A Day in the Diet

Balia!
Thoughts, tips and experiences in living with MS and the Swank Diet
By Rosamaria Sagastume - October 2008

Baila means dance, in Spanish.  That is exactly what I did in October.  I have reasons for keeping my health in top shape and dancing is one of them.  When I stood on the wooden floor with my tight Flamenco shoes crashing into the deep sound of the wooden planks, I realized the guitarist was going way too fast.  Sometimes, regardless of how well we know a step, we just cannot keep up.  I literally could sense my brain trying to keep my legs moving at the pace that I know I can keep up with in my mind.  I know beats; I understand rhythms, even those complicated Buleria rhythms of Flamenco which work in twelves.  The legs did everything they could and I certainly made it look like I knew what I was doing, because I do know what I am doing, I just do it at a pace with which I can keep up. 

I marvel at the quick steps of the professionals.  My legs may someday be able to be that fast.  Notice, that regardless of the scars on my brain which are very real, I still feel that it is a possibility.  Some might say I am dreaming.  Well, I am not dreaming about how I went from wheel chair to being ambulant (though not symptom free).  If I say to myself, “I’ll never do that,” guess what happens?  I will never ‘do that.’  Recently, in my graduate school program, I completed my final presentation for a class that opened my eyes to the programming/ coaching/ positive re-enforcement that I have succeeded at with my MS.  With a direct view of the Empire State Building to the north, I glanced at it as I spoke to the class about the powers of thinking, and coaching oneself to overcome adversity.  In my case, as in yours, the troubles come with a name.  We know what Multiple Sclerosis is, what it has done to us, the damage to our bodies, our spirit, our relationships.   When we rethink it all, when we are brave and confront our situation, ourselves, and become self aware, we start to truly heal.  The word disease is a “dis”-“ease”, something is not “right,” something is not “at ease.” What if life could be done with ease, rather than without ease, or Dis-ease?  I have been living my life this way for three and a half years.

My years of living with MS have not been symptom free by any means.  You all know that my right eye is still seeing too much light and yes, it hurts at times, and in the sun, it tears on occasion.  I indeed was hospitalized this year and yes, it can be a downer when my expenses go mostly to paying hospital bills or co-pays.  Do I concentrate on that?  No.  I DO focus on the beauty that I DO see, out of both functioning eyes.  I get caught up with my feet at times when my brain absolutely knows what it wants my body to do, though my body may not listen.  I get frustrated yet I do not become negative or hard on myself.  I take that energy and use it to give me more determination to learn a step, or to see my symptoms as an opportunity to appreciate my body more every single moment that I might not experience any symptoms at all.  It is all about your personal view of this universe.  In my universe, my body is appreciated, loved, revered, cared for, and exercised in order to continue growing.  In class, I explained to the students, who are already professionals in their fields, that it is possible to change your thought process to better yourself at work, or anywhere on the road of life.

For at least one week, the skin on my right thigh went completely numb.  Wrap cellophane wrap around your leg then touch your skin.  That is what my skin was able to interpret, a faint touch neither soft, nor hard, just a touch.  This is what I did to get that back.  I at first was sad and felt a little let down by my own body.  As soon as I noticed my thoughts were actually negatively interpreting my body, I changed the thought process.  I stroked the sides of my leg, those sides that were still working well, and I loved myself.  I infused love into my hands and my thigh and caressed it.  I thanked my leg for being strong and so good to the rest of my body.  I thanked it for walking, for working.  I honored my body out loud.  On occasion my friends will look at me strangely when I will, out of the blue, blurt out, “I love you eyeball!” “Love you skin!” “You’re the best, arms!” I kid you not.  As I experienced that serious exacerbation, unable to move my legs as I desired, I spoke to myself out loud.  Why would I care what anyone has to say when I am the only human being on this planet who has to live with my body, hence, I am the only human being who can love my body like no other.

