How to Use Dr. Stutz’s Life Force Pyramid for Physical, Mental, and Emotional Healing

I would like to introduce the Life Force Pyramid by Dr. Stutz, who is the creator of the TOOLS. Phil Stutz and Barry Michels are the authors of Coming Alive and The Tools. In these two books, they share the same tools that they use behind closed doors with their clients.

Also, I recommend the Netflix documentary, “Stutz,” featuring actor Jonah Hill and his psychiatrist, Dr. Phil Stutz, for anyone interested in personal development and mental health.

Additionally, I will introduce the pyramid and show how you can practically use it in your daily life.

Why am I sharing this?

1. To spread awareness about the importance of listening to our body, taking care of ourselves, and taking care of the relationships and connections in our lives. This impacts our overall wellbeing: physical, mental, and emotional. 
2. It is also a powerful tool to avoid burnout, both physical and emotional.
3. Sharing my own experience might help and inspire you if you’re going through something similar.

As a transformational coach, I believe that a coach should lead by example, so here I am sharing my experience with you, trying to apply the principles from the Life force Pyramid on myself first. 

Maybe some of you who are reading this now, are struggling with burnout or are on the brink of one. Some might be battling a kind of chronic illness or a communicable disease. If you feel that you are lacking energy, vital energy, to live the life you want and do the things that you want to do, this article might be for you.

Introducing the Pyramid

According to Dr. Phil Stutz, the life force pyramid consists of three levels: body, people (relationships), and yourself (relationship with self and your subconscious). He suggests that if we work on these three levels, everything else in life will fall into place.

Let’s take a closer look at each level of the life force pyramid, and how working on each of them might help improve our overall health and well-being.

1. The Body

The body is the foundation of the life force pyramid, and it represents our physical health. Taking care of our bodies is essential for building a strong foundation for a happy and fulfilling life. This includes eating healthy, getting enough sleep, and engaging in regular exercise. Dr. Stutz says in the documentary film about him, that if you take care of the body alone, you have taken care of 85% of the problem.

When we neglect our physical health, we often experience mental and emotional distress. For example:

• lack of sleep can lead to irritability, difficulty in concentrating, and anxietypoor nutrition can lead to low energy levels, a compromised immune system, other diseases, and chronic illnesses

Therefore, taking care of our bodies is vital for our overall well-being and is the first step towards building a strong and resilient foundation.

2. Relationships

The second level of the life force pyramid is relationships. As human beings, we are social creatures, and we need positive, meaningful relationships in our lives. The quality of our life is determined by the quality of our relationships, as Esther Perel puts it. Our relationships can either lift us up or bring us down. So, it’s important to:

• invest in positive relationships and cut out toxic ones

So, what to do?

3. Relationship with Yourself

The third and final level of the life force pyramid is yourself, which includes your relationship with yourself and your aspirations. This level is all about personal growth and self-awareness. 

How can we achieve this?

Working on this level helps us become more self-aware and grounded in our values, leading to a greater sense of well-being. 

This includes taking time for self-care activities such as meditation, journaling, or pursuing hobbies and interests that align with our values and aspirations. 

By focusing on personal growth and development, we can become more resilient and better equipped to handle life’s challenges.

In summary, Dr. Stutz’s life force pyramid offers a simple and practical approach to improving our overall well-being. By focusing on our physical health, relationships, and personal growth, we can build a strong foundation for a happy and fulfilling life.

Putting the Pyramid into Practice

As a transformation coach, I find  the insights shared in the documentary “Stutz” to be valuable tools for helping my clients work on these essential areas of their lives. I highly recommend watching “Stutz” to anyone looking to deepen their understanding of personal growth, professional development, and mental health.

What was my own experience?

Like everyone else, life happened to me, and I have neglected my health and wellbeing, despite knowing better, which has resulted in burnout and long sickness.

The result was that I have never fully recovered from Covid which I had in December 2023. I contracted secondary infections, and I have been battling two infections ever since.

My energy levels are at their lowest ever. I do not seem to recover. Courses of antibiotics followed by cortisone, chicken soups, endless tea mugs and home comforts…. nothing worked.

My body is forcing me to slow down and to give it time. I’m usually a  person who is always running around in a hurry, and does not accept being sick.

I was otherwise healthy, active, non-smoker and I barely drink alcohol.

