Understanding The Placebo Effect: Diabetes Talk & Meditation

1:01:39

1:01:39

Understanding The Placebo Effect: Diabetes Talk & Meditation

by Patricia Daiker

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4.9

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talks

Activity

Meditation

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Everyone

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This meditation is for people who live with diabetes. The session begins with a short discussion on the placebo effect and how we can utilize it to improve diabetes, health and wellbeing. A guided meditation follows that offers healing and peace to the parts of the body most impacted by diabetes.

Meditation Health Healing Peace Holistic Health Self Belief Breathing Body Scan Gratitude Nervous System Stress Polyvagal Breathing Autonomic Nervous System Stress Reduction Affirmations Guided Body Scans Positive Affirmations

Meet your Teacher

Patricia Daiker

Dallas, TX, USA

Meet your Teacher

Patricia Daiker

Dallas, TX, USA

Transcript

My name is Patricia Daker and I'm the owner and founder of a company called Better Diabetes Life. I'm a registered nurse, I'm a board certified nurse coach and I have type 1 diabetes. And so my company's purpose is to provide support, Inspiration, Insights to this other side of living with diabetes which most of the time you'll hear people talk about diet, Exercise, You know all the what to dos and I really like to focus on the how, The other side, The stuff that they're not going to tell you. And being a nurse when I was diagnosed I knew all the clinical stuff but I still struggled and so what I want to bring you are the things I never got. If you're interested about my company, My services, What I do, I can't talk about them on this platform but there is a link to my website in this bio so I think mine should be right there, I'm not sure where it is on your screen but there is a way to access my profile and my full website there and you can learn a lot more about me right there. So tonight's topic asked by one of my friends that joins, I met her on here and she usually joins us from Ireland and it's really late at night so I don't know if she's going to make it or not but curious about the placebo effect and how we can use it. So what is it, How does it relate to diabetes and what can we do about it? So the format of this session, I usually cover a topic and I'll give you kind of a description and go into some of the ins and outs of it and then the last half is a guided meditation and that's really to bathe yourself, Your organs, All the parts of you that can be impacted by diabetes with some just intentional goodness. We get enough badness, Right? We have enough harsh things happen and so it's good to give back. This is about diabetes, It also probably makes a lot of sense if you have any chronic illness but I'm going to talk about it in terms of diabetes. If you know somebody who is struggling with diabetes and could use some encouragement or insight, I'd invite you to, I think there's a little button about right there that has a forward arrow on it, You can invite someone right now and they'll have time to hop on before we get too far into things. We do a Q&A at the end so I'll do the little talk, We'll discuss a topic, Then we'll do the meditation and after that if you have questions you want me to answer, I'd be happy to do that. Insight Timer always asks that I remind you, There's a little donate button up there somewhere, I don't see it on my side but it is greatly appreciated if you find this valuable, Your monetary donation makes me feel good, It makes me keep wanting to do it so I appreciate you coming on and doing that. I do record these so this is recorded and if you go to my profile page on Insight Timer, I have a lot of other recordings too so you might see something that speaks to you and maybe what you're dealing with or what you need today or you know maybe you heard something tonight and you want to go back and revisit it, Maybe you like the meditation, So there's just a lot more there. Alright so I see several people on here so I'm going to invite us to get started and I always like to gather, Before we get started I just want to have a mental connection, An idea that we are together. So in this group we are people who live with some challenges that most people don't and we get each other, It's a safe place. Coming together and being together and connecting in this way is very healing to be among people who understand and it really doesn't matter to me whether you're type 1 or type 2 or any other, You know there's a bunch of different forms of it nowadays, It requires change in your lifestyle and it's a hardship and that's really what I want to talk about. So as we get started, You know we're here, We're safe and I'm going to set an intention tonight and our intention for tonight is that we will be open to the magic of our body, Mind and spirit. Okay so before we get done, Get started with the talk, Let's just take a few breaths, I always think it's good. Deep breath in through your nose, Relax your shoulders, You know and just give yourself permission to be here, Give yourself permission not to worry about anything, Give yourself permission to be present, To listen, To learn, To be open to something new, Be open, Let's have a little, I like the idea of something magical might happen tonight. So with that, We're going to get into our topic which is the placebo