An Introduction

Four years ago, I took a very dramatic detour in my life through the experience of total physical collapse. I'd been driving myself around in life with the accelerator to the floor, brakes fully engaged, running on gas fumes and dangerously low on oil. Falling into the abyss of total dysfunction was not a surprise, but that didn't make it any less of a rude awakening when I suddenly realized that my vehicle (my body) would no longer get me to where I was pushing it to go.

I remember thinking while in the middle of the worst of it, how I just didn't know that a body could do the things that my body was doing. I didn't realize how much dysfunction a person could really experience in their own form. I lost the ability to adapt to even the simplest things such as sound, light, changes in temperature, smells, electronic devices and appliances, many foods and even reading words on a page. My body would start to shut down and black out when faced with the most basic outside stimulation. To say that I felt unsafe in my body would be an understatement. I felt on the verge of dying at almost every moment and I knew that there was nothing medicine could do for me. I didn't believe that I would have survived a trip to the hospital in the first place.

I had been trying a holistic approach to "get well" for over a decade. I knew I wasn't well and I was throwing supplements, dietary modifications, rest, meditative devices and a "positive" mindset at my body to no avail. Traditional doctors couldn't find anything wrong with me and told me it was "just anxiety" or "all in my head". Holistic doctors just told me that I needed this supplement or test or to rest more. Everything I had been applying to the problem was just a band-aid. The wound within was festering and seeping outward, only to be denied, shamed and repeatedly covered up. My body was communicating a message that I wasn't able to understand through my mind but on a deeper level, I longed for stillness and the serenity of this very moment. It wanted me to meet myself exactly where I was but I was too busy running from my past into a future that I was afraid to face.

Life will call you to yourself through any means necessary to get you to wake up and pay attention. I wasn't listening and I was too afraid to let go into myself, so life pushed me into a free fall where I had no footing underneath me and I had no choice but to surrender. It was the most important experience of my life and I don't regret what had to happen. I certainly don't want to repeat it but I see how very necessary and purposeful it was. It destroyed who I thought I was and forced me to be present to myself in ways I couldn't do before. I lost my ability to control my body, I lost my job, my independence, my friendships, my freedom, my confidence, my certainty, my sense of safety, my ability to communicate and engage with people and my ability to escape what I didn't want to face. My body was so sensitive that I could no longer even daydream without starting to black out. I learned how to tune out my racing mind when my body became the ultimate biofeedback machine. I didn't realize it at the time but in looking back, I can see how that time helped me to understand the fundamentals of how to feed the mind. Whatever you focus on, grows and expands. Too much focus on the past or future drains the body's energy reserves and feeds the stress response.

My awakening has felt more like a thawing from a deep freeze. I continue to unfold in stages. I've gone from thinking this was my journey of physical healing where I would finally "get there" to realizing that it's always just been a journey to myself where there is no end because I am an infinite spark, endlessly expanding. This blog is meant to give me space to express and share as I move more deeply into my own expansion.