JANUARY

What the Body Has To Teach Us

I have deep respect for the body’s ability to heal itself. The healing system within each of us is complex, but very much a part of all living organisms. From an evolutionary point of view alone, we have had to have mechanisms of self repair to counter the inevitable powers of injury and illness that we encounter in our lives. Sometimes we forget the fact that throughout the million years of evolution, we have only for a very tiny period had access to doctors, herbalists and the helpers that these days we seem to depend so much on. The survival of our species can only take place, however, because of the existence of our own innate healing system. Its powers are incredible. I continue to be dazzled by them.

I first learned about the body’s ability to heal itself when in my mid-twenties I suffered from what used to be called endogenous depression – depression with no apparent cause. This was after a childhood of constant illness. During my childhood I appeared to have one infection after another, as well as many other discomforting events such as nightmares practically every night of my life (we all grow up believing that what we experienced in childhood was "normal" and so did I). I remember when my own children were born, I figured there must be something "wrong" with them because they did not have nightmares.

In my early twenties I was fortunate enough to meet a handful of doctors, men and women who had been orthodox trained in medical school but who had forsaken the symptomatic treatment of illness through drugs to look deeper and ask questions such as "What can we do to enable the body to heal itself?" and "Is it possible to increase the body’s ability to resist illness and injury, and if so, how?"

They taught me what they knew and each of these men and women in the United States, in Britain, in Switzerland, in Germany, and in France, were enormously generous with their knowledge and their time. Out of this came a book that my daughter and I wrote called Raw Energy which explored the health enhancing and healing properties of raw foods. We were so excited about what a high raw diet primarily based on masses of fresh vegetables with some fruit, had done to transform our lives that we wanted to write a book about it. Raw Energy was a best seller in every country in which it was published. Using a high raw diet, various forms of fasting and juice fasting, I tapped into my body’s own healing system, and eliminated the build-up of toxic wastes from a childhood during which I lived on junk food.

My father was a jazz musician and most of my childhood was spent on the road with him eating in truck drivers cafes in the United States. I discovered that when I detoxified my body, through juice fasting and a high raw diet, and at the same time supplied it with all the minerals, vitamins and phytonutrients (at that time they were virtually unknown), my body not only was able to heal itself, it was raised to a much higher level of vitality, resistance to illness and balance than I had ever experienced before. I also discovered, at the same time, that what I had been suffering from as a kid was what is commonly known as "food allergies". In my case, as in the case of many, these allergies were to milk products and many of the grains, specifically wheat and corn. When I cut these foods out of my diet, my health simply soared. I then began to work with what I had learned, to explore other avenues of empowering the healing system within the human body and began to share it with others through my work in television, my books, my articles in Harpers & Queen and, under the name of Susannah Kent, in the Daily Mail.

One of the troubling things about health is that when you have it, you never think about it or indeed what you need to do to preserve it. I would never have become a writer on health had it not been for my having to learn very early on about how to help the body heal itself. Then once I had established a high level of wellbeing for myself, I rarely gave it a second thought, until I had some sort of a problem arise: when I become peri-menopausal and found I was awakening in the night, I began to research the whole experience of menopause, to ask questions and to try to explore the underlying causes of these physical changes, both pleasant and unpleasant, that can take place on a woman’s body just before menopause and for the years following menopause.

About six years ago, I fell off a thoroughbred at full gallop and broke the bone in my arm. This taught me a great deal too. Because I am not keen on taking pain killers, and because the arm was broken in a way that it could not be set, it simply had to be taped and allowed to hang at the side of my body. I refused the medication given me at the hospital and instead went home and laced my arm with 3,500 gauss ceramic magnets, knowing that a negative magnetic field enhances the healing of bones. In fact, the break healed so quickly that the orthopaedic surgeon who was looking after me was dazzled by it. No one at the hospital believed that I had taken no pain killers, that is until I returned the bottle to them unopened. So enthusiastic was the orthopaedic surgeon that he asked me if I would be willing to give talks in various hospitals in Wales about using negative magnetic fields.

Then once again, I went back to taking my health for granted. That is until 15 months ago. On October 20^th 2001 I was boarding British Airways flight 949 at Munich Airport, bound for London. I was the first person to leave the gate and walk down the ramp to get on the aircraft. I noticed that the ramp was running with water and I remarked how dangerous it seemed to allow people to board an aircraft down a ramp that had water flowing down it. I was walking slowly because I had to wait for a couple of hours for the flight in the airport, and I was very relaxed.

I slipped and fell directly onto my left knee which folded under me. I hit the ramp so hard that it split my leg open. Blood gushed everywhere. All boarding of the aircraft was immediately stopped. I was the only person that had been allowed to walk down the ramp. All of the other passengers were held at the gate for 30 minutes while I was trying to sort out the flow of blood from my knee. The cabin service director, a man named Lawrence Weir, and his colleagues were enormously helpful in supplying me with whatever was necessary to check the blood flow. When the plane was finally boarded by other passengers, British Airways chose to take them from the gate by bus around to the back of the aeroplane lest they too be faced with the dangers of a ramp with running water that had caused my accident.

As in any accident there is generally something amusing that happens, and this was no exception. About the time I had finally stemmed the profuse flow of blood, the German paramedics arrived dressed in combat gear, a man and a woman. The man came up to me, grabbed hold of my knee, and then proceeded to split open the wound that I, with the help of the crew, had finally calmed down so the blood was no longer flowing. Of course he caused more blood flow. Then he informed me that I needed to go immediately to the German hospital where I would have stitches. I told him that I didn’t intend to go anywhere, that I was going home to London. I thanked him and said I didn’t need his help. At that point, he said, "Well then, I will have to have your credit card". I said "my credit card? No way am I giving you my credit card. You haven’t helped me and I don’t want your help, I just want to be left alone so that I can go back to London and let the wound heal". He replied, "Well then I am going to have to call the Police". I said "If you need to call the police, do call the police". At that point the pilot came up to the paramedics and said to them "Please will you leave, British Airways takes full responsibility". Happily they left.

