A funny thing happened to me when I was preparing to leave for a long-awaited vacation…
As I write this, I should have been on the beautiful island of Flores in the Azores, hiking the caldera or exploring the gorgeous, verdant coast with my husband. Instead, here I am recovering from a an emergency 8 hour surgery to repair a perforated bowel…with a couple of complications. Here’s the thing… I’m a very healthy, active person. I do yoga, I do strength training 3 times a week, I walk a lot, I meditate. I eat super healthy, locally grown, organic, homemade food. And yet I ended up in the ER two weeks ago and was completely shocked to be very quickly dosed with heavy-duty antibiotics and told I would be admitted to hospital. And when the doctor told me I needed emergency surgery…well, imagine me negotiating with her to fix the rupture temporarily with antibiotics so that I could still go on vacation and do the surgery on my return!
I’m home now and on the road to recovery. But I spent 8 days spinning out in the hospital. I’m still trying to process everything, and especially how close I unknowingly came to a very life-threatening situation. As I’ve been thinking about it, so far I’ve learned 3 hard lessons that I need to share with you:
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Do not ignore the signals your body gives you, especially the unusual ones. I was cocky about my health. I take good care of myself and was arrogantly confident that I made all the right choices so I would never get sick (true up til now). If I had not “powered through” the 3 days of intense and unusual abdominal pain I had 3 weeks prior to the ER visit, things might have turned out differently. I waited a week to see a doctor and then tests take time to schedule and review. I should have gone directly to the ER. Please listen to your body. It has important things to tell you.
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Don’t waste a single moment of your one precious life. For me, this is another one of those unexpected events to remind us that no matter how well you take care of your self, it’s not a promise that you will not have health issues. You just never know what life will bring you. So make everyday special in some way, seek and find joy in everything.
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Always get travel insurance, even if you think you’re the healthiest person in the world. Cocky me…I never get sick…I don’t need travel insurance. Bad, bad decision. My mother was a travel agent and she would not have been proud of me! When I had to cancel so close to the departure, we lost a LOT of money.
Don’t be like me, please learn from my lessons.
While I was lying in my hospital bed, I was literally spinning. From dizziness, from drug-overload, from the unexpected and unwanted things my body was going through. Strangely, I wasn’t afraid, upset or angry or even sad (except to miss my vacation). It was as though I was just observing what was happening to me. Perhaps I’ve cultivated enough equanimity over the years to move gracefully through this difficult experience. I don’t really know. But I was spinning.
And it occurred to me at one point that spinning in a hospital bed through a health crisis is sort of like the spinning we can feel in our daily life as we confront the troubles and crises in our lives and in the world these days. Politics, economic crisis, social upheaval…so much uncertainty, so many worries. Does any of this make you spin out some days?
As I was spinning and unable to focus in my hospital bed, I dug into my toolkit of practices to see if I could find something to calm myself, to get grounded, to slow down the spin. I could only find tiny, easy, calming practices, nothing else worked. And I thought to share these today as they might also be able to help us in times when we feel like our world is spinning out of control and we just can’t focus enough to roll out the yoga mat or to sit for meditation.
Here are the 5 micro practices that I was able to do to get grounded.
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Savasana - I decided that if I had to lie in a bed, I would make it a long savasana. I was able to simply focus on the connection between my body and the bed which helped to soothe my mind and calm my body. Sometimes, all you need is savasana. It’s a very powerful pose.
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Listen to meditative music - I couldn’t focus enough for a guided meditations but I could listen to music. Luckily I have lots of soothing, meditative music on my phone and this really helped. If you need some savasana-style music, have a look at my Savasana playlist over on Spotify.
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Count backwards from 50 - One count per breath. You will find that your breathing automatically slows down as you count. This is a very calming practice that will help you to stay grounded in the preent moment. You just can’t count backwards if you’re not focused on the numbers, one after the other. This is a good practice to try if you need a little help to fall asleep. For me, it works every time; I never make it to zero.
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Chant the Heart Sutra - this Sanskrit mantra has powerful calming capabilities. Chant “gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha” as long as you need to. (Pronounced “gah-tay gah-tay, pah-rah-gah-tay, pah-rah-sahm-gah-tay, bo-dee svah-ha”). More about this mantra later in the month.
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Long-tail breathing - this is my name for a simplified 4:8 breathing practice (or 2:4 if that’s all you can do). For some strange reason, ever since I’ve learned this pranayama breathing exercise, I envision inhaling and exhaling following the outline of a long-tailed bird. See the little diagram below to understand. Weird I know, but the visualisation is helpful for the flow of breath. I couldn’t breathe well in the first days at the hospital so this little practice helped to sooth and ground me and it also helped me to breath a little more deeply so that my oxygen levels could rise.
If you’re ever in a crisis, big or small, perhaps one of these micro practices will help you to get grounded and reconnect with the present moment.
