This has been a stupendous week and I have felt the strength of my power. I have really accepted that nothing is going to cure me from my PTSD. Furthermore, I took pride in the beautiful environment I had created in my life with the help of my husband and therapist; it is a place where I can be nurtured and evolve to my fullest potential. Also, we have created (over the last 11 years) the optimum environment for managing my PTSD. I feel that now I can be my truest self, my authentic self. I feel such intense gratitude for all the abundance in my life. However, I also feel this awesome responsibility to continue to learn new ways of optimizing my health, and I am committing myself to this evolutionary process.

The first area I am going to work on is to improve my optimum health through nutrition and the act of eating. Luckily, I have found this online summit sponsored by the Institute of the Psychology of Eating in which to begin my studies. This summit confirmed the choices I have made based on the wisdom of my own internal healer. I have been listening to it recently and I have learned so much. I have already incorporated green veggie shakes with probiotics into my diet to improve my gut health and this summit just confirmed my innate wisdom. In addition, it reinforced how important the act of eating and tasting your food is. It is important to be in the relaxation response to maximize the nutritional benefit. Meal time had never been a relaxed environment. It is hard to be in relaxation response or sympathetic dominance response when you are generally in the flight/fight response or parasympathetic dominance response.

As a way to nurture a relaxation response within me I have implemented several things. First, I have started to have a glass of warm water with lemon 20 minutes before eating in order to prepare my body for digestion. Also, I have incorporated some Qi Gong movements before sitting for a meal to help center and relax my energy. Furthermore, I light candles, have gentle music, use my best china, and try to put down my fork after every bite. Finally, I compassionately remind myself that I am in a process of learning how to relax while eating. I try to let go of my perfectionism. I so want to improve my overall health in hopes that it might relieve some of my pain so I want to get it right from the start. I need to remind myself that life is a process of learning and evolving and that it takes time to build new neural pathways.

I own, I claim and I celebrate my power to optimize my health regardless of my chronic, severe PTSD and all the other challenges that come with PTSD like digestive, metabolic, inflammatory, chronic fatigue and pain.