When my literary agent Michele first read Mind Over Medicine, she told me that it changed the whole way she thought about her health. She said, “Before reading your book, Lissa, I honestly thought my body was none of my business. Now, having read it, I know, without a doubt, it is.”
Many of my patients feel the same way. A woman struggling with a health condition once confessed to me that she thought of her body like she thinks about her car. She’s not a car expert, so when her automobile breaks down, she takes it to her auto mechanic, who repairs it and hands it back to her – fixed.
She had the same attitude about her body. When it broke down, she’d hand her body over to a body expert – a doctor – and pray that the doctor would be skilled enough to fix her.
Is Your Body Your Business?
Is that how you think about your body? Do you believe your body is none of your business? As a physician who spent twelve years of training and ten years of practice learning to become a body expert, I used to believe I knew your body better than you do. I now know that, while I may have a better understanding of the arteries in the leg and I may wield a scalpel more expertly than you, nobody knows your very unique body better than you, and nobody is better equipped to prevent or treat illness than your brilliant inner doctor, which I call your “Inner Pilot Light”.
Your Inner Pilot Light is that part of you that knows what’s true for you and can help you align your life with that truth. When you make life choices that are out of alignment with your truth, the body reacts with physical symptoms that, left unchecked, become disease.
Think back to a time when you knew you were out of alignment in your life. Maybe you were out of alignment in a big way – cheating on your spouse or embezzling from your company or abusing your child. Or maybe you were out of alignment in more subtle ways – selling out your integrity in a soul-sucking job or drinking yourself to sleep every night or staying in a relationship with someone you don’t love. If you can remember how your body felt during those times, chances are good that your body didn’t feel so hot. You may have had headaches or gastrointestinal distress or a flare up of a skin condition or allergies. Or you may have just felt fatigued. But I’ll bet your body was signaling to you that you were off course.
