Dear One,
With heartfelt intention, this share’s for illuminating, alleviating, and elevating you on your Lyme healing journey with more ‘Internal Calm.’
Ever felt like a dust storm’s swirling about inside of you with Lyme and associated myriad issues seem more than handle-able? Oh, I so remember this – and inner peace felt far, farrrrr away.
My sense was like the Bhagavad Gita describes,
“to master the mind seems as difficult as to master the mighty winds.”
When an utter lack of Calm within felt perturbing, it flat out angered me when it was suggested that my mind had a part to play in healing.
However, in reading or hearing about people who healed from various diseases, a similar theme surfaced. Echoed in success, spirituality, and self-help books I devoured.
Initially, I denied it; yet 10 years of fighting and using plenty-o-medicines hadn’t done the healing trick so what did I have to lose?
Little by little, I grew into the idea that many “problems come from our Internal state [or are exacerbated by it].
When we are Internally Calm, we reason and then respond; we don’t just react.
When someone slights us, we don’t lash out with angry words or angry fists. We turn the other cheek.
When someone cuts us off, we give them the benefit of the doubt.
When things go slower than we want, we wait patiently.
When someone is passive-aggressive, we refuse to take the bait. …
A Calm mind is not the absence of conflict or stress, but the ability to cope with it” per Shane Parrish of Farnam Street.
It’s not suppressing, bypassing, or repressing – nor avoiding perhaps with scrolling websites for hours researching Lyme treatments to avoid agitation within.
It’s, gradually, nurturing inner Calm and improving psychological wellbeing to aid healing. Research analysis of 300 scholarly journal articles (not a typo!) showed that stress negatively impacts our immune system. This study showed relaxing reduced inflammatory genes from expressing and improved “mitochondrial energy production.” Yes for Lyme healing!
Here are ideas for considering or perhaps cultivating Internal Calm:
• Noticing what’s going on within us – AKA thoughts and feelings, even if superficial – is step 1. This awareness allows – eventually – for shifting. Realizing that we feel or think in certain ways like, anxious or that our minds often roiling over thinking about Lyme symptoms, starts us on the road to being able to do something about it,
• Pause. Momentarily’s ok. Take a breath. Imagine breathing into your heart. Then exhale. Repeat. Twice. For a smidge, do … nothing. With a goal of,
• Acknowledging – and observing feelings or thoughts – such as frightened, disappointed, and humiliated – to aid acceptance. Or leaning towards acceptance. Not sure how? Situations, where we’re triggered, can help us see where we are not accepting. This isn’t judgment nor pushing away, it’s more a ‘sitting with it.’ Perhaps saying emotion aloud. Or internally – depending on audience. ‘I feel ___________.’ Or, take a guess with ‘Maaaaybe I feel ______________.’ Journaling on triggers can help noticing. This assists awareness later for improved choices ‘in the heat of the moment.’ Eventually and little by little, inner pain’s potency – surprisingly – can reduce giving Calm emergence space,
• Compassionate action – for ourselves and others too – can then rise from a new recognition of feelings and thoughts. You taking care of precious you’s needs = woot!
• Real life example: I’m about to bite hubby’s head off. (Notice.) Before opening my mouth, lemme stop a sec. (Pause, a breath – or 7.) ‘What’s up, self? How ya feeling?’ Hmmmm, silently mulls trigger and clenched gut. ‘I feel irritable after late night’. (Acknowledge & even accept a bit of feelings/thoughts.) To hubby, ‘I’m heading to bed’. Strategy fits need, fills the tank, annnnd Calms. Plus head-bite-offing was prevented. Yay,
• What Calms you? Ponder activities and relationships – Holy, human, or heartwarming four-leggeds. Praying, walking, journaling, doodling, trail hiking, praying in church parking lots or chapels, yogaing, stretching before bed departure, meditating in nature, and painting mountain scenes. Pick your quiet or silent, mind emptying pleasure. Adding it daily, consciously, even nanometer by nanometer,
• Practice – in easier situations. Ran out of milk Saturday morning? Shoulder shrug, oh well. Head to the store or skip milk use and get it later when feeling better. Success here means improved ability to apply strategies in harder situations over time,
• Tech breaks. Limit your inputs per Ryan Holiday in Stillness is the Key. As Epictetus relays, “be content to appear clueless in extraneous matters.” Perhaps consider if extended social media time or Lyme board scrolls are truly serving to heal, and/or
• Stress escalating and Internal Calm heading for hills? Perhaps pause, pray a 3-4 word prayer repeatedly, wait for the emotion to die down, go silent, and/or give yourself some distance. Step out of a room and do any or all of this. Stop a heating conversation with ‘Let’s talk later.’
In upping Internal Calm, it’s rather extraordinary how this inner state ripples through us and outward. From our hearts, for our health. And even, then, it flows to others, for others.
Cultivating this can not only feel increasingly soothing, it lovingly draws others to us. Yummy x 2.
In the long term, once more peace and calm are discovered within, we then embody it and model it for dear ones and strangers alike.
What serves us can, in turn, serve our fellows.
Divine service indeed. Beginning with wonderful y-o-u.
With love beams & belief that Internal Calm can blossom more for you – blessing your dear self,
Judy
| PS – Thanks, Max Alaghband at knowyourmind.training for Don’t Suppress Stress, Cultivate Inner Calm aid in bullets 1-3. |