I am busy getting ready for the next Etsy show in downtown Charleston… it will be this Saturday, from 10AM to 3PM in the Music Farm. Stop by and say hi! I will be bringing lots of stuff… brand new necklaces I have not released into my shop yet, reusable grocery totes, art prints, notecard sets, my book… but the best part is I will have a great sale running on anyone who signs up for any of my Health eCourses. I will have the kits ready to give to you to take home in hand, and fabulous pricing on all five of my upcoming courses.
I’d love to see you so please swing by and say hi, and help spread the word about this event to any local Charleston peeps. Thank you!
I’m going to re-run my Thoughts On Health about the thyroid today, because I have a loved one who has had thyroid issues come up for her, and she has been in my heart a lot lately. This blog post originally ran last year, so I hope it will be new to many of you. xoxo, Laura
“When you take charge of your life,
there is no longer need to ask permission
of other people or society at large.â€
-Albert F. Geoffrey
Our thyroids do so much for us.
The thyroid is one of the main centers of control in our body… we have so many parts that help coordinate and regulate our organism as a whole… the brain, the heart, the pineal gland, the thyroid… all of these organs work for our entire body… maintaining the health of our body as a complete organism.
Unlike the big toe, who is maintaining health for itself, the big toe, and indirectly for the organism, as it wishes to walk… these organs maintain their own health and DIRECTLY coordinate efforts of the entire body. If any of these control centers feel dis-ease, the effects are felt throughout the entire body… not localized to any one body part, but instead, can make our entire organism feel dis-eased.
The thyroid is often compared to a thermostat… regulating temperature control over the body. This is true, but the thyroid does so very much more. Indeed, I feel that the thyroid is like the entire engine of a car that we are driving. If you can picture your thyroid as the engine of your vehicle, you can really appreciate everything your thyroid does for you and how it may affect you if it is malfunctioning.
Like the engine of a car, the thyroid keeps you going. Maintaining your energy levels as you truck along down your path of life. If you are constantly keeping your foot on the gas pedal, the engine starts to overheat… as the engine gets pushed and pushed, the entire dashboard, steering wheel, and car itself may tremble under the great roar of the revving engine… shaking and raging and overheating… this is a thyroid storm.
Working in the hospital, I had a patient admitted for thyroid storm, and she was just like this… a car engine whose owner was leaning full on the gas pedal, unable to cool down or slow, she was trembling and sweating and her mind was racing and her eyes were bulging and she could not find peace.
Taken in the extreme opposite directions, if you ease your foot off the pedal and start slowing down… going too slow to keep up with the flow of traffic… the engine cools, the zest for driving is gone, the journey moves in slow motion, and with it, so do you.
Cold skin, cold hands, brittle hair, constipation… clogging up traffic, if you will. This is the classic feeling of hypothyroid.
If you slow down so much that your engine idles on the side of the road, you pull over and remain sitting in an unmoving vehicle, whose engine is still on… it’s just the same as hypothyroid in it’s most extreme form. Living in a body whose is alive (engine still running) but moving nowhere allows the toxic fumes of carbon monoxide from the engine to seep up into the car itself… potentially killing the driver.
Loss of energy, memory loss, lethargy, coma… these are the extreme forms of hypothyroid, and are as unwelcome as sitting in a closed garage with a car running… eventually the toxicity of the car itself, with no fresh air and covering no new ground… is toxic to the driver.
In life, you have to keep moving.
In life, there is no staying still. There is no stationary. Even as you are sitting and meditating in the moment of the *now*, the moment is always evolving. I’ve talked about that very recently… how every single moment is something new, and just as it is impossible to take the same breath of air twice, walk on the same patch of earth twice, be the same person in each moment… it is impossible to drive down the same road twice.
Each time, there will be a new blade of grass on the edge of the road, a new butterfly flying through the air… a new car cruising by you in the opposite lane… a different cloud in the sky… you just can NOT have the same experience twice.
Even those who commute down the same road to work every day, twice a day, have never had the same commute twice. Never. A different breath of air, different food digesting in your stomach, different socks on your feet… you’ve never repeated a moment of your life and you never will.
Each moment is in it’s entirety, unique. Special. Blessed. Once-in-a-lifetime.
So really, to sit in an idle car with it’s engine running, hour after hour, day after day… you cannot survive like this.
To be alive is to invite change.
Likewise, running full speed and stepping full on the gas pedal is something you can not survive as well… Flying through intersections, red lights, running so fast you can not keep up with the scenery along the way, engine overheating and smoking and trembling… is not a sustainable condition either.
So how does the thyroid become either hyper or hypo in it’s functioning? If the energy of the thyroid is the energy of moving through your life… the energy of driving down your path… I think imbalances of the thyroid arise from imbalances in how you are perceiving and expressing your journey.
