Are You Listening?
Listen for, and trust, the small internal voice that says this may work - I will try it.
I thought I had good intuition. It was great for making decisions for my children, identifying when someone I cared about needed help of some kind, or deciding whether or not a situation felt safe. But, I was not using my intuition to help myself. Not only was I not using it, I could not even hear it.
The first time that I really started to show up for myself, and listen to own quiet voice was when I was unsuccessful in finding a solution to my chronic back pain. The back pain had come on all of a sudden when I was 43 and was a jumping off point for much of what followed in the next decade. I will refer to it often in the posts here. I had sustained no injury, had no accident, and had no health problems of any kind.
In seeking solutions for the pain, I started with conventional medicine. The details of that nearly two year journey are not important, but what is important is that there was no apparent cause for the pain, and that nothing - including prescription pain killers and back injections - gave me any relief from the pain. What I know now is that it was a huge wake up call from my body that I was out of balance, and it was showing up physically.
I started feeling hopeless and frustrated about finding a solution, and I was so angry that this was happening to me. This pain was like a living thing and was affecting every single aspect of my life. In spite of all these feelings, there was a piece of me that thought - there has to be a solution. I am too young and healthy for this. This is no way to live.
A friend of mine mentioned in passing that she had taken a Bikram yoga class and that she really liked it. This stuck with me - maybe because I had never heard of it. I looked up the studio and called and spoke with the owner. He assured me that the program was designed for healing; particularly for back strength and flexibility; I was intrigued and thought I will give it a try.
It was REALLY HARD and UNCOMFORTABLE and I could not do many of the poses. It was also completely different from anything I had tried before, and looking back I think I stuck with it mainly because it WAS so different and so challenging. If you are not familiar with Bikram, it is practiced in a room heated to 103 degrees, and is a 90 minute class comprised of 26 poses and two breathing exercises, each done twice, in the same sequence in every class. I went once a week for a couple of months and my back definitely felt better. After 6 months I knew it was making a big difference. I did it every week for the next 7 years, and then did an alternate form for about another year.
I showed up every single week because the healing felt so tentative; that if I stopped the class the back pain would come back roaring back; after all, it was the only thing that had worked. I could also tell that I was making progress - I was getting stronger and the class no longer felt so strenuous. Taking those classes led me to a massage therapist who offered her services at the studio, and she mentioned a chiropractor whom she called a healer. He became the missing piece in my physical wellness and I am still his patient.
As I moved along my healing journey I have learned to listen carefully to myself, and to outside sources of wisdom. I have gotten really good at paying attention to my own physical body and mental state, and the information it is giving me. I actively seek out new information and when I hear something that resonates with me, I literally take a note. My best resource is podcasts, although books come in a close second. What I know now is that if something catches my attention, or sounds interesting/innovative/sensible/helpful/insightful, I pay attention.
What is your small, still voice saying? Can you get quiet enough to hear it? Are you paying attention to information that comes your way? Are you exposing yourself to new information, particularly if you are trying to solve a problem? Does an idea resonate, give you pause? That is a sure sign that it is worth pursuing.
