I have terrible insomnia. Sleep has been an issue for me since I was a child. I manage it. Some nights are better than others. Last night was a particularly bad night. I think I slept about two or three hours in the wee hours of the morning, but other than that I was wide awake, stewing about being wide awake, trying not to stew about being wide awake, reading, embroidering, listening to my Calm app, meditating.

As the morning dawned and the day began, I climbed out of bed and prayed for strength. I am lucky on this day. My schedule is light and my husband is home. After the morning routine of breakfast and walking the dogs, my husband and I were in the kitchen and he asked about my sleep. This led into a conversation about the uncertain times we live in, the melancholy that always seems to accompany October, and how different the energy of Monday is compared to Sunday.

In our conversation, I realized that I hadn’t been doing a good job of minding my stress level and managing my inner world. I find I quite easily deny what is happening in my inner world of thoughts and emotions. I had read a few news articles that had triggered fear and anger in me. But instead of acknowledging and working with the thoughts and fears, I watched the football game and shopped on Amazon.

After my conversation with my husband and the realization that I needed to spend some time with my inner world, I thanked my insomnia for alerting me to this. At 2 AM this morning, I was raging against my insomnia, cursing my body, desperate for sleep, fearful of facing a day on an empty tank. But now, I feel a sense of gratitude for my insomnia. It let me know that I wasn’t in the peace that I can choose to be in.

Making friends with the disease in our bodies may be the last thing we want to do. For most of us, we see disease as the enemy. We think, once we vanquish the enemy, we will be free to do what we want and we will be happy again. We blame disease as the root of our problems. We see disease as something that needs to be made to go away.

As a Licensed Acupuncturist and Medical Intuitive, I spend my days listening to people’s bodies and their diseases. I give a voice to disease. What I see in my work, is that our diseases, though difficult, uncomfortable, and painful, offer wisdom. I see the gifts these diseases can bring.

In our disconnected world, insomnia is what prompts me to connect more deeply with myself. Simply put, disease can be an avenue for a deeper connection with yourself and a greater understanding of your inner world.

Writer and healer Deena Metzger calls this a sacred illness. She says: “A sacred illness is one that educates us and alters us from the inside out, provides experiences and therefore knowledge that we could not possibly achieve in any other way, and aligns with a life path that is, ultimately, of benefit to ourselves and those around us.”

For me, insomnia is one of my sacred illnesses. It has simultaneously been wretched and sacred for me. Sometimes insomnia is unbearable for me. But then, if I look inside myself, I see the gifts it has brought me. It has led me down a path of self-realization, a path I would not have taken if it weren’t for insomnia. It has given me a compassion and empathy for all of the sufferers of chronic disease that I work with.

For me, insomnia is what is. I take really good care of myself. I do everything I possibly know to do, but insomnia persists. I can fight insomnia all I want, but I have yet to find something that makes insomnia go away. In my line of work, I see many people like me who take good care of themselves, do all the right things, and still they deal with chronic disease.

The confines of disease give us the unique opportunity to accept what is. For many people who deal with chronic disease, there is no escape. At times, disease can feel like a prison. We may feel trapped and powerless to effect real and lasting change in our bodies. The first gift disease brings us is the opportunity to work with what is. The act of making friends with our disease is simply accepting what is. In many spiritual and philosophical traditions, accepting what is, is what brings peace and contentment into our worlds. Accepting what is can bring an end to suffering. When we meet what is happening in our bodies with kindness and friendliness, we relax a little bit. With that relaxation, there forms a relationship between ourselves and our bodies. We create some space for ourselves to just be. With this acceptance, we can begin to connect to ourselves.

Tara Brach, Buddhist meditation teacher, psychotherapist, and author of the book Radical Acceptance says this about accepting what is: “Clearly recognizing what is happening inside us, and regarding what we see with an open, kind and loving heart, is what I call Radical Acceptance. If we are holding back from any part of our experience, if our heart shuts out any part of who we are and what we feel, we are fueling the fears and feelings of separation that sustain the trance of unworthiness. Radical Acceptance directly dismantles the very foundations of this trance.”

