fibro-MY-algia

FIBROMYALGIA

I read somewhere once that fibromyalgia syndrome (a.k.a. FMS) was generated by a person’s inability to complete a burning desire. It sure feels like it. It burns. A lot. I like to describe it like having a sunburn that is so exquisitely painful that clothing is too painful, the wind generated by a fan burns. A sunburn feels a little better every day. In FMS the burning gets a little hotter every day. Remember the last time you did heavy exercise and had a burning ache in your muscles the following days? Remember the burning lessened a little every day? FMS gets a little hotter, and a little deeper everyday.

The pain of FMS gets so deep inside that thinking hurts. Feeling emotions hurts. Lights artificial and natural hurt. Sound hurts. Sleeping hurts. Sitting, walking, standing, moving and even making love hurt.

Aside from being in a relationship that was not working and feeling trapped in it, unable to move out on my own, my life was pretty good. One day I was fired from my job after being interrogated by two FBI agents and told to get a lawyer. Lots of money was missing and I had been framed by my best friend. My life fell apart. I fell apart.

My body shut down. My mind exploded and two years later I was officially Temporally Totally Physically Disabled with stress induced Fibromyalgia syndrome. My roommate at the time would often have to help me out of bed and onto the Lazyboy recliner in front of the television. My girlfriend and I were still trying to make it work living apart and she would often come over to put spoonful after spoonful of soup or broth gently into my mouth. I would move my tongue ever so slowly to try to swallow, every movement of the tongue and throat feeling like a thousand red-hot needles. I couldn’t laugh or cry because the movements generated by both were too painful.

This went on for about two years, the most painful, miserable days of my life, and at the same time, the best thing that could have ever happened to me. FMS became my best friend, confidant, teacher and guide. If I did something that was not good for me I paid dearly for it. When I made the correct changes at the right time and in the right direction I felt my life slowly come back to me.

Over the years many people, students, friends and clients alike, have asked me how I got over FMS. I have been contacted by people who have FMS and who just want to see if its true that I am well now because like me they were told that there is no cure. Thanks to all those who have asked me I have spent many hours finding the answer and refining that answer. I have also come to see how “getting over it” involved very many small changes over a period of self-discovery that still continues.

The one thing that must happen in order for one with the FMS label to “get over it” is to stop trying to “GET OVER IT” and start working on being well. Being well requires many things, most important of which is to take charge of ones health. Many studies show that the best treatment for FMS is education. Education that promotes health and healing by teaching one about how, what and when to eat, how to move effortlessly and efficiently, and how to do what we came here to do.

According to what I have learned while “getting over it” we all have a dream to manifest. When we were born we were born with a purpose, we came here To Be. To Be What? The closer one gets to that knowledge the better ones life is. The further one gets from that knowledge the more one goes against the current, the more turbulence one encounters, and the more one gets tossed this way and that, and the more the tossing hurts. The desire to Be becomes a burning desire that consumes one from the inside.

So what did I do to heal from FMS? I changed the way I eat and the way I move. I watched. I paid attention. When I hurt, I noticed patterns. When I changed those patterns, I hurt less.

Now, almost twenty years later, I am very happily married with my best friend and the greatest teacher I could ever have. We do Iyengar yoga with on of the most advanced instructors with the well-earned reputation of being intense in his practice and in his ability to hearten and inspire one to be intense in ones practice. I teach holistic health, massage, bodywork, healthy eating and movement, and I have a private practice where I integrate all these into a healing regimen.

Why Fibro-MY-algia? Because I believe that it is mine, I am the only one that can do anything about it. No one can eat for me or chew for me. No doctor or therapist can ever do it. The moment I Take responsibility for my well-being, I am already better. It is MY fibromyalgia.