Well my health has really been poor since I was sick earlier. Normally stresses like rent, PMS, and the usual personal crises I'm accustomed to for many years are now becoming way out of scale to usual. Regardless of the validity of my concerns, of course, you know how health can always worsen things if it's not in order. Well, I'm reluctant to mention any health achievements because sometimes when I've mentioned things on here about how a health problem was resolved, the resolution went away the second it was posted and never came back. But I've been experimenting a little with posting things like that with this caveat as well that I hope it will remain so, and there's no guarantee that it will considering this strange issue of posting it taking away the health upgrade. So yeah, that all said, here's what's going on.
I think due to liver exhaustion (which isn't serious or my doctor would have called me in concern about my liver test lately), I'm overall just exhausted and low energy and just finding it so hard to recover overall just after I was sick before. Because that cold cascaded into a number of problematic issues with medications I had to take (plus I made the mistkae of drinking and having too much sodium in my diet), so this all escalated into a big health crisis. It seems the sodium stuff is not serious anymore, although I'm still trying to limit my sodium even more. But all things considered, it seems to be my liver. That said, there was also sleep problems that had been happening since winter holidays, and only recently did I start making some progress there, by taking melatonin and really really trying to force myself to sleep at a routine time. And somedays that's been wonderful.
As for mental health going along with all this, work was forcing me out of socializing with friends, and so I took it upon myself to force the issue of socializing with a friend once a week. As much as I fear money reprocussions right now when my business is suffering so much, I decided to make it a priority or else I could tell, life's problems would become out of perspective in my mind. Already this has been really paying off to do it. Yang's birthday happened and I was honoured he wanted to spend his special day with me, and another dear friend Bryce came by and worked on my motorhome, which was really helpful emotionally. Then also I have coffee with Nicky tomorrow and I know how that's going to be (a little piece of heaven as always with Nicky, who is a poet at heart). Plus just eating more raw foods, vegetables, and limiting sodium.
Well that's about all I can do for now, but there's also the option of going on a liver cleanse. To do that I have to remove all sugars (even honey etc) and wheats though, and I'm at a bit of a loss in a way for how to do that considering I'm mildly hypoglycemic and do rely on carbs a certain way. I think oats might work, but I dunno, I admit I don't feel like eating plain oats that much (lol). I'm reluctant actually to cleanse, but I'm starting to feel like that's the only option going forward if I want to feel like myself again. So not at all looking forward to this, but when I get a chance and can afford it, I guess I'll buy the wild rose cleanse or something more tuned to the liver and see what I can do.
Sometimes I do question my mental health a little bit, but thankfully, searching myself, I concluded that it's nothing actually serious — it's just that sometimes things feel so serious but they might not be all that bad more in perspective. I researched what I was going through and that was the main way to figure it out, but I also talked to another dear friend of mine on facebook who was currently in the mental ward of the hospital, newly diagnosed with skizoeffective bipolar disorder :( He's always been a very free, open, honest and expressive person, and he continued in this way from the hospital.
He shared on facebook so many examples of just what kinds of things were going through his head and how the doctors were defining it. I thought I could do a better job exploring the meanings of these experiences for him but then again, it was obviously true he needed immediate help getting grounded out as he was like obviously on a trip that coudln't be tamed. He was just unable to be reasoned with at that point. Just a really calm voice, cool environment, good casual comforts, and a dear friend's insights, wouldn't even have cut it for the poor guy to stop this kind of uncontrollable level of extreme exploration of his spiritual notions and dramatic fears. His fears were just getting the best of him, not just sometimes but in every moment — as a thing that was causing him to be unable to put a sentence together without chaotic diversions in the middle of any thought, into more threatening scary stuff he thinks of.
This really provided me with some insight into my own spiritual experiences with intuition and my own fears and worries, as that has played into it. Cosmic or spiritual drama, the sense of haters after you, all these kinds of categories of thought — they obviously feel like they have more power when the body is exhausted and major stresses like money problems are pushing your psyche. Negative things in life are actually true and do have their importance, but just balancing the positive and negative perceptions in your mind is always an artform that I feel has a lot to do not only with physical self-care but also skills in expanding upon your insights of any positive or negative quality. For me, i'm witnessing myself when I'm in crisis and viewing such a series of skills that I have which my friend doesn't have, and I'm seeing how that's related with Ayahuasca.
My background in psychedelic plant medicine hasn't just been experimental in journeying with fun plants. It has involved vegetalismo, the practice of connecting in very deep traditional practice with certain non-psychedelic healing teacher plants known to the Shipibo-Conibo Amazonian traditions of Ayahuasca healing. What I've realized many times is that each master plant I've worked with is, as if, like whispering into my ear on the super micro level whenever a thought comes up for me of any kind. They provide solid insight, breakdowns, additional context, beautiful artistic perspecrive, toolsets and skills, room to emotionally breathe, and constructive pathways of creation towards higher goals, all on a hyper-micro level of thought, to enrich every thought I have.
I witness my friend's thoughts, as he describes them in real time as they happen. I have similar thoughts like that although I picture it as a different concept myself but it's comparable — it's just that for me, I'm thinking so much more about how to categorize and work with those thoughts, etc etc. It's phenomenal actually when I think back on my friend's background in the past, how much he's shared, and imagine what kinds of healing teachings I would have offered him all these years to help build resilience to his psyche, if I had known it was going to escalate for him to the mental ward like this later. I'd have so much rich insight to provide. I see how valuable that is sometimes. And that's inspired me to think about offering more continued resources on things like spiritual sensitivity and intuition, the sense of negative spiritual or psychic influence, and just intrusive horrible thoughts.
Traditionally, Ayahausca medicine culture has a very different way of picturing the meaning of these kinds of thought elements. It dates back of course for thousands of years in South America as a larger cultural phenomenon. I always know other cultures and parts of the world are the missing link for healing in our North American bubble. So sometime I have ideas for how I'd love to expand on stuff like that ...... when I'm feeling better. But I just haven't been feeling that well lately, and at the moment, I'm just struggling to continue making visual art and do writing to go with that, so I'll just keep working on myself. It's probably for the best if when I offer advice of a psychological nature anyway, that it be coming from a more stronger time for me emotionally anyhow. I don't want to act as though the only way to work out your shit is to help others work out theirs. Sometimes you have to just work on yourself. But it's just nice to know that I'm OK in the mental health department.
I'd say things are like in a high risk period, but the sunshine and positive people around me, and little steps towards physical improvement, must be the track to getting back to normal again.
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