effect. So it's kind of an interesting thing to talk about when it comes to diabetes, I'm sure your doctors don't talk about this very much, So what is the placebo effect? So clinically what that means is someone is given an inert substance, An inert means that it doesn't do anything, It's a small pill of flour, Sugar, Some little thing that doesn't have any medicinal properties or a treatment, There's actually been people that have done fake surgeries but that gets into a little bit of an ethical question but whether or not you believe in it, Research and studies show that when people believe what they're taking, Whether it's a treatment, A pill, A medication, Whatever it is, When they believe it their body actually changes, They actually benefit from it even if there's nothing inside the pill or the treatment that causes that effect, Right? And inert means it's inactive, There's nothing there. So the placebo effect has been well documented, It's why we do double blind studies and there's a lot of clinical reasons for understanding it because if you give a group of people medicine and they improve, We have to account for the fact that maybe they improved just because they believe they would, Right? So that's what the placebo effect is. There was a National Library of Medicine article and it said 35% of people, They did a study and 35% of patients responded positively to placebo, Meaning that nothing happened but the outcome was achieved, Right? So basically the belief that it would happen was significant and it created an effect, Right? It created a physical, A mental or an experiential effect. Something happened and it really wasn't related to the treatment. So to me, And I always frame my diabetes thoughts, Care, Attention to a holistic model and that's again kind of different than what you might find in allopathic medicine and allopathic means your regular doctor, Right? The person who studies your organs or a doctor that specializes in something. But when we talk about a holistic or an integrated approach, It's your body, Your physical bones and blood and yourself, Your muscles and your mind, So your thoughts, Your mental status, Your ideas, Things like that and then your spirit, Which is that harder to describe part and I really don't want to call it a religious part, Although it does align very strongly with religious connotations, But it can be about your beliefs and about your knowing. It's something inside you that never changes, That always is and has been with you since the moment you were created, Right? So body, Mind, Spirit and typically when we talk about diabetes, We're body, Body, Body, Right? We're just looking at the blood sugars, We're looking at organ damage and we focus really intensely on how do we care for the body. Not a bad thing at all. It's a good thing. Unfortunately for us to care for our body, We have to do things, Make changes, Change perhaps our beliefs and if we don't do that, We'll never do the work to change what we need to to help our body. So if we're not checked in mentally or we don't believe it in our heart, It's going to be very, Very, Very, Very difficult to do. So when we talk about placebo effect, It brings all three of those together. So we have our body, Our physical, Our mind, Our mental, Our spiritual, Our belief, Our knowing or understanding. Okay, Let's just talk about how those things play together. So our body, If you think about it, Is a sensing organ. So a lot of what we're doing is gathering inputs. We see things that come in, We hear things that come in, We taste things and all these senses, We feel things, Right? There's all this different information. We smell things and every time we receive sensory input, We're getting some sort of data, Right? It's some sort of something coming in. So our body will think of it as a sensing organ, Right? Our mind is interpreting that information. So something comes in and that interpretation can be a judgment, Right? So is it good? Is it bad? Does it taste good? Does it smell good? Does it sound good? Is that safe? Is that not safe? So we come in from our body, Our mind decides what we like or not like about that, Right? And then our spirit kind of reacts. There's a part of us that doesn't even, We don't have much control over. So I'll talk a little bit about that and I talk about this all the time if you've been on my talks before. So our spirit part can almost be linked up with what's called our autonomic nervous system. And so our autonomic nervous system is the opposite of what we do when we want to make a fist, Right? We decide we have an idea here and we clench our fist. That's not our autonomic, It's the somatic system, Right? But our autonomic nervous system is the part we never even know that happens. It's our digestion, It's our blood pressure, It's our heartbeat, It's breathing, All those things that, You know, It's healing our body, Making cells change, Cell division, All that stuff, Immune system. We don't think about that, Right? It just happens. So that part, Again, Is like we sense things with our body, We interpret them with our mind, And then based on what our mind says about it, Our body reacts with a cascade of so many different things, Right? And so they're automatic and we don't think about them. Those automatic things can be broken into two parts. Our sympathetic nervous system, And that's your fight or flight, And our parasympathetic nervous system, Which is our rest, Relax, Restore. Either way, Based on our