Resting & Healing

I have had an interesting journey with resting and healing. As a high energy person, I have had to train myself to rest. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely LOVE resting and sleeping, I just have a very active mind and she is always thinking about the next thing to do. Once I am engaged in a task, I can be incredibly focused and quiet. Watching me paint or read, one might think I am good at resting but in these instances my mind is extremely active.

I am talking about resting the mind and the body. The fact that I have learned to quiet my mind and reign my body in too, is quite an achievement for me.

Five weeks ago I woke up feeling as though I had literally been run over by a bus. I had gone to bed feeling quite healthy the night before and I had woken up feeling shocking. My body felt ravaged – as though I hadn’t slept for a week and had just finished a marathon. On top of this, I felt as if there was a huge weight on my chest, or a compression around my lungs – I was struggling to breathe. Getting up to go to the bathroom proved really challenging as I was out of breath by the time I reached my en-suite bathroom.

I immediately put it down to seasonal allergies. My relocation form South Africa to England had only been official for 6 months by then and this is my first full blown spring here. Thinking back on the previous week, I remembered all the times that I stood inside the branches of the trees heavily laden with blossoms and breathed. I also looked around my house at the 5 vases of daffodils and decided that perhaps the daffodils were best kept outdoors.

Within one hour of waking, I started to cough a dry cough that simply would not subside, my struggle to breathe became worse and my extreme exhaustion was now accompanied by a raging fever. I was also lying on the couch contemplating a nap.

Suddenly I felt nervous. What if I had Covid-19? The fear wasn’t about the virus itself as such as I have a strong body and immune system and I have fought off many viruses in my time. My fear was more about the fact that I had been in contact with people with compromised systems. A good friend of mine is a kidney transplant survivor and her son (my step son) is an asthma sufferer.

My mind kicked into response mode and I started by taking my temperature – I had a fever. Next I decided to use the NHS online 111 service for Covid-19. This is a very useful service. If you live in the UK, go here: https://111.nhs.uk/covid-19/

The result of this online questionnaire was that there was a 90% probability that I had the illness and that I should stay at home, hydrate and take bed rest as well as remain in isolated quarantine for a minimum of 7 days. It also said that if I had been in contact with any other family member in the past week that they should remain in isolated quarantine for the next 14 days. My other step son (no asthma) had been at the house the previous day.

I had been shopping the day before which meant that we had full grocery cupboards and fridge but also that I had possibly shared this virus around town. My husband was involved in the process from here on, via telephone as he is on lock down at work in Afghanistan. He mobilised his eldest son to come back to me to quarantine, so as not to put his mum and brother at risk. He also issued very strict home care and lock down instructions to his younger son and his mum. I received strict instructions to go to bed and stay there.

So yes, NHS, my husband and common sense were all in alignment with the message to rest and recover. My body was getting on board with these extreme symptoms making me feel worse and worse with every minute that passed. I went to bed.

For the first time in a very long time, this was easy. I went back to bed and slept. A few hours later I woke up drenched from my fever, went to the loo and then went back to sleep. Later I managed to move from the bed to the couch, where I watched a movie and then proceeded to fall asleep again. When I woke up later, I went upstairs and slept through the night and late into the next day. Then I repeated the previous day’s ‘activities’.

Sleep came easy for me and 5 hour naps felt like 15 minute naps and I quickly became ready to sleep again. Getting up and down the stairs was a true test. I would take a few stairs and have to rest up against the wall if I was going down. If I was going up, it would be two or three stairs and then I would have to sit down to catch my breath before attempting the next few stairs. This process had me feeling VERY emotional. I would sit on the stairs and have a little cry. I would cry for my own extreme physical weakness and I would cry for the compromised and elderly because I could not imagine feeling even worse than this, to the point of needing a ventilator.

The fever brought some incredible dreams to my sleep time, yet I could not recall them when I woke up. My appetite wasn’t affected but I slept through many mealtimes. When I was awake I made a point of making smoothies full of good fresh ingredients, drinking lots of lemon, honey and ginger with turmeric and cinnamon as an anti-inflammatory and fever fighter and I tried to stay connected with my work. All I could manage in that time though, was a couple of dial-in meditations online and keeping up my posts on social media.

I didn’t tell anyone about the fact that I was ill. On the one hand I definitely did not want to worry my family and friends who were far away in South Africa. I also did not want to talk about illness constantly as I was trying to stay focused on my business and other positive themes in order to aid my own healing. In addition to this though I felt guilty for being sick. It was such a weird feeling – that because I am strong and fit and healthy, I shouldn’t have contracted this virus. I also have a keen interest in the metaphysical angle on illness and especially viruses and so I wanted the chance to get in touch with my own emotions and process in order to understand why I had become ill.

On day 5 of this cycle of sleep, fever and internal struggle, I woke up feeling so much better! I thought I was over it and decided that since I was so healthy and fit, it obviously didn’t affect me for too long. I did a short yoga flow that morning and within half an hour of that I felt worse than I had in the preceding days! I lay down on the couch and slept again just 2 hours after waking up. This was the day I decided to tell my daughter that I was sick. I also told one other friend here in England – deciding that perhaps some positive energy coming my way would be good and helpful.

The symptoms continued for another week. The first thing to subside was the cough – thankfully as I have a very low tolerance for coughing and I haven’t often had a cough, so I was driving myself crazy with it. The fever was particularly sticky. It would flare at random times during the first 9 days, reminding me to go back to bed and sleep again. The exhaustion and compromised breathing lingered for ages. 5 weeks later and my lungs still don’t feel back to their full capacity.

The intense illness lasted for two weeks, with an additional week thereafter where I wasn’t able to go for an exercise walk or do yoga. The fever flared on and off for 10 days. The exhaustion lasted a full month and even now as I go into week 6, I am still needing more sleep than usual and taking more breaks then I would usually have done before. I have managed to get back to my exercise walks and yoga but it has been a slow return as my body has felt so weak in the wake of this illness.

I re-learned some very valuable lessons during this time. My work is all about self-love, self-awareness and building self-worth. My work is also all about the power of our physical bodies to process this life. Our bodies do so much more than we give them credit for. Our emotions and intelligence and motivation all sit within our physical selves. Connecting to, listening to and obeying our physical bodies is such a powerful tool as it is through our physical that we experience life and our bodies are our barometers.

I remembered the importance of sleep. I remembered the importance of rest. I remembered the importance of acceptance. I remembered the power of humility. I remembered the power of each and every individual in society. I remembered the power of community. I remembered to listen to my own needs. I remembered that my needs must come first if I am to have anything to share with the world. I share this in my work every day but I had to remember this for myself.

I am speaking about it with people now that I feel like I am over it. Not to focus on the pain or the drama of it but to stay in my truth. In one of these chats, a good friend of mine in South Africa urged me to write about it for the sake of others. So here is my story, should you need it. I still don’t want to focus energy on illness but I have been reminded of the importance of sharing – even if it is just for the sake of information.

Remember the power of your mind though. Remember the power of your emotions. You may hold all the information in the world but you create your reality every day in every way. I needed the rest. I needed to come to terms with some of my own demons. I needed to level up and when I wasn’t taking enough down time to do all of this, my body got sick. She helped me out. She brought me to a place of vulnerability and weakness so that I could no longer focus on everything else, I had to face the stuff that needed facing in order for me to grow to the next level of me.

I salute everyone, everywhere fighting illness whether in their own bodies or in the bodies of others. This is not just a physical fight, it is a fight on the emotional, psychological and ethereal planes. Stay strong, stay positive and believe for the best outcome always.

Life has a way of working herself out – even when it makes no sense to us.