The Crown

I don't remember when it came into my life, but it became my backbone. A rose gold necklace with soft, downward facing loops that ended in points with gleaming gems adorning each one. It wasn't obvious what emblem it was supposed to be, but to me, it looked like a tiny crown that had been strung up on either side only for the weight of its shape to suspend it upside down.

It felt like me.

When I was a little girl, my mother always told me that my name, Ariana, meant "princess". What comfort this idea brought me whenever I felt small. I'd imagine that somewhere out there, a king and queen had been searching the earth for their lost little girl, desperate to bring me home. I'd imagine I was secretly destined for more, for royalty. It was only a matter of time until my true parents found me and brought me into their inheritance. In my mind, I'd soon become the most precious, most cared for, most desired and most valuable girl in the whole entire world.

The feeling of maybe stuck with me always. Maybe I wasn't confined to my flaws, destined for my weaknesses. When that inverted crown necklace materialized into my life, it became a prompting of possibility. It was an emblematic symbol of something that I was not, but could someday become. The necklace reminded me that on days where I did not feel like a princess, that maybe, someday, the crown would upend and my true and most divine identity would be found. I hoped that with enough effort I would fulfil my maybe, that I would become something I loved.

Something you love. Are you something you love? At the start of a new year, so many of us are focused on what we have or have not accomplished over the past year, and look forward to the new season with the same semblance of maybe I once clung to.

I wonder how often we consider that our maybe, our upended crown, has been ours all along had we only stepped back, taken a new perspective, and chosen to turn it around.

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As a student of physical therapy, I have learned how to treat conditions of the movement system, the system that gets you out of bed, lets you hug your kids, guides every single daily action you could fathom, even makes you breathe. What is at the very core of the movement system? All parts of our body being deeply interconnected, the master commander of it all is, of course, our brain. Our mind. Our consciousness and very will to thrive resides in our noggin and branches out like a tree with deep roots to every point in our body, telling it to do this and that and everything in between. Each command receives an answer, and each little root soaks in external stimulus to feed the mind to make us aware of our surroundings. They speak pleasure, and pain, comfort, and discomfort, joy, and sadness. It is all, in reality, one system, the nervous system.

We know that there are aspects of our body that are not under conscious control. Our heart beats away with its own speed or slowness at its own determined pace. Our digestion turns decadence into dirt. We fight disease, sweat, reproduce, and swim in hormones all without conscious control (thank goodness our brains are doing all the dirty work for us!) It is, though, all one system, and therefore our waking mind is deeply intertwined with our subconscious and unconscious brain. For example, an emotional upset is a conscious experience with an unconscious reaction. We may cry tears from our eyes, our chests may feel heavy, our legs may feel weak. If we experience a fright our heart races, our muscles tense, we get hot. A flattering complement may embarrass your mind but redden your cheeks. Stimulus is continuously registered by all levels of consciousness and processed and dealt with in ways we never perceive.

It can go as deep as our genes. Epigenetics teaches us that our behaviors and changes in our environment can turn on or turn off the expression of our genes. For example, weight gain can lead to changes in gene expression that dispose us to type 2 diabetes, while a healthy diet and regular exercise can incite beneficial metabolic changes from gene expression.

In the book by physician and neurologist Suzanne O. Sullivan, MD, Is It All In Your Head? she explains and tells the dramatic and yet very true stories of real patients she has treated that had severe physical symptoms, from violent unstoppable convulsions to complete blindness, that had no physiological explanation. In each case, so many doctors were seen, so many tests were ran, and not one single thing could be found to be wrong with these patients. Not until they saw her and were referred to a psychiatrist. It was there where they discovered that some form of trauma or emotional issue was not being dealt with by their emotional self but their physical self. This is referred to as somatization. With appropriate therapy, many if not all of her patients saw a reduction or cessation in their symptoms.

This is not to say that everyone always experiences somatization or the effects of epigenetics or that all physical experiences are always related to our minds, but to show that when it’s all said and done, our psychosomatic (mind-body) connection may go deeper than we realize. This is what I am here, starting this blog, to explore. This is what I aim to raise awareness for. I say all this to incite thought, for everyone who owns a body and dreams of change. Are we really who we think we are? Are we confined to our maybes? Do we have some idea of what we want to be, like me and my dreams of royalty as a little girl, but have some unseen obstacle standing in our way of seeing our crown upended? Perhaps, and it by no means is true for everyone, our chronic pain is determined by more than our bodies. Our bad habits have the capacity to be broken. Not just our perception of self, but our actual physical self, can be optimally healthy, beautiful, whole, despite the lot we are cast, just as we have always dreamed. Perhaps with further exploration of who we really are, or who we really can be, we can tap further into our psychosomatic system to become in control of our health and our behavior. We can manifest who we feel we are inside. Perhaps this is what we are on this earth to achieve.

To quote a favorite religious leader of mine, Dieter F. Uchtdorf, "You are not ordinary, rejected, or ugly. You are something divine — more beautiful and glorious than you can possibly imagine."

This is not a new concept, certainly not original, but it is what I want to explore for physical therapy. My job when I graduate will be, well, to therapy the physical (lol). But we are much much more than purely physical beings. I dream, hence the DPT Dreamer, of a world where the psyche and soma are treated together, because they are one, they are us, they are you. Stick with me on my blog to explore deeper into how your crown can upend, your dreams can be realized, today.