But the body always keeps score! These are the two hard lessons that I have learnt, from my own experience in the last months.

• The first lesson is to protect my boundaries fiercely, especially around family, which is one of the hardest things to do.The second and most valuable lesson is to listen to my body, and never to push it again by saying yes when it is saying No.

What went wrong?

• War happened in the Middle East, and I had to evacuate my mother and bring her to Berlin. My father decided to stay behind and I worried about his safety.Canceled Vacations and no Sun: due to the war, and Covid, and other reasons, the result was that I have not left our cold city since 7 months. This also  weakens the immune system further.Pushing my body to function at full speed while I am not fully recovered was wrong. I paid the price. One secondary infection after the other.Struggling to accept what is: We could not sell our house in the green and move back to the city, despite our best efforts.Neighbors and families with kids left our street, friends left the city.

I lost the safety network and community near my house, and a lot of my social contacts.

As a very sociable person who thrives on connection with others, this has left me very lonely. Afraid that my international friends, who mostly live in the city center, will leave next.

Lesson learned but class not dismissed

1. Wait till you are fully recovered first. Never push your body to function fully while you are still sick.
2. Be flexible when  you are sick, be flexible. Rest and do not push yourself to keep all the appointments and commitments, which you have made when you were healthy. 
3. Nothing is sacred or set in stone.
4. There are rarely appointments and opportunities in life which cannot be made up later. But once your body collapses, or you lose your health, you have lost everything.
5. Slow down. I broke my little finger on my right hand, and I do not know how. Can you imagine? Till now the capsule of the finger joint is torn and isn’t healing, because simply it does not get the rest it needs. Here I cannot do much. There are meals to be cooked, kids to be driven to school and laundry to be done. Yes, the kids are doing many chores as well.
6. Prioritize well: if it is not an absolute necessity and vital, it can wait until you heal.
7. Do not force yourself to attend events when you are sick.
8. Manage the fear of missing out. Now I am particularly guilty when it comes to this one. Friends who want to meet you for coffee can wait a week or two.

I did not want to postpone or call off any meeting, for fear of loneliness and missing out, until I was too sick to meet anyone in the last 7 weeks.

How does the path to healing look like?

It’s a spiral one, some days I go up and some days I spiral down.

Now I am trying to heal, heal my body and heal from the burnout and chronic fatigue of long Covid: so how do I do it?

I am trying to do it from the bottom up, as Dr. Stutz recommends, starting with my body first.

Then one moves up in the pyramid to connection with others and connection to self.

I am trying a holistic approach to healing, where I take care of my body, my soul, and my connection to myself and others.

For My Body: 

• Sleeping well: going back to being the early sleeper I am.
• Good nutrition and a reset for my gut bacteria.
• Vitamins, manuka honey and bone broth.
• Movement: breathing exercises, yoga, and light walks

These are the practices that enable me to get back to my body, and to what is felt through it. This is what brings my body back to reality and connection. It brings me back to presence.

 For Connection with Others:

 I cannot meet my friends for coffee and see them in-person because I´m still weak.

•  I try to talk to them on the phone.
•  I have also joined a new coaching community.
• When I have enough energy, like once a week, I meet friends for coffee or lunch.

For Connection to Self: 

• Taking time alone 
• Meditating on some days
• Writing on others
• Daily walks 

In conclusion, my wish for you is to become aware of your body and how it is feeling. If you are aware of that, you feel the present living within you. You overcome the separation, and you become connected again.

First, connect back to your body. Get to know it, to feel it, listen to it. They say that 90% of all wisdom resides from the neck down. Listen to your body, and don’t say yes when your body is saying no.

Take care of the positive and important relationships in your life, but also establish light and shallow ones, just for the sake of staying connected to life.

Take time to connect with yourself, no matter how that looks like for you.

Go on that hike, book that massage, go on that silent retreat…. write, meditate, read, or swim. Some people swear by gardening, others by knitting; to each their own. How about simply sitting and doing nothing. Schedule some Do Nothing Time and observe the impact that has on you.

If this resonates with you, and you would like to talk about your physical and/or mental wellbeing, do not hesitate to book a free consultation call with me.You don’t need to go through this alone. Reach out for help. We can  discuss and personalize  together a specific plan,  designed especially  for you to recover and heal.  

DM me now If you would like to know more, how we can wetogether make a personalized healing plan from burn out for yo