Slow Going

Slow Lane Living

“The road to my healing had two parts. The first part was simply learning to calm down the body/mind...Although meditation can be just as powerful as prescription medication, unless we probe the roots of our symptoms, meditation will simply mask our pain rather than helping us transform our trials into deeper levels of understanding and creativity. The second level of healing involved changing my negative perceptions about certain events in my life so that I could learn to experience things differently.”

                         Joan Borysenko (The Power of the Mind to Heal)

Some people believe that events happen randomly in the universe. Perhaps I am a control freak, (I see you nodding..) but I believe all things happen for a reason. So my fall this week that has me limping and in pain, has brought with it some important lessons. My first response as always, is to cry foul and curse a lot. Secondly, I go into self-recrimination mode and give myself a dressing down for stupidity and air-headed-ness. Only after all the hullabaloo has died down, and I have given in to the need for rest, do I begin to sort out the meaning.

I have found that I have options as to how I respond to adversity. One is to create a lot of negative energy and push myself to persevere regardless of the pain. The other is to take the event as I would a teacher—what can I learn from this? When I go the pessimistic route, I don't heal as quickly, and sometimes I even exacerbate my injuries. When I go positive, I heal faster and I experience unexpected benefits.

Physiologically, when we engage in fear-based emotions like anger and hostility, our autonomic nervous system pumps large amounts of stress hormones into our blood stream. Those very chemicals reduce our immune response and slow down healing. On the other hand, when we calm down and respect our body's need for rest, we activate the hormones that repair damaged tissue. In other words, an agitated body cannot heal. Even taking ten minutes a day to pay attention to your breathing, slowing it down and focusing inwardly, can help the body/mind to gather itself and grow stronger.

Being laid-up has given me time to simply think—to contemplate. I hadn't realized before how little energy I give to planning, thinking through, weighing pros and cons and how much I simply operate on high-speed auto-pilot, running from one thing to the next without giving much thought to any. I didn't know that lying on the porch swing and watching the clouds fly by, which I did frequently as a child, is an adult spiritual practice. I am learning that certain birds, wrens I think, have a truly beautiful song and that my lying on the floor is better than a cookie to my dogs. While operating at a slower pace, I've come to understand that it's not necessary for everything to be done today. Tomorrow is another day...and then there's the day after that. (“and there's always Tara, Miss Scarlett”)

                                               Living in the slow lane,

                                                          Jane