I've always been fascinated by health and healing. Probably because I walked through a brutal 18-year healing journey with my dad trying anything and everything I possibly could to help him.
I did a two-year-long healing certification program with a prominent church that sees people miraculously healed through prayer and spiritual experiences all the time. I did my training for functional nutrition and saw people healed through food and lifestyle. I became an emotion code practitioner and have seen people heal through forgiveness and emotional release.
I spent different seasons of my life heavily immersing myself and studying all the ways one can be healthy and heal through the physical stuff, spiritual stuff, and emotional stuff. Many people can get locked in on just one of those areas, and they all can work, but to know which one you need to press into can only be determined by, you.
So many of you resonated with my last post on the problem with functional medicine and wanted to know more about the alternatives I do now.
What is your health paradigm?
A paradigm is your framework or lens through which you see the world. It affects how you see, respond, and experience everything around you.
We all have a paradigm in which we view our bodies and health.
Modern medicine paradigm
If you have a modern medicine paradigm, you may view doctors as the ultimate authority of knowing what is going on in your body. You may think that the body can randomly develop disorders and diseases that are completely unpredictable and unpreventable. You may believe that germs and viruses are contagious. You may believe that medications, ‘shots’, and surgeries are a modern convenience.
Holistic health paradigm
If you have a holistic health paradigm, you may think that diseases and disorders are a result of lifestyle factors, poor food choices, environmental toxicity, GMOS, mold, genes, age, etc. You may be on many supplements. You may take things to try and strengthen your immune system when you get sick. You may think the world we live in is toxic and you need to work hard to avoid certain toxins and foods.
Paradigms matter because they control your reaction and how you handle the symptoms you experience. They really matter when you consider what kind of doctor/ healer you are going to because they will view your symptoms through whatever lens/framework/paradigm they have. And whatever they specialize in they can usually somehow always relate it to whatever symptoms you are experiencing. Ex: parasite specialist will attribute symptoms to parasites - a mold/Lyme specialist to that, a hormones doc to hormones, etc.
My current paradigm
My current paradigm is different. It has a lot of similarities to German New Medicine, but also with my own connections from all of the trainings I have done from a physical, emotional, and spiritual lens.
A few paradigm shifts I’ve had over the years:
What if. . .
germs, viruses, microbes, or bacteria are not the problem, they are the cure
This is the third law of German New Medicine. As Dr. Hamar discovered, microbes play a positive role in our healing and the presence of them is a sign we are in the healing phase.
For example, when someone has a sore throat, the bacteria that is present in the symptoms is actually the thing that is trying to heal the body, it's not a bad thing causing the problem, it's trying to heal the problem.
Bacteria break down and build up tissues, and are symbiotic to the human body.
Blaming the symptoms or bacteria, germs, or viruses for the sickness, imbalance, or disease is like blaming the firemen for the fire. They are not the problem, they are trying to treat the problem.
Previously I would take supplements to strengthen my immune system or get rid of the bacteria or virus when a cold, sore throat or flu came along, but now, I acknowledge they are already doing the work to heal my body and let the process flow.
you don’t need to focus on getting rid of symptoms
Symptoms are always there for a reason. They are trying to resolve whatever conflict shock you may have recently had (GNM law #1). When you are having symptoms, instead of thinking something is wrong or trying to get rid of your symptoms, view them as helping you, and do whatever you can to identify whatever conflict they are trying to resolve and work on resolving that conflict so the symptoms can no longer be there.
You can relax when you start to experience symptoms because that means your body is already healing! It completely changes the way you react and handle any health issues that come along.
Previously I viewed any symptoms I was having as something going wrong in my body, but now I know that the presence of the symptoms means my body is in the healing phase - a major paradigm shift that has allowed me to move through anything with myself or my kids faster, with less stress and more ease.
Different symptoms indicate different conflicts the body is trying to resolve: skin issues are a form of a separation conflict, digestion issues stem from an ‘indigestible morsel’ conflict, and autoimmune symptoms stem from a ‘self-devaluation’ conflict.
If symptoms are reoccurring or not going away, this is called a ‘hanging healing’- meaning the conflict keeps getting triggered instead of resolved.