thoughts and our ideas, Something happens. So you know, You get in a car or somebody cuts you off in traffic, And all of a sudden your sympathetic nervous system, Your 911, Your fight or flight kicks in, Chemicals go through your body, Your blood pressure goes up, Your heart rate goes up, You know, Everything just shunts away from digestion and repair into safety and rescue. Just happens. It just happens. Likewise, If we have things come in where all is safe, All is well, All is good, There are things that our mind hears and our body responds. So in that all is good state, That's when we're digesting, That's when we're healing, That's when we're doing repair. So things happen in our outer world, We interpret them, Our body responds. That just happens. So the placebo effect comes in when the mind, So there may not be any external stimuli, Right? So we're going to bypass the body part. We're not sensing anything, We don't know anything, But we believe it's true. So the mind believes, I took a pill that's supposed to help me, You know, This treatment will make me better, Right? So it's using the mind, Your belief system, And even though your senses, The input didn't come in, Your brain still interprets that it did, And it sends the same signals, Right? So it can be the same signals of stress or healing and repair. Interesting, Huh? So that's literally what the placebo effect is, Is it bypasses our sensory input, Our mind believes it, And so it tells the body, Proceed accordingly, Right? So we know that clinically, But we also sort of know it in the greater world, Right? We'll hear things and like, You become what you believe, Right? Or we have self-fulfilling prophecies because we believe it comes true. A lot of faith, Religious organizations, You'll hear a lot of information about, You know, Believing in something, You have to believe, You have to have faith. That is really very closely aligned with the placebo effect because if your brain thinks it's true, And literally your brain is an organ of your body that's neural fibers, Neural networks, It's dark in there and it doesn't really have any input other than what's coming in through, You know, Your organs that do something. So inside, Your brain really doesn't know where it comes from, Whether it's a memory or an idea or a belief. But inside your brain, Whenever it perceives something as true, It changes your outer state. So, Okay, So there's another physician that I follow, His name is Dr. Joe Dispenza, If you've all heard of him. He does some really interesting work that proves some of this theory, How our emotional state, What we believe, What we feel, Creates things before the event occurs, Right? So this, If we believe it's going to occur, We actually create something before it happens, We create the cure. And they did a very interesting study, And I don't know if I can explain it correctly, But they did a study where they showed people images that evoked a sensory response, So fear, Love, Joy, Laughter, Whatever. And they watched with a camera the person's pupils, And they timed pupil area reaction with seeing of the cards. And it was interesting because what they found was that the pupil changed before the card did, Right? So there's this whole kind of mixed up situation where we think the external controls the internal, And it's really, There's a lot of internal things happening in your brain that's controlling the external. Makes any sense. One other thing that he talks about is gratitude. So if we want to change what's on the inside to impact, Gratitude is the ultimate state, As he says, Of receivership. So you're only grateful for what you have, Which turns back around to belief. If you believe you're sick, It's very, You're going to influence yourself to go that way. If you believe you're well, You can influence yourself to go that way. And so there's things that we can do to help reset our mind and convince ourselves of a good outcome versus a bad. The healthcare system does the opposite of this, In my opinion. Oh my gosh, You're going to get complications. Things will be bad. You could lose this. You could lose your sight. Oh, If you do this, Bad, Bad, Bad, Bad, Bad, Right? And so they're creating in our mind a belief of a bad outcome. So I really try, And I've tried over the years, I don't look for that. I really try to believe I can be healthy. I can do this, Right? So it's those I am affirmations. And we do those a lot with our meditation and we will do that. But when you say I am, I am, Or I have this, Or I am healthy, It's changing your brain, Right? And over time, Over time, Right, Like what we hear becomes what our body knows. It's that experience. But this belief in yourself, This belief of possibility, This having hope, Very, Very powerful, Right? And that's using that placebo. We can also use goal settings, Right? So if you set a goal to do something, You tell yourself, I will do this. You start creating a belief in your mind that this is where you're going to go. You know, It's no coincidence that when you go on vacation, Before you get there, In your mind, You know where you're going, You know what you're going to do. And you start taking action steps in that direction. So if you wanted to go to Mexico, And you didn't do anything, You know, But you bought tickets to Mexico, You planned your trip, You wouldn't be surprised if you ended up in Mexico. You would be surprised if you ended up like in Europe, Right? Like what the heck happened? And I think