Hashimoto’s Autoimmune Disease: Healing with Yoga Health Coaching

Cate Stillman — Wed, 28 Jun 2017 20:46:21 +0000

Gin was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s disease, an autoimmune disease which causes the immune system to attack the thyroid, four years ago. Since then, she has set forth on a journey to learn exactly what works for her body, not only to eliminate symptoms, but to actually thrive. She shares how the habits of Body Thrive have helped her get in touch with her body, ensuring that she gets exactly what she needs while staying away from the things which will push her out of balance and toward inflammation.

Through group learning she has found that though other people may appear to get away with bad habits without signs of deterioration, these habits end up causing problems in the body and mind down the road. Gin has come to think of herself not as a person with a condition, but as a person who simply understands and is connected to the laws of nature. Her testimony can be used not only for people struggling with an autoimmune disease, but anyone who wants to truly thrive in body and mind.

What you’ll get out of tuning in:

Why it’s important for all people to get in touch with their bodies’ needs
How to understand what your body needs
How group work can help orient you toward connectedness and thrive

Links Mentioned in Your Episode:

Pure Life NC
Body Goals Session
Banyan Botanicals (20% off their products for summer)

Show Highlights:

0:50 Gin describes how the habits of Body Thrive help her day-to-day energy levels and immune function
4:30 Gin and Cate discuss the law of Karma and how everyone is ultimately affected by their habits
7:40 Gin and Cate talk about getting in touch with the self and aligning energy, time, and relationships
11:45 Gin recounts how a group dynamic helped her to recognize that she wasn’t alone, and that everyone should practice good life habits in order to thrive

Favorite Quotes:

“No one is getting away with anything! And that’s the law of Karma.” -Cate Stillman
“You just have to get to that reality that’s it’s really about the long term.” -Gin Burchfield

“It’s not one habit..” -Gin Burchfield
“I always hear: ‘I just wanna eat normal!'” -Gin Burchfield
“My first ‘aha’ came when I was in Body Thrive and you were like ‘this is where autoimmunity comes from.’ And it comes from the constant overdoing, the constant striving for perfection; that kind of type A stuff.” -Gin Burchfield
“Maybe somebody else has a slightly stronger constitution, maybe they’re a kapha type, maybe it just hasn’t bothered them as much yet, but we’re all in it together; we’re all headed on the same trajectory.” -Gin Burchfield
“I’m gonna chill out over here with my green drink that’s good. It doesn’t mean we can’t commune together, it just means we aren’t communing over the same misery anymore.” -Gin Burchfield

Guest BIO:

Gin began her career in Massage, Ayurveda, Yoga and Wellness in 2001, and has been in private practice in Raleigh and Cary, NC since 2008. She specializes in Medical Massage Therapy and Ayurveda, the sister science of Yoga. Gin also serves as faculty in the Therapeutic Massage program at Wake Technical Community College since 2009 and enjoys her work as a Montessori Yoga and Anatomy Instructor through her self-developed “My Body is Science” program. She is currently studying to become a Certified Yoga Health Coach and is offering her new group-coaching format 10 week program PURE HEALTH four times per year.

Prior to this she had the distinction of working at the Chopra Center for Wellbeing, founded by renowned physician and author Deepak Chopra. Here she learned Ayurvedic Massage Therapy and Panchakarma (detoxification) administration. She served as Assistant Supervisor in the Chopra Center Spa before being recruited to work as Therapeutic Bodywork Team Lead at Wellspace, a large integrative healthcare center formerly located in Boston, MA.

Your Habits + Your Integrity Spectrum

Cate Stillman — Thu, 19 Jan 2017 15:07:17 +0000

I wrote this post and made the little diagram for those who are in the seemingly endless cycles of negative self-talk to inform you that dissolves when your habits align to your bodies needs. Your mind and emotions are negative because your rhythms are out of alignment. They are a symptom – not a cause in themselves.

I was on a Body Thrive coaching call the other day. I try to check in first. I take the pulse of the group. I find out where people are stuck. I also find out where people are having breakthroughs, big realizations and better automated habits.

I’ve been coaching people on the habits of Ayurveda since 2001. I’ve been coaching the habits of yogis longer than I personally had integrity with the habits. This is how it is with many of us. We learn by teaching. We step into integrity by noticing when we fail to step into integrity. If you teach or coach, you put yourself on stage to learn from the crowd.

I started to get more honest with my groups a few years ago. I let them know where I struggle, and where I excel. The result of all this humility and authenticity is the habits of yogis have automated in my life. Slowly, surely maturity comes from living into aligned action.

The lack of inner integrity many of us have haunts us daily.

I made a simple diagram to explain my observations:

(*I don’t want to imply that all disease is caused by habits out of integrity. I know it’s more complicated than that. But I do what to generalize here based on Epigenetics and the power we have to take aligned action.)

And you can maybe relate. You know what you should do. Yet, doing it is another thing altogether. And when you delve into the differential – it’s that you don’t have the habits to get done what you know you should do.

We don’t know how to implement the structure, the process, for our own evolution. And the weird thing is – once we implement the structure – the habits come easily. The toughest of habits are easy to lick when we have the structure for small changes.

I’m curious if you know what I am talking about – the lack of integrity issue.

The integrity issue is universal

If we get that the integrity issue is universal – that it’s built into who we are as human beings – than we can stop the self-flagellation and get on with aligned action.

If you’re carrying extra weight and you don’t want to – you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you’ll working too much and your body is breaking down – you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you’re on drugs that feel like band aids for deeper issues and you’ll not addressing those deeper issues with daily habit upgrades, you too catch my drift.

This weird thing happens when you lose integrity with yourself, and this cool thing happens when you gain deeper alignment with your self. The loss cycle creates separation. The gain cycle builds inter-connectedness.

Back to the coaching call for Body Thrive.

This group started in early November and we cruise through the holidays together, upleveling our habits as we go. We were live on the week 8 call. I did the opening check in. My group was doing the habits of yogis.

Access to ease, and time opening up.

My members reporting exiting the self-perpetuating cycle of stress. Their new ancient habits were making their lives easier. And the lives of their kids and partners easier.

This came across my Facebook feed as I was writing this post:

The yogis of yore devoted to a low stress, easeful environment inside the body and inside the home. Low stress inside and outside lays the groundwork for aligned action. High stress leads to disconnected action which creates more work and more stress. I’d give you an example but I’m sure you can come up with one from your own life to test the theory.

My peeps reported having more time.

More time to do what they wanted. My peeps reported on having more space for clear thinking. And of course the typical unneeded pounds shed and deeper sleep, and better nourishment that comes from better planning and smarter living. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What captured my interest was the ease.

The expansion of our hearts that occurs when we step into alignment with our little daily body habits. The self-loathing, and those of us who are sensitive enough to feel it know exactly what I’m taking about, eases up. The negative self-talk, the critic, the judge, and even the rebel, start to dissolve into aligned action.

And we enter the next phase of our personal thrive. The weirder predictable thing that happens next is as we step into aligned action we see where others are on this spectrum. We see those who are miles ahead of us – whom we can connect with and learn from. We also deeply notice those in our lives who are in the self-perpetuating self-contraction. And we become deeply aware of how much we care.

And that is how I measure the progress of my group. If our hearts are effortlessly breaking open, we’re on the right track. If we have more time, more space, more ease, less weight, less stress, more aligned action, I am doing my job.

Read the book. Get in my course. Or do whatever you need to do to move the needle from negative to positive. We’re in this together.

Yoga Health Coaching |