time in my life I saw alternatives to healthcare beyond the “safety” net of allopathic, mainstream medicine and it shook me to the core.

After that fateful afternoon I took it on myself to find out more about what other possible ways to cure oneself were out there. It was many doctors later, many treatments later, many practitioners of alternative modalities later that I realized that I had bought wholesale into believing that a cure is the end-all to all dis-ease, and that it is always performed by someone else, or effected by a pill, or by a method. Every day we are bombarded by “new” discoveries that will help us loose weight, sleep better, look younger, live longer. As human beings we are so much more complex than what a single pill (or twenty) can do for our health; yet, for the better part of our lives, we put all our hopes on external interventions, sometimes even at the expense of ignoring our own inner sense of what our body needs.

When we are dead-set on a cure (say, for a chronic condition, like I was) we invariably find out that managing the condition becomes the only true alternative when we are in this mindset of getting cured.

I remember being in that mind-space, and it’s depressing and frustrating and painful, and I spent close to 30 years bouncing back and forth between “finding a cure” and managing my dis-ease and the emotional and mental distress it brought about. I felt like a failure at my “inability” to be cured by others, and more than once I saw doctors throwing their arms up in the air and closing the book on me, their own frustration echoing mine.

In all fairness medical professionals do want us to be well. Yet, each one of us is the expert on our own selves, and way too often we get swayed by commercials for wonder drugs or top-ten things we should be doing to be wrinkle-free. I am not in any way discounting that there’s real value in these offerings. There is no doubt that many treatments are life-saving and can and do improve quality of life. Yet, somehow, we have placed the entire responsibility for being healthy on others.

Being healthy starts by getting re-acquainted with ourselves, and with our needs instead of wants. It takes some soul searching and facing negative aspects of ourselves. It requires we discard old conditioning and rethink our relationship with the medical establishment and what our expectations are. Being healthy means questioning a diagnosis and asking for second opinions, and not being afraid to investigate alternative ways to deal with our dis-ease. Ultimately the road brought me to Reconnective Healing, and I have healed from my chronic condition; but I could have just as easily missed on this opportunity had I not been listening to my inner self.