I’ve spent a great deal of effort over the last five years healing myself. Going from suffering from bulimia, anxiety and severe depression where I was at the stage of almost committing suicide, I decided that enough was enough and that I needed to change my life and my mindset desperately and permanently. Over the years I masked my pain and attempted to control my life and how I felt through exercise and extreme dieting, which over the years has led to various health conditions and injuries, including contributing to a serious injury that I suffered about four months ago to my back. For many years I have suffered from bulging discs as well as degeneration and arthritis in my spine. As a child I would work hard outside and carry buckets of water that were far too heavy for me which is where I think it all started from. I remember even around the age of 10-12 years I would suffer severe muscle pain and spasms in my lower back. My back has flared up many times over the years but never stopped me from exercising. I just found ways around it when my back flared up.
I’ve never been someone who is ok with being miserable and sad. Even as a kid when I used to write in my diary every night that I hated my life and wanted to die, I would still put on a happy face at school, joking and laughing so that no one knew what was going on. I was embarrassed at my life compared to all of my friends. I don’t show a great deal of emotion if I can help it, even now. As an adult, especially once I entered the fitness industry, I hid my inner demons exceptionally well because I felt as though if anyone knew that I suffered from an eating disorder or severe depression that I was a joke in the health and fitness industry. Exercise was definitely something that helped me to keep my depression somewhat in check, but it was still only a bandaid to the underlying issues. Every time I would injure myself and be forced to rest I would find myself falling back into severe depression in a screaming heap. Those were probably among my darkest times and when I was at the greatest risk of committing suicide.
I wasn’t an idiot, I’m not stupid. I knew that my issues stemmed from my childhood. In fact, most people that suffer from anxiety and depression can identify a few reasons why it may have come about. For me it was as a result of a childhood of feeling scared, unloved, rejected, unsafe and unwanted. As such I had developed massive feelings of self-hate toward myself. Exercising was one way of releasing endorphins but another way that I had control over my life and the way that I looked. My bulimia was very similar.
A few years back it became very clear to me that something needed to change, otherwise I was going to end up dead. So I made the decision there and then to do everything in my power to change my life. Although I’d had no control over what happened to me as a child, I finally realised that I was an adult now and I was the only one that had the power and control to change my life. It was time to use it. The reality was that although other people had contributed to the way I was feeling, I was allowing their actions to continue to affect me rather than making the decision to change my life and my mindset for myself.
I’m not someone who feels comfortable going to a counsellor or psychologist and talking about my problems. It’s just not my thing. I’m the sort of person who even if something breaks at home or at work, calling someone else out to fix it is my last resort. I would rather read books and search the internet to find ways to fix things rather than call someone. That’s just a part of my personality. I am independent to a fault and sometimes it’s probably far quicker and easier to call an expert.
I finally took the responsibility of creating my own happiness. Since then I have adopted various strategies and approaches and I have changed so many aspects of my life which I cover in my book, Becoming Your Inner Goddess. I have gone from hating myself and punishing my body to finding love and respect for myself and displaying kindness to my body. This has changed the way I exercise and the way that I eat. I exercise in order to be healthy and I eat to fuel and repair my body rather than to punish it because I hated the way I looked. I have gone from worrying constantly about anything and everything to allowing myself the time to be grateful for the good things and people in my life.
I’m certainly not perfect though, and there are still things that don’t come natural to me. No matter how hard I have worked on my mindset, I still worry about being accepted and loved, I worry about what others think of me or say about me, I compare myself to other people and I overthink many situations and work myself up into a massive tiz. These are things that I know I need to work on because they still have the tendency to cause me a great deal of anxiety and stress.
When I hurt my back, I was given the opportunity to try Crystal Bed Healing with Alisha. My back injury was so bad that it threatened my ability to continue to live the life that I had created for myself that I loved. I had completely overhauled my nutrition already and was following a vegan diet and I was seeing great improvements but I jumped at the opportunity of something else that could assist with my healing. Considering I was looking at a minimum of 18-24 months to be able to return back to impact exercise (with the possibility of it never happening), I was keen to try anything that could help speed up the process. This was a big step for me being so self-conscious of asking for help, but it was with someone that I trust with my life. Alisha is one of the most beautiful and genuine people I have or will ever meet. I honestly didn’t know what to expect, or what it could do for me. But I knew that anything was possible. I have been able to heal my bulimia and severe depression through alternative methods so I was more than prepared to give it a go.
