I'm grateful for so much tangible love and support flowing in from each of you. Makes me smile often.
At the end of my second week here, I'm immersed in growing relationships with friends who are here to take a look at their life patterns and their health. Serious diagnoses reflect processes. They are complex and intricate. This awareness makes for vulnerability and beautiful honesty. Like Sam, a 23 year old man who suffered a stroke and is trying to recover the use of his arm and Iva, a writer from Lebanon who has become a laughter companion as well as a deeply intuitive friend. Iva, George and I got a case of the uncontrollable giggles during a very important lecture recently. Ah, medicine!!
There is so much offered here, it's overwhelming. I receive IV treatments and consultation on bloodwork with nurses and doctors, oxygen chambers, Vitamin D therapy, to mention a few.... Then there are therapies galore, some which just arent for me, and others that seem to be created just for me. There's something for each type of personality, even the woman I met in the wheatgrass juice bar who had her makeup tattooed on her face so she'd always look made up. I was wondering how she managed to put her makeup on so early in the morning.
I am specifically working with an Old Brazilian Transformational Breathwork Instructor and a QiGOng Doctor as well as a nurse focusing on the Lymph system and available counseling on demand. I've had to miss many lectures for my sanity and pace, and even so, it's a full time effort. The breath work and QiGong have passed my expectations. I leave those sessions stunned and with much to think about and integrate.
Our routine has been to head to the pool before bed where we do infrared saunas and then take the polar bear plunge 7 times, sitting in a hot pool for 15 minutes, then plunging together into the icy water for 15 seconds. It tends to be a group effort. Since Chinese Medicine refers to cancer as stagnation, the hot/cold plunge wakes the body from stagnancy, and just makes me feel incredible. I'm pretty proud when I manage to walk into the icy pool with determination, and with a community of others screaming and hooting and hollering.
On a personal note, I find that about every third day a kind of darkness descends, and I struggle with all of my fears and the unknown, and I get very, very crabby. Those days are pretty rough. I think often of RUMI's poem, "the Guest House" on those days. It has been consistent, though, that if I wait these out, I wake with a fresh sense of possibility in the morning.
A little more than a week to go, and already I'm sad to know It will soon be time for the next steps, whatever they are.
Here's Rumi's poem:
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they are a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice. meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes. because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.
— Jellaludin Rumi, translation by Coleman Barks