I’m going to start out this blog article with a 30-second meditation. Hang in there with me and you will see the point. After reading the next paragraph I want you to set your phone down and close your eyes for 30 seconds and participate in this.
I want you to imagine a table in front of you with a bright white cutting board. On the center of the cutting board is the a large ripe, sweet and bitter, middle of the summer, Lemon. To your right is a sharp set of knives. Once you close your eyes I want you to imagine carefully picking up the knife and slicing through the lemon cutting it in half and then in quarters. I want you to deeply visualize the feeling of the skin and the texture of the inside of the lemon as the knife cuts all the way through to the board. I want you to picture the lemon juice on the cutting board and the seeds spraying out. I want you to imagine what it would feel like and taste like to pick up one quarter of that lemon and pop it right into your mouth. Hold that feeling for at least 20 seconds to experience the sensation. And then open your eyes.
How does your mouth feel right now? If you are like me and have a pretty powerful imagination and an even more powerful link between mind and body, then you can feel that bittersweetness down in the socket of your teeth, into your jaw, and a ton of extra saliva in your mouth right now. Before this meditation if we measured the amount of saliva in your mouth versus right now there would be a tangible, scientific, measurable difference. But where is the lemon?? There isn’t one. What that means is that in 30 seconds you took an idea and made it real. You took something intangible that was simply a thought and you created a tangible and measurable response. We complete this lemon experiment on our clients in session and it proves a very valuable point about the inextricable link between your thoughts and your body. Working in addiction for many years before opening my own practice, I’ve learned through the stories of my clients that they can be extremely sick and withdrawing from heroin, but the moment they pull up to the dealers house all the withdrawal symptoms immediately fade away and they even feel a euphoric high knowing the relief of the fresh dose is coming. Your mind is extremely powerful and whether you’re using it for good or for harm it’s working like this every day of your life. What do you think the magnitude of that is? Every moment your thoughts shape your body and every moment your body shapes your reality and your existence.
Now take all this and apply it to the pandemic. The frantic and anxious fear-based energy we are all experiencing right now is manifesting in our body. It’s causing an increase in production of cortisol and adrenaline both of which are known to suppress the immune system and make likelihood of sickness greater. The ripple effect of this collective anxiety will travel far and wide. I’m in agreement that there are actions we all must take to protect ourselves and our families from covid. Whether this means getting the vaccine or not, whether it means making some sacrifices on events you decide not to attend, whether it means wearing a mask in particular places, whether it means you buy medications to keep on hand or spring for a nebulizer to do breathing treatments at home… We’ve all taken all the actions that we possibly can already. Take the action that you think will most help you, but then you simply must release the rest. Carrying this extra burden of weight will lead to an increase in sickness in the body and will ripple out in your decisions. Try a mantra, “I’ve done everything I can do to protect myself, I am releasing the burden of stress and anxiety.”
Once you’ve found ways to release the extra anxiety burden you are carrying the next rung to reach for on the ladder of mental stability and health is to trust your body. Yes we would like to believe we can trust the government and we can trust the pharmaceutical industry and we can trust our insurance and our primary care doctor. At the bottom of my soul I hope that is true! If we cannot trust our own bodies and the universal intelligence that governs the body to fight through illness then we are putting our trust in the hands of the wrong people. If you’ve ever been pregnant, you’ve already had to learn and apply this lesson. As anxious as you might have been about the well-being of the baby growing inside your body you had to trust that your body knew what to do in order to build this incredibly complex miraculous being and it did! Extend the same trust to your body to fight through an illness. Our ancestors somehow survived the Oregon trail and many other horrible terrible life experiences. We will survive this.
In summary, do the things (take the actions that you personally believe will protect and help you recover should you come in contact with the virus), release the anxiety burden and the frantic covid panic, and on the deepest level possible reconnect to the trust you have and your body and in your creator.
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