Disease is the breakdown of our complex adaptive system we call health. Our psychologies, brains and immune systems work together in a constant exchange of information to create a state of balance or good enough health. Multiple layers of feedback systems allow us to adjust our physiologies to the constant changes we are encountering on a minute to minute and day to day basis.
Allostasis
Is the ability to maintain a stable internal environment through physiologic and behavioral changes. It is one major characteristic of good health. Faced with too much stress, challenge and change our systems break down and we get sick.
As in other complex systems this process follows non-linear rules, which means that small causes can have a big effect once your health protecting systems become sufficiently unstable.
Nobody can exactly predict when we will get sick or who will get sick when facing a certain threat such as for example a virus or some toxins that alter our DNA and create cancer.
Restoring Health
Once we get sick, restoring health requires certain medical procedures or treatments, some life style changes such as dietary or exercise regimen changes, and the strengthening of our allostasis or ability to adapt to the changes and uncertainty of life.
Resilience
Is our positive capacity to adjust to change and cope with life challenges and stress. This adjustment and learning process that may result in us “bouncing back” to health or us using the adverse experience to make us stronger and more resilient (much like a vaccine gives us the capacity to cope well with future exposure to disease).
Resilience is a very individual process that depends on individual and cultural values and belief systems.
Process
Health and Disease are processes on a continuum. They are partial experiences and roles. In the midst of sickness and dying we are also alive and well. A process approach is curious about all facets of one’s lived experience and helps facilitate awareness through the process of change.
The Sandpile
Imagine adding sand to a coned sandpile. Over time the sides of the pyramid get steeper and at some point a sand slide becomes inevitable. But nobody can predict when adding just a single grain of sand will trigger an avalanche. Our complex state of health is deeply unpredictable. Health is a poised critical state that minor disturbances can tip out of balance and create disease states of all sizes like avalanches of sand in a sandpile. We live constantly on the edge of unpredictable change.
Health is a dynamic interactive process and requires ongoing complex adjusting behaviors.
Process-oriented Disease Management Coaching
Our coaching focuses on widely accepted health behaviors and medical treatments (both conventional and complementary) as well as individualized recovery goals that may include:
- cultivating your inspiration for your creativity
- encouraging you to see change as healing and believe that healing is change
- reminding you that your humor and curiosity will help you go through illness
- helping you find purpose and direction
- strengthening your sense of feeling at home even when in pain and suffering
- developing a space for learning and community
- inspiring you to think on your own and to believe in your experiences and yourself
- fostering your confidence in caring for yourself
- nurturing your belief in your self-healing powers and the flow of nature they bring to life
- training your trust in your true and deepest nature
- shaping a better world for you, your family and your community
- supporting your internal diversity and the diversity of your communities
- and exploring your own powers of creative healing