I have been on a healing path for a long time.
Coping with a chronic illness and finding what would assist me to both cope and to forward healing, has been my main focus. Its also been the cause of my awakening to a deeper spirituality. Finding a personal understanding of what Life means to me and what my purpose is.
This is my story.....
Initially i took ill in my late teens with what turned out to be a fatigue condition called ME or Chronic Fatigue immune dysfunction syndrome. A collection of symptoms, largely characterised by extreme exhaustion, while also in my experience affecting the endocrine and autonomic nervous systems.
I had always loved sport, dancing, and school and it was there in 1990 that i picked up a throat virus, within a matter of months these things i loved, became extremely difficult and after a year impossible to continue with.
It appeared that i never fully recovered from the virus and went on to develop exhaustion which affected me so much that even sitting up or talking to people in my home was too much. I was dependant on care from my family and i was kept me from being able to be out of bed for some 12 years.
I would liken it to having your battery taken out, thus trying to live without a supply of energy.
Which makes so many ordinary things like washing and eating difficult and so much more of the fun stuff, simply impossible.
I spent a lot of time unable to do anything at all, other than lie and just be. Almost like a very long meditation retreat but combined with feeling very ill. Isolated from normal life, gives you time to reflect and severe illness tends to cause you to seek answers to life's deeper questions. Or at least it did me.
I discovered far more than i ever imagined i could at the start.I think when we open our heart and mind and ask, things tend to come to us. Bit by bit i have followed my intuition, read and learnt about what God or Love means to me.
Increasingly i would turn to my heart over my head, as a way to find strength comfort and some peacefulness amidst the fear.
I came to a holistic approach to healing, one where to recover my health became possible. I came to understand what healing means in terms of finding the dis-ease on whatever level/s it originates, and restoring balance through releasing, or changing it at the cause.
Over the years i have gradually learnt about my emotional health, my spiritual beliefs, my conscious and sub conscious thinking and my physical symptoms and how all these influence one another. Within this, there has also been periods of such confusion, as to how best to play my part in trying to get better. I have also experienced a lot of anxiety and stress. There have been some extremely difficult times physically and emotionally, ones i look back on and wonder how i made it through.
In recent years i experienced improvement and was able to get out a bit, though it has been quite up and down in the last few years and i have had time back in bed. I always follow where i need to go, in order to recover further, i continue to hold the belief that healing is always occuring every day and we can do things to enhance this, as well as understand what causes contribute to the pattern of dis-ease. At the moment my capabilities and energy level is quite low, but keeping my blog is my way of expressing and being a part of a wider world than just my home life.
My experiences of the last 20 yrs have shown me that there is always much more to things than at first may seem, so i seek never to judge others, or myself harshly. its fantastic to be empowered to know that you can make a difference to your health, but that must be taken in balance with the path your life needs to follow. One that we cannot always understand with the mind but can often intuit with the heart.
Surprisingly good things can happen even amidst the most bad, i find that there is always a reason, and a way to be found through suffering into greater ease or lightness of Being, and that we are Divinely cared about.
There is a Universal force within all life, always seeking to assist us. It is LOVE and its power is beyond conditions.
Healing as a journey, i find, is a balance of opposites, of surrendering and being empowered.
Of making somethings happen and of a deep allowing of what is, to be.
Of finding answers and our own way forward combined with trusting when we cannot see the light
that a higher part of us can, and is guiding us in the right direction
I read a quote by Steven Levine once, that said,
"Illness can either take you further away, or closer to, your true nature."
And i feel closer and more of who i am, for despite the limitations i have lived with
- i have also gained freedoms.
For this and other aspects of my life i am very grateful.
kat x
Past blog enteries on my health can be found under My healing journey
and reflections under Listening to my heart
Healing list of books (in process of adding these)
Healing into life and death - Stephen Levine
The Fragrant Heavens - Valerie Ann Worwood
Love without conditions - Paul Ferrani
The Barn Dance - James F Twyman
Reinventing the body resurrecting the soul - Deepak Chopra
i get self help or spiritual books online at www.cygnus-books.co.uk
I use a little device called an Em-wave
for heart coherance & stress relief
If you're in the Uk, I got mine from here
please also see my natural beauty and holistic healing page
and peace spirituality and positive change page