This in no way is your typical self indulgence/ ego trip.  It certainly is rewarding your body, the limbs, the vocal chords, the swallowing abilities, the breathing abilities, urinating abilities, etc, for being with you, making you who you are.  In this universe I do not compare myself with others.  That might only serve to cause feelings contempt for those who have it all, yet abuse it.  In this universe, I care for myself and if saying positive phrases out loud helps me, then so be it.  Not only do we need to feed these bodies the right type of fuel (you wouldn’t put low-grade petrol in your Lexus), we also need to feed the mind with wonderful ideas and goals.  Thinking negatively never brought me any good fortune.  My fortune began once I escaped traps which kept me at bay from being the inspirational woman that I am.  With my humor (you have to learn to laugh at all of the setbacks we sometimes experience) and determination I have gained abilities that I use daily.  The skin on my leg is back!  It is back to feeling once again (you’re the greatest, skin!) just as I envisioned.

This month, I completed class, danced at a showcase, took Dunkin’ to Times Square to participate in the annual dog masquerade and still managed to do it all while having MS.  Class starts again in a few days and I will have to be traveling in the cold temperatures after work and getting home late 4 nights a week.  You hear me say “How will be able to pull this off?” You will not hear me panic.  You will hear, “this class will be over before the winter recess, and I will get an ‘A’.” I focus on getting it done.  I see the light at the end of the tunnel and never stray from it.  What’s the point; it will only set you back and make it harder to reach later.  I choose to stay present and in the moment.  I can truly say that I believe it works since it has worked for me and continues to work.

I brought home these great fresh and crispy green beans.  I threw in onions and stir fried them, getting them all warm and ready for more.  I added egg whites which I had already mixed in a bowl, added spices, tomatoes, saffron and Wind Horse and I ate healthily and deliciously.  Use PREMIUM fuel for the more “sensitive” of engines.  It does not stop with positive re-enforcement.  We are on this diet to understand the foods we need and those that cause us harm.  Since we have the recipes for the foods, let us now start building recipes for the mind to follow.  The greatest part of this dish is that it is your own creation.  You just need the main ingredient which you will be glad to hear, is bountiful.  Yes, you guess it, love.  Start with that and infuse it into your daily talks to yourself.  You are an amazing human to live with MS.  I sometimes think that we get it for being so super cool in order to see how great we can be.  Like I said, whatever works for you.  Now get your ingredient and start cookin’!

Eureka! Striking Gold as a Pioneering Coach
Rosamaria Sagastume
Foundations of Coaching and Coaching Theory
Professor Judith Hamer
October 18, 2008

Embarking on a clear understanding of coaching requires several texts, discourse, observations and life experience.  This task is not as simple as picking up a text, reading and understanding it and putting it into practice.  Coaching involves "backbone and heart" (O'Neill 14), emotional intelligence, practice, feedback and goal setting.  The reason coaching is part of my daily life unraveled itself after connecting the “coaching” dots.  My experience battling Multiple Sclerosis, a disease of the central nervous system, has brought me to a path of holistic recovery thanks to a coaching method I developed on my own out of necessity.  As a woman battling a disease on her own, I have coached peers and students to improve their lives and their scholastic achievements using the principles I applied to my full recovery.  The path to success was non-existent, much like the Wild West of Executive Coaching article, I “needed courage and compassionate support to confront,” (Sherman, Freas 86) myself during the most trying time in my life.  I, the coach and the coachee, created a safe universe where I could cope and flourish as “no standard template for coaching plans or metrix exists” (Sherman, Freas 88).  I created a template with a holistic twist that works for over three and a half years and which I use on students and peers.  My template relies on self-awareness, which stems from my breath, to the effect I have on myself and others.

The texts alerted me to the congruency between my efforts to cope with a disease, which rendered me disabled at twenty nine years of age, and those principles of coaching. Through self awareness and fine tuning my emotional intelligence, I was able to develop skills which have carried through the greatest success in my life thus far: the ability to be independent, ambulant, and not on any medications or western medicinal treatments.  Lying in bed forced to stay awake with a drip of steroids feeding my veins, set the stage for my endless reading about Multiple Sclerosis.  I began my mission to overcome the pain, the sorrow, and the fear of the unknown future.  As humans do, I panicked.  I went through different ways of interpreting my existence on this planet using new language, new words, and positive reinforcement regardless of the dire prognosis which the medical doctors insisted upon.  The uphill battle did not break me and I kept consistent with my approach.  As months passed, legs began moving, skin began feeling, and tongue began tasting once again.  Of all the books I read about MS, none mentioned coaching, though several mentioned meditating and holistic recovery.  As Flaherty states, “Being aware of our body and what is affecting it invariably brings us into the current moment,” (Flaherty 101) and it is in this present state where true coaching can take place.

