Illness and Awe
Harping on the mind and body connection from the sick couch
I can’t believe how long I managed to ignore the mind and body connection honestly. I can’t believe how long I just thought my brain was operating independently. Especially when I felt so out of alignment with who I thought I was so much of the time. I spent years feeling like the things I was doing or saying or thinking weren’t ME. And then doing mental gymnastics to shame myself because if I was doing and thinking these things, especially repeatedly, they must be who I am.
I never even considered that other factors were affecting my behaviors. That patterns, and the past, and my environment, and my diet, and my body were all affecting how I felt and in turn, how I thought and acted.
Being sick this week was such a crystal clear example.
I have a body wracking, hack until I gag cough. I have had chills and a fever, my head has been throbby. I am generally just uncomfortable and very tired. Typical cold stuff.
And I have found my little brain falling into its old patterns.
When I was hustling to the train (after two days quarantined at home, I promise), I was sweating inside my coat while my face and hands were freezing, and I was spiraling.
I hate my job. I can’t believe how much money I’m spending on dumb stuff. I haven’t made any progress in life.
I was laying on the couch yesterday, head aching, not wanting to cook, but extremely dehydrated and hungry. I wanted to be under a blanket and cozy, but I was already on fire and I felt too tired to open a window and let the cold air in.
He’s going to leave you. You should leave him. It doesn’t work. You are going to be alone forever. Love and a happy relationship aren't for you.
I felt Couch Stephanie nod knowingly and urge all of us onto the couch.
Nothing had happened to make any of these thoughts re-emerge except that I was sick and my body was uncomfortable and tired and unregulated.
Body meet mind. Mind meet body.
It’s amazing how quickly an unregulated body led my brain back into old negative thoughts.
It’s also amazing how much just being aware has changed my level of control.
I am so so sorry you are feeling sick. And thank you, Couch Stephanie, for the reminder to rest. We are going to rest. We can go to the couch, but that doesn’t mean we need old couch thoughts. We are going to the couch because we are sick. But then we are going to get back up and we are going to keep going. Here’s some water. And I opened up the window to let a little air in. You can curl under the blanket now. You are okay. Take a nap. No texting. I love you.
Awe
What I really came here to write about was awe. Luckily, it’s connected.
On my drive home from Thanksgiving I listened to this episode of On Being.
I love when science validates “spiritual” concepts. It makes me feel a little less silly typing the word spiritual. Plus, it’s just really cool to see the way all of our little cells operate. I’m also excited to know about Dacher Keltner (especially since he consulted on Inside Out, hello) and I’m adding his book to my already large stack of unread books if anyone wants to book club it with me… a few months from now.
I have always been obsessed with magic.
The every day stuff - the sunsets, the right chord in a song, exploring a new place, tenderness between humans, inhuman human achievements, really large grocery stores after being in NYC too long, finding exactly the thing you needed at the exact moment you needed it. I’ve called it Everyday Magic. I have called it Bits of Beauty. I’m often in hot pursuit of it. I’ve started websites dedicated to it. I’ve filled journals with it. It’s a close sibling of surveilling for good, my alternative to the weapon of gratitude.
Calling things magic is just my way of saying I’m in awe, I suppose.
So awe is what has kept me on this planet.
It has been a source of drive and of recovery for as long as I can remember.
And now here it is in this random podcast I found when I was getting too sleepy on a long drive. And it has science attached!?
Finding awe scientifically improves our health. Awe activates the vagus nerve which runs throughout the body. It touches our heart, lungs, and digestive organs. The vagus nerve can raise or lower our heart rate. It can affect digestion and breath and our gut.
Hello mind and body connection. I am in awe!
Awe yeah
The morning after I listened to this podcast, I had to get up at 6am to go to work. Anyone who has woken up near me will tell you, I am not a morning person. I pulled out of my friends’ driveway into the darkness, with an hour drive ahead of me and the tickle of a cough in my throat. My stomach was churning at the same speed as the wheel my pre-work anxiety hamster was racing no one on. The sun started to creep up through the trees, changing the indigo everything into full color. I felt something, everything, definitely the corners of my mouth, lift, knowing I was about to turn onto the highway that ran next to the river. I love water. And I love the way the sun likes to play with it. Pink and amber light danced across the (shockingly?) blue Hudson. The wall of rock my car was hugging, was a cliff of gold, full of texture, the morning sun reveling in every nook and cranny. I felt like I was moving through a sort of intimacy - the sun joyfully greeting everything she had missed while she was sleeping, touching and kissing every inch, leaving morning magic in every crevice. Across the water, I could see the hot edges of her at the ridge line, first a peaking triangle and then a full circle sitting on top of the mountains, bare and awake. I was in awe of this morning and of me being here for it. I felt my body relax. My shoulders dropped. My stomach stopped churning.
“If the soul is not in the body, where is the soul?” Walt Whitman
