Every time I think of the song written by John Mayer in 2002, “Your Body is a Wonderland”, I laugh. I always remember that year at the beach with our 4 kids and my crazy brother-in-law belting out this song on the nightly boardwalk excursions at the beach, rephrasing it to “my body’s a wonderland”. Our family still laughs every year at the beach, reminding him, that, yes, his body is a wonderland.

I do believe that all our bodies are wonderlands. While the term connotes a magical place, truly, our bodies are magic. The body automatically seeks balance. For example, when we are faced with a stressful situation, our body shunts energy to our heart, muscles, and lungs away from other organs where energy is not immediately needed to address or escape the situation. Once the stress is resolved, our body seeks to rebalance.

So many people, however, are chronically stressed. The nature of their stress may be physical, mental/emotional, environmental, or any combination of these. While their bodies constantly seek to rebalance, at some point with ongoing stress, they may develop issues with organ function such as neurological, digestive, or hormonal balance. This is one reason why so many people develop issues such as indigestion, obesity, brain fog, headaches, fertility, sex drive and other symptoms. When our bodies can no longer balance, often the weakest link in our body is where we may start to manifest symptoms and disease.

When faced with experiencing symptoms or disease, there is still hope that you can regain your “wonderland”. Your body can perform its magic but often needs some help getting back into balance. This is not by just giving medications to manage disease or symptoms, but rather, finding out what started and is perpetuating the imbalance(s). This will provide the most value and ability to regain wellness.

Take charge of your health and commit to finding out where your imbalances are and correct them. While this is easier said, than done alone, your journey to health can be much easier with the right support. This means appropriate assessment, testing, and guidance from a practitioner and/or health coach that is trained in functional medicine.

Oh, and yeah, back to my brother-in-law. Well while he had his ups and downs with his “wonderland” since 2002, with guidance and support of a functional wellness practitioner/coach, he can continue to claim “my body’s a wonderland” next beach vacation.