Hema Werner
Hello folks! This is Hema. It has been over a year since we released the last issue of the Seeds of Awareness. The other day I came across my article I Love to Eat in one of our previous issues. It begins with the sentence “I have always had a complex relationship with food.”
Well, during the past two years my relationship with food got even more complicated.
Almost two years ago, on Halloween night, I woke up with a terrible pain in my upper chest. The pain was unbearable, felt almost worse than the pain of childbirth, as far as I could remember. After trying deep breathing and baking soda, I called -up my Naturopath around 2a.m. From the nature of the pain, she thought it sounded like a gallbladder problem, but of course she told me to go to the nearest emergency room (ER) to get checked out.
Talking to her convinced me that I was not having a heart attack. The pain subsided a little. I was afraid to go to the ER: I did not want my gallbladder removed in the middle of the night. Besides I did not want to wake up my sleeping boy and haul him into the car. So we choose to just pray, and wait until daybreak. After sending our son off to school next morning we headed to the Urgent care. There I had an EKG, and a series of blood tests. To make a long story short, it turned out to be a case of Acid Reflux, in other words, GERD (Gastro-Esophageal Reflux Disease) where the stomach produces too much acid which then creeps back into the esophagus.
Thus began a new phase, (a phase transition rather) in my complex relationship with food.
A series of visits to regular doctors (M.D.s) and irregular doctors (Naturopaths) followed. The M.D.s prescribed a series of antacids and proton pump inhibitors to reduce the production of stomach acid and recommended a few lifestyle changes. The N.D.s prescribed a variety of herbs to soothe and heal the GI track — digestive enzymes, Aloe Juice, Slippery Elm, Deglycyrrhizinated Licorice (DGL), Turmeric, Coral Calcium, and recommended a few lifestyle changes.
The lifestyle changes were all sensible things to do:
I tried all of these hoping to find that magic pill or move that will make the illness go away and each of these seemed to help to a limited extent. Yet on some level I knew that there was something going on deep within me that needed to be healed.
The symptoms continued to get worse and were compounded by my fear of what the excess stomach acid might be doing to the esophageal lining. After about a year of this daily digestive drama, I was afraid to eat. I was not able to eat anything hard — not even toast and apples. I could eat only soft, mushy and bland foods and I was taking 8-10 pills with each meal to help digest what I was eating. Yet I experienced pain every night which kept me awake at night.
It is not easy to live on a diet of bananas and rice, sweet potatoes and soy milk. Though I was grateful I was able to eat some food, I was afraid to eat any real food (e.g. something flavorful like a vegetable stir-fry). Everything I could eat was sweet — my body craved the other five tastes: salty, sour pungent, bitter and astringent. I was constantly hungry and thinking about food all the time. I was loosing weight, and felt weak and sometimes dizzy during the day. I found it difficult to be a good mother and partner. I felt groggy and irritable and would loose my temper easily. All this because my stomach had forgotten how to regulate its acid production? I sometimes marvelled at how something so normal as digestion, something we routinely take for granted can so profoundly affect our psycho-physiology.
So, with all this drama taking place on the physical and emotional planes, I found it difficult to meditate and exercise regularly. (I would often sit down to meditate only to doze off). I could only pray.
So I prayed a lot. Many friends and relatives prayed for me. I affirmed to myself that I am worthy of healing; that I deserve to feel healthy and vibrant. I prayed for healing to manifest in my body, mind and spirit. I also tried massage, Reiki, and Jin Shin Jyutsu treatments which for me were meditative experiences.
I slowly came to the realization that stress was the root cause, that unprocessed emotional turbulence had manifested in the form of disease. So I learnt not to ignore pain and dismiss stressful situations. Just as physical pain is a sign to pay attention to our physical body, so is emotional pain a signal to give attention to our heart-mind (emotional body). Just as we say “ouch my belly aches” and take steps to heal the pain so it is wise to say “ooh, my heart aches” and take time to heal the fear and hurt.
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“The ability to digest fully the experiences presented to us at any moment is the key to good health. When we are able to extract the nourishment we need and leave the rest behind, we create balance and integrity in mind and body.” - Dr. David Simon |
Stress happens in everybody’s life. But when we get too busy to acknowledge stress and do not take the time to process toxic experiences, they manifest as disease in our body-minds. Conversely, when we nourish our bodies and minds with attention and awareness, with empowering and healing experiences, we enhance our physical and emotional well-being and bring more balance and harmony into our lives. I have believed in this mind-body connection to healing for years but perhaps now I know it beyond belief.
Healing has been elusive, but has been happening slowly. I am now able to enjoy eating some ‘real’ food. I am learning to be more present in my body, pay attention to my emotional aches and pains listen and process fears and anxieties as they arise, rather than dismissing them as distractions. When Challenges arise I am ever so slowly learning to let go of control and surrender to what is.
I am gradually shifting my focus from doing and accomplishing things to being peaceful and at-ease in body, heart and mind.One of my favorite bedtime affirmations is “I create peacefulness in my mind, my body reflects this peacefulness as perfect health”.
Hema Werner, Ph.D. is a freelance writer, editor, and teacher. She has been studying and practicing various forms of meditation for the past ten years. She teaches a weekly meditation class at the Gentle Strength Co-op.
We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
- T. S. Eliot
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