When I was 16, I had an experience that has influenced many decisions in my life. I was home-schooled for a semester my junior year in high school because I was too sick to attend school. I ran a fever and had no energy; symptoms were the same as mono, but I didn’t have mono. Medical doctors couldn’t determine what was wrong with me and didn’t know how to treat it.

In looking for other options, my parents took me to a chiropractor who used unusual healing methods. He said it didn’t matter what we named my illness. A diagnosis wasn’t necessary. Our bodies are made to heal whatever goes wrong and we needed to strengthen my body’s natural healing abilities. He rubbed minerals into my body, gave me some herbs to make into a tea, and used a pendulum to determine what I should and shouldn’t eat.

I followed his diet even though it was hard for a teenager to go to a birthday party and not eat birthday cake. I ate nothing white — no sugar, no flour, no bread, no cake. There were other specifics in the diet, like a teaspoon of nutmeg a day, vinegar, and other nuances I don’t remember. After following his plan for 6 months, I was healthier than I had been in years. My energy returned, my temperature was normal, and my hair got curly. I don’t think I had the flu for 20 years after that experience.

There were many times after that when I wished I had access to someone who could use the pendulum like he did. I tried using various tools as a pendulum for myself, and nothing worked. Until about 10 years ago when I was in a gift store and a boxed pendulum fell off of a shelf onto the floor in front of me. It seemed like it was meant to be mine, I bought it, and I have been using her ever since. “Pendy” has been incredibly accurate and useful in making many decisions. She has become a valuable tool for me to access my intuition.

I learned two major lessons from my experience at 16. One is that my body has a self-healing mechanism that I can trust if I give it the nutrients it needs. The other lesson is that the answers to many of the questions I have can be answered by my inner knowing, and one way of accessing that inner knowing is with the use of a pendulum.

I have often said that one of the gifts of cancer is that it forces us to learn to trust our intuition. Just as one diet isn’t best for everyone, treatments aren’t a one size fits all. Especially in the world of integrative treatments, how does one choose among the many options? For example, yesterday I had appointments with both my integrative MD, and my Naturopathic oncologist. Some of their recommendations for me were polar opposites (more about that in my blog). Without a way to tap into my inner knowing, I would have been in total confusion.

I think we can all improve our ability to access our intuitive knowing. Terri Tate and I both believe so strongly that intuition has made a huge difference in our healing journeys that we are teaching a workshop on the subject, called Trusting Your Inner Guidance. We have taught it three times to rave reviews, and our last workshop will be July 13th in Seattle. Early Bird registration ends on Monday, June 17th. You can get more information here.

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