The thyroid sits in your neck, lovingly wrapped around your throat and encasing your voice box and vocal chords.
What better place for the command center of your driving force to sit.
It stretches around your voice and feels, breaths, literally soaks in the energy of what you are saying, all day, every day. It *lives* in the energy of your voice.
It feels acutely when you are not speaking your heartsong. It mourns for the words you do not say. It withers when you do not speak up on your own behalf. If you are not singing your own heartsong, you are taking your own foot off the gas pedal of your car and your engine is responding by slowing down.
In reverse, if you are speaking words that are not your heartsong… if you are angry because you are not being allowed the time to express your own inner knowing… if you are upset at nobody hearing *your truth*… your thyroid intuitively feels this, knows this, revs up on your behalf… tries to sing out your song for you. It tries to call out the words that are not being heard. It will run itself into the ground, it will run you into the ground… giving everything it has and more. Too much. In unhealthy ways.
What your thyroid wants and needs from you, is to listen to you say your heartsong in joy. In peace. Not fighting or competing to say it. Not getting angry because you aren’t heard, or because you haven’t carved enough time out of your day for yourself, or because you give everything you have to everyone else.
Your thyroid is a control center, a place of *knowing*, and it maintains it’s health through expressing this verbally.
This has nothing to do with if anyone else is listening. It has nothing to do with if you are being heard. You just say what you need to say… for yourself.
Because being *you* is what you do best. Because you, releasing your truths, brings joy and creation into the world. Because what you can create… the thoughts you can think, the joys you can feel, the ideas you can share, the space you can occupy, the car that *you* drive… no one else can ever do it. No one else will ever be in your shoes.
If you don’t sing your song, who will?
You are the one and only you that the world has ever, or will ever, EVER see. Your thyroid knows this, even if you don’t.
Your thyroid is poised right between your heart and your brain… it feels the communication between the two… the thoughts you are thinking in your brain and the emotions you are feeling in your heart.
It holds them both and then it demands that you sing. Not in anger or frustration or to get others to do something for you… it demands that YOU SING!
You sing whether your children are watching or the world is watching or you are utterly and completely alone. You sing not because you care at all what the reaction is going to be, or that you are even interested in the reaction… you sing because it is YOUR SONG! It’s what you do!
You do not want all that knowledge, all the thoughts of your brain and all the feelings of your heart, to get stuck in your thyroid.
If you are not singing your heartsong, and it depresses you, your thyroid will slow down. You will be effectively taking your foot off the pedal… what’s the point of driving, right? If no one is witnessing your journey?… and then you become hypothyroid. Cold. Tired. Listless. Feeling less like yourself… as you gain weight and your hair falls out and you start to forget little things… and you begin to feel less motivation to get back on the road.
If you are not singing your heartsong and it angers you, your thyroid will speed up. Try to get noticed. Try to out pace, out run, out preform the other cars on the road. No one is listening to you, your thyroid thinks? Then I’ll just rev the engine louder and get people to notice. And louder still. Feeling unheard and unappreciated, you begin to feel jittery and angry and your heart pounds and your thoughts race. Your eyes bulge as you try to capture the scenery that is whizzing endlessly by. And in the end, you are wearing yourself out and losing touch with the joyful song you were wanting to sing.
So how to restore and maintain health to your thyroid engine.
Treat your thyroid like you would a beautiful drive that you are enjoying.
Knowing every second that passes as you drive down the road is unique, never going to happen again, precious. Driving with gratitude, knowing what a blessing it is to be going down the road at all… listening to your heartsong on the radio.
When you drive, it doesn’t matter what the other cars are doing. It’s not personal.
Sometimes, there are crazy drivers out there and you might slow down and let them pass… you might chose to take a turn down an unexpected street so that you can get a little space… you might crank the music up louder and crack yourself up at your own voice as you sing along.
And if the road is empty, and you are trucking along enjoying the solitude… it doesn’t make the journey any less worthwhile.
You are still keeping your radio tuned to your favorite station, whether the road is crowded with traffic or empty.
You don’t change your tune just because there is another car on the street. You proceed with awareness… with appreciation… you might give a smile or a wave, you might let them go first in front of you or it might be your turn to go first… but you don’t change your song with every car that passes.
You drive from a point of being centered in your own lane.
If you can tune your radio to the song that you want to be singing right at this moment… the song you can feel welling up in your heart, or the song that your brain is humming in your head… you can enjoy the drive no matter who else is on the road. And you bring peace and harmony to your thyroid.
If you make your journey about being heard, about how other people react to you, you are going to wind up with your foot pressed hard on the pedal (hyperthyroid) or pulled over on the side of the road, giving up (hypothyroid.)
Just drive drive drive. This is your journey. This is your truth. Crank up the radio and sing! xoxo