There's a space between feeling well and actually becoming unwell when your symptoms first appear.
It's subtle and it's a space that's kind of in between when things just feel a little bit different but you can't quite put your finger on why.
It might be that your body feels a little bit tighter,
You might feel a little bit more tense or you might feel a bit more reactive to situations or it might be something else.
Something just feels a bit not quite right.
And the thing is most of us were never taught to recognize this phase let alone understand that this phase actually exists.
Yes there is a space between well and unwell.
I'm talking about that in between phase because becoming unwell it doesn't just happen like that.
There is a process as I said in between.
If you don't know me my name is Claire Szywanowicz.
Hello I am a naturopath,
A nutritionist,
A medical herbalist and a human design analyst who has been working in the natural medicine industry for more than 20 years.
So I know what I'm talking about.
And when we talk about the difference between well and unwell a lot of practitioners will say you need to look at your diet and of course your diet is a big factor in your health and how you feel.
We can also talk about how much exercise are you doing?
Are you walking regularly?
Are you lifting weights?
Are you getting your cardio up?
Are you doing are you doing regular movement?
We can also talk about your emotions.
Have you been too angry?
Have you been too frustrated?
Is life feeling really hard and stressful?
And you might feel like you're doing all the right things.
You might have a really clean diet.
You might even detox.
You might do the strength training.
You might take herbs and you might have so much love for yourself.
Genuinely.
You've done the work you can say I love myself.
All amazing and wonderful.
Yet there is still a space between when you feel well and when you feel unwell.
It's not always a logical scale of textbook information that tells us what makes us sick.
What makes symptoms appear.
That space between well and unwell,
I'm talking about that in between phase,
Is a moment.
It's very short and I'm not talking about the split second between oh I felt fine five minutes ago and oh now I've got this sore throat or now I've got this overwhelming fatigue.
I'm not talking about that to that.
I'm talking about the moments that lead up to you.
That might just last a split second.
That lead up to the symptoms occurring.
They're almost invisible but I promise you they occur for all of us.
So what might that look like?
What does the space between well and unwell look like?
I'll give you some examples.
It looks like being at your place of work and being asked to do this task by your boss and you and your body goes you contract in you feel stressed and you go you feel the overwhelming wave of oh my god.
How you deal with that stress determines how your body will function moving forward.
If you allow yourself to sit in that stress in that moment without taking a moment to recognize that you feel stressed,
To recognize that you feel overwhelmed,
To recognize that whoa this feels a lot and you just plow through go yes okay no worries and go I've got to get this done without taking a pause or without seeing how we can modify something a little bit to take this pressure down from my body a little bit.
That is the moment between well and unwell.
Mm-hmm.
Another example that is less extreme is say you are someone who edits video footage.
You might be doing your creative little editing thing and you love what you do so much and you just want to keep plowing through and get it done because you're so excited to see the end result.
This goes for any creative endeavor and as you're doing the editing or the creative work you notice that you start breathing a bit shorter.
It's not because you're stressed it's because you haven't eaten recently.
It's because your body's saying I'm hungry I need some fuel so that I can keep working on this project for you and we can get this amazing thing that you're working on looking the best that we can but I'm lacking fuel right now and we need to really stop and we need to go get to get some food so we can power up again and it may not be as extreme as I'm saying with the shortness of breath but might it might just be a just like little micro shifts in how you breathe and you might push them away.
This project's way more important than what my body is telling me right now or because you're not noticing what your body is doing.
You do that too often that is the moment between well and unwell.
The wisdom in your body doesn't always shatter you like symptoms do but it always will communicate with you before it shouts with the symptoms.
Your body's wisdom will say if you can tune into it into the subtle signs your body's wisdom will say hey hang on that was a little bit too much right now let's just take a moment let's reset and then depending upon what you're doing you will shift your behavior in varying degrees.
The more you can recognize those spaces and tap into those spaces the stronger and the healthier and the happier you become.
I have been creating a program which relates to all of this and as I have been creating this program the amount of moments that I have become aware of between the well and the unwell that I have been overriding for honestly years without recognizing it and yes I am a health practitioner who has been in the health industry as I said for more than 20 years this is the subtle work.
It really takes mindful attention to tune in and go oh I see what I was doing I see why that is actually a problem and leading up to this other thing that you may have caused and recognizing those micro moments making those changes helps to keep you stronger and vital and keeps your capacity to experience life in a happy healthy way as enormous as it possibly can be.
I genuinely hope that this has given you something to think about and maybe a little bit more of empowerment regarding your well-being and how in control you actually can be of your health and your happiness.
I'm very grateful for you being here and sharing your time with me and in the meantime I genuinely look forward to seeing you next time.
Bye for now.