those are the kind of things we can think about with our diabetes mindset. I am going to be healthy. I'm going to be well. I can do this, Right? But in our heads, If we're like, Oh my gosh, I'm going to get a complication, Something bad is going to happen. You almost get in that mindset of self-fulfilling prophecy. So you can use the placebo effect by really retraining your beliefs. And it doesn't have to be that nothing bad is going to happen. But you can believe in possibility. You can believe in improvement. You can believe in just today. And the key part is really believing it. So you don't want to ever go too far out of the realm because intellectually your brain is going to know it's not true. So there's a fine line where you move the needle a little bit with your beliefs. And that all comes with possibility, With hope, With setting goals, Having an intention, Believing it's achievable. Believing it's achievable is hugely important. If you don't believe it is, So if your doctor says, Okay, I want your A1C to come down five points, And in your mind you're like, There's no way I can do it, You've already used the placebo effect against yourself, Right? But you know, So instead of saying I needed to come down XYZ amount, Then maybe you look at smaller goals that you believe that you can do. In that mindset, The belief is there and your body will follow. It's kind of cool. Talk one other thing about fear and faith. So fear and faith, Or fear and belief, Whatever, Are believing in something that hasn't happened yet. Whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, You can believe in something that hasn't happened. So our faith is that something good is going to happen or we believe in a certain outcome. Our fear is something bad is going to happen. And again, Not to belittle the healthcare system, But a lot of patient education uses fear. If you don't do this, This, This, And this will happen. Badness will happen. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't know that, But if that's your only motivation, You're going to be thinking about fear and bad outcomes all the time and your brain is going to be just looking for that. And so that's what you're going to follow. You're going to start altering your course. So we need to be mindful. We need to be aware. We need to understand the possibilities, But we don't want our brains to live there. We want our brains to live in possibility and hope and better. So we want to spend time feeling good feeling, Right? So the belief when we believe things. So if you believe it's going to be a good day, You believe I've talked a lot about field trip day. If you believe you're going to have an exciting day, You feel differently, Right? You feel better. If you believe there's no hope, You're pretty much down and it really takes a lot more mental and physical energy to get you to do things. So if we can intentionally find time feeling good, Right, Where we can look for the good in the day, Whatever it is, Right? I had a choice. I got to pick which finger. I had one blood sugar today that was better than all the others. I was able to make a good choice. I walked a little bit, Celebrate every win. And what happens often is we criticize ourselves because we don't do it all. And then we start telling ourselves the stories, Right? And so we're using the placebo effect against ourselves. Oh, It's bad. I can't do this. This isn't good. So spend some time feeling good where it's possible. We feel happy where you notice the good things you did and then avoid the lack language. So lack is I can't, I don't, I want, Please give me, Please cure me. These states where you're saying I don't have what I need and you can possibly be in lack. But again, If your brain is thinking I don't have what I need, Then it sends out a lot of chemical distress signals that put your body in a state to react to that belief, Right? So I don't have what I need. Your body's going to go into defense mechanism versus I'm okay right now. I'm good. That's a calming effect on your body. It's all about what you're thinking in those thoughts. And I think you choose, You know, Be mindful and aware of what you're thinking. And that's probably, I say this a lot, But there's so much going on in our head. So we might do better if we can notice and go, You know what, I'm not letting that thought go because that's not serving me. And on some level it's like taking a bad pill, Right? So your thoughts can be a good pill or a bad pill. So you have power, Right? We have power in our thoughts. So if you would imagine your thought is like a seed that you can plant, It's inert. Seed doesn't do anything. You have these thoughts in there. So they're there. But then when you speak it, You actually give it life and it sprouts. So that now that idea, That thought, The placebo effect got bigger when you're believing it. So if you're speaking, I can't, This is bad, This is horrible versus you're speaking, I'm trying, I'm learning, I'm doing my best, Right? When you do those things and follow it with an action, So that thought comes into a word, Comes into action. It goes back to that body, Mind, Spirit sort of thing. And I'll come all the way back, What the mind believes, Right? It creates in the body. What the mind believes, It creates in the body. So whether that's fear or danger or safety, Healing, Without you thinking about it, Right? And so we want to try to influence whenever we can to add some positivity back because we're just