When The Body Just Goes Weird
 |
I have been thinking about how to address this. I had a return of my symptoms 2 days ago. I’d like to be able to not block off what is happening but also not draw much energy or attention to it. Nobody can solve it, or really do anything. But it helps me to think out loud.
I feel like I am no longer on any known map of my own body, like everything is just so alien.
My skin feels like it has dry ice beneath it; My bones hurt, every cell hurts, my stomach lining feels like a bruise, and I haven’t had any appetite in weeks. I can chew and swallow but I can’t understand why I’m doing it exactly. Now, as of an hour ago, I have an ear infection, which is unheard of. I feel like microscopic, I don’t know, little things, are crawling on my skin and scalp, and now and again, the feeling of a giant sledgehammer hitting me on the side of my head joins the whole experience, then goes away again. Arms are once again centers of pain—upper arms.
I don’t want to open this up to a dialogue about healing modalities even though I know everybody is full of love as well as profound knowledge here. But this is something that has transcended everything, including: A fast, the best nutrition, every imaginable detox remedy, for weeks on end, it only gets worse.
If I tell the story of how much money I got rid of chasing feeling better I will be in a bad mood and you will think I’m an idiot.
I just keep thinking: “None if it matters.” And really, it doesn’t.
One good thing I did this morning was I tried to listen to Wim Hof again and put my shoulders and later, head, under really cold water. I did feel better.
Before I got sick, I was getting into Wim Hof, both the breathing and the cold showers and I felt great.
My old friend Tom DiFerdinando has just shown up like a miracle next to my lawn chair. He drove 4 hours to get here, to see if he could help me.
He is a pain, injury, trauma therapist—Reich influenced.
I will write again hopefully later tonight.
I would imagine the lifetime of stress you have been under to be a speaker of truth has affected your physical body's ability to stay well. Every body has weaknesses that the stressors of the world tip into becoming actualized; the acute stress of this moment in our world, and being someone who sees and speaks truth, as much as you can try to keep yourself well, I think the subconscious body copes with more than we realize. Wim Hof, I appreciate what he is doing and also I wonder if it is one size fits in the way he seems to believe. I don't think anything is. I wonder if the cold helps a person who spends a lot of their life in the colder realities of the world. What if warmth (warm emotions, warm bathing) is what your body needs? Definitely breath work, but maybe with warmth, instead of cold? Just a thought. My body tips into asthma from emotional stress, and deep sadness and grief and fear about the world, for me Wim Hof fast breathing and cold are not helpful; slower, calmer breathing, and warmth, are. I think if a person ate a junk food diet but they were a pretty happy go lucky person who did not hold on to stress/worry/sadness/fear or focus much on those worldly realties, their health would probably be much better than someone who ate all organic food but carried a lot of stress and sadness. A body might do better with a mind that didn't focus on the horrors of the world; I don't think deeply caring minds were really made for this world, it's too much to cope with if you see it. It might be that your work in the world -- work that people like me appreciate more than I can ever say -- is harming you, because it's just so much to hold in the body all the time. I am just saying this from my experience, of a lifetime of focusing on all the awful things, because they are real, but feeling how my physical body over time shows me the stress it causes. I think the physical body really needs a good amount of pleasure to stay well, and to recover. This would be Reichian, I think. At least in, the importance of the release in orgasm, or however one achieves pleasure and sensory release in a world which currently wants to cast eros so far away we don't any longer remember what it means to feel pleasure. It's interesting you mention Reich, because he gave us a lot of reasoning as to why we are here, in this eros-free scientific world of sterility and injections and covering of senses. But then, in our own lives, if our own bodies and lives mirror that repression and denial of pleasure, it's important that we reassess, otherwise the power structures have infiltrated our lives even while we rally against them. I appreciate your voice so much, but if it is at the expense of your bodily well being, something has to change for you.
Thank you for describing so honestly the loss of oneself. It happens with illness but also with age. Again you manage to put in words what noone dares to. Being within a skin and flesh one doesn't identify with anymore. I lost my body to a neurological issue in 2014. My perceptions were wrecked, giving me false information about everything. I lost sphincter control. I couldn't walk anymore. I lost 16kg because I couldn't swallow. And it got worse with menopause. I use to say "with age one looses first one's skin, then one's bones and finally one's mind". Understanding the weirdness of being trapped in a body which is impossible to recognize and use for both one's benefit and others (and feel proud of) helps me today feel infinite compassion for aging and handicapped people. When I look at my 98 year old, silent, heavily cataracted eyes'mother, I now just try to connect with the soul trapped in there... and she smiles...