A healing touch

Over the last few days I’ve gone into a fairly regular kind of energy slump where even listening or thinking becomes painfully exhausting. It’s as though my body is so tired that even moving my mental muscles to form a thought makes me ache.

Yesterday, as I was lying in bed I caught myself trying to do a metta (compassion) practice when I was too tired to think straight. I was trying to form kind and caring thoughts about being in pain, but this mental ‘trying’ just increased my pain.  Hmph!  I was stuck. 

Then a section of Toni Bernhard’s book ‘How to be Sick’ (oh, how I love that title!) came to mind. Toni writes about cultivating compassion towards herself in the face of chronic illness by using phrases of care and understanding such as 'My poor body, working so hard to feel better'.  She then writes:  'Whatever words I choose, I often stroke one arm with the hand of the other. This has brought me to tears many times, but tears of compassion are healing tears.'

Following Toni’s suggestion, I stopped trying to think compassionate thoughts and just started stroking the top of my hand with my other hand.  This kind, compassionate touch went beyond all thought, straight into the heart of the matter; ‘Oh, I’m sick.  How sad.’ 

I was transported back in time to when I was very young – 5 and 6 years old – and spent months in hospital with asthma. I was not only isolated from the world, but also cut-off from my immediate surroundings by a thick plastic tent covering my bed.  Asthma medication was pumped into the tent, so I could breathe it in and out. The intention was to heal, and it probably saved my life many times over, but the experience was confusing and so very lonely. 

The simple act of touching my own hand brought me back to this sad time; a time where all I really wanted was kindness and a sense of connection – to hope, life, and the outside world.  It felt as though offering myself this care, even 30 years on, was a kind of healing. This beautiful and simple practice gave me a sense of mothering and caring for myself. 

Thankyou Toni! 

Beautiful Gili Air - Lombok - Indonesia

Awakening Now

 

Awakening Now

by Dana Faulds

 

Why wait for your awakening?

Do you value your reasons for staying small 

more than the light shining through the open door? 

Forgive yourself,

Forgive yourself.

Now is the only time you have to be whole.

Now. 

Now is the sole moment that exists to live in the light of your true nature. 

Perfection is not a prerequisite for anything but pain. 

Perfection is not a prerequisite for anything but pain. 

Please, oh please, don't continue to believe 

in your stories of deficiency and failure. 

This is the day of your awakening.

 

 

 

Danna Faulds is a US poet and  practitioner of Kripalu Yoga.  She's written four books of yoga poetry: Go In and In; One Soul; Prayers to the Infinite; and From Root to Bloom.

Self-Compassion Phrases

Hello lovely readers! 

It's been a while since I've posted, mostly because I've been busy crying. (I am confident that at the end of this financial year I will get a thank you letter from Kleenex and hopefully a free mega pack of man-sized tissues to see me through another afternoon of weeping). 

When I last posted I wrote about doing an exercise where I recorded how I was feeling and then responded with phrases of self-compassion.  This little exercise opened the flood-gates and 15 years of 'coping' has been washed away in my tears, as I allow myself to feel all grief-stricken, pissed-off and crappy at losing so much of my life to this illness.

I've been practicing saying little phrases of self-compassion to myself as I lie in bed feeling whatever feeling is present in the moment.  To help myself do this, I've been collecting and writing down phrases of compassion and kindness.  During the day, I have the list of phrases open on my laptop and while I'm resting I just open my eyes every so often and pick a phrase to repeat to myself.   

I thought I'd share this list in the hope that some readers may find it useful.  I'd love to know what your favorite self-compassion phrase is! 

Bumper list of self-compassion phrases

Yes, I’m sick – it’s difficult. 

What’s going on here?  How are you feeling?

It’s not my fault, there’s nothing I have to change.  

I never get to choose a feeling – I just get to choose how I will meet the feeling.

I’m sad that I’m sick.

I’m sad that I feel this feeling difficult.

This feeling is meant to be here, and I care about it.

How are you? I’m seeking to understand, not to change.

I’m doing the best I possibly can in this situation, a really good job.

I’m doing a great job of resting and taking care of myself.

I feel agitated, I want to ‘do stuff’ – well, that’s totally fine. It’s totally normal to feel like you want to do things when you’re sick.  I’m sure we’ll find time for you to do that later.

Even though x is happening and I feel x I choose to trust the place I am in.

I know I’m a good person because good people feel x and I feel x. Therefore I’m a good person.

It’s not my fault – it’s just happening.

I love you every way that you are, exactly as you are – and I’ll help you to be any way you want to be.

I’m here to make life better; I’m here to help.

This matters.  Whatever it is, it matters. 

