by Alan McAllister, CCHt PhD-phys
After the hernia surgery everything in my belly is tender and frozen. It is not so much being in pain – the medication helps with that – as a deep sense of fragility and protectiveness oriented to potential pain. New pain that would signal that something is wrong, has been strained or aggravated. This focus is encouraged by ongoing aches that filter lightly through the medication. While focused on sensation I do reiki on myself around the clock. Healing things inside as fast as possible.
The doctor says I can’t hurt myself, but my body/mind worries that things could be stressed or come loose in unpleasant ways. This is mostly subconscious. The result is that my awareness is focused inwards in detail, listening for signals from parts of me I usually ignore. Am I feeling things move in my intestines, the ache of bruises healing, or protests from muscles that indicate I’ve tried to move in ways they are not ready for. Even if I can’t hurt myself, the instinctual minimizing of pain seems a good goal. Besides not wanting to be in pain, the less new stress the faster I can heal.
These are signals from my body that I am learning to read so I can hold in it compassionate care. I’m not used to feeling my belly in such detail, so I have to sort things through and learn what it all means. I’m paying much more attention to how I move, to relaxing where things through out my abdomen and to using my legs and arms for even simple things like rolling over. I live briefly in a world that has shrunk to my own body, something like having the flue. It is defined by internal sensation and to listening for potential new sensation, creating space to feel.
With this expanded internal orientation I have less awareness to give to the external world and to other people. It’s out there, but relegated to a secondary importance. I am immensely grateful that I have loved ones caring for me so I can let outer things go. How I roll over, finding comfortable positions to sleep, waiting for my digestion and other basic body functions to come back on line, take up most of my attention. All through the haze of the pain medications, which cycle in effect, making it unclear when there is more sensation or simply a reduction of the masking of what is already there.
Sometimes I can feel people or things out in my life pulling on me a bit. I respond as I can, but often have to let them go. Its hard to explain the shift in awareness; that even though I’m not really in pain, pain has become my focal point, listening for it, avoiding it, adjusting myself to relieve it. Pain is an insistent master. This inwardness is not personal, but I have really little choice right now. I will soon emerge and be present for them again, but for the moment I have to be present for completly myself.
Slowly the pain recedes, the meds are reduced and then not necessary. Other things begin to come back into awareness. With the physically healing there are related energetic pieces that come up powerfully for clearing. Deep old fears from the body/being that are kicked loose and I have to breath through to find myself again. I am healing more than my hernias here. More gratitude for the powerful assistance of my loved ones, who hold me through this phase as well.
I notice that there is a soft compassionate place I have found for myself, a place of stillness and relaxation inside, that allows the healing to take place. I have little choice about giving it priority right now, my body demands to be cared for and healed. The physical fragility demands protection and attention in a unique way. There is a protective fierceness that arises around it. Being in this new relationship with my body I can sense that a similar dynamic is true for emotional or other wounds and how they demand and engage our attention, although we have a harder time giving others permission to attend to them.
When I start to go out into the world I find I am more aware than usual, of everything. The internal compassionate space is still there, but now it also forms a foundation for being aware of the world around me. Without the inward spaciousness my heightened outer awareness might be too much. I can notice it swirling around me, all the pretty colors, but my internal foundation is still present and I can watch it roll over me and let it go. Rather than letting the world rush in on me I can watch it go by on the surface of my being and choice to watch or engage as necessary. I don’t have to choose between myself and the world, but owning myself I can let the world be itself and selectively dance with it. Keeping my compassion for myself I can come more softly into the world as well.
Taking care of myself I heal and release my own pain, and this allows it to disengage from the world around me. I come back to the world more secure in myself and less afraid that it will hurt me because I’m no longer allowing it to. I’m more relaxed in myself, physically and mentally, and thus meet the world more neutrally, rather than jumping into it, or allowing it to invade me. Something has come clear in a new way, the balance of awareness inside as well as outside, not in opposition, but in a complementary way.
The patching of my umbilical hernia has allowed me to become less enmeshed, to have a cleaner boundary. I am better able to have a soft compassionate stance with myself, to listen to what I need first, and then engage others. Surely Grace and Hope have come more into my life, not just as my nurses for the operation, but as spiritual forces walking with me as I heal.
(© 4/2015)
