Fibromyalgia doesn't have to be a Life Sentence — treating it in a more holistic way can make the needed lifestyle changes obvious and easier to adopt

What I was afraid of

My mother always told me "wait until you get to be my age" so that I could have empathy for how she suffered. My solution was to never let things get so far that I would suffer like she did. I was worried when I started to recognize some of her symptoms in myself, because I didn't want my kids to resent me the way that I resented her. I finally realized, I didn't resent her because she was sick, I resented her because when she was well enough she ran away and left us behind. When she was finally too sick to run, she was no use to anyone, and it bothered me that we were meant to feel sorry for her. I am not like that with my kids. When I am well, I am there for them. When I am sick, they are there for me.

Some people would describe fibromyalgia as congestion in certain key areas in the fascia — connective tissue that holds everything together. Many think it is a diagnosis of exclusion: if it is not something they can do something about, it gets labelled as fibromyalgia, and no drug seems to work to relieve the pain. It is, however, possible to work the unresolved trauma that is stored in those areas, so that chronic contraction can let go and circulation can open up once more.

There are cultures that have no perimenopause symptoms. They tend to be cultures that support each other and value wisdom. It is the lack of feeling valued that creates the conflict that creates the symptoms — a common one is frozen shoulder.

The moment I considered: maybe I will get all the illnesses that came for my mom, maybe I will get cancer and resign myself over to mainstream medicine, maybe that would be a break from trying to outrun what may be coming for me anyway — this permission allowed some of my pain to let go. Then, after getting some feedback from Markus (see below), I found an interesting combo of Esogetic treatments that allowed me to sleep through the night and wake pain free (more on this below).

What fibromyalgia actually is

Fibromyalgia may have a genetic (nature) or nurture (how we are taught to deal with stress/conflict/trauma) component, but Esogetics offers a way to treat the genetic tendency to store unresolved childhood trauma in the prefrontal cortex — which means that instead of perceiving things as they are and using all the information available to direct our life, we see the world through the bias we came in with. Negative beliefs about whether others will support us. Patterns that for some reason never seem to change.

Fibromyalgia cannot heal if the feet stay clogged (in a Kirlian photo) and the body cannot repair overnight. Poor diet clogs the big toes. Lack of exercise prevents the rest of the feet from opening up — so they stay dark and stuck. Sleep is when the brain and body take out the garbage, organize, and repair. Without cleaner eating, movement, and sleep, the fascia cannot release. The treatment opens the door, allowing you to see what is needed and how to fit it into your life, in a way that you couldn't see before. Seeing the impact your choice has on your photo, can also motivate change. Especially if you have a treatment, feel better, but then lose your gains, and your photo shows you why. No one wants to lose the momentum just as life feels like it is finally starting to open up.

When I learned about treating the joints, I chose to treat my shoulders because I had tenderness in my foot in the area that corresponds to the shoulder. This treatment set off a cascade of elbow, wrist, and shoulder pain. Even though I also treated the elbow and wrist and felt the psychological issues lift (shoulder unfolding, elbow less aggression, wrist better understanding) the areas that correspond to the shoulder (top of the middle fingers) didn't get better and the areas that correspond to the outer elbow (left big and ring toes) were getting worse. The Kirlian — or my body — was still teaching me. Nothing is for free. The treatment did not cause my arm to hurt. It told my body to tell me more about what was being stored there, and my arm started to tell its tale of woe: "You want to open up and share your gifts because you know they have value (see the compilation of how I healed my youngest in From Carrots to Classroom: Helping Kids Feel Safe) but you feel like no one will listen, so you are too aggressive, and even when you change your tactics so people come, you are hesitant to follow through because you're scared, so you self-sabotage".

Treating pain is not enough. Pain is not the problem. It is the way the body communicates how everything is connected. It slows us down enough so that we can make change to prevent further injury. I needed to change how I was trying to make space for my business in the world, how I expressed — and by extension understood — what I had to offer, and I had to lift the aspects of this that are not mine to carry. We all have specific life lessons. Our life experiences cause us to pick up extra lessons that are not required and will only slow us down.

The treatment

I had a colleague apply a three-part treatment for my shoulder pain to address:

• The inherited tendency for childhood trauma to get stuck in the prefrontal cortex

• The additional burden that we carry (called attachment or unhooking)

• Pain that starts in the neck, to the upper back, down the arm, to the fingers

During treatment I fell asleep, had many nonsensical dreams, and still felt pain when the treatment was done. I went home with the intention to eat in a healthier way — but I still grabbed a snack from what the kids were eating. Regardless, I was able to sleep through the night, but you can see the impact of poor dietary choice in my Kirlian photo.