They say that stress and a genetic pre-disposition, is the cause of Multiple Sclerosis, and several other diseases.  Flaherty states, “it is stress that does the damage. And this is yet another good reason to attend to the body in our coaching” (Flaherty 105).  Controlling the body’s reaction to stress is one of the keys to better health.  This is one of my principles in dealing with my body and my disease.  After coaching myself to overcome a Multiple Sclerosis exacerbation which physicians called “serious” my body and mind have been “coached” on how to tell when other human beings experience stress.  Assessing someone’s body is the first thing I do when I meet a student who walks into my office.  Are they round, overweight, endomorphs or ectomorphs (Flaherty 109)?  Do they workout, are they lazy about their body and health choices?  All of these observations give the coach an edge which “reveal(s) a client’s current mood or state of mind” (Flaherty 105). The years I have incorporated my own coaching skills have taught me that we are a walking tribute to our choices in life.

As the student sits in my office, eager or depressed, I am aware of body language and actual verbal language choices they make, while recalling the comments made by faculty who in this case serve at managers.  The Dean, or Director in this case, also comes into play.  The Dean sees trouble for a student.  Faculty is alerted and the stage is set for the coach (myself) to intervene and save the student from failing in school.  As discourse commences, “the triangle coach” emerges.  It is easy to fall into “rescue mode” with students especially.  The years of coaching my body and my mind to deal with symptoms and to overcome them have taught me that without one’s own “buy-in,” one cannot correct behaviors or attain goals.  This goes for students and all levels of executives such as CEO’s, Directors, and entry level employees.  As humans, we need to want to change before change can occur.  “People often have to unlearn skills or concepts that have served them in the past but no longer work in their current situation and will not work in the future to which they aspire” (Hunt and Weintraub 180).  The change that occurred within me was devised in order to live in my current situation, a life with MS.

At first I had no insight on how to change.  Most people do not have this insight.  After reading several books about the disease I gained insight about my possible futures.  This motivated me to never be in a wheel chair again.  The capabilities came with time.  A realization sparked and inside of me that made me believe that I am capable of overcoming Multiple Sclerosis since there is no known cause for the disease.  My real world experience arose daily as I practiced envisioning my climb to being “MS free.” I held myself accountable for the times I would wallow in sorrow.  My accountability forced me to change in order to not fall into the same behavioral patterns.  It was hard to change.  Through the use of models which I incorporated out of sheer necessity, I was able to live with a positive outlook on my health.

The Client Responsibility Model of which O’Neill compares to the Rescue Model, states practices which I have used myself and with my students. Even bed ridden, I focused on my strengths.  This is easier said than done when doctors said they could not guarantee that I would walk with a normal gate again, play my guitar, or have the cognitive skills I have depended on throughout my life.  When everything seemed dismal, I did not let it get me down.  I focused on the square inches of my skin that were not affected by the burning sensation caused by the MS exacerbation.  These practices I created for myself gave me a deep understanding of myself and others.  Understanding my humanness allowed me to understand human beings in general.  If I have the capacity to talk to my body and my mind to the point of 98% recovery, I can use these new findings on others. 

Understanding my role in a client’s life is paramount to get the job done right the first time.  With students comes drama.  In order to best serve their needs, I must step back in order to allow coaching to occur.  In Margaret’s case study, the coach is emotionally involved throughout the entire process (Multidimensional Executive Coaching).  As a sentient being, I care deeply about someone’s pitfalls and successes.  As a woman with Multiple Sclerosis, I know pain and successes so well that I do not have the need to dive into the client to a point of danger.  One must allow the client to stumble and get herself up on her own, with a coach to support her with words of encouragement rather than falling to bits.  The choice and respect I bring to language with phrases such as “I think you can handle that,” and “what additional supports do you need,” are carefully chosen to always encourage a student (Hunt and Weintraub 153). Experiencing suffering allows me take a healthy step back from the coachee in order for the coaching process to continue.  This is my signature presence which I strengthen by being emotionally aware of my client (O’Neill 19-45).

