A few days ago I did two really amazing things for myself. I’ve been really trying to prioritize me whole-heartedly and do things based on my own terms, no one else’s. It sounds so simple, but it is rather difficult when there is so so much going on in a place like this. It inflicts certain pressures and makes it easy to get caught up things that are meaningless. But. That’s a constant. Life is like that. I keep trying to remind myself that its all so temporary and I need to work on doing things that make me happy because its all going too quick. Telling myself to take it all one thing at a time until I believe it.
So: for me a few days ago, I saw a life coach and a homeopathic doctor.
The life coach was something that just kind of fell into my lap. I saw an article in Wellness Magazine and ended up going to this woman, Leila’s home in BoKapp, which is near the city center in Cape Town. She is beautiful. Radiant in every definition of the word. She welcomed me with open arms and I instantly felt a deeper sense of connection to her from just her physical touch. We made small talk as I walked into her home. We went upstairs and entered her zen room where she does her consultations. It was a beautiful space with comfy cushions, healing mantras on the walls, self love books and awesome pillows on the floor. We sat on the floor and she had me take a moment of silence to thank myself and just sink into the moment. From there I felt such a sense of comfort and sense of being content, like I was really doing something for myself that I hadn’t done in my entire life. She asked me questions about my desires, values, goals, worries, thoughts, anxieties and everything across the room. What I loved so much though, that I find is different than modern western talk therapy, is there didn’t seem to be this sense that I needed fixing. She told me she was focused on me now, not who I was or who I was going to be tomorrow, but genuinely how to better myself today and help guide me in that direction. I felt like I was home being there with her. She made me feel so much less alone with my thoughts and made me feel like all my anxieties aren’t as terribly irrational as they seem in my mind. Its nice to have someone in your life that supports you like that, apart from friends.
Food for thought from Leila: change is the only constant. Everything else isn’t permanent. Helped me rationalize a lot
I went to eat at Sexy Food after to just be and enjoy a good meal. Then I went to class and then straight to a Homeopathic Doctor! What a day right? I wanted to be inspired.
Homeopathic medicine’s goal is to heal your body with natural remedies to bring it back to its original state of balance. Homeostasis.
A homeopathic health practitioner (homeopath) uses pills or liquid mixtures (solutions) containing only a little of an active ingredient (usually a plant or mineral) for treatment of disease or just everyday ails. Everything is all natural, from the earth. These are known as highly diluted or "potentiated" substances that are used with the mindset that the body is able to heal itself.
The doctor was a younger man named Robert Durrheim. I originally sought him out to learn about the practice of homeopathology as a whole, just because of a genuine curiosity with this part of health, but also because I wanted to learn about alternative ways to deal with anxiety. I practice mindfulness and yoga, but I have been feeling really different since being here and wanted to learn about other coping mechanisms. I also have had trouble sleeping the past few weeks and wanted to know if he had advice for me in that department as well.
To say that it was a positive experience would be a complete understatement. It was the absolute best I have ever been treated by someone in the health space. I walked into his office and right off the getgo, I was given time. I was listened to. I was analyzed at a holistic level, fully, and I was treated with love and care. I was treated like a person with a health history, rather just a number on a chart that needed to be dealt with.
He asked me questions that I’ve never been asked before by a doctor. He asked me about my ‘thirst,’ if I am a relatively thirsty person. He asked me if I considered myself a cold or hot person, temperature wise. He asked me about my diet in detail, down to the foods that taste the most delicious to me. He asked me about my dreams. He asked me what time I usually wake up in the middle of the night. He asked me what type of season I prefer. He asked me if I had deep social connections in my life. He asked me questions about my whole SELF because everything is interconnected.
We discovered that an increase in anxiety, though I knew would be evident during a big life change like all that I am experiencing here, is totally related to my diet. And with anxiety that has an implication on sleep of course.
One moment that stuck out to me is that he told me that my gut is my second mind. What you put into your body affects your mood and thoughts and attitudes. I totally had been educated about this in the past, and I know certain foods have a positive or negative impact on me, but I didn’t know on how large a scale they did. From his evaluation of me we found that the one thing that has changed in my diet the past few months is that I haven’t eaten any Greek yogurt since coming here. There are a number of important probiotics in Greek yogurt specifically that work directly your mind. I am a huge greek yogurt eater and probably eat it most days for breakfast at home, but did not realize how one small change like that really affected my entire wellbeing. That was something so simple that he took the time to find out with me just in our 40 minute meeting, among other things. I had no idea the value of Greek Yogurt.
He ended up prescribing me 3 all natural remedies made from herbs to aid in my wellbeing, along with continuing my normal practice of self care. I also am going back to him in May for Acupuncture which is another homeopathic treatment. I felt so cared for.
With both of these experiences I was thinking about access; how simply available they both were to me. I called a week ahead to both mediums and came in exactly a week from my call. There was no questioning or talk of my insurance or analized of who I was, I was just treated like a person and given the time. In the states I may have had to wait weeks for two separate appointments for something so special like this. Also, they would have been so expensive. Though both of these outlets are part of the private sector of health care, they are still accessible and relatively inexpensive by American standards. The homeopath 45 consultation, three bottles of homeo remedies and a probiotic that was all given to me in his office was 75$. The life coach is 19$ a session. It goes back to the value of health here. Yet again, South Africans doing it so right.
South Africa you’re a special place.