Same went for sleeping. Absorbing nutrients from good food and getting proper sleep are two critical activities our bodies need to rest and repair to stay healthy. So… as the dominoes fell, I started getting sick and tired… over and over. And it didn’t seem to be getting better. I felt like crap. All the time. I was aware of the things that were making and keeping me sick. Fast food, processed snacks, high sugar intake were the usual suspects. But they seemed to be giving me SOME comfort. It was later I realized, they actually weren’t; I was just mistakenly using them as my “pacifier” when I was feeling sad, lonely, or depressed at the loss I had experienced. So, I thought I’d try something different. Maybe I would sip on some bone broth instead of crush that bag of white cheddar popcorn I was so fond of. I knew I'd be more successful if I 'replaced' instead of 'punish' by omission. I made tiny tweaks along the way, finding better alternatives to my guilty pleasures and made sleep a priority. This took a long time (and I still battle being a night-owl). I simply wasn’t ready to give everything up yet. Yet, after a while, my body did start to crave that nutrient-dense food and it got disgusted by my old stand-bys. This, along with purposeful activities like exercising, deep breathing, and prayer, really helped me get back into that state of calm and finally get that desperately needed rest.
Meditation, prayer, stretching, and taking time to purposely SLOW DOWN are all activities that can really help in calming that second brain of ours to bring the body back into that parasympathetic state we want to be in. The sympathetic (fight-orflight) state works well short-term and is meant to protect us and give us that extra push to escape a difficult situation. However, remaining in overdrive only leads to burn-out and inflammatory processes that drive chronic conditions and disease. Grief is hard. There is no rulebook on how to handle it the correct way. You can only try to listen to your body’s messages. Make it easy on yourself. Cut yourself some slack during this time. Prioritize sleep, try to avoid things that bring you more worry (like everything on a screen), read more, journal your thoughts, pray, stretch, go for a walk in God’s nature, and take time to eat healthy, nutrient-dense food in a relaxed manner. Your physical body needs this support, especially during this time of emotional turmoil.
Susan Koursaris is a holistic nutritional therapy practitioner in the Chicagoland area. To learn more about her practice, visit whollyheartnutrition.com
@whollyheartnutrition GET GRIEFY - ISSUE 1 - 2024
