…Back then, I would often think about the beginning of the disease.
Did I overlook something that could have caused the inflammatory joint disease? What had gone wrong? I dug into my memories and found – nothing. Nothing besides the memory of feeling a slight hollowness, a subtle feeling of: “What do I live for – and why? “ — swallowed up by the everyday turmoil that demanded my attention from dawn till dusk. And if someone had asked: “What do you want? What is it you are missing?“ I couldn’t have given a proper answer. But a sensation ensembled the feeling: Sometimes I would experience a certain feebleness in my hand when I grasped or held onto things. But that clue alone wasn’t sufficient to point me to an explanation for my RA.
However, due to the discontinuation of my treatment, I was now alone with my “rheumatism-thing”. I was entirely on my own and wanted to make the most of my situation. But I had never given my own body more thought than absolutely necessary before, especially not what lay beyond sight beneath my skin.
So what could I do?
Arthritic pain, a lot of it, forced me to think.
Fritz Perls described the function of pain as a waywiser to its causes and their relief: “The pain will lead the way!”. Following Perl’s words, I pursued the pain in my body and realised how it made me physically aware of the different regions of my body.
To me, that was a significant experience: Until then, my RA had seemed like something independent of me, that came and went as it pleased, flowing freely throughout my whole body. As if something foreign, that I had no control over, had its own life inside me. That was why back then I thought that my illness was not related to how I lived but to bad luck or a failure of my body.
While I was very familiar with how this “something” felt as it made itself known to me through sensations ranging from slight tingling and dull throbbing to sharp, tearing, burning, and excruciatingly severe stinging pain, swelling, and restricted movement, I found myself unable to explain it. I realised that I had only an imprecise picture of my physical inner life, which influenced my awareness and my unconscious perception of my body as myself, limiting it to the minimal degree of knowledge I had about it.
Before my rheumatoid arthritis illnesses, such as colds or injuries, such as a broken arm, had always been accompanied by an openly apparent cause and achievable cure. Additionally, I wasn’t used at all to feeling my body as intensely as I did now.
To gain a deeper understanding of myself, I continued to explore my condition.
My pain and physical decline made me sad. The disease gave me anxiety and made me worried; I felt shame and anger because of the situation I was in. This emotional effort also left me physically exhausted.
I was mainly exhausted and constantly freezing. The cold chills that rushed through my sick body were what first made me realise that my emotional state could and did manifest physically and could be felt in my muscles, nerves, and skin.
My sadness sat like a pillow-sized, oppressive drop on my chest, hung heavily on my head and shoulders and pulled them down. My head was sore with worry and started to ache; my anxiety cut my breath short and tightened my chest.
I realised: My rheumatoid arthritis and its consequences triggered emotions that I could observe to learn how my physical sensations were reflecting on my emotions!
And vice versa:
How my emotions found their expression in my physical sensations!
Sensations and emotions correlate – not only when one is blushing with embarrassment, freezing in shock or shivering from excitement. That’s why I started thinking that there had to be access to an understanding of my RA beginning from my thoughts and emotions, while my body was aching and my mobility restricted, not least by my sensitivity to pressure.
During my pain-covered nightly waking times, I read a book by Anne-Marie Tausch¹ about her life with cancer. She described how she had intensively imagined the diseased regions of her own body, the processes in them and then the successful fight against cancer cells. This way, she wanted to stimulate her body to heal.
I liked the idea of healing through the imagination of a healing body, despite my problem not being cancer, but rheumatoid arthritis.
In any case, I wanted to do something for myself, even though I wasn’t a physician.
And so, I deliberately directed loving, caring thoughts and good feelings at myself, letting them create pleasant and comforting images in me. Often, I couldn’t bear warming blankets or thicker clothes because of the pressure sensitivity of my body, and was therefore constantly cold. That’s why I first imagined my body surrounded by a warm, yet feather-light, fluffy-soft blanket as a gentle, comforting protective cover.
That was successful in giving me what purposeful positive imagination was supposed to: a sense of protection and comfort. I started to relax, which meant that after a while, I actually got warmer!
So I learned from the experience with myself:
Emotions and thoughts provoke a physical reaction!
My sensations are real for both my body and my soul!
I now wanted to try the conscious use of positive imaginations of health, and the positive feelings they evoke, to overcome rheumatoid arthritis.
I was looking for clear, distinct goals to aim my imagination at, using images connected to and evocative of positive emotions. I therefore began to imagine my body with healthy joints and muscles.
To form my images as detailed as possible, I browsed through a number of anatomy studies of the inner workings of a healthy body. I examined the bones, joints, and all related structures: tendons, muscles, connective tissue, and nerve cells. Soon, I realised that I tended to feel more comfortable with graphics than with photographs.
