The Body Awakening

Chances are you are on the path of enlightenment or awakening to your path, purpose, and soul-led life if you're reading this blog. My spiritual awakening is the subject of my first book, due to be published this year, but there was something missing.

The surgeon in the mask explored my forehead with his fingers. "Hmm, this will not be a standard biopsy," as he asked the surgical nurses to hand him the portable ultrasound machine that explored my forehead again. After interminable minutes, he made eye contact.

"It's your call. We may get what we need for a diagnosis, but there's a chance I won't find a sample vein I can cut. Both sides are blocked up and you'll have a scar on your forehead for nothing."

I looked at him intensely and said I didn't care about the scar on my face. "I really want to know what I have. What does your gut say?"

"Do it."

"Then let's do it," and he administered the anaesthetic.

"You'll feel a pinch and then a small radiating pain," and that was exactly what it felt like.

It was January 2026. For six weeks, I suffered with icepick headaches, a sore jaw, fatigue, and a feeling that I was revisiting my autoimmune disease from 2017. It felt the same–lack of appetite, the feeling I was sick, rapid weight loss–but I couldn't account for a cough, my very sore neck, and those headaches that felt like ice picks were targeting my head in sharp jabs every few minutes.

After a C.A.T. scan, the results for sarcoidosis were negative. I continued to gulp down painkillers like candy, every 4 hours for over a month until I got my definitive diagnosis. It was Giant Cell Arteritis. No, not arthritis, but it's related somehow.

The following week felt like a blur of urgent appointments, with steroids prescribed and a referral to a rheumatologist an hour's drive away, but I was grateful. If my doctor hadn't talked with me, we might not have discovered the vital clue to what I had as soon as we did. The clue was I thought I should go see my dentist because my jaw was incredibly sore.

My doctor's eyes lit up. "I know what you might have," and spoke with a specialist surgeon that night to consult with him, then sent a prescription to my pharmacist for steroids. Within three hours of taking the steroids, my headaches suddenly stopped. The critical phases of a disease and its diagnosis are essential for progressing towards effective treatment and eventual recovery; however, as I've previously mentioned, the path to wellness involves more than simply administering medication.

The something missing was a much deeper awareness of my body and its function with the other major parts: soul and spirit. For a moment I felt euphoric; I didn't die, and I could have. This disease, if not caught in time, can cause a fatal stroke and blindness. Reality hit me like another whack to the head, literally. The disease gave me the amazing gift of finally including my body in the triumvirate of spirit and soul working together. My body felt trapped behind steel bars and needed a new lane toward the body awakening I could see ahead of me.

If you are a high-performing athlete or, like my friend who feels everything in her body first, you know about listening to your body. I didn't. I discounted by body thinking it was just a necessary house for my spirit and soul because it functioned moderately well until it didn't. Everybody gets something eventually, I reasoned, but this disease could have killed me. Listening to my body was first on my list of changes.

I started a food journal and recorded everything I ate, and then began asking my body what it needed every time I ate, and it responded. For the first time in a very long time, I felt my body's contentment after a meal or snack. Next, I began writing in my personal journal again. This year, I was determined to apply all the healing knowledge I gained from my mystical transformation to my physical transformation and wrote this question: What was the healing I needed, and where did I feel it in my body? There were outstanding issues to deal with.

My body guided me as I heard its voice more clearly. This was difficult, as the medication made me feel like my insides were playing a multi-level and chaotic ping-pong game. I couldn't sit down for long before attending to the list. You know, the list of things to do that was piling up in my head. The list was the reason for going through my entire house, cleaning, updating, and reorganizing as I went until my body screamed at me to stop. I was pushing myself again and not paying attention to the opportunity and healing of recuperation–eat, breathe, sleep, and break larger jobs into smaller parts to accomplish daily. That worked well, but I had to remind myself many times not to push my recovery.

Before my diagnosis, I did not thrive. I survived. What would it take for me to thrive physically throughout my recuperation? Here's my list from my journal:

Meditate daily, breathwork daily, eat what my body wants to eat, ground when I need to, maintain healthy boundaries, create a vision for my body, deal with any outstanding issues of any kind, don't exercise until body says it's ready, and no pushing myself allowed. My body also said no refined sugar and processed foods, and yes to limited bread/wheat, rice in small amounts, lots of calcium-rich foods, vegetables, almonds, walnuts, figs, dates, and seaweed.

My body awakening was not quite up and running yet. Sure, I was losing weight and awakening to its pleasures, its wisdom, its healing. I have a feeling there's so much more my body was patiently waiting to teach me. For now, I was told to stay present and mindful and concentrate on one day at a time. I looked for inspiration everywhere: three lines in a poem by Mary Oliver nailed it.

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

 Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese”, Dreamwork, (Grove Press, New York), p.14