When you're sick....
With training, our brains can help us be more at ease even in the most challenging moments, including when we’re sick. Part of the discomfort of being sick comes from those times when our brain yanks us out of the present moment and puts us into “simulator mode”. It’s like when we go to a museum and there is a flight simulator in the sunny lobby. We buy a ticket and climb inside and then we have a simulated experience of being on a roller coaster. In reality, we’re sitting in a capsule firmly grounded to the floor in the sunny atrium of the museum, but it sure doesn’t feel like that.
Our brains do that to us regularly. In reality, we may be sitting in a favorite chair, wearing a cozy sweater, maybe drinking a cup of fresh water or tea, but our brains have gone into simulator mode and we’re mentally in a bumpy, scary situation somewhere. When we’re sick, that “somewhere” is likely to be a time when our disease has progressed, or we’re in pain, or we’re imagining the effects of our illness on our ability to work, to live as we’re used to, and on the effects of our illness on our family. This moving out of the body as it actually is and into a fearful future scenario, or “time traveling” as Dr. Amishi Jha from University of Miami calls it, can create a lot of stress for us. On top of that, we might be aware of the stress and then get even more worried and fearful about the effects the stress might have on our health.
But we can train our brains to time travel less often, and to notice when we do time travel. We can practice remaining deeply connected to the present moment, even if it’s for just part of a breath at a time, so that we can recognize when we’re in “simulator mode” and bring ourselves back to what’s actually happening now. In her book, “How to Be Sick” Toni Bernhard, who lives with a debilitating disease, shares that when her mind wraps her up in stories about what might happen, whether it is fair, etc, she focuses on an objective observable truth. For example, she becomes aware of herself as a “woman sitting in a chair.” Not a sick woman, not a sick woman waiting for yet another doctor to come into the exam room, just “woman sitting in a chair.” By doing that, the mental grip of endless stories loosens a bit, giving us the space to breathe and feel more easeful.
We can also move our attention through our body noticing how we feel in each part of the body in the moment - the actual sensations that we can observe. When mental images of how we might look pop up, as opposed to how we’re actually feeling, we can take Sharon Salzburg’s advice from her wonderful book, “Real Love”, and smile and tell the mind that it has the next few minutes off and to go take a nap or have a cup of tea. There may be parts of the body that are experiencing discomfort or pain, but there will also be parts that - in that very moment - are functioning miraculously. We can open to it all. When we reach a part of the body - maybe the part with cancer or any other medical challenge - that causes a strong emotional reaction, we can offer ourselves great compassion. We can rest in recognition of our emotional experience, any fear, grief, anger or sadness we’re feeling, and then we can offer a wish for a return to peace and ease or, as Tara Brach suggests, we can offer up the wish, “May this serve somehow."
Wishing you peace and ease and good health.