I specifically chose graphics that were best for forming mental images, gave me a positive feeling and a good overview of my body’s interior. Studying the anatomy and physiology of my body shed more light on my condition. It gave me a clearer understanding of what was actually happening inside of me, particularly in the areas where I felt the arthritis pain and where my mobility was limited. Over time, I also gained a better understanding of various processes occurring within my body.
In the years prior, my RA hadn’t been consistent over the days, weeks and months. There were times when it had progressed less perceptibly, slowed down, and when there was less inflammation and pain.
I learned that my rheumatoid arthritis slowing down always came when I could relax more intensively than usual and thus relieve enough stress to get closer to or even from time to time below my critical limit, where load from stress and tension became overload. And I noticed that the situations that had allowed me to relax more intensively than usual were always those out of the ordinary routine of everyday life: listening undisturbed to my favourite music; following thoughts that made me happy; being amongst my loved ones during family gatherings; going on outings with friends or taking a stroll by myself; watching a suspenseful movie; reading a gripping book; experiencing fun and joy in general.
Normal, everyday situations were when I was most tense, yet I couldn’t tell reliably when or just how much that affected me. I could only compare my experiences with the inflammation and pain that accompanied them, and from this, subsequently deduce the level of tension I had had in those situations. Therefore, I actively practised relaxation throughout the day and habituated a more relaxed posture and a better treatment of myself aimed at reducing tension and stress.
While doing so, I recalled the previously viewed graphics of healthy and strong hands, arms, elbows, and so on, over and over again until they became completely familiar. This allowed me to envision my own body as healthy in this way, combining this visualisation with relaxation and happy memories. So I found that I could empathise with unrestricted and carefree body movements and postures of myself and others, that I could almost feel them with my own body, even while RA restricted my mobility.
By the use of relaxing body techniques (such as Autogenic Training, the Feldenkrais Method, and Progressive Muscle Relaxation), we can improve body perception. By doing so, we’ll strengthen our ability to detect and eliminate tension through relaxation.
Targeted, conscious relaxation was precisely what I needed to heal my rheumatoid arthritis.
In my first HeilÜben exercises (HÜ! Level 1), I used the fact that health, as already described in detail above, can be fostered by the mind, with thoughts and emotions, even if an illness restricts the body.
Going mind first helped me to experience more consciously again, despite the illness-related limitations, which made even beginning with purely body-therapeutic interventions very difficult or even impossible.
I discovered that, in contrast to intense, clear sensations such as pain or emotions such as unhappiness, I had no longer noticed the many subtle physical stimuli due to various effects of my RA, or at least only perceived them dulled.
I had already noticed that my sensations had changed during RA when the fine hairs on the backs of my fingers and hands were breaking off. I noticed that this caused me to touch and grasp things a little more forcefully than would have been necessary or good for my body, as I couldn’t really feel them enough otherwise.
As I gained experience with the disease, I understood that the effects of rheumatoid arthritis influenced my perception through my altered sensations. It became clear to me that RA changed my body in such a way that I became less able to help myself, because it limited my senses in signalling the slight, subtle changes in my body. My pain tolerance, for example, had risen significantly, taking the warning function out of what I came to consider mild pain that, compared to the pain level I was now used to, just faded into the background.
The less accurate the sense of touch in my hands became, the more numb they grew to anything but the sharp arthritis pain, the less I could adequately exert force when I grasped something. The more swollen my feet and legs were, the worse the condition of my knees became, and the worse I walked. Often, too often, I couldn’t walk as my joints would have needed me to. As a result, my restricted senses led to restricted body movement and poor posture.
During the worst times, I would sometimes slam my crooked hands desperately at my desk and hate them for how they had changed. It felt like they had turned against me, feeling painful and woodenly numb at the same time.
I so wanted to feel and touch with them as I had before, I wanted and needed them to be completely mobile, and above all, painless again. And I knew that by using force, that wouldn’t happen.
At this point, I realised that I had to consider two main facts. The first were my restricted sensations and, consequently, my limited awareness of more subtle emotions and feelings. The second was that I moved and held myself accordingly: limited due to the restriction of my sensations and to the consequences of relieving postures and lack of training (leading to shortened tendons, weakened muscles, worsened blood circulation and even more fatigue) as my limited sense of touch as well as my limited proprioceptive sensibility had an effect not only on my movement and posture but on my overall perception.
The disease (by way of inflammation; pain, swelling, numbness, mobility restrictions, loss of energy, fatigue) restricted and so influenced my sense of touch and my proprioception feeding my perception. As a result, perceiving the finer information about myself and my surroundings became significantly less possible.
My lessened perception led to my having information about myself and my environment that was influenced by the disease. This created my own RA reality, in which I almost completely forgot what I was already less able to perceive through my sense of touch: how I could move more freely and what that felt like. It was no longer just about being restricted in my mobility because of RA or being in pain, with the potential for permanent damage to my joints always close by. It was about me gradually unlearning healthier movement.
