Do your mind and body feel like a warzone?
Befriend your mind and body when you live with chronic symptoms (or want to prevent them)
(Photo from Unsplash)
It’s a strange state of affairs when you can't trust your body and mind.
We live in a tightly regulated and monitored environment, with a nervous system and brain that is always looking out for danger, seeking to keep us safe.
But it can become a hostile environment.
Have enough bad or stressful experiences in life (or one long one); focus on them enough; together with scary or poor health advice, poor nutrition, sleep and lack of support and... BOOM you can develop a chronic illness. This might show up as pain, fatigue, anxiety, autoimmune illness, obesity or other medically unexplained symptoms.
What do you do when your protection systems are in overdrive?
What do you do when they no longer accurately signal or assess what is happening in your body tissues and systems?
As one patient described it to me, it’s like living with an overprotective parent or bodyguard.
They care, they are well-intentioned, yet they stifle you and become THE problem. They stop you living your life. They can even take over your life. ‘Knowing’ this in your head makes a difference, but is rarely enough to significantly change the situation.
We need to convince our system that we are safe through 'lived experience'. Then it might just relax it's guard on us.
Conscious practices like mindful movement, yoga and meditation do just that. They transform a hostile inner landscape into a friendlier one.
This 5 minute meditation will help you to start befriending your body.
“Go back and take care of yourself. Your body needs you. Your feelings need you. Your perceptions need you. Your suffering needs you to acknowledge it. Go home and be there for all these things.”
— Thich Nhat Hanh