🔥A DIAGNOSIS & A TURNING POINT
“My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends ...
It gives a lovely light!”
I first encountered this poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay in my high school English class. Little did I know its wisdom would precisely capture my life decades later…
In late 2020, during the height of the world’s “Great Pause” - I was officially diagnosed with a rare autoimmune skin condition. Like most autoimmune diseases, there is no complete cure. Mine specifically had no known proven treatment. And as with most autoimmune diseases, the risk of developing additional autoimmune diagnoses increased with each passing decade of life, if root causes were not addressed.
Amongst all the “Chaosmos” of 2020 - this was another jolt - but also a signal, transmitted through the vessel of my body. And I recognized it instantly - an unmistakable visible SOS from God. My name “Deepa” means “light” in Sanskrit, a meaning I embodied long before I realized how deeply it mirrored my life. For years, I had lived as if my light could never dim, burning my candle at both ends without realizing the cost.
- 5 cups of coffee a day since I was 15.
- 5 hours of sleep a night on average since high school.
- Relentless grinding through college, medical school, residency, fellowship, & medical practice.
- Sustaining a long-distance marriage for 4 years across different states early in our life together.
- Navigating solo parenting amidst juggling demanding residency and fellowship training in my “pseudo–single mom” era while raising our older 2 Littles.
- Undergoing 3 emergency C-sections, each marked by complications and prolonged recoveries.
- Surviving a near-death experience on the operating table during the birth of my daughter.
- Learning to come into my own as a young physician early in practice, while raising our 3 young “Lightbeams” with closest family hours away in Chicago.
- Holding down the homefront while my husband commuted back & forth to work ~3 hours a day, once our family was finally under one roof.
It felt like endless striving, endless giving, endless pushing…ENDLESS….. My body finally spoke the truth my soul had long known. For nearly 3 decades I had been firing on all cylinders fueled by cortisol-adrenaline, my own sky-high standards, and a deeply ingrained mission to accomplish. I carried many roles, countless responsibilities, and even more expectations - from others, but mostly from myself. And like so many women in medicine, especially as a mother, I powered through every long call, every sleepless night, every impossible week with the same quiet mantra: Just keep going….
Yes, I had accomplished much …. But at what cost? Because the truth is simple - there is NO light from an extinguished flame. Slowly, steadily, silently, I had been depleting myself … running on near empty. My diagnosis was not random, but the cumulative result of years of unrelenting stress and unchecked inflammation. Even as a physician, I had ignored the warning signs. And yet in that diagnosis, everything clicked. I could finally see in a most visible way what was happening to me. And something deeper ignited within me…and that spark was the tipping point which led to the beginning of my shift.
🌌CATALYST FOR DISCOVERY. A DIAGNOSIS BECAME A DOORWAY
At first, I did what most physicians do: I researched. I dissected the science. I dove deep into evidence-based medicine, mechanisms, triggers, and patterns. And the more I learned, the clearer it became - What I was facing was broader than any single diagnosis.
It was the result of societal overwhelm - our collective autoimmune state.
A society addicted to hustle and speed.
A culture that glorifies perfectionism and youth.
A generation living in chronic sympathetic overdrive with no true rest.
A world believing our worth is tied to productivity, scorecards, and accomplishments.
And then normalizing all of it, until it becomes our baseline. Unrelenting stress that led to chain reactions of hormonal disruption → chronic inflammation → led inevitably to disease. Not just mine - but all autoimmune disease, and in fact, most modern illness. That realization cracked something open in me. A doorway to healing revealed through the blessing of disease.
🌿THE BREAKTHROUGH, PARADIGM SHIFT, PIVOT & COURSE CORRECTION
Healing began the moment I understood it would not come from a prescription alone. My shift was internal – a change in my consciousness… The realization that I Am the Medicine and that my healing was within. With that awareness I made a choice to rebuild: slowly, intentionally, consistently … One micro-shift at a time. I began reclaiming what I had long abandoned in the name of achievement:
By first choosing to nourish better and correcting nutrient deficiencies.
