While I’m sitting on the train from Denmark where I visited my brother and his family to Hamburg, Germany, where my parents live (and I was born and raised) and I’m looking at the Danish landscape flying by, I reflect on healing and brainwaves.
My brother lives with his family outside a small city in Denmark. From their house, you can see the Fjord and it’s a 15-minute walk through fields and along a creek to the large inlet. Already on my first visit two years ago, I noticed how quiet it was. It’s not super remote and there are cars passing regularly. But it’s just not this constant noise, I’m used to living in the middle of a large city. I sometimes wonder if I could deal with the quiet if I had it every day. Probably but it depends on where it is. Also, I’m not ready to leave the city.
Healing
I’m touring Europe. If you’re interested, you can see and read about it on Instagram where I posted extensively about my trip to the Balkans, Germany, France and Denmark. I’m travelling on my own – I left the kids in Australia with their dad. So, I have a lot of time to observe and reflect. I can see how easily stressed I still am although it’s getting better. I can see how my eczema skin is healing but still keeps also flaming up. I feel there is deeper healing but on the surface, I keep being stressed and easily too excited.
The relaxation needs to get through a lot of layers but doesn’t reach them all. Things like parenting, daily chores and annoying routines are gone. But some sorrows are not easily offloaded, emotions still need to be processed and travelling causes a few new stresses. The good thing is that I can now see all these better because of the break from everyday life challenges.
My plan is to finally heal my body. For the last three years, I’ve been working my way up through decades of too much stress leading to depression, eating disorders, excruciating eczema, fatigue and cancer. Disconnection from my body kept me in an unhealthy lifestyle full of sugar, alcohol, cigarettes, coffee and not enough rest and nutrients. I also felt that I had to take responsibility for everything and, if I just tried hard enough, I could do everything. Until I learnt that I couldn’t and started to go on the healing journey.
Brainwaves
I have come far with my healing journey and regained energy and joy. My skin is much better but still flames up a lot and hasn’t healed properly in 25 years. I’ve experimented with food and breathing. I’m moving a lot (owning no car ensures regular exercise). I saw an acupuncturist regularly and I’ve let go of a lot including my apartment.
Now, I feel, it’s up to my mind. That mind is still too noisy and anxious. It’s easily stressed and hard to calm down. I think I need to spend more time in alpha or theta. What? Brainwaves!
Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/brain-waves
We function in frequencies. Our brain works with electrical impulses often in combination with chemical reactions. If we are awake and active, our brain runs on a certain frequency (yes, like a radio) which is called Beta. We get into Alpha when we meditate, daydream, exercise or do meditative stuff like crochet, gardening or drawing. I watched my dad rake leaves in the garden. He did it very slowly and thoroughly – meditative. I think I went into the alpha brainwave frequency just watching him.
Meditation?
I have decided that I need more Alpha and possibly Theta in my life. Those are healing states when there is no danger (from sabre tooth tigers, deadlines or parenting challenges) and the mind can tune it down a knot and let the body and brain heal and consolidate. In those states, we can access intuition and subconsciousness which provide a huge amount of information important to enrich our tunnel view of right or wrong, bad or good perspective.
So, how can I get myself into Alpha? I guess, I need a meditation routine. It’s absolutely possible without meditating but since I struggle to let go of Beta, I know that I should work with long meditations. Meditating is hard for me because I believe I have no time. What could be a better indicator for my still too-high stress level than believing that I don’t have time to meditate for 15 to 20 minutes? When I then get myself to meditate, I need to tell myself “just a bit longer, you can do a bit longer”. My busy self gets stressed and feels that I should now get on with my life. When I get myself to meditate at least for a few days, it does have a benefit on my crappy sleep and skin. Those 15 minutes don’t do a lot but it’s still something.
The plan
So, my plan is to get myself to meditate for AN HOUR. EVERY DAY. So scary! I need to scale myself up slowly. An hour of meditation almost frightens me. But I’m hoping that all the alpha waves get me better through the day, lower my general stress level and help me to heal the rest of the eczema. And it’s definitely a step towards more happiness (don’t worry, I don’t suggest that you meditate for an hour unless you wish to do so).
Do you have meditation practices? Let me know.