Byron Katie puts it this way in her book Loving What Is: “I am a lover of what is, not because I am a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality. We can know that reality is good just as it is, because when we argue with it, we experience tension and frustration. We don’t feel natural or balanced. When we stop opposing reality, action becomes simple, fluid, kind, and fearless.”

By accepting what is, we begin to feel some openness within ourselves. We begin to feel peace in our bodies. We begin to feel more connected to ourselves. This is the beginning of feeling at home in our bodies. This can bring great relief to those of us who are struggling with chronic disease which persists day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. We see that as we manage our symptoms with healthy diet, exercise, and supplements, we can also accept ourselves just as we are, with our imperfections, our ugliness, our messiness, and our diseases. We can find room within ourselves to say, I am okay just as I am.

The second gift disease offers us is the opportunity to listen to our bodies. Disease is often our bodies’ way of communicating with us.

Disease can be caused by many things like bacteria, viruses, environmental toxins, genetics, and so on. Sometimes, disease can be a physical representation of what is happening in our inner world. Disease can show us the imbalance of our inner world of thoughts and emotions. When our inner world goes unacknowledged and mismanaged, our physical bodies can be the messenger of that.

Thankfully, in recent decades, tools to help us acknowledge and manage our inner world have come forward. Meditation, mindfulness, qi gong, and yoga are some of the tools we can use to connect with our thoughts and emotions, meet them with awareness and understanding, and work with them.

Ancient Chinese medicine has never separated our inner world from our outer world. Chinese medicine has always seen the interconnectedness of our thoughts, emotions, and the health of our physical body. This ancient system of healing gives us the tools to work with both our inner world of thoughts and emotions and our physical health.

The Five Elements of Chinese medicine, one of the many styles of medicine indigenous to Asia, is particularly good at showing us the connection between our thoughts, emotions, and our health. It gives us a legend to the road map of our bodies and helps us decode the messages hidden in disease.

There are five elements that make up nature and therefore five elements that make up our human form. The five elements are water, wood, fire, earth, and metal. Over the centuries, these five elements have evolved into constitutional types which help us understand our tendencies in our thoughts and emotions, and in our health. The five elements are a powerful tool for self-realization.

As a fire constitution myself, I know that insomnia is a typical imbalance of fire constitutions. The element of fire rules the heart, and in Chinese medical diagnosis, sleep issues almost always involve the heart. Symbolically, insomnia represents a lack of trust in life and an inability to allow life to happen. Fire constitutions like to feel in control, but logically most of us know that there is no way to control life.

There is an ancient Taoist principle called WuWei which is translated as non-action or non-doing. In his book Nourishing Destiny, Five Element scholar Lonny Jarrett says that for centuries the character for WuWei hung above the emperor’s throne to remind everyone of the importance of letting go and allowing life to just happen. WuWei is not passive. It takes patience, focus, and practice.

When my bouts of insomnia get bad, I look at my ability to practice WuWei. I look at my connection to myself. I see how I am forgetting and mismanaging my inner world.

Understanding your own constitution can illuminate your own habitual tendencies and their relationship to what is happening in your physical body. The five elements can give you a template to look at your diseases symbolically. If you’d like to know what your Five Element constitution is, here is a link to my quiz.

I would also love to explore this further with you in a medical intuitive reading. Click here to schedule an appointment with me.

When we make friends with our diseases, we open the door to our inner world. We have the opportunity to listen to the wisdom of our bodies and to be with what is. As we make friends with the deeper parts of ourselves, we find the peace and contentment we are looking for. We start to view disease as a friend when we see that it is calling us home. It is calling us not only into a greater understanding of ourselves, but into the peace that is available to us if we choose to allow it in. If we accept the call, if we make friends with our disease, we begin to feel at home in our bodies. Not sometime in the future when we are better, healthier, or more energetic, but right now just as we are, disease and all.