(My latest portrait - I thought it suited the mood of this post!)

Developing the Mentor Pt 3

For a few weeks now I’ve been writing about using Zen teacher Cheri Huber’s techniques of discovering an inner mentor. (Here’s Pt 1 and here’s Pt 2).

My task for the past week was to make a recording of myself talking about something in my life I was struggling with and then recording what the ‘mentor’ would say in response.

When I started to do the recording I didn’t have a plan of what I would talk about.  I just turned on the video recorder on my laptop and found myself describing how I was feeling physically; just listing my physical symptoms.

‘I feel exhausted…my head hurts and the muscles behind my eyes feel tight…’

Then, I found myself describing how I felt about all these physical sensations.

‘I feel so left out, and so envious of other people who can get out of bed and do things…I feel like this is my fault and I should be able to change it…’

Then, I used the second half of the recording to say mentoring, compassionate phrases to myself.  I found it quite difficult to come up with these phrases, they certainly didn’t flow naturally!

I found myself saying things like,

‘I’m not here to criticize – I just want to listen, and to try to understand what this is like…I’m here to help in any way I can…I’ll support you through this.’

Saying all these things was incredibly moving,  and listening back to the tape everyday has been so comforting but also very, very sad.

I’ve been sick for 15 years and this past week is the first time I’ve been able to cut through the numbness that surrounds this illness and just feel my physical sensations and the feelings I have about them.  I'm starting to realise how trapped I've been  in the beliefs that I ‘shouldn’t’ be sick, that being sick is my fault, and that acknowledging my physical symptoms is a sign of weakness.

I am starting to have some awareness of the cycle of blame.  Something bad happened (I got sick) and my instinct was to judge and blame. The judging and blaming led to more difficulties (I was numb, I couldn’t feel much at all) and I felt that the way out of this problem was to judge myself a little more (I’m such a cold person, I’m so judgmental, I’m not kind…blah blah blah). 

As the saying goes: ‘It’s heaven all the way to heaven and hell all the way to hell.’  I thought that by piling on the criticism and judgment I would ‘improve’ myself and get better; I thought it was ‘hell all the way to heaven.’  But, really it was just hell all the way down. 

Starting to feel again is painful.  Sometimes it feels as though there is an intense, white, anguish that rises up through my bones as I allow a feeling like sadness or grief  move like a wave through my body. But it also feels right, and real. I feel I’m learning to counter the instinct to judge with the mentoring voice and I can see small, but important changes.

 I woke up yesterday morning feeling exhausted.  As I lay in bed I cried, because I was so tired and it was the beginning of another long day with this illness. After about 10 minutes I stopped weeping and realized that was the first time in 15 years I had just spontaneously cried because I was sick – and not pushed my feelings down by saying something like, ‘well…it could be worse, there are people who are much worse off than you’ or ‘well, you don’t deserve to feel sad, it’s really all your fault.’ I had just allowed myself to cry for 10 whole minutes.  Quite an achievement.

+++

On a completely different note - I posted before Christmas about doing a house portrait for my dad.  I just got it mounted onto a wooden block and had some photos taken and here's what it looks like.  I think it's quite cute!

Developing the Mentor Pt 2

Last week I wrote about a little project I was doing with a friend of mine.  She has been doing an e-mail course with Cheri Huber and one of her assignments was to teach someone else the techniques she's been learning in the course. 

My first task, which I wrote about last week, was to record myself talking about all the positive things I was doing to help my life improve, or be a bit happier.  I've been listening to this recording every day and have found that it really helps to externalise the positive, mentoring voice in my head. 

This week's task was to spend some time just thinking about who this mentor might be.  When I think 'mentor', does an image of a person come to mind?  Or many people?  When the mentor speaks, what does their voice sound like?  If the mentor isn't a person - what is it? Perhaps there's a particular feeling, or color, or sound associated with it.

 

All interesting stuff to muse on. 

 

I've been interested in Cheri Huber's work for a year or so now, so I've thought before about the qualities and persona of my mentor.  My mentor changes a bit. Often it's an older woman (modelled on some older Catholic nuns I met during my time doing volunteer work with refugees - truly inspirational women).  My other mentor 'voice' is a man of about my own age who speaks with a slow Texan drawl.

 

The Texan drawl bit was odd at first, but  I worked out that I liked the idea of the mentors voice speaking to me really slowly and calmly, and when I tried to imagine that the Texan drawl is what I heard!  (A bit like Owen or Luke Wilson's accents).

 

So, my mentor is kind, accepting, speaks slow Texan, and is either Luke Wilson or a nun.  Hmmm...kinda weird, but it works for me!

 

A pictorial depiction of the inside of my head. Confusing!?