Illness as Meditation
ending burnout in your practice
Winter 2022
“Illness could be a western form of meditation” r remen md.
It has been nearly 30 years of practice in my own life both professionally and personally to gather the gravity and momentum to sit still in my own “uncomfortable.” My own uncomfortable minds meanderings about what reflections I casted out to the world, to those I loved, my colleagues and importantly to the patients who would come to sit on my treatment table. I had a moment of nearing burnout. Giving in and moving on about 7 years into practice….And then, the rooted question came.
AM I ENOUGH?
We see ourselves different don’t we.
We want to believe our best intentions forward though the Divine in us, our True Nature is layered under our Second Nature: Our Personality. This personality created through our perceived-learned-personal reality in a conditioned state.
It is through this awareness that offers the golden opportunity to see our side as it is real in its reflected brilliance to the world about us. It does ask us the most salient question of:
Am I Enough?
I believe this is may be a root of our suffering that tracks us into burnout in our professions.
Burnout fo Physiotherapists is 5 years on average and we exit stage left.
If we want to re imagine our work and re instill the earliest notions of why we came to the practice. It is Beginners mind on refresh.
It is encountered-conversation with awareness that this uncomfortable inquiry becomes resolved and the experience we sow turns to wisdom, to a pain free existence through the shedding of a shadow self that had said:
I was never enough. (we depersonalize our patient interactions, are unmotivated, emotionally-physically exhausted)
In our daily practice of becoming more experienced we listen to the voices and how they shape a lifes narrative. It is a moment to moment reflection woven into the fabric of:
“I need to do more.”
“I need to be better.”
“I need to be needed.”
“I am not enough.”
There is little space to heal in those shadowy statements. Nary a place to let pain mend its way around the bends in our lives to flow effortlessly upon the heartbeat of living a fully expressive life. “A whol-istic Lifehood.”
These waterways that bear our unfolding stories float ourselves into a boundless and limitless encounter with needy-ness we are to seek outside of ourselves. When we are “Aware” of this we find a pathway to health and healing. We find through the threading of unconscious subroutines of our thoughts that express the sameness, our Noro’s yarn of consciousness becomes the foundation for a re-woven fully texturized life ahead. We re-mend our own true tapestry.
In these meditations of awareness the lightness and bearable nature of Love heals spontaneously: Heals the addiction we have to pain and suffering. Heals the unconscious thoughts that manifest illness in our corporeal natured selves. It is a door that closes shut-hard-lasting to the world of impossibility. By taking that step over the threshold of an unknown path, we “will” fill ourselves with delightful possibilities ahead.
Notions of: Can’t do, Won’t do, Never could, shoulda-woulda-coulda’s will be replaced by I shall, I will, I can.
Joe Dispenza,1 the motivating Neuroscientist says we move from:
Philosopher to Initiate to Master
from
Knowledge, Experience to Wisdom.
from
Thinking, to being, to doing into mind-body-soul
Where my burnout was cast away.
Rachel Remen, MD2 is the foremother of mindbody medicine. In the 70’s she would be selected as part of a small handful of physicians (from Stanford) who would venture to Esalen Institute to begin conversations of these deep connections of holistic medicine and how our mind-scape affects our healing trajectory. Little did she know that experience pivoted her into the beginnings of a new way of pointing out into a deep listening practice of medicine.
She has spent her whole life’s career from that point forward to teach how to listen genuinely to another’s story and masterfully she weaves health and healing in Deep Presence for the other. Today it is called Narrative Medicine. Her presence is grounded in the moment to moment existence that says, she is right there with you. I know this because she held my hands and looked me right in the eyes with a great smile and offered blessings and thanks for being in the workshop with her. She told me we should always leave each other with “blessings” for without the existence and acknowledgement and presence of another we are left alone to our own devices in this cruel world. Blessings.
Nothing existed but her and I in that moment. That is Grounded Presence. Not another word needs to be said, just the sensations of being seen and understood in that one slice of existence. I existed in whole. I was transformed in that short few minutes I was with her.
When Rachel speaks of illness as meditation she s noting her own suffering of her bowel disease (Crohns) and the multitudes of surgeries in her young adult life to attempt to ameliorate her disease. Early on she was offered a bleak outcome. She transformed her life, became a mindbody physician to the chronically ill and an author, educator to thousands of medical students and most importantly her own investigator into her own illness and pathway to healing.
I have never forgotten her eyes and how she touched deeply into my soul and met me, her hands soft and warm and gentle and her beaming smile and her soulful eyes behind these large rimmed glasses. That was a healing moment for me as a person and as a practitioner.
I n q u i r y
To escape burnout in our practice we will find ourselves in newer and richer territory to meet each souls needs: To meet our own.
Find mentors. Studying with the experts and masterful teachers in our noted and ancillary professions is part of a complex prescription to building the wisdom in your practice, and at the heart of your practice is this mindset to seek out others to understand the ways in which we can show up at the table, on the floor side by side in tandem with those we are charged with.
Reach out for support, “ask” for help in the small and seemingly inconsequential and the rather largeness of it all.
Ask Questions. Lots of questions until you find some understanding.
Stay sharp and curious and ask the questions of the heart, for the answers will never fail you. We are enough in those moments and often times see that we are much more. Limitless and unbounded. That is an antidote to Burnout.
If you find “At The Heart of a Wise Practice” enjoyable and useful to your endeavors, please subscribe and donate to support my efforts in helping you engage in these discussions with your extended circles professionally and interpersonally. Blessings
Book References for Dr. Joe Dispenza. Being Supernatural and Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself.
Book Reference for Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen. Kitchen Table Wisdom and My Grandfathers Blessings.