These are the photos Markus looked at (more on this below, taken on Jan 14th and Jan 27th, with my initial shoulder joint treatment applied on Jan 25th, 2026):

Below is my photo the morning after applying the three treatments (mentioned above), when I woke with no pain until 6pm. You can see that the flattening on the lateral side of the middle fingers is less (see more on this below), but we see the familiar heaviness at the top and choking at the bottom of the left big toe. Even if to a lesser degree, something about opening up my wings still drives me to have difficulty processing my emotions and to be negatively impacted by my dietary choices.

I had no pain until 6pm that night, when I violated my rule — to only use my laptop at the ergonomic stations my husband set up for me — by closing my body inward to watch a show on my phone (perhaps this is another strategy I use to avoid processing how I feel). Then I ate badly, because we were invited for dinner at a friend's and they made food with dairy, which I usually try to avoid. I woke at 1am as payback. It is interesting that 6pm is kidney time and 1am is liver time. Strong kidney/water grows liver/wood, but weak kidney — also associated with alpha brain waves, the ability to relax while awake — does not. Liver is associated with beta, thinking brain waves, and thinking or misuse of anger through dietary self-sabotage can burn out the body. I need to learn to earn my time at my computer by meeting the needs of my child and my body first, before trying to meet the needs of my business:

For more on the TCM clock see: → Why You're Up at 3am — What the TCM Clock, Pain, Unique Psychology, and Kirlian Are Telling You

For more on the return of pain at 6pm and waking at 1am see: → Giving Birth to Pain — What Tracking Your Symptoms and Experiences Can Tell You

What it means when the pain comes back

Because 6pm is kidney time, there is likely more subconscious fear around stepping forward with my business. As I describe in the article linked above, it was not just one past life where I was hurt for trying to offer something someone else did not appreciate. The treatment likely needs to be repeated to get at the deeper layers.

What the Kirlian showed

Markus Wunderlich — Peter Mandel's son, who now leads the clinic in Germany alongside his younger brother Julian — clarified something important when reviewing my photos (above). He said the cones on the medial side of the middle fingers were not attachment but conflict signs, and that the flattening on the lateral side was the bigger issue — not trusting myself, stuck, and inability to move forward because of a lot of attachment (its a subtle difference, that changes the way we think about how to address it).

It makes sense to me, if the psychological (medial) side of the finger wants to go forward (towards the thumb, out into the world), while the lateral (physical) side is holding back — no, my family might still need me or I might get hurt. The conflict between the two is pulling the finger apart, causing the D-like shape. The fear shows up in my shoulder. The aggression in my elbow.

I am grateful to be able to adjust my understanding because my teacher sends our photos to Germany from time to time, so we can get feedback on what we need, which allows us to learn how things work through our own experience of unfolding.

How the left big toe and the feet tell the story

My teacher — and Markus — would say that the heaviness at the top of my left big toe is my inability to process my emotions, so they get stuck in the diaphragm, and the choking at the bottom of the left big toe is my tendency to eat badly, maybe to cope with how I feel. I know I eat badly because the self-care was not put in place beforehand — I wait until I am starving and too tired to put in the effort to cook properly. A dysfunctional pattern that needs to change.

Food doesn't always tell us right away the damage it is doing, which is why dietary change can be hard to sustain. But the Kirlian shows the pattern six months before it becomes physical. I used to avoid eggs because they gave me leg pain for days afterward. I had to remove dairy because it was causing chronic issues (discharge, dryness, pain) with the mucous membranes in my sinuses (and likely my intestines, which I only felt through dry lips, most of the time). Having both dairy and eggs out of my diet at the same time was too hard to manage. Once dairy was consistently out, eggs stopped being a problem.

I used to think that being up at night dealing with my physical issues was the price I paid to be a better practitioner, but the loss of sleep cost more than just inability to function for a few days, it was driving my risk of developing fibromyalgia and I wasn't giving my body and brain enough credit to provide insight in the morning if I would just allow them to do their nightly duties of cleaning and repair. I didn't need to lose sleep to wake with a better solution. Trusting the body — not just the thinking mind — is part of what this work is teaching me.

