“Our greatest glory is, not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
Oliver Goldsmith¹
I have been free from rheumatoid arthritis for more than twenty years!
For over twenty years, there is no pain, inflammation, or restriction in my body’s movement caused by rheumatoid arthritis.
My sleep is mine again – as long as I like and without a rude awakening.
I feel the touch of my child’s hair beneath my hands again when I caress his head!
Many years back in time, when I first experienced swelling, pain, and restricted mobility, I only saw the effects of rheumatoid arthritis but not its cause.
Stress and tension while discomforting sentiences had had more impact on me than I had been able to manage on time. From that came overburdening.
In the following years, I experienced that I got sick burdened by overloading stress and that I healed by relieving it.
When I was overburdened however my symptoms showed again. This reverse effect I’ve witnessed over and over again while I tried to heal.
The joy at my progress made up for the bitter acknowledgement: I had lost valuable time to rheumatoid arthritis my family and I won’t get back, but although this was almost the worst part of the illness, it doesn’t do any good to ponder about the loss. It would mean throwing away even more time and good energy than it had already cost over something that is gone.
Fortunately, all of us have precious lives in the present. Every single healing effort is worthwhile. Every step, no matter how strenuous it is, will pay off. That’s what makes it possible for us to win. And in doing so my possibilities grew.
Today I react differently to certain stimuli, as I did before: in a healthy way.
With my daughter’s question: “Mom, what is rheumatism?” and (after my explanation): “You had that too??? I don’t see anything of it!”, my review of my experiences with rheumatoid arthritis began:
“Yes, honey, today we do sports together, and our life is full of joy and movement. When I was ill, I couldn’t even hold your brother with my hands. If I wanted to lift him, I had to embrace him with my arms and laboriously pull him upwards because my fingers were too thick and crooked and badly movable; my body ached. With his then three years, he helped me close buttons and picked up smaller things from the floor for me that I couldn’t reach. He learned to deal with my limitations at an early age; he knew, for example, that he was not allowed just to run away because I could not keep up with his tempo…”
So I told her. And, for the first time, I looked back on days, weeks, months and years of pain, fatigue, physical disabilities, and sadness. I saw the whole of it from the start to the long-desired healing.
I had hated this disease and thrown it off like an oppressive grey coat – along with any thought of it.
Reports from people who are currently affected by rheumatoid arthritis show me that the first years of their ordeal are often very similar to my own experiences. The difference was:
While rheumatoid arthritis progressed and spread in both body and life of many others affected by it, I slowly but continuously made my way out of the disease!
During that time, I practised, overcame setbacks, kept practising, wrote down my exercises and improved them until I healed. And all this without any specialised prior knowledge, nutritional changes, medications or surgical interventions.
This way, my healing exercises named HeilÜben exercises came to be. With them, I protected myself from overload.
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