I want to talk about nerve endings, the nervous system, mast cells, the language of physical reaction, how our bodies speak to us. My grandmother was a Christian Scientist, my father spoke of how she believed illness was a sign of sin, a sickness in the soul that could and should be prayed away, how she didn’t believe in medicine. I often think how this interpretation, such few degrees off at source could land so far off the mark, but that’s all it takes, a scope misaligned early on, and you end up shooting yourself when something goes wrong. Because this conversation is tentative, and I’m being careful now, illness as message, sickness as meaning. Because when we get sick the whole story is never the isolated part that’s shouting the loudest. I’ve been working with self-regulation, learning how to regulate my system when it goes into hyperdrive. Sophie asked me yesterday what systems I use and it was a good question because we each learn the methods that suit us, and that we can sustain. Cold baths, inversions and meditation are my three, and I do each in the morning for three minutes. I told her how the cold baths set the dials to zero, how the inversions strengthen my heart, how the meditation is me turning up for myself, checking in, seeing how I am. It doesn’t seem like much, does it, yet three minutes in a cold bath can feel like forever and three minutes is all my system can cope with when I enter the land of sitting still before the great Unknown; I’ll get into why that is tomorrow. The point is that however small or slight these movements are, they form a practice of alignment which builds a habit of familiarity, and when I’m out in the world and find I’m running, it’s these sensations I can reach for to bring me back together, hello inside of me, it’s okay, I’m here. I’ve a friend who became very sick with long-covid and in order to save herself developed her yoga teaching practice into a recovery program which now holds the hands of millions of long-covid sufferers around the world. Her clients return to their doctors showing signs of recovery and their doctors say to my friend what is that you’re doing? How are you getting these results? The answer to that is more than one sentence but for the sake of this moment I’ll sum it up with I listen. I let them tell me what they’re feeling, and we work with that. This is the part we can bring to the table when we’re sick, the part that can work in collaboration with whichever medicines we like. Our nervous systems are speaking all the time, sending messages, trying to keep us safe. Listen.
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Also, I wanted to say that I have such respect for people who have a spiritual path that feeds them. I am such a cynic that it's too late for me. I've tried.
Christian Scientist is a title that has always confused me, but I have never investigated it for some reason. How did she reject medicine?