kind of geared by nature to be more negative. That's the survival mechanism. We want to see the bad stuff. So I think the other piece is when it's kind of jumbled like that and you're not sure, It all seems too much, We've had bad things happen in the past, We're worried about things in the future, How do you find a place where you can believe something good? And it's in the now. Like that is where you, So anything could possibly happen in the future, We don't know. Lots of things happened in the past, We can't change them. But now is the place where we have the opportunity to change and we can be okay now. We may worry about something, But now I can make a choice. Now I can make a decision. Now I can say, I'm okay, I'm breathing, I'm here, I'm alive on this earth. I have choices. And so sometimes just that moment of now is enough and it can give you balance and it can get you out of worry mode and back into a more calm state. Recap a little bit, Just really talking about the placebo effect, It's real. It's because your mind believes something is true that it's not getting from sensory input for whatever reason. An event happened, Someone told you something, Whatever those ideas are, You believe them and your body follows suit. And so we start with medicine, Thinking about I take a pill that doesn't do anything, But I get pain relief, I get an effect. We can extrapolate that to just general diabetes management into what you believe is possible. And so by nature, We're always going to hear all about the bad stuff that can happen. You need to know it has to be there, It's good information. But if that's the only thoughts you're giving yourself, Then you're really stuck in a negative pattern, Right? So your placebo effect, Your belief can cause you to take a path that's less healthy, Less healing. But if you can believe that for however long there's possibility, There's hope, There's that you can do it, Even if I can't do it for the rest of my life, Just for the next hour, I can do it. That's a positive belief that you can tell your brain that will release chemicals, It will reduce stress, It will help you heal. So now is where it happens. And so sometimes it requires suspending disbelief and believing in possibility, Right? And if you can do that, It's tremendously powerful. If just for a moment you can say, I don't care what all the data says, I don't care what everybody says, I believe healing is possible, I believe I can change, I believe right now these are the things I can do. I can't do this, I can't do 500 things, But I believe I can do these. If you can do those in that success, And once you achieve those, Then you maybe do some more, Right? But we're tricking ourselves into believing, Which changes our anatomy on some level, Right? Get this out of a stressful mode. Okay, So I think that kind of wraps it up. If anybody has questions about placebo, I can jump in real quick. Otherwise we'll get started with the meditation. Alright, So placebo is all about your beliefs. What you believe is possible, What you believe about yourself. And honestly, That's where it starts because if you don't believe it's possible, It's really, Really, Really difficult to change your behavior. So you have to believe and you have to find something that makes sense for you. Those little things, Those positive things can change your course over time, Right? And so we want to go into a healthy, Healing, Whole, Happy state versus, Oh my gosh, I can't do this, I'm miserable, This is hard. And it is hard, It's a burden. I'm not saying it isn't, But when we don't have control of a lot of other things, Having control over our thoughts and our attitude and what we choose to believe can be very, Very powerful. Okay, So that was the placebo, Right? So what your mind believes is what is true, Right? We focus on what's going on now. So in this meditation, We're going to allow ourselves to believe that our body can repair itself and that we are going to believe that we can let go of worry. We are going to believe that we can receive good and positive benefit of belief, Of rest, Recovery and restoration just in this moment now. So we'll gather again, There's more of us right now together. We are among friends, We're in a safe place. We're with people who understand that living with a chronic illness is not as easy as it sounds. It takes a lot of energy and focus. So it's a place where we can relax, We can let go, No judgment, No right or wrong, Just information, Ideas, Some may stick, Some may not. We're gathered with friends. So we always like to do this polyvagal breathing, Which is breathing in and out through your nose, Mouth closed, In intentionally through your nose, Out twice as long. I usually count in for four and out for eight. And polyvagal breathing stimulates internally one of the nerves that helps to lower your blood pressure, Lower your heart rate and shift you from 911, Our sympathetic state, Which is worry, Fear, Anxiety, Stress into our parasympathetic state, Which is relaxation, Restore, Healing, Right? It's the part where our body is doing our maintenance work. So we can't be doing maintenance work when we're fighting fires or running from things. So worry counts as that 911 state. And Lord knows we all have enough worry, Right? So we'll get into this meditation. So we'll start with the breathing again. So everybody take a deep breath. I want you to lean back. This is the fun and easy part. You can close your eyes. Relax your shoulders. Let