Yesterday, I attended my 3rd group meditation session in the @naturalmedicine discord server run by @bewithbreath and the mindful life crew. It turned out to be a really positive session.

I've written about the importance of mindfulness for people with chronic illness before in this blog, Freedom - The Mental Battle is Half the Battle.

To briefly elaborate, the cessation of thought that results from successful meditation can allow the space for healing. When you have a chronic condition your day to day is a constant battle with busy thoughts. As each symptom begins, you wonder how debilitating and intense it's going to turn out to be today. It is extremely difficult in this situation to just let go and let what will be.... be, as one day it can lay you low and another you can function.

“Every human being is the author of his own health or disease.”

_{Swami Sivananda, founder of The Divine Life Society.}

This quote is all over the internet, erroneously accredited to Buddah in most cases... but hey, that's just the internet. I do agree with the sentiment in this statement and have felt this effect in varying degrees over the last 6 years of struggling with this illness. The key word to focus on here is author.

Has meditation or diet cured my small intestinal bacterial overgrowth? No.

But what we put into our body, and how we approach our perception of reality, can certainly improve things, sometimes facilitating true healing. It is exactly as difficult as writing a novel. With a novel you have all of the pieces of the puzzle to work with; plot, characters, theme, beginnings and endings. It's how you put these things together that makes a novel worth reading.

When approaching health through meditation and mindful living, it is important to understand that it's a complex novel you must author, especially for people with chronic conditions. No amount of good will and positive thinking will kill a profound overgrowth of bacteria in your guts. Despite what you might have read, you can't heal cancer by wishing it so! However, I would argue that those miracle stories you read about people healing chronic disease through intent, are people who have been either lucky or stubborn enough to find the magic formula to write that perfect novel. They have healed through a combination of meditation, diet, mindful day to day living, stress reduction and in some cases herbal medicines.

I know healing naturally is possible, and even for some through pure intent. But it has proven to be a much more complex puzzle for me, that I am still trying to work out.

To learn about the hundreds of treatments and tactics I've tried, you can read more in these blogs.

My SIBO Story (part 1) - What is SIBO & How it has Effected Me

My SIBO Story (part 2) - The Elemental Diet - 3 Weeks Without Food

My SIBO Story (part 3) - After The Elemental Diet - Plans for Natural Healing

indful life Meditation Experience

The theme of my meditation experience was definitely tranquility. I didn't set out with any set goal, just to be with breath and see if I could still my thoughts. Guided by the very accomplished @bewithbreath, we flowed from body scan into breathing meditation. It is at this point that I found what I really needed, a strong escape from my busy thoughts. Throughout the 10 -15 minutes of focusing on the breath flowing in and out of my nose, my mind drifted several times to thoughts that are stress triggers for me. But each time @bewithbreath seemed to have plugged into the collective unconscious, as his prompts to return focus to breath came just as my 'monkey mind' started to take over.

The final 5 minutes of the breathing section flowed by in a complete stillness for me. That quiet mind feeling is like paradise, that's the most accurate way I can describe it. Especially with my day to day mind state being quite prone to stress and fight/flight reactions. When I find these brief times of nirvana, it is just that... nirvana. It's kind of like sleeping but with bodily awareness, nothingness within and without. The sound of passing buses, police sirens and all the city life just melting away.

As I have recently had a disc issue with my back I was lying down to avoid pain from sitting cross legged. Lying there drifting, I felt the physical power of meditation in my legs, which had previously been achy, and now had ceased to hurt. My muscles relaxed into corpse pose, and the numbness in my left leg - the remains of sciatica - has eased off today after that deep relaxation.

ealizations & Plans to Heal Chronic Illness Naturally

I find meditation to be a cumulative experience.

The process of the breath meditation and body scans brings complete quiet for me... when it works 😉 I'm not sure exactly what happens to the psyche when thoughts are quieted like this but I imagine it to be like a dirty car windscreen being wiped clean. All this is going on in your subconscious while you just drift in a pleasant letting go of the world.

This process continues after the meditation is over when returning to thought, you find that you can see through that shiny windscreen much more clearly. This is how it is with me after a successful meditation, realizations and ideas flow in the 8-9 hours afterwards. Sometimes they pop into the mind like a bolt from the blue, others times they settle in like water flowing into a tarn, filling every tiny crack and crevice in the bed of the lake. These ideas and thoughts follow this watery analogy in their clarity.

After meditating I had a strong realization that the tools are still all there for me to figure out how to heal this illness, I just need to start all over again with a different methodology. My recent resignation to suffer on, is more born out from six years of constant disappointments, but it is the busy thoughts fed by stress that strengthen this lethargy. It is truly exhausting to keep trying to figure this out, but at the same time it's just as exhausting to sit back and do nothing.

In my conversations with the group prior to the meditation, I'd mentioned The Wim Hof Method as an example of the proof of mind over matter. It occurred to me that as I tried his breathing and cold water therapy for a short period during my elemental diet treatment, maybe I should give this remarkable method a chance long term.

I was first made aware of the Wim Hof Method by @redrica who used it to help with depression and promote mental health awareness. Check out her crazy Vlogs where she jumped in the Thames every day for a month:

https://steemit.com/@redrica/2l9ilcbz

The Wim Hof method is a combination of meditation, a specific yoga breathing technique and cold water immersion. This combination is proven to activate the sympathetic nervous system and stimulate the innate immune response in humans, check that link for the scientific study! When I was very sick during the elemental diet, I followed the breathing and cold water immersion for four days and it seemed to make me feel moderately better each day.

I also realized through the meditation process and in the hours after when my mind was quieter than normal, how important it is to carry mindfulness into everyday life. It is all very well having these wonderful meditative experiences for thirty minutes, but the goal for me is to increase this clarity of thought during the in-between times. I realized it's not about not thinking, if you were in that state 24/7 you would get nothing done. Rather it's about that background presence that Eckhart Tolle talks about...

This is that 'nothing' feeling that you get when meditating, but if you can allow it to exist in the background in your day to day, then it is so much easier to keep clarity of thought. It's hard to explain, I've felt that state of deep joy and acceptance before in my life, where I have complete control of my thoughts and an inner calm. Part of what I want to allow/find/accept into my life, is that state of presence in the endless moment. This, along with active methods such as Wim Hof and healthy diet, are what I think will be key in my journey to heal. I've nothing left to lose as I've tried every medical treatment and exclusion diet known to man... now it's time to try something new.

All this from a 30 minute meditation session!

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If you would like to join in the meditation sessions in the @naturalmedicine discord channel, they are on Wednesday and Saturday, details below.

• Wednesdays 8:30 to 9:30 pm London time

• Saturdays 5:30 to 7:00pm London time

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All images are creative commons, links to accreditation 1 2 3. Quote pictures were made by me using GIMP open source photo editing software. If you have enjoyed this post, you can check out similar work on my homepage @raj808. Thank you.