Embracing Your Diabetes II: Body, Spirit, and Diabetes Control

Medical research has shown that spirituality and faith are good for one’s health. All else being equal, people who believe in a spiritual power or force outside of or within themselves tend to be healthier than people with no spiritual underpinnings. So it makes sense that many people have found that spiritual practices help them cope with a chronic disease like diabetes.

This finding, of course, doesn’t mean that people have to join a formal religion or embrace a specific philosophy to get this healthy effect: Many people follow maps of their own making on their spiritual journey.

This Well-being article describes the journey of one man with type 2 diabetes.

• It demonstrates that some people find that the experience of dealing with and managing a chronic disease like diabetes actually changes their life for the better.
• It describes the insights of Charles Creekmore and shows how his set of personal spiritual practices helped him cope with the disease and changed his life in positive ways.

Not only did Charles embrace his disease, his believed that his diagnosis of diabetes was not an end for him, but a beginning.

A Different Spin on Diabetes

Charles Creekmore, author of Zen and the Art of Diabetes Maintenance, describes a revelation he had about his diabetes not long after he was diagnosed: He realized that in some way, he needed this permanent medical condition. How could anyone need a disease like this? Here’s what he says:

“While I spent that afternoon at the chore of writing wedding invitations, I began to understand how diabetes was beginning to train me in a new set of abilities I had never possessed:

• Responsibility to oneself, one’s body, and one’s spirit
• Enough self-discipline to perform the everyday tasks, the daily grind, that nobody likes doing
• The skills necessary for self-examination, in both the physical and emotional senses
• The perseverance needed for carrying on a healthy, long-term regimen
• Attention to the small details that make such a vital difference to one’s health over the course of a lifetime
• The compassionate traits of tolerance, good will, and patience, which are the bellwether attitudes needed for dealing with any chronic illness.”

From this point on, Charles Creekmore created a new way of living his life that is based on “spiritual structure and discipline.”

New Design for Life With Diabetes

Creekmore’s design for life with diabetes is composed of seven practices that have helped him deal with his diabetes. As you look over his design below, you may find that you want to include some of them into your own way of thinking about living with diabetes.

• Meditation: Creekmore calls meditation “telepathy of the spirit” and a “homecoming” of sorts. Meditation helps you find “the person at the core of your very essence … who instinctively knows the answer to every dilemma in your life.”
• Reading: He reads things that make him think about the “profound mysteries of the universe.” Books of meditations, poetry, and philosophy are some sources of his inspiration.
• Solitude: Creekmore finds that, in our busy and LOUD world, finding time for solitude and silence is healthy. One can meditate or just use the time for reflection and relaxation.
• Exercise: He says, “I look at exercise as the oxen that pull the plow of my spirit. For me, at least, exercise guarantees that I reap what I sow.” What a wonderful way to look at physical activity!
• Awareness: Developing self-awareness has many benefits. Become more conscious of your actions and reactions, your thoughts, your attitudes, “but always one at a time, and always second by second.” Self-awareness helps you stop knee-jerk, negative thoughts and actions. “Each time you find yourself engaging in any conditioned reflex that triggers negative emotions in yourself … stop and take stock.” Try to understand both the trigger and your response to it.
• Prayer: Creekmore uses the term prayer in the broadest sense, as communication with the “sacred principle, a higher power, or divine source.” Not every person with diabetes will follow this spiritual practice, but Creekmore says his prayers express his deepest yearnings as a person with diabetes “trying to make the most of my life.”
• Clarification: Determine your values and priorities and live by them. What he describes is a process by which we clear away clutter, confusion, and other aspects of our lives that don’t fit with our values and priorities.

For Charles Creekmore, being diagnosed with diabetes was a life-altering experience — as such a diagnosis is for everyone. But he embraced his diabetes and created a personal spiritual design so that his life was altered in many positive — not negative — ways.

Your Turn

Think of some of the ways that your diabetes has changed your life.

Now, which changes do you view positively — that is, they improved not only your health, but also your quality of life?

Do you think that any of Creekmore’s practices could help you manage your life with diabetes?

Summary

• Some people find that the experience of dealing with and managing a chronic disease like diabetes actually changes their life for the better.
• The insights of Charles Creekmore show how his set of personal spiritual practices helped him cope with the disease and changed his life in positive ways.