the world step off for a moment. Let the space between your eyebrows soften. Unclench your jaw. Relax your shoulders. Relax your abdomen. Let the weight of your body be supported by whatever's underneath you. We'll do some breathing and I'm going to count in for four, Out for eight. So take a deep breath in two, Three, Four, And release slowly. In two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight. In two, Three, Four, Through your nose, Out two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight. And relax. In two, Three, Four, And out two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight. Deep breath in again through your nose. In two, Three, Four, And out two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight. Let go of anything that doesn't serve you, Any beliefs that are harmful, Full of fear. Another deep breath in two, Three, Four, And out two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight. And last time, In two, Three, Four, And out two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight. Notice how your body feels. Sometimes you'll feel a tingle, Maybe a softening, Warmth, Just relaxation, A letting go. Imagine your muscles draping off your bone, Loose, Fluid. We'll repeat our intention for tonight. Our intention is that we will be open to the magic of our body, Mind, And spirit, Working together in ways we don't even understand, To heal, To correct, To repair, To restore. We'll repeat some truths that can be said any time, Any day. I'll say them aloud. You can repeat them in your head or say them out loud. And so these are true. All of these statements are true about you. So I am here. I am breathing. I am whole. I am okay. I am magical. I am worthy. And I am present. I am capable. I am a creator. I am open to possibility. I am safe. I am healing. And I am okay. Relax. Let go. Let the wisdom of your body do its work. And we'll travel now with a guided meditation through the different organs and systems of your body and just paying attention to each area that I mentioned. And whether you know how to do it or not, Most of us would never know. But we're going to guide our healing parts of ourself to each different organ so that whatever is needed and necessary flows there. Healing happens. Restoration happens. So as we begin, Take a deep breath in. Close your eyes and move your attention into your heart. Your heart that beats in the center of your chest. Strong and steady since the day you were born. Your heart that is a structural organ that acts like a pump. Your heart that is an emotional organ that acts with love. Imagine being inside the blood vessels of your heart, Traveling through the arteries and veins that carry blood to and from this organ. And as you travel in these blood vessels, You see clean, Pink, Healthy tissue. If you happen to notice anything that looks rigid or rough, You can imagine it melting away, Dissolving, And leaving clean, Clear, Pure blood flow, Bringing life, Oxygen, And nutrition to your heart. Relax the muscles in your chest. Feel your heart beating. Feel the fullness of love and emotion in your heart. And know that your heart shares this with the rest of your body. Offer thanks and gratitude to your heart for its tireless work, For what it does for your system, For your body, For your mind, And for your spirit. As we leave the heart, Travel downward to your abdomen, Over to the right, Just below your ribs is your liver, An organ that has many purposes. It's complex. Imagine blood easily flowing into the liver, Bringing toxins, Waste products, Other substances that may need to be bound and excreted. Your liver has digestive properties. Your liver also stores glucose that can be released in times of stress, Of sympathetic response, Of 911. Your liver also has to deal with clotting factors for your blood. It's cleaning, Healing, Repairing, Restoring. Imagine your liver swelling just a bit, Full of blood, Full of oxygen, Full of life-giving nutrition, Cleaning and filtering the blood in your system. The blood flows effortlessly and the liver works easily, Repairing itself, Restoring any damage, Maintaining optimal health for all systems in the body. Imagine light and love surrounding the side of this part of your body. Offer gratitude for the work that your liver does and thank your liver for its tireless, Tireless work every day since you've been born. From your liver, Move further towards your back. Above your waist, Below each rib, The ribs on each side are your kidneys. Two small organs safely tucked away behind your ribs, Fed by an artery. Imagine that artery bringing clear, Fluid, Healthy blood, Oxygen, Nutrition, Flowing through each kidney effortlessly. Filtration occurs to maintain fluid balance. Sometimes the kidneys help us get rid of extra sugar. Within our kidney function can be systems that help with blood pressure. Small nephrons, The smallest part of the kidney, Exchange fluids and substances that need to be released from your body at the smallest level. Now we ask for our body to bring healing, To repair structures, To help with filtration, To ensure that proteins stay where they should, That fluid balance is optimized, That any damage from high blood sugar is repaired, Restored, That every small vessel is open, Flowing, Bringing immune products. Take a deep breath, Breathe into this part of your back and as you breathe in, Imagine your kidneys full of blood flowing, Full of life, Full of healing. Ask your body to bring everything