My posture and movement were correspondingly restricted, which, on the one hand, negatively influenced the progression of my RA and, on the other hand, led to further health problems that increased over time, all of which, of course, affected my already diseased musculoskeletal system.
The progressive changes and a longer duration of the illness increased not only the gap between me and my fellow human beings, but also the difference between me and the person I had been before getting sick. In that, more significant and rapid changes caused by RA were usually easier to recognise as being deviant from a healthy person’s normality than the mild, steady ones. The greater the difference between my rheumatoid-arthritis normality and my previous, healthier normality, the more it became clear to me how much influence the disease was having on my own life. A certain degree of “body blindness” I had to fight actively, as it led me to become accustomed to my life with RA.
My rheumatoid arthritis, a chronic inflammatory process with pain, swelling and deformation, couldn’t be ended by goodwill alone. And I learned from my body that information, such as and specifically my sensations, changes me. And that works both ways: into and out of the rheumatoid arthritis.
To assess myself and the world around me effectively, I need to rely on my senses. One is only within one’s own skin and experiences oneself and the world outside from within. So, I needed information, that is to say, perceptions of healthy movements and postures that I couldn’t get from my limited body alone. My perception was initially oriented primarily towards my more limited bodily sensations until I intentionally and consciously intervened, using my own skills to access my sense of touch and proprioception through my imagination.
In doing so, I discovered that I could, to some degree, compensate for a lack of sense of touch, e.g., when my hands and feet were numb, swollen, or aching, by observing my movements while simultaneously making myself aware of how much force I put into them and the posture I had while doing them.
I could regulate both my movement and posture this way, thereby relieving my body, despite my limited sense of touch and mobility. As I reflected on, tried and practised activating my senses and combining my skills, I felt how much more comfortable I was with my body when I relieved my posture and movements. Encouraged by that, I did everyday things in this better and healthier way.
I decided to exercise in every situation and with every task, training with everything I was doing: when I moved around, sat down, got up, or ran, and even when I opened a faucet and took my jacket off the hook …
I combined my body movement and posture with emotions, imagination, and sensations. I realised how much all of these closely intertwined elements make up how we handle and treat ourselves: They direct movement and posture, and, at the same time, are triggered by it.
So, I trained my awareness and improved my attention, both for what was happening within and around me. My exercises changed me, made me more mindful of what I had done so far, and of what had overloaded me. Wherever I uncovered them, I eliminated my harmful habits, for example, by reducing misplaced pressure on my bones and joints through building muscle.
Through my HeilÜben exercises, I became able to reaccess my finer, physical sensations, which were important, as they are the body’s warning signals before and during overloading it by misusing it. When I consciously felt more subtle sensations like the beginnings of discomfort, alongside the obvious sensations like harsh pain, I could also feel stress and my reaction to it much sooner, allowing me to reduce them before they affected me so strongly that I became ill. Such an internal early warning system against overload, inflammation, and pain requires all of the senses.
I observed how my sensations, emotions, and ideas influence my physical expression, as they are all direct-acting impulses that govern my body’s movement and posture. Depending on my capabilities and daily form, I added exercises to improve posture and movement.
HeilÜben exercises Level 1
- addresses with words what we are aware of: our minds and the feelings that are accessible to us – it explains why and exactly what is practised.
- addresses body and soul directly via imagination and movement. By working with more than just our minds alone, we gain more power to effect change. Doing so the body is initially addressed directly through intentional thoughts, relaxing imaginations, images, and feelings, as well as in subsequent HeilÜben exercises through body perceptions and sensations (achieved through relaxation and gentle movement).
In the midst of my rheumatoid arthritis, I utilised my skills to create healthy impulses from pictorial images, fostering a more conscious body-soul-feeling, concentrative relaxation, and improved posture and movement.
All of this is based on the abilities I had before, while still healthy, without ever paying particular attention to them.
Over time, I came to know my skills better and strengthened my confidence, which in turn improved my healing and thus increased my motivation. I collected more and more concrete observations and insights that confirmed my endeavours.
All of this was unfamiliar to me while my body was “reeling out”, and yet I experienced firsthand that nothing I had tried so far ended the RA, and healed it. I had the best intentions to help myself. However, my skills were not sufficiently developed from the outset and needed practice and training.
With the HeilÜben exercises, all healthy impulses worked alternately, strengthening and triggering more relaxation in my body. This enabled me to relieve my posture and movement in the midst of RA. During the healing process, it was essential for me to deliberately and repeatedly break the habit of tensing up by consciously relaxing in various situations.
From a certain level of their form, my skills enabled me to acquire the necessary knowledge and relaxation skills for the next advanced HeilÜben exercises (Level 2).
While I was continually working on my exercises, pain offered me a heap of new insights to think about.
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