The room the bed was in was calm and smelt amazing. I have no idea what the thread count on the sheets were (I’m not really into that sort of thing) but they felt absolutely incredible. Alisha got me comfortable, I closed my eyes and she said some words to me before turning on the crystals and the music and leaving me to relax. During the time that I was on the bed, I transitioned from feelings of complete detachment where I wasn’t aware of my surroundings to feelings of sorrow and despair. On a couple of occasions I just began crying for seemingly no reason and was overcome with grief. Strangely, just as quickly, without my control, my crying stopped and I felt fine. I felt as though I wasn’t conscious for a great deal of it. After what felt like twenty minutes, Alisha came back into the room. It had been over an hour.
After the first healing I actually felt quite heavy and emotional. Somehow I had been reminded of things in my past that I had repressed and not dealt with as part of my own efforts with my healing. They were things that, in hindsight, need to be addressed because they are the things that drive my subconscious reactions and behaviours in certain situations that I didn’t even know were there. Over the course of the following week, these feelings surfaced and reminded me of how I used to feel. During the week I felt highly emotional, I was feeling as though I was not worthy of love, reading into situations and coming up with completely unreasonable assumptions in my head, I had feelings of resentment and negativity. I was ‘that’ person who was making negative comments on random Facebook posts! It occurred to me that when I was a child I used to be so resentful and jealous of all of my friends who were happy when I was completely miserable and got to go home after school and play instead of going out and working like I had to. My brother was lazy and complained so he ended up going inside and I had to do his share of the work. This work led to my back playing up from an early age. As a result of these things in my childhood, I would find myself getting very angry at people who I felt were lazy and people who would complain about things. In school, I would worry about being loved and accepted and felt different to all of my friends so I would worry about what they would say about me when I wasn’t around. I was so angry and emotional as a child but forced myself to never express it because I was worried about getting in trouble. All of these feelings surfaced during the week after my first healing and it was an extremely emotional week for me. As difficult as it was, I went back for another healing. I hoped that it would change the way that I was feeling. I didn’t want to continue feeling that way.
My second healing was very different. It almost felt as though I slept for the hour, but I do remember some things. I remember feeling as though I was worthy and deserving of love. I felt completely different after the second healing. I experienced a feeling of calm, love and acceptance of myself. It felt amazing! Those feelings continued on through the week and they have remained with me since. I also felt that I naturally wasn’t even concerning myself with worrying about what others were doing or saying. It is very difficult to explain but it felt as though I was content. I have had another healing since then which felt like it has further reinforced those feelings for me.
I am a very logical and scientific person and in the past I haven’t been open to this kind of approach. Over the last five years though, I have found that alternative approaches have been the key to my healing process and to becoming a happier, healthier and overall a better person. As such, I have found myself becoming much more open to things that in the past I would have laughed at and resisted. The way I see it now, is I have absolutely nothing to lose. I have only things to gain. I have learnt that I don’t need to understand exactly how it works, that sometimes I just need to have a bit of faith.
Every day, my back is healing, my mind is healing and I am becoming a better person. I’m not going to question it, I’m going to keep doing the things that I find are working and I do believe that the Crystal Bed Healing has been helping me massively. Although the week after my first healing was very confronting, the feelings were temporary and I have already felt a massive shift in my emotional state. I truly believe that along with everything else that I am doing, this will all help to heal my back. I am physically able to do more and more each day and I am no longer taking any pain medication. One thing I find very fascinating is that my back was the trigger that led to me having the healing when it was a physical symptom of what was happening during those moments in my childhood that led to shaping those limiting thoughts and behaviours that were yet to be addressed and healed. Kind of crazy and wonderful when you think about it…….
As confronting as the week after my first healing was, I would do it all over again. If you are someone who is worried about this, just make sure you set yourself up for a week where you can allow healing and facilitate kindness to yourself. I was still able to work and function, I was just a little cray cray and unreasonable in my own head. At the end of the day, it’s stuff that you need to address and heal in order to become a better version of yourself and well worth a little bit of discomfort.
Til next time,
Kris :-)