Reintroducing some form of daily movement.
Creating margin in my schedule by honoring time boundaries.
Granting myself permission to breathe, pause, recalibrate.
Attempting to protect sleep as a sacred pillar.
⚓And most ESSENTIAL, anchoring my mornings with prayer & weaving it throughout my day.
Simultaneously I consulted experts and trusted physician colleagues in functional medicine who introduced me to restorative tools I had never considered for myself such as cryotherapy, infrared sauna, halotherapy, and more. And something remarkable happened. My body began to heal. My skin cleared. My brain fog lifted. My energy returned. My once diminishing Inner Light suddenly burned brighter!!! Not because of one change - but the synergy of many. A constellation of physical, emotional, mental, environmental, and spiritual alignment …creating a new way of being.
And this is when I journeyed from learning the facts/acquiring foundational knowledge (UNDERSTANDING), to going inward and connecting with my core personal values & truths (INNERSTANDING), to finally gaining a higher bird’s-eye view of the big picture - the MACRO (OVERSTANDING).
🌱OVERCOMING BARRIERS • COLLAPSING TIME • CREATING AND SUSTAINING AN ALIGNED ENERGETIC ECOSYSTEM
Even as a physician, blessed with so many resources and unwavering motivation, consistently carving out time and accessing wellness tools was incredibly difficult. I travelled to St. Louis & Chicago whenever I had the chance to seek these experiences. And I kept thinking:
If this is hard for me… how much harder must it be for everyone else?
If these tools transformed my health, how could I make them easily accessible - without the travel, the time drain, or strenuous carefully orchestrated effort?
What if wellness didn’t require juggling appointments or city-hopping, but instead existed in one thoughtfully designed space that collapsed time and maximized impact?
A sanctuary - where both women and men feel equally seen, welcomed, and restored - through intentionally curated, separate spaces that honor comfort, privacy, and personal rhythms. Where details are considered, from efficiency to discretion, so healing can happen with ease.
That question became a pull that created a vision ... and the vision became a calling which eventually planted the seed for Salt & Light Wellness.
🌄 THE VISION: A SANCTUARY ROOTED IN NATURE, SCIENCE, & SPIRIT
I envisioned a nature-based, science-backed, spiritually rooted, private space right here in Springfield … where resetting was not a luxury or a distant destination ... but a local, immersive, restorative experience. A place where the overwhelmed mother, the exhausted professional, the chronically ill, the injured athlete, or weekend warrior could walk in depleted …and walk out feeling more whole. Salt & Light Wellness was designed for people just like me, just like you, just like all of us - who are trying to keep up with life while longing for a place to recalibrate.
Here, modern science meets ancient wisdom.
Here, your body remembers how to reset.
Here, you do not need to rush, strive, or perform …. just return to yourself.
This is not really a spa and not just a trend ...
Instead a place for BECOMING . . .to facilitate your continual EVOLUTION•EXPANSION•ELEVATION ...
🌀 CIRCLING BACK TO OUR WHY
To circle back to our greater purpose - Our Why . . . Salt & Light Wellness exists to create a sanctuary where you can replenish and give back from overflow, not depletion.
To be Salt - grounded, essential, preserving what matters….
To be Light - radiant, illuminating, igniting the path…
For YOURSELF…. For OTHERS… For the WORLD !!!
My hope is that my story serves as a lighthouse. In the words of Jon Acuff …"The scars you share become lighthouses for other people who are headed to the same rocks you hit." Salt & Light Wellness is not meant to be just about me …. it is about Us as a Collective.
Truly it is my honor and joy that our paths intersect here. I am certain Salt & Light Wellness will help CULTIVATE & REVEAL the Unique Light within each soul who walks through our doors.....
✨With Love & Light,
Deepa Cyriac-Thirunelli, MD
Visionary & Co-Founder, Salt & Light Wellness