The big paradigm shift is, instead of treating the exact symptom (taking herbs for a cold, magnesium for digestion, progesterone for more progesterone etc) I focus on treating the conflict that caused that symptom. Life-changing. Because simply taking a pill or supplement or natural remedy for the symptom is not addressing why the symptom was there in the first place.
diseases are adaptations trying to heal the body
The 5th law of GNM makes sense of illness, perhaps for the very first time and authenticates that disease is not a mistake of nature, but rather an intrinsic part thereof.
There is meaning and purpose in what appears to be the chaos of disease.
Dr. Hamer established that every 'disease' originates from an unresolved conflict and is mirrored biologically on the three levels of psyche-brain-organ.
Meaning: a shocking, hard, confusing, or stressful event occurs in your life and depending on how you perceive and react to the event, a part of your brain is impacted, and that part of the brain affects an organ in the body, causing the symptom.
According to Dr. Hamers work, there is no such thing as disease. Instead, our symptoms are the biological response to something that we experienced in life that caused a shock and we can assist the body by resolving the conflict shock with a perceptual change of what happened.
Previously, I viewed disease as a result of lifestyle or even something random that no one can predict. Now, I see it as our body intelligently adapting to whatever it is needing at that time, and identifying the conflict shock it’s trying to fix and heal within the psyche is where I look for the root.
the energy you carry matters the most
A huge paradigm shift that has immensely changed my health is realizing the energy I carry and have around things matters more than the thing itself.
When I stopped obsessing and restricting food, worrying about glyphosate, GMOs, and gluten, it didn’t affect my body negatively anymore. Same with EMFs, mold, parasites, etc.
Fear, shame, and guilt are the lowest frequencies that do significant damage to the body.
Love, gratitude, and joy are the highest that are incredible healing to the body.
This isn’t about being positive or in good energy all of the time. You can feel terrible or be in a bad situation and move into the energy of acceptance and trust and be totally fine. It’s when fear, stress, and shame take over that causes problems.
what you truly believe is what you see
If you believe a certain supplement, diet, pill, or treatment will work, it probably will.
If you believe everything around you is harmful and bad for you, it probably will negatively affect your body.
What you believe from a subconscious level, which is hard to know, I believe will show up in your life.
That’s why I spend so much time exploring what I truly believe about all areas of life and how that may be causing whatever I am experiencing. Because you don’t see life as it is, you see it as you are.
What I do
So then, instead of seeing doctors (traditional or holistic) as the authority to know what's going on in my body, or taking millions of supplements to heal or strengthen my immune system, when I have health issues, I see symptoms as opportunities to explore the ways I am relating to life and I ask these questions:
What benefit am I getting out of experiencing this?
What's going on in my heart?
What conflicts am I dealing with? How can I resolve these things?
How am I perceiving life? Relationships? Purpose? God?
How am I living in fear, worry, constriction?
How can I support my body to relax, rest, let go, accept, and connect with the creator?
A conflict is resolved when it can't happen again or when you can laugh about it. What would need to change in your life for this shift to occur? What will it take for you to not experience this conflict in this way ever again?
What will it take for you to no longer see this as a threat?
What will it take for you to not give an F about it anymore?
These questions have profoundly changed my relationship to health and whatever I or anyone around me may be experiencing.
It also has dramatically changed how I handle symptoms and sickness with my kids.
This doesn’t mean I don’t do all of the natural things and take supplements, I do. But I do it from a completely different state of mind. I see those things as ways to help me stay energetically grounded and emotionally stable, not as the cure or solution.
This stability will allow me to handle the curveballs of life with more grace and it will be easier to return to this balance should I experience a shocking conflict, which I believe is the biggest determining factor of health and what affects your body the most: how you handle, perceive, and move through the stress, trauma, and curveballs in life. And eating, sleeping, and moving well greatly affect how your mind can work and respond to life, so that’s why it matters.
That’s my focus, that’s what I am always striving to do better. And that’s what has made my health, mind, and life more and more beautiful each year.
I feel incredibly turned off by social media right now, so if this has been helpful to you, I would be so grateful if you could give it a ❤️ on top or share it with someone you think would be a good fit around here so I can keep this newsletter going (without selling my soul to the algorithm)!
Great post! Paradigms shape our healing journey. Shifting from viewing symptoms as enemies to recognizing them as signs of healing can transform our approach to health. Embracing a new health paradigm means seeing bacteria and viruses not as threats, but as allies in our healing journey. What if our symptoms were actually signs of recovery?
I would love to know your thoughts of arthritis in your hands.