Onwards and Upwards No. 4
Hello healing team,
I hope this update finds you well.
After my last visit to see the nutty professor (Spencer), it appears that I don’t have any more doctors appointments until January. So my focus for now is to recuperate from the Stem Cell Transplant, and improve the strength in my right shoulder. With very little consideration, and given the crap year we have had, Sarah and I decided that the best place for me to recover was on the road!! So we hooked up the caravan, stole the kids out of school and ‘flew the coup’.
We are now Day 6 of a six week road trip. Yay!! We got on the road with all of the grey nomads and Swedish backpackers and headed off West. In short, we will follow the coast all the way to Adelaide, head up to the Flinders Ranges, cut across Central NSW to Sydney, then swing back down the east coast landing back in Melbourne on the 23rd December. We get back just in time for the family to arrive for Christmas, and with enough time for me to get to Myer at 11:30pm on the 24th to get Sarah a perfectly timed Christmas present. I welcome any of your ideas on nice places to visit while we are travelling, or nice Christmas gifts I can get Sarah upon our return.
Today we find ourselves in Mount Gambier, having already stayed in Warrnambool and Cape Bridgewater, and done day trips to the Twelve Apostles, Portland and Nelson. We plan to stay in each place for 2-4 nights so that we balance the jobs of packing up/down the caravan Vs driving too far on any given day. It also gives me plenty of time to rest when my body / temple tells me I need rest. I find meditation helps me to supercharge my rest times and I also find that it helps me better understand what is going on in my body. Whether I have 10 minutes or an hour, travelling in a car or sitting on my bed, I find I can do some beneficial meditation.
I started doing meditations for several reasons:
- all of the Wellness and Conquering Cancer books suggest meditation is the primary pillar to Wellness;
- Professor of Integrative Medicine Prof. Avni Sali advised that meditation is one of his primary pillars of wellness;
- Much of the Eastern world routinely does meditation for wellness as one of their primary pillars of wellness.
…………….so who am I to argue?
I recently attended a meditation clinic with Naturopath and Wellness professional Lisa Jolly (https://www.facebook.com/oneskywellbeing). She explains the benefits of meditation as something like this; Your mind is like a spiral that becomes tightly bound, and if bound too tight, can manifesting itself as stress that can effect us mentally, emotionally and physically. Symptoms of this can include feelings of anxiety or of being overwhelmed, or physiological issues including elevated blood pressure, headaches, backaches, shortness of breath etc. For many of us, that spiral gets too tight, and has too many layers of stress. Meditation allows you to actively remove tension from that spiral providing more tolerance to deal with daily challenges and life challenges.
Before I understood meditation, I thought that sleep or relaxing in front of the TV was how I got my best down time. However, it was put to me that ‘sleep is a parked car with the engine running whereas meditation is a parked car with the engine off’. In my experience, meditation is more than just rest. It gives you the opportunity, while resting, to focus on what’s going on in your body. To get in touch with the feelings you are experiencing in your body, but often overlook or ignore. If you are aware of those feelings you can address them. If you don’t acknowledge them, you tend to store them away so they add tension to your life spiral. Quoting from the book Happy for No Good Reason (http://www.shivayoga.org.au/happy/) “the outer world effects us. By working on the inner world we develop independence and strength so that we can return to peace or happiness no matter what happens on the outside.”
Rereading what I have written above, I feel like a bit of a w@nker. Twelve months ago, I would never have written this, let alone send it to hundreds 😉 of my closest friends. The reason why I have put it out there is because I have found meditation beneficial to my health. Strong influential people throughout history have benefited from meditation. You can too if you give it a go……….assuming you are not doing it already.
Take care
Geoff