necessary to heal and repair any damage that may have happened. Ask your kidneys to relax and receive the healing, To be open to being healthy and new again. We thank the kidneys for their tireless work, Filtering, Cleaning, Maintaining fluid balance. We offer them gratitude for their work. As we leave the kidneys, We travel a little bit further down in the abdomen to where our digestive organs are, All the way from our throat down to our stomach, To our intestines. Your digestive tract is a transformative and amazing system that provides nourishment, Helps with emotional balance, And is the seat of our immune system. It transforms food that we eat, Which is nonliving, Somehow turning it into our living flesh and blood. Our digestive organs can often be the holder of our fear and our struggles and our worries. So as you place your attention in your abdomen, Give yourself permission to relax, To let go. Imagine waves of propulsion moving over your stomach, Slow, Rhythmic, Healing, Stress-free and pain-free. Let your digestion proceed effortlessly, Pulling all the nutrition it can, Removing things and bypassing things that are no longer useful for your body, Healing any areas of stress along the digestive tract. As you flow through this area, Imagine traveling from your throat down into your stomach, Into your small intestine, Into your large intestine, And as you proceed, Notice smooth and glistening the inside surface of these organs. Clean, Healthy, Pink, Well vascularized. If you happen to notice ulcerations, Redness, Swelling, Any areas of dysfunction, Imagine in your mind they dissolve away. Healing processes, Energy, Your immune products are brought to any area that needs attention. As you exhale and inhale, Breathe in peace and softness into your abdomen and release worry and tension and stress. Right now, Everything is okay. You are healing, You are feeling better, You are doing good work for yourself. We thank the digestive organs for their work to feed and nourish us, To maintain a biome that we don't even understand all of the things it does. We gift ourself with the desire to eat healthy, To put in good food that comes from nature, That tastes good, That provides vitamins and minerals and so much more. We're grateful for our digestion and we offer it thanks. Seated just behind the belly button, Put your attention on the area of your pancreas, Nestled back in between your stomach and your intestines behind your belly button. Why is your pancreas an organ of much attention when we live with diabetes? On some level, There's dysfunction in the pancreas. All of us have a different level of impairment. Pancreas produces insulin, Perhaps too much, Perhaps too little. Hopefully our pancreas is still producing other products such as glucagon to help raise our blood sugar, Digestive enzymes to help digest our food. Our pancreas is under attack from many fronts with immune products, With impairment, With negative thoughts that we offer. We offer our pancreas forgiveness. We give it special blessings that it tries to do its best under such dysfunctional conditions. We offer it gratitude for the work it still continues to do despite being injured or impaired. Take another deep breath. Imagine light, Warmth, Glow coming to the middle of your abdomen, Gifting this area with thoughts of good feelings, Of health, Of healing, Of peace. As we travel further downward, We come to our lower extremities where our upper legs meet our hips. Two large arteries extend down our femoral area. Move your attention to the inner parts of your legs and these large blood vessels, Carrying fluids, Blood, Immune products, Nutrition, Healing to your lower extremities as they travel down through your thighs, Around your femur bone, Through your knees, Under your kneecap, Down lower, Into your calves, To your ankles, To your feet, To your toes. Notice how your legs feel. Relax, Release. Notice the blood flowing to the very furthest parts of you, In your toes. Imagine these tiny, Tiny capillaries and blood vessels open, Blood flowing freely, Bringing nutrition, Oxygen, And healing to the farthest reaches of your body. If there is swelling in these areas, Imagine your blood system, Your veins, Taking that fluid back with it, Returning it higher and higher to the body, Releasing the pressure, Calming any feelings of numbness or tingling that may occur. Hopefully as you're lying down and leaning back, You've got some relief from your standing on your feet that carry us around every day, That perhaps might have some numbness that needs a little TLC. We offer gratitude for our legs and our feet for getting us where we need to go, For being our foundation. We encourage optimal blood flow. We ask all the parts of our body to redirect resources, Energy, And healing to our lower extremities. We offer gratitude and thanks for this part of our body. As we travel back upwards, We find ourselves at our shoulders, Which may have become tense again thinking about our bodies. Let your shoulders relax again. Let go. Be in a state of receivership. Put your focus on your arms. Start with your shoulders. Ask the muscles from the back of your head to your shoulders on the outside. Imagine yourself traveling down the blood vessels inside your arms, Past your upper arms, Past your elbows, Into your forearms. Notice the blood vessels, Pink, Shiny, Smooth. If you see areas of irritation, Redness, Roughness, Notice them as they melt and move away, Disintegrating in front of your