Cross-Training Body Mind Emotions Spirit | Rachael R. Resch

I’m very happy to report I’m now medically stable.  What a relief.  I’m no longer afraid to sleep for fear of not being able to breathe.  Yesterday, I spent the whole day out of bed!  I can talk now, but I sound like a funny, chipmunkish, Marlon Brando-esque squeaky frog.

Last night, I was awake again for several hours speeding on prednisone.  I listened to the music in my head.  The Beatles sang “All You Need Is Love.”  I did the “Body, I Love You” practice with difficulty.  Monkey-mind and prednisone are are great, mutually distracting playmates.

I practiced in a new way.

I said, “Grief, I love you.”

Each time I said, “Grief, I love you,” my shoulder blades immediately warmed and filled with the energy of attention, and the warmth wrapped around through the bones of my chest, clavicles, sternum and ribs, then seeped into my lungs and heart.

Today, I began doing the Nia Five Stages of Self-Healing movement practice on my bed.  The Five Stages of Self-Healing is based on the developmental movements we all did as infants and kids.

Until now, I’ve been afraid I couldn’t breathe well enough in a horizontal position to attempt the practice.  When the body is horizontal, the lungs must work harder because gravity makes the chest and ribs weigh more.  (Of course, now I realize that I could’ve modified the practice and done it vertically.)

As I began, I felt fear.  I felt afraid to move.

Over the last three weeks, although everything has been very body-centered, out of necessity with my breathing so limited, I have done only the most basic movements: eat, rest, pee.  I have been doing the vast majority of my moving in the energetic realms.  I was shocked to realize how still I’ve been physically.

I wept.   I felt afraid I couldn’t do the Five Stages.  I felt didn’t deserve to exist on the face of the planet.

Then something said, “Sense and feel, don’t think.”

I entered into the practice of Embryonic.  I wept, then I played and explored.  Delicious.  I was surprised by how much I could do and how much vitality was there waiting for me!

Over the last three weeks, everything has been so very serious — life and death and all that.  What a blessing it is now to feel the spirit of play come in.  What a blessing it is now to feel room in my body for some freedom.

Grieve, Play, Love, Fear, Peace.  This body is a gift.

(Fourth in a series about healing pneumonia and asthma.)