Deeper Reflections
After the surgery she started off trying to sleep on the bed. This turned into attempts on the fainting couch and then she ended up nestled in the recliner and ultimately into a chair. With each creak or movement, my heart rate went up and by breathing quickened as I awoke from a dead sleep at 2am to being fully alert. It was like being in a 4D movie at 3am, 4am 5am and every night thereafter. These were the signs of an unrelaxed nervous system being unraveled by a cat with a ball of yarn.
I discovered that I was in constant anticipation of what could go wrong. Preparing for the worst case scenario had been in my mind for days prior to surgery and now I was living it, whether it was realistic or not. Having heard countless horror stories of pain from friends and seen my own patients’ post op recoveries my memory created fears of the past. I was also imagining what could happen and so now the fear of the future became predictable. By not being in the present moment to breathe and regulate made it that much harder. To not see things as they are but creating things as I wanted them to be or what I thought they will become based on others’ facts were plaguing me every hour.
Today going deeper I explored the reflections of what if I had to undergo this procedure. Yes, me. How would I have felt as that was being reflected back to me in these moments. How would my life have changed, where I am not able to do the things I love eg write or be mobile to exercise or train. What was I truly afraid of. Then I saw it. A much more insidiously hidden emotion. What if something had happened to her, like complete disability or a complication or even the unthinkable. I had to face these emotions that were creating their nests in my psyche and holding me hostage. How could I live without her? That was at the core of the tree of fears that needed uprooting. To face these feelings and realize their basis in perceptions.
The anticipation of the long road to recovery and the disruption of the billions of steps and processes in place each day in our lives to keep an almost insanely manageable schedule of a busy life still in motion, without wifey taking charge of her part was fearful and revealing. Moreover, what I had taken for granted in my life was now being threatened.
It is all energetic, just like when we keep dealing with toxic people or situations, we tend to take on those energies. And so I took on all the energies of everyones’ stresses, worries and anxieties. The rhythm had been disrupted. The disconnection from my “normalcy “ demanded an over compensation with an overstimulated and now hyperactive nervous system that had run amok. Then there was my “need” to do it all. To keep everything in check, to avoid an escape from the predictable and controllable life that I thought I had. The desire to juggle every ball in this circus of life is impossible. My perceptions thought I could, based on false data. Surrender to the reality and the truth that I could not, was humbling and groundbreaking. A triage of my emotions and rationing of my energies was sought. The pattern of madness was breaking with each awareness.
This led to interrupted sleep patterns, bad eating choices, and the hand reaching for sugary edibles to comfort and soothe the dopamine reward and the high cortisol driven brain. The relaxation we seek as reprieve from our stresses is not the external vacation but the internal wisdom to guide us home.
Life has a musical rhythm of harmony and flow, that is easily disrupted by the mind, that is always in a desperate need to keep us safe through control and to fix things. The melodies are in disarray. The heart beat and the breath respond to this rhythm either with synchrony or with dyssynchrony. Vital clues to what is going on and so the solutions to reharmonize can be found in breath work and meditation to calm the systems, to ground us back to reality and catch the runaway train of the mind and halt it back into awareness. To slow it down to allow the body and the mind to heal and repair. To own our feelings and re-pace.
528Hz music, a nice long swim, exercising with weights, a short run, stretching, breathing exercises, meditations and gratitude journaling all assisted in bringing me back to center. Entering that space of balance I was able to unlock all these recessed fears and heal them with love.
It is wise to remember that there is nothing that the mortal body can experience that the immortal soul cannot transcend. I noted this when I awoke to the sound of silence in my now regulated nervous system. Speaking once again from my heart space. Grateful for this experience and whatever comes our way over the next few months, the trials and the tribulations, it is all part of the same spinning coin of life, except this time time I know how to toss it. That makes all the difference in the world.
What a trip that was for sure !
I am back to being me. I like it.
……………..
I love you
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