Simple eating — direction not perfection

I've had an eating disorder most of my life. My father would bring me donuts, McDonalds, Pizza, and fried bread (buying us things he thinks we will like was the most comfortable way he had to show that he loved us), but then he also told me I was fat and bought me Get In Shape Girl out of the same love (and concern). The only approaches that ever worked for me to lose weight were simple rules. No dairy. No alcohol. No caffeine. Everything else is allowed. At my worst, only eating during a one-hour window each day — but in that time anything goes, including cereal with ice cream or hating myself so much that I refused to eat because I didn't think I could attract a partner after my breakup if I didn't lose weight.

Seeing the pattern in my left big toe in my Kirlian photo motivates me to make a different choice — out of love instead of self-hatred. Others feel the same.

Yesterday I put spaghetti squash in the air fryer for 15min and topped it with a premade eggplant, roasted red peppers, and sunflower oil mix, although I would have felt better about using olive oil, I don't know how to make this mix for myself yet. But I am starting to realize that grabbing a fruit or vegetable is just as fast as going through drive-thru for take out. Not that I didn't make an effort to eat healthy before, more is being asked of me now, and I can do it!

My middle child may also benefit from me modeling eating one-ingredient-at-a-time (as it is called for by her Human Design), maybe this would clear her recurring small intestine pain and cold hands and feet (circulation issue).

What changed in my life alongside the treatment

As mentioned, my husband created a workspace for me in my son's room. Once I have gotten our youngest off to school, if my son is still asleep he will not be for long with me working in there. Win win — he gets up and goes to school, and I have a space to work that does not hurt.

I am also starting to book clients that fit who I want to serve — people who come because they care about themselves, their child, or their parent, sometimes they realize they could use the support too. When family starts to understand what is going on beneath the surface, they can continue to support one another, which is more than any practitioner can do.

The conflict is real, not only about wanting to share this work but being afraid, but also about truly wanting to work with women. I can see men for any modality, except applying Esogetic treatments. For that, I can refer to a colleague.

Taking the time to prepare healthy food before I am starving and exercise before I settle into a day of work, helps me sleep, have a better Kirlian photo, and wake with clarity. My body will not allow my business to grow if I am going to do so in a way that is harmful.

What being open to something different actually looks like

I had a statement I was going to put on a tote bag to represent my business, but AI had a different opinion. AI's suggestion did not feel right at first, but I put both options into the Soul Contract calculator and my original statement would have generated more karmic relationships, more lack of commitment from clients, and more feelings of unworthiness. The AI suggestion will draw people who I can help ground, holding a safe space to laugh and heal, helping them feel connected, and attracting the right clients. I went with the AI suggestion. I am ready for change.

Looking back on what is and is not mine to carry

My Esogetic karma numbers are 2 and 8, which means my accumulation number is 2+8 reduced to a single digit — which is 1. I am only meant to work on lessons 2 and 8, and if I react to those, then I need to clear lesson 1 first — unprocessed material left to me by my ancestors. The treatment above created temporary pain at the accumulation level for lessons 7 and 3 — lesson 7 being about hiding in intellect and knowledge, cynicism toward ordinary life, doubt about whether what one has to offer has value; lesson 3 being about creativity suppressed, voice given away, talent not trusted, difficulty believing in one's own potential. Acknowledging that these are not mine caused the pain to move out of this area and put the squeeze on somewhere else.

Even though you will see in the Why I Left The Developing Mind Off the Esogetic Medicine Reading List — and What It Has to Offer Beyond Laterality that I carry the tendency to hide in my intellect as a way to avoid coping with emotional pain — left hemisphere specialization — patterns can change.

This is the first article in a trilogy: → Why I Left The Developing Mind Off the Esogetic Medicine Reading List — and What It Has to Offer Beyond Laterality → Giving Birth to Pain — What Tracking Your Symptoms and Experiences Can Tell You

If you want to explore this further

→ Pain is Embodied Chill — how chill accumulates in the fascia and what releases it → Why You're Up at 3am — the liver, the TCM clock, and what the body is trying to clear → What Your Joints Are Trying to Tell You — karma, attachment, and why the Kirlian doesn't always change right away → Felt Safety and Kirlian Photography — seeing the pattern in the photo → In What Way Is Alahnnaa Campbell a Holistic Health Practitioner — why mental health has to come first → Are You Ready? → Book a free 15-minute consultation