I took the flight back to London where they met me with a wheelchair. I went back to my home and at that point, I rang a consultant surgeon friend and asked what he suggested I do about the cut (for I figured that was all that was wrong with the knee, although I couldn’t walk, but naturally if you have a wound like that I figured it would interfere with walking for a day or two). He advised me to go the chemist, buy some "butterfly stitches" and apply them to help the wound heal cleanly, which I did. I then stayed in bed for about several days before trying, with great effort, to walk further than from my bed into the bathroom.

The wound healed beautifully, leaving only a small scar at the front of my knee. And although the knee was swollen and painful, I did not think much more about it, for with my trust in the healing system of my body, I figured that it would heal. A fortnight later I noticed that my knee was not only still very painful, it had developed a bursar (a swollen area filled with water beneath the skin). I also noticed that the knee injury had badly affected my balance as well as my sense of proprioception, so that I could not be sure, for instance, how far the ground was from me. In addition, my walking gait was very disrupted. For many months I was treated by doctors, an excellent osteopath, massage therapists and did everything I could to care for myself.

What I did not understand is that an injury, when it is bad enough, not only causes the physical damage, it can actually undermine your immune system. In the year following my fall I contracted two intense illnesses, one in January 2002 where I came down with what appeared to be pneumonia, and then again in September in 2002 when I got some sort of a measle like infection that created blotches all over my skin, fever, and discomfort. I ended up looking like a flaky alligator after about 2 or 3 weeks.

During almost the whole of 2002, I also could not exercise which of course did not help whatsoever in keeping my body strong. I gained weight. A few months after the fall, I developed severe hip pain in my right hip as compensation for the way I was holding my body in an attempt to protect the left knee which continually threatened to go out on me. The pain surprised me and worried me. I began to wonder if I had suddenly developed some kind of arthritis. I started questioning everything I had ever written and wondering if everything I had ever believed and taught about health was wrong. I was forced to turn away a great deal of lectures and workshops I was asked to do. Then, to my surprise, this pain in my hip completely disappeared. Before long, however, I developed an inflammation in the plantar fascia at the bottom of my right heal, again compensatory because of the way that I was holding my body.

In May 2002, while in Glasgow to give a conference, I was standing still on a cobblestone outside the Kelvin Gallery, when all of a sudden my knee gave way and twisted my left foot, and I fell, crushing my left foot so badly that I couldn’t walk for another 3 weeks. The saga simply seemed to go on and on.

What has been interesting to me was I found myself questioning everything I had ever believed or written about. I found myself plagued with the thoughts that I’m sure many have if they become seriously ill or have a severe injury. Thoughts like "I wonder if I will ever recover or if I am simply degenerating and nothing can be done about it"?

The whole experience has reminded me just how a physical state affects us psychologically for I spent much of the past fifteen months since the accident, with my self esteem badly undermined, being unable to carry out the simplest work tasks. It has also has brought me a great deal of compassion for people who have suffered severe injuries which prevent them from walking or functioning in the ways that they ordinarily take for granted, and its awakened me to how precious the human body is, and how important it is that we nurture it, and never take our health or vitality for granted.

Finally, I found myself getting angry with the whole thing. At that point I went off to see a sports medicine specialist who sent me to have an MRI scan which revealed severe and ‘permanent’ damage to the knee. I then began physiotherapy, determined to see if there is a way of being able to restore the knee, regardless of how much effort it takes to do so. I can’t imagine not being able to ski or surf again.

At last, things are getting better. Slowly, day by day, things are getting better. I have been getting up at 5-30 in the morning and cycling for half an hour (I still am not allowed to walk very far because of the inflammation in my right heel) and I have been swimming everyday. In fact I was lucky enough to swim with the dolphins with my youngest son yesterday, which I enjoyed enormously. But finally, my body is regaining its strength and balance, and slowly, slowly, its vitality.

What has been wonderful for me is to realise that this whole experience, although it has undermined my ability to work and necessitated my turning down many offers to do projects that I would like very much to have done has been a profoundly rich time of relearning things which I thought I knew, but really needed too know at much deeper level, about life, about renewal, about the preciousness of everything that we are given. And, in many ways, most important, about how illness or injury can be a powerful creative event in our lives. These last 15 months, I have many times felt despair, disillusionment, and a deep fatigue which I thought would never clear.

Now, slowly and steadily, day by day, I can feel my strength being restored. Whether or not the knee is ever perfect, I don’t know. I would like very much to avoid having surgery on it if at all possible, and have been lucky enough to be working with some wonderful people who have done more than their share to help me help myself. In the meantime, I feel that the whole experience has demanded that I look deep within and re-order my own values and become more clear about what I want in the future in relation to my work and my life. In strange ways, the experience has helped me appreciate the simple beauties of the smell of jasmine, of the sound of water pouring over rocks, the sunrise as it comes up each morning, and I realise that no matter what condition we are in, the richness of experience that life offers – even if you are lying flat on your back in a bed and can see nothing except a branch of a tree through a window – is such that I couldn’t begin to express the beauty and the value of it.

I wish you all the very best for 2003. May it be a year of greater creativity, joy and meaning in your own life.

Leslie