Healing the roots of chronic illness
Listening to your body - a path to healing
Happy penumbral lunar eclipse! (January 10th, 2020) I read that this eclipse offers a time of painfully baring our souls - and our wounds - to ourselves and each other, for greater healing. I had to laugh when I read that, it just rang so true. So this post is in the spirit of the lunar eclipse.
What makes us vulnerable to chronic illness?
After four years on my healing path from Lyme disease, I’m grateful to feel pretty darn good. It’s been one heck of a learning process. Over time, it’s become clear that I bear a fair amount of responsibility for getting sick. I don’t blame myself, and I did get a tick bite that kicked it all off. It’s just also true that when I got Lyme, I was taxing my system to the point of vulnerability.
A good friend of mine who is in remission from Lyme said to me recently, “Lyme is about boundaries”. She could have been talking about any chronic illness. Boundaries mean saying no when you mean no, and yes when you mean yes. Boundaries mean feeling yourself deeply enough to know what you want, what you need, and what sucks for you - and speaking up even if you piss someone off. To feel our own boundaries, we need to feel our own bodies.
As a Pilates teacher and bodyworker, it’s embarrassing to admit how detached from my body and my boundaries I was when I got Lyme. I wasn’t sleeping, due to my second baby. I was working way too hard. I was pushing myself to make money, to socialize, to exercise, to weigh a certain amount - all when I was truly exhausted and should have been napping. In short, I wasn’t listening to my body.
A tick bite came along to let me know that my relationship with my body was in need of an overhaul. It could just as easily have been a genetic mutation expressing an auto-immune disorder. Tuning out our bodies, our pleasure and our boundaries makes us vulnerable.
Pleasure is intuition
Our puritanical cultural roots do pleasure a disservice. Pleasure tells us what works for us - we can use it as a guide toward well-being. We feel pleasure when we release the neurochemicals that fuel mental health, gut health, immune health and epigenetic health. Dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin - these molecules feel good! They are messengers from our deep intuition.
What do we want to do for work? Who do we want to be friends with? Who do we want to be lovers with? How much sleep do we need? Do we want to stay home or go out? Making all kinds of choices, big and small, can be guided by listening to physical pleasure, or intuition. Had I been following my body’s lead four years ago instead of my ideas of what I “should” do, I most likely wouldn’t have been vulnerable to Lyme.
Intuition can even be a guide to healing. It takes practice, but listening to “gut feelings” can lead you in the right direction in terms of diet, supplements, even medical treatments. What I notice is a slight increase in feeling good, literally in my gut, when I imagine choosing treatments that will work for me. My mind needs to be quiet for this to work. (How to Heal Yourself When No One Else Can, by Amy Scher, is a terrific book that helps practice this.)
Finding pleasure when you’re sick
The path back from chronic illness is not quick or easy. Chronic illness can feel like a lengthy, painful divorce from your body. Staying present at all, not to mention finding intuitive, physical pleasure, can be extremely difficult. In this way, chronic illness mirrors trauma - and in many cases, the experience is traumatic.
In my worst hours, I only felt good lying in bed, in deep meditation. There were months where nothing else really worked. (This is why I wrote the meditation album The Cells’ Breath.) In deep quiet, in total rest, I found softness and peace. I had to stop everything else to get there - work, family, normal life. But the practice started me back toward listening to myself, and getting well.
Healing looks different for each of us. What practices work for you, minute by minute, day by day? How does your body relax and feel safe? What brings you rest, contentment, joy? When do you need to say no, or yes? Asking these questions is the beginning of healing.
May the New Year shed light on your path,
Shona