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The many columns I have written for the Hair Route have mainly concerned the scientific side of medicine. However, over the years I have come to feel that optimal healing includes the soul or spirit as well as the body. Scientific medicine enables people to live longer and better than ever before, yet does not address all of our needs as human beings. Because the spirit and body is mutually dependant, healing needs to be directed at both. Hormonal vulnerability, because it can be so limiting, creates crises that are both physical and spiritual. Unfortunately, others rarely accept hormonal disruptions as a justification for temporary impairment. It is acceptable to call in sick for the flu, but not for PMS. Since hormone problems tend to be recurrent, they create dread that when you do feel good, it won’t last. Women are often afraid to tell employers that their hormones are making their lives difficult, both from embarrassment and from a fear, likely justified, that it will lead bosses and coworkers to consider them undependable. Then, too, hormonal vulnerable woman sometimes blame themselves because the effects of hormones are so elusive as to seem to be psychological rather than physical. Here are some of the spiritual effects of living with untreated hormonal vulnerability: Loss of hope • A feeling that the good part of life is over • Having to force oneself to go through the motions • Shame • Feeling like a complete failure – as a woman, worker, wife, mother • Guilt • Helplessness – exacerbated by doctors who offer no help or comfort • Anxiety over future • Loss of pleasure • Meaninglessness. A psychologist or psychiatrist might say that what I have listed as spiritual effects are just symptoms of depression. This ignores the fact that depression itself is a state of spiritual crisis. But more to the point, to apply the label of depression is to ignore the cause – hormonal vulnerability. Time and time again I’ve seen what was supposedly depression lift when the underlying hormone problem – whether unwanted hair, acne, hair loss, PCOS, PMS, menopausal symptoms, or insulin resistance, to name a few, was relieved with proper treatment. No endocrinology textbook I have ever seen mentions the soul as a target organ for hormone action. This omission does not mean that spiritual healing cannot help hormonal vulnerability. On the contrary, spiritual healing is particularly valuable in coping with the elusive, but very real, effects of hormones on mind and body. Anyone who has read my columns in this magazine knows that I believe in using all the resources of scientific medicine to correct hormone problems. But doctors need to recognize that even when treatment works perfectly, something else may remain: the sense of vulnerability, a certain apprehension that the problem will return or another arise. With appearance changes such as unwanted hair, acne or hair loss, the effects of years of embarrassment do not vanish overnight. Those who are hormonally vulnerable are particularly aware that the human body is neither completely reliable nor indestructible. It is just when we are up against the limits of our bodies that spirituality is needed. Also, since treatment of hormonal conditions tends to work gradually – indeed, it is often better this way – affected women may benefit from learning more effective coping skills while waiting for treatments to work. More than ever, women in the modern world tend to be hard on their bodies. Many work long hours, relieved if that is the word, by strenuous exercise. Hormones must fluctuate practically non-stop to compensate for the extra demands placed on the body. The great Chinese sage, Laozi, wrote 2,500 years ago that our difficulties come from having a body. In place of pressing against limits he taught cultivating a sense of what can actually be accomplished at each moment. In India, Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha, taught a middle way between overindulgence and extreme asceticism. To those of his followers who wanted to practice self-mortification such as near-starvation, he pointed out that one cannot develop spiritually without attending to the needs of the body. Modern studies have shown that meditation can effectively decrease stress hormones such as cortisol. These lessons are of great value to moderns who tend to forget that at certain moments in life, quiet reflection is better than non-stop activity. By prayer, meditation and other states of quiet receptivity, we can better develop our sense of when and how to act. Sometimes the first step in solving a problem is to simply be with it for a while. Women tend to be much better at this than men and so are ideally suited to cultivate this natural ability for their own healing. In The Hormonally Vulnerable Woman, I give details on some of the easy-to-learn methods which I learned from my own experience studying meditation from teachers in the US and Canada as well as in China, Japan, and Thailand. I’ve refined these methods in workshops I’ve conducted for heath care professionals and for women with PCOS. Women who share hormonal vulnerabilities will not necessarily hold identical beliefs about religion and spirituality. Recognizing a spiritual principle in the universe can take many forms. For that reason, I have developed methods of meditation and prayer that can fit anyone’s spiritual beliefs. I’ve drawn upon Buddhism and other Eastern philosophies because they have been my personal path. But the techniques should be equally comfortable for followers of all religions, and even agnostics. In the modern world, most of us must fit meditation into already overloaded schedules. Fortunately, even very simple forms can help set the body into healing mode. Realistic expectations are critical. Meditation is not, as sometimes advertised, instant ecstasy. As with anything important, meditation takes time to learn. It is a skill, not a talent. Progress is usually gradual; those who persist usually notice that their life has changed for the better, including their relation to their own hormones. It took me about a year of regular sitting before I noticed any effects from my practice. Once I got to this point, however, I started to notice more and more benefits in rapid succession. Not only was I calmer, the incapacitating migraine attacks from which I’d suffered from my teens ceased. I had not anticipated this; rather after I had been meditating for a couple of years, I suddenly realized that I had not had a migraine for several months. Now, many years later, I still have not had another attack. Somehow I can tell a headache is coming on and shift something in my mind that nips it in the bud. This does not mean that meditation is a cure-all, but it can do things that medication cannot. In next issue, I’ll give some simple instructions for forms of meditation and prayer that can fit into even the busiest lifestyle. |
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