eyes, Replaced with healthy tissue. Continue traveling into your hands, Into your fingers, Into your fingertips. Notice the part of your hand, The part of your arms that you use to care for yourself with acts of self-love. Hold your hands in front of your face and feel the warmth and the energy that emanates from this part of your body that gives care to yourself and to others. Rub your thumbs against your fingertips, Caressing each one, Thinking it if there are pokes from finger sticks for taking this pain for the good of the body. Allow healing, Wellness, Light to flow through your hands. Once again, We thank our hands for their tireless work to prepare our food, To check our blood sugar, To administer our medicine, To take care of our body. As we leave our hands, We travel back up, Up our arms, And we come to our neck. Swallow and release the muscles in your neck. Relax. This neck is the center of your voice, The place of your truth, Where you tell others what you need. You communicate your thoughts, Your beliefs, Your requests. Often our voices can feel stifled, So we can believe it's possible to speak what we want to say. And we thank our throat, Our voice, For being so central and core to everything that we do. Move your attention now upwards to your brain, This massive organ that is constantly processing information, Guiding our body, Influencing our hormones. It's the neural network megacenter, So much activity. But right now we give the brain permission to relax, To not think, To not do, Knowing full well there are many processes going on without our knowledge, Keeping us safe and healthy. Imagine the blood flow through the brain, Flowing easily, Effortlessly in vessels that are firm, Pink, Connected, Strong, Delivering everything that we need to be alert, Bright, Smart, Creative, Empathetic, And providing ourselves this care. Our brain enjoys this parasympathetic goodness that we're doing, For it can turn inward in a safe time to heal the parts of itself. We thank the brain for its ever-vigilance. We thank it for its ability to guide us, To synthesize all the data, To help us make decisions. We offer gratitude, And we believe in our brain that we can be the best version of ourselves. Next, Move your attention to your eyes. The retina of our eyes is an area that can be impacted by diabetes. The retina is on the back of our eyeballs. So as we think about this area in the back of our eyes, Imagine the muscles that hold our eyes in place, Loosening, Softening, Letting go, Letting focus become blurry. Actually look at the back of your eyeballs and see the blackness, The depth that we typically don't pay attention to. Imagine the tiny, Tiny blood vessels feeding your retina, Healthy, Pure, Whole, Restoring, Healing, Blood flowing easily and fully to nourish your retina for perfect vision. All healing products are guided to this area if it's necessary. Your eyes see the world and color your vision and bring life to much of what you do. Relax your eyes. Thank them for the vision, The joy, The things that you see, And bless them with healing and goodness. I want to move back to our heart, Downward into the core of your being. Breathe into this space and relax. Let your heart be full with the joy, The love in your heart radiate to every part of your body. And from your heart, From your center, Repeat again our affirmation. This is your truth. I am here. I am breathing. I am whole. I am okay. I am magical. I am worthy. I am present. I am capable. I am a creator. I am open to possibility. I am safe. I am healing. I have diabetes, But I am okay. And just linger here just for a moment. Allow your body to touch the parts that need healing, To direct resources away from monitoring for danger. Right now is the time for your body to turn inward, To heal, To repair, To nourish, To regrow, To relax, And to receive. Being in this state is healthy. It's necessary. It provides balance to the burden that diabetes can offer to your body. You need time spent quiet and peaceful and calm so your body can help repair. What you believe is possible will impact what your body is able to do. What you believe will influence the hormones, The chemicals that are excreted by your glands. What you believe is possible and about yourself will influence your healing. And so by changing your belief just a little bit, You can change the direction and find more peace and healing in your life. Let's hear a few moments. Start to come back to present, Let your thoughts come back to my voice, To this place and this time. Become aware of your body and how it feels. Notice and remember this feeling of peace and relaxation. Just remembering how you feel now can help transition and move your body back into this state. So begin, Move your arms and legs a little bit, Blink open your eyes, Take a deep breath. Then when you're ready, Open your eyes. Thank you for sharing this time with me. Thank you for giving yourself this gift. This is more important than you could ever know. It's needed, It's necessary, It's healthy. It's the opposite of stress and we all have enough stress, Right? Exhausted physically. I want to thank everyone for joining me. I get as much out of this as anybody else. I think I love being in this space. I feel connected. I feel safe. I feel like I'm helping so it's just as good for me as it is for everybody else and I hope it's beneficial to you. I will sign off. Thank you again for joining. My best. Be well. All my Diet Buddies. Thank you. Bye bye.