lotusinthemud

11 tips from 11 years sick

What I’ve learned from 11 years of chronic illness.

Published on May 29, 2012 by Toni Bernhard, J.D. in Turning Straw Into Gold

A year ago, I posted a piece titled, “10 Tips from 10 Years Sick.” Well, a year has gone by and I’m still sick. So, I’ve re-visited that post, changing some of the tips and adding to others. And, of course, there are now 11 tips, not 10! At the end of the post, I hope you’ll share your own experiences.

1. The onset of chronic illness or pain is the beginning of a grieving process.

I could have weathered the first three stages of the grieving process—denial, anger, sadness—with a lot more grace had I known that grief is a natural response to a sudden, unexpected change in health. But I didn’t know. The onset of chronic pain or illness is a major life event. Looking back on what happened to me, now it seems obvious that losing my ability to freely function would trigger denial, anger, and sadness. But it took me many years to understand this and, until I did, I wasn’t able to come close to touching that fourth stage of grief: acceptance.

:: link to article here

amida at sukhavati house, london

You are welcome to visit and to attend any courses.

Here is their new website - have a look through it for details

porridge for breakfast (and thoughts on micro-productivity) - from michael

I've been reading Michael's blog, listening to his podcasts and reading his charming books for a number of years. Michael, who has M.E., as do I, is so good at maintaining a life of creativity around his limited energy. Today he writes:

Last week was a busy week.

As well as running the Get The One Thing a Day Habit course for the first time I was working hard on getting some sample pages ready for the book I’m working on for Perigee Books.

I thought I’d planned things well, leaving myself plenty of time for rest and recuperation, but problems with my home Internet connection meant that I had to go to town everyday to upload material for the course and the book and do all the other things that I rely on having a connection to the web for (most of what I do!).

Being forced to focus

At the beginning of the week I really enjoyed my trips to town. I was forced to focus, carefully planning and fitting everything I needed to do into the couple of hours I was in town for. Making (I thought) the very best use of my time.

falafel burgers recipe - Recipes - BBC Good Food

Falafel burgers recipe - Recipes - BBC Good Food.

transforming our terror

Here's Vishvapani's interview with Christopher Titmuss:

As the Iraq war waged meditation teacher Christopher Titmuss wrote Transforming our Terror, exploring the response to 9/11 and the drive to war: ‘They decided that the way to combat their fear was to hit out.’ Vishvapani met him in Totnes to discuss the book and Buddhist responses in a time of war

Christopher greeted me at his house in Totnes, southwest England, in a large black hat, long black raincoat, and trailing black scarf. A senior teacher in the Insight Meditation movement, Christopher is without the cool reserve of some of his contemporaries. In Buddhist circles he has dispensed with his surname and now prefers to be known simply as Christopher. He has large, friendly eyes and an immediately engaging manner. Engagement is one of his themes. ‘I recently told one Dharma group, ‘I think I prefer Moslems to Buddhists. At least they have some fire, some passion …’. It was a provocative way of saying that I think Buddhists can be so ‘nice’, and so passive.’

We met to discuss a book Christopher had published in 2002 in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, called Transforming Our Terror: a spiritual approach to making sense of senseless tragedy. ‘I have been visiting the US for 25 years, but mainly just to lead retreats. So the America I encounter is the American mind. And I noticed that after 9/11 there was a great deal more fear and anxiety among the people I was teaching. I started to ask myself, what can Buddhist practice say to this experience?’

The result is an enquiry into the nature of fear, grief, loss, and how the human mind processes and makes sense of them.

:: continue reading here