It is through trust that I am able to engage my clients.  Hunt and Weintraub agree that “trust in the relationship between manager and employee is probably the most important element of a coaching friendly context” (Hunt and Weintraub 76).  Another important factor is timing.  When a student clearly states to me that they do not want any assistance, I leave an open ended opportunity for them to contact me should they need to.  I follow up in a few weeks to check if the timing may have changed.  When a client reaches out to the coach, “immediacy is important.  If you wait too long to intervene, you can lose the benefits of immediacy” (Hunt and Weintraub 97).  My self-coaching occurred out of immediacy.  Had I not been enlightened enough to understand that I needed to do something in the moment, rather than months or years down the line, my outcome might not have been so favorable.  Having MS showed me to live in the moment and to coach myself moment to moment.

We are all creatures of habit.  As I entered a new world where my own body no longer felt mine, and also could no longer distinguish soft from rough, or cold from hot, I began my new habit.  I became a positive woman who coached herself out of experiencing Multiple Sclerosis as a disease.  My coaching began in my mind.  After a day’s work, I would be so exhausted that I would literally fall asleep, unable to concentrate much on anything else but my betterment and how I would baffle doctors someday.  I focused on that goal, on the goal to walk again, to drive and to run my own shower without the aid of someone to check the temperature.  The drive was so great to again taste my food and urinate without having to push down on my bladder that nothing, not MS or the doctors, would get in my way of achieving my goal.  I coached my mind every hour I lay awake and in pain, reeducating my brain and spinal cord, the nervous system as Flaherty explains:

In essence, coaches coach the nervous system.  That may sound strange to some readers and only obvious to others.  By saying that, I am proposing that it’s only by reeducating the nervous system that behaviors, responses, and reactions—as they occur in real time, not in reflection—change.  We make the novel, be it a new behavior, process, protocol, into the everyday and familiar by allowing it to migrate into the background of our consciousness.  The migration occurs when we consciously take on new practices and persist with them.  All of what it takes to bring about this reeducation, in alignment with the principles specified in Chapter 1, is what I’m calling coaching. (Flaherty 62)

In essence, I reeducated my nervous system from scratch.  It is obvious to me as my behaviors changed forever.  I was always aware of my own reactions to the dismal outlook that Multiple Sclerosis paved for me.  As the disease has no known cure, the facts would not change for me overnight.  Rather than adding stress to my stressful situation, I taught myself to see my life as a positive flow of energy regardless of my abilities or disabilities.  When I would come to tears in frustration, I would honor my emotions and allow sorrow to escape as long as I never let it linger.  When I walk and feel symptoms on my legs, tiny ants running across my skin at random times during the day, I laugh about it.  I do not fear Multiple Sclerosis any longer.  I coached myself out of fear and into a body that embraces her disease and herself for I am more than a diseased body.

After coaching myself, without having the knowledge that I gained in this course, my life has taken on yet another approach.  As individuals we have the power to surmount and assist others in changing themselves for the betterment of a company and themselves.  Honoring oneself and one’s clients is not only something I came up with in an urgent situation, but is practiced and written about extensively.  Something inside of me was able to overcome adversity and continues to grow.  The Wild West of Executive Coaching article made me a believer that I am a pioneer, a coach who coached herself back to health, with no previous knowledge of coaching.  There is no universal template for coaching, there are only universal coaches, those of us who have a deep understanding of the process and live by those standards daily.

This is an amazing story – with work I think it could be published.  So the course has given you a vocabulary to talk about things you already know!  Thanks for telling us about this.   A- 

Works Cited

Hunt, James, and Joseph Weintraub. The Coaching Manager : Developing Top Talent in Business. Minneapolis: SAGE Publications, Incorporated, 2002. 76, 97, 153, 180.

O'Neill, Mary Beth. Executive Coaching with Backbone and Heart : A Systems Approach to Engaging Leaders with Their Challenges. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007. 19-45, 76.

Flaherty, James. Coaching : Evoking Excellence in Others. Chicago: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2005. 62, 101, 105, 109.

Sherman, Stratford, and Alyssa Freas. "The Wild West of Executive Coaching." The Harvard Business Review Boston: Nov 2004. Vol. 82, Iss. 11; p. 82-90.

Orenstein, Ruth L. Multidimensional Executive Coaching. New York: Springer, 2007.

Rosamaria Sagastume is a regular contributor to this portion of our site.