12 March 2020: Spiritual and energetic healing practices really help me get through difficult nights. I am grateful to my wonderful somatic coach, Vanissar Tarakali. She gave me a wonderful ritual to direct energy and compassion towards the parts of my body that have been cut open and poked about. This complements the unconscious natural processes.
It’s hard to get through the nights
It’s two weeks since my surgery. I’m completely off the pain medication, and my pelvic area is more tender and achy than really sore.
But deeper down I am disturbed. I often feel weak and weepy, scared, vulnerable and tired. I am up every hour or two at night to pee. After that I tend to lie awake and feel bad.
On top of that, yesterday it was really sore passing urine until a lump of blood came out. At low times the voice in my head says “all this effort and discomfort – and all I can look forward to is getting back to a bit less than I was.”
The way ahead at night looks like a long tunnel just getting darker and darker.
Healing and immune boosting touch
Vanissar’s immune boosting and healing ritual is one thing I can hold onto during those sleepless scared patches in the night. It’s about resting my own healing touch on the parts of my abdomen that have been cut and bruised, and breathing energy and love into them.
There’s a lovely hand-over-hand cycle. It starts at the groin and moves progressively up, more or less in tandem with the chakras, guided by Vanissar’s biological map plus my own intuitive sense of where it hurts and needs care.
More body, less mind. Hand over hand, breathing energy in circuits through my body. Hand over hand, sending love to the cauterised flesh. Hand over hand, inviting new growth amongst the scarring.
Here’s another way to put it. When I breathe deeply, accept my current situation, and consciously direct my care and attention inwards, it feels good.
Peace spreads. My fears don’t go away, but they subside a little.
Daytime healing priorities
During the days, I am getting used to prioritising healing and close family time over work “out there.” It’s getting easier to say “No.” Also that spiritual fogginess is starting to clear a little with resuming daily yoga on our lawn. This morning we were back to our full 30-minute morning yoga set. During the yoga I can feel the post-operative sticky cramped feeling in my body and soul begin to clear.
I have learned that a lot of the pain in my abdomen comes from the carbon dioxide gas used during surgery. They pump it in to inflate the belly and push organs out of the way while performing miracle surgery deep inside me. It’s a low ache rather than a sharp pain, and I suppose it is much better than using scalpels or hard clamps to clear space.
Walking, yoga and healthy eating in the days, healing touch at night are helping me through.
July 2021 note: It’s nearly a year and a half later, and the physical aches and pains are long gone. And I still use this healing practice to help me through those nights that turn out to be particularly dark.
I think this aspect of recovery from cancer is often not given much importance yet my feeling is that it is critical. I felt very betrayed by my body. I felt I had taken good care – ate well, exercised, didn’t smoke and generally had a very “healthy ” lifestyle – and yet , here I was facing cancer and the unknown . It took awhile to get beyond that. That is when I took up yoga at a small studio recommended by a friend. It helped me get back in tune with my body and not only forgive it but be grateful to it for getting me through surgery and chemo.I feel yoga saved my life in many ways.
I led a healing hands meditation in my (online) yoga class today – then Mish, who was in the class, reminded me of this post. The meditation uses hand rubbing, breath of fire and holding a ball of energy between our palms to focus and become more aware of the ways we can bring our attention to our prana, our life energy, and use if for healing – ourselves or another. It’s a powerful tool with many versions and applications. Mish used it effectively and still does when needed.
One of the ways I’ve been able to support Mish’s healing and our closeness has been through physical and energetic touch in different ways. We’ll come back to it later in the story.
This post and the yoga today reminded me of the last time I was able to visit my mother in June 2019, before the pandemic. She had a stiff neck and back, a fairly permanent feature of her aged body (that was a few weeks before her 96th birthday!). I arrived with a nasty eye, ear and bronchial infection. We took turns using our healing hands on each other. She had been trained in healing touch energy therapy when she volunteered at a hospice – this is not a physical touch but a focusing of energy through the healer’s hands as she passes them over the person needing healing. She was able to do this for me and express her love in this way. I expressed my love through both physical and energetic touch on her stiff muscles. It was a close bonding time for us.