I remember when the Doctor told me that I had Ulcerative Colitis in 2001. It felt like my life was over. I was told this was an incurable chronic disease that I would be living with for the rest of my life. It took me eight years before I discovered the tools to heal myself.
In a nutshell, my healing was a process of understanding the mental, emotional, and physical connection within myself. I began listening to Eckhart Tolle's, "A New Earth" on my mp3 player, and started noticing the negative mental and emotional patterns repeating within myself like a broken record. As I remained committed to staying present and watching how my mind was operating, I went through a sort of decompression. My mind became very still, and I started releasing a lot of repressed emotional energy, and intuitively started eating differently as well. I began drinking fresh vegetable juice daily, and stopped eating dairy, gluten, and sugar (which I now know cause much inflammation in the body, also acting like an opiate in the brain--causing an addictive response). For details about my healing diet for Intestinal Repair, see "Body and Nutrition" under the "What is Holistic Counseling?" page. Naturally repairing the intestinal lining (not simply covering the symptoms with meds) and detoxing the body is an important step in healing from U.C. but not necessarily the only step--the mental and emotional aspect may be playing a part as well.
I was naturally cleansing and detoxing my mind, emotions, and body, without the intention to do so. It all started to happen naturally, first starting with the mindful awareness practice. As I went through this process over the course of about 2 months, I felt a huge weight lifted off of me, I stopped taking my medication to find that miraculously my symptoms were gone. For those who may think that this is only a remission of U.C., all I can say is "does it matter?" I am happy, healthy, and I know the steps to take if U.C. ever does come back into my life.
It has been an amazing journey to go from severely malnourished, underweight, and suffering from horrible intestinal symptoms, to great health and feeling happy again. I never thought it would have been possible, I am so grateful! It has been 3 years since I healed, and my health is better than ever. I'm grateful to be able to guide others through their process of healing as a holistic therapist and counselor! Blessings and good health! --The following is more specific and detailed information about my journey of healing!
The Path of Healing
My healing began as I came across some powerful spiritual practices of self reflection and mindful awareness. These practices directed my attention inward, and I began looking very honestly at the thoughts in my mind, my ego, and the emotional patterns I was continually repeating. As I did, I began to understand why Ulcerative Colitis was manifesting in my body–I was repressing emotional and psychological pain from throughout my life, holding this negative emotional energy within my body, and watching how that effected my eating habits and lifestyle in a way that was out of balance with my heart.
This repressed emotion expressed itself as patterns of subtle negative thinking and negative emotions (anxiety, annoyance, frustration, worry, depression, judgements of others, a general uneasiness about life) — which eventually manifested as dis-ease in my body. I now understand that a likely cofactor of most dis-ease is negativity in the body (literally, negatively charged molecules within the cells of the body that slowly cause the systems of the body to breakdown).
Through this honest investigation inward, there was a decompression that happened, whereas the repressed emotion got released and the body began to relax again, returning to its natural state of health and wellbeing. At the same time I was following my intuition to eat differently, drinking fresh vegetable juice everyday, allowing for a natural detox of my body. I incorporated different foods, cut other foods out of my diet entirely (For details about my healing diet, see "Body and Nutrition" under the "What is Holistic Counseling?" page).
Over the course of this process I began to realize greater depths of my True Self (that which exists beyond thought and emotion), and began to feel the Life energy within my body and how I was directing it. During this process I also began to see how I was using food to cover over these emotional wounds, and how, even though I was eating a healthy diet on account of my U.C., I was still very much an emotional eater. As I began to uncover more self love through the practices of mindful awareness, my relationship with food and my body changed as well. I adopted a more specific diet free from gluten, dairy, and sugar.
Over the course of two months my symptoms went away completely, and I felt a joy, love, and peace return to my life that I had not experienced in a long time. I have been completely symptom free for over 3 years, and in better health than I’ve ever been.
I now have a greater understanding of the interconnectedness of the body, mind, emotions, and spirit. The process of healing extends far beyond removing physical dis-ease from the body, but rather, reflects a greater journey of growth and expansion of consciousness on the path that each one of our souls embarks upon during this lifetime. Bringing love and compassion to ourselves during our journey is one of our greatest tools for growth and positive change. I now offer spiritual counseling for those who are seeking this kind of spiritual healing within themselves.
Through my own path of healing I discovered how natural healing happens when we align our minds, bodies, and emotions with the energy of love from within our hearts. Greater holistic health is at our fingertips when we seek to better know ourselves and honor the call from within our hearts.
What is Ulcerative Colitis?
Ulcerative Colitis is a chronic auto immune disease where the immune system continually attacks the intestinal lining of the digestive tract, causing internal bleeding, cramping, weakness, fatigue, and depression. Western medicine does not know what causes Ulcerative Colitis, and colitis treatment involves daily doses of medication to suppress inflammation in the digestive tract. The symptoms of U.C. were quite challenging to live with and limited the enjoyment of my life. It seemed like I tried every U.C. remedy on the market. I eventually began to dig a little deeper, realizing that healing wasn’t going to be a quick fix.
What causes Colitis? Western medicine does not know the cause or have a cure for Ulcerative Colitis, and colitis treatment involves daily doses of medication to suppress inflammation in the digestive tract.
Is there a cure for U.C.? There are so many natural remedies for colitis, and natural remedies for healing in general, that it can be overwhelming to know where to start. I tried acupuncture, counseling, a specific colitis diet, regression therapy, meditation, herbs and vitamins, chakra healing, sound therapy, saw a spiritual counselor, and went to a Reiki master. While many of these approaches helped, I was never able to get to the root cause of my dis-ease.
Mica Akullian M.S. is a holistic therapist in the Bay Area, serving Oakland, Sebastopol, Berkeley, also offering online counseling and phone counseling.