4 minute read
ENERGY + HEALING
ENERGY AND HEALING:
Connecting My Strength to Energy
Iwas diagnosed with Muscular Dystrophy in August of 2020. After about fifteen years of worrying my legs did not work the way they should, the diagnosis almost gave me relief. Almost.
I remember how the silence expanded to fill the room after the doctor said, “You may be in a wheelchair in five years, or you might be exactly the same as you are now for a very long time.” Because of the rarity of Oculopharyngeal Muscular
Dystrophy (OPMD), he declined to give me odds or even hazard a guess on my future abilities. The zoom appointment ended with him saying medicine could do nothing for me. Go live my life and come back when it wasn’t possible anymore. It felt so dismissive, like snapping a book shut. Nothing to see here, move along.
As a yoga and meditation teacher and Reiki practitioner, I’ve seen how powerful these practices can be for healing. So when I received my diagnosis, you’d think I’d instantly lean into them for support. Nope. I instead alternated between freaking out and ignoring the diagnosis all together. Eventually I landed squarely in the panic zone and got quite good at feeling sorry for myseIf.
It took months for me to realize what the constant stress and anxiety did to both my body and my mind. My symptoms progressed much faster than I anticipated, I wasn’t sleeping well, and it started to be a struggle to feel happy. Always on high alert, I looked for signs of the disease. Every day my legs felt like lead, every time I smacked into yet another wall of fatigue — it felt like another battle lost.
I started to sense how choosing to focus on the effects of OPMD closed me off to the energy around me. By constantly battling my disease, I battled myself. It took a long time to see all the sneaky, subtle ways I fed into these cycles of negativity. How my inner dialogue obsessively cataloged all the ways my body failed me. How I let the need to slow down and rest become signs of weakness instead of acts of self care. While so busy trying to keep up physically, I didn’t allow myself to slow down mentally. Even my meditations had an agenda. I focused on what I wanted instead of allowing for what was present.
BY SANDY BARRY (SHE/HER)
A year after my diagnosis, I sat again in meditation. Spinning in all the loops became habitual for me. A quiet voice said very clearly, “my strength does not come from my body.” The spinning stopped and I listened harder and I heard it again …
My strength does not come from my body.
I felt a subtle shift as I considered what strength really meant to me, why the lack of it made me feel so desperate and sad. What would my life be like if I broke with the stagnant patterns of energy I surrounded myself with and embraced a strength unrelated with the power of my legs? What might it feel like physically to orient my everyday choices with this optimistic energy?
And then I saw myself walking up to this amazing ocean of abundant energy with a teacup … then a bucket … then a pipeline … Until finally I just walked right in.
When I choose to focus on the good and the joy in my life instead of the presence of OPMD, I not only can feel the flow of energy around me, I can become it. Within this energy, I am sustained, nurtured, and whole. There are no battles to be fought, just peace.
I still wake up every day with a chronic, progressive disease — and it no longer defines me. I use yoga and meditation to cultivate the habit of paying attention to my thoughts.
The energy my thoughts and emotions carry is tangible. When I mind my thoughts, I am better aware of what I say and what I do. Aligning my words and actions with the energy I want in my life opened me to endless possibilities for happiness and connection with the people and the world around me. It is such a relief to be in this space of conscious, positive flow.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Some days I’m physically drained and fear tries to sneak back in to mess with my head – she can be a persistent little bugger. But when I allow myself to face my fear while connected to the bountiful presence of energy surrounding me, fear doesn’t stand a chance. +
