Meditation is generally considered to be A Good Thing, especially for those who have some sort of chronic illness, and there are now many studies that show assorted positive effects from regular meditation.
Meditation tends to lower or normalize the blood pressure, pulse rate, and the levels of stress hormones in the blood. It produces changes in brain-wave patterns, showing less excitability [...] Meditation also raises the pain threshold and reduces one’s biological age [...] In short, it reduces wear and tear on both body and mind, helping people live better and longer. Bernie Siegel, ‘Love, Medicine and Miracles‘
Sounds like a good thing, right? My psychologist thought so too, and suggested I start to meditate. He suggested it quite a lot of times, actually! I kept trying to meditate and finding that it just wasn’t working … either I’d fall asleep while doing it, or I’d end up feeling more pain and fatigue than when I’d started. It seemed like instead of re-charging me it was just using up precious mental and physical energy that I really needed to use for survival.
Recently I was talking to Frank Albrecht (Frank has a child with CFS, and also works as a psychiatrist) by email and he said that he’d found a similar thing:
Already found you can’t use meditation with worn out people, it takes too much energy and they
need to use what they have for other purposes. Frank Albrecht
However, the idea of meditation – giving you a chance to slow down and take a spiritual “deep breath” from the world – seems like a good thing for us with chronic illness. I might not do much physically but I do tend to fill up my time nonetheless, unless I’m really too sick I tend to be listening to the radio, or reading, or whatever, almost all the time.
Since the ‘Real Thing’ didn’t seem to be working – I couldn’t regularly meditate – I went about finding some alternatives to meditation … these are the things that I came up with:
- Playing some quiet baroque music, stuff like Pachabel’s Canon or The Four Seasons which is fairly repetitive and well known. Put the music on endless repeat if you can. The important part is really listening to the music. Don’t do anything else, just curl up somewhere comfortable, in an easy chair or in bed or whatever, and listen to it.
- There are tapes which are designed to ‘slow down your brain’ and encourage the sort of alpha-rhythm brain-waves that meditation brings. I’ve got one called Sound Medicine: Music For Healing that sounds very peaceful, I don’t know if it really does what it claims to for brain waves, but it’s nice to listen to!
- A third option is one of the tapes of nature sounds – bird-calls from a rain-forest or whale calls or something like that. Sometimes they have soft music woven around the natural stuff, and sometimes not, but they seem very calming. I often play this one just for background.
- Spending some time – five minutes or however long you like – just looking out the window and watching the garden. Don’t think too much if you can help it, just watch the flowers and leaves bobbing in the wind, and watching any birds or bees or other creatures that are there.
- Doing some progressive relaxation exercises. This is almost the same as the ‘bodyscan’ meditation that I learned, except it’s simpler and takes less concentration so I find it less exhausting. It’s also a good thing to help you get to sleep.
These things are similar to meditating but not the same. I have heard from many people who are chronically ill and can’t meditate but can manage one or more of these exercises and find them calming or even energising.
A note from Jenn Vespermann:
When I was trying to meditate, I found that I was using some of my brain activity to suppress (the awareness of) the chronic pain of CFS.
The act of meditation shut down the parts of the brain which were suppressing the awareness of pain – thus, meditation *HURT* and I couldn’t explain why. (not until I figured out what I was doing)
Meditation for me, therefore, involves becoming aware of the pain, accepting the pain, and trying to meditate *THROUGH* intense pain. Needless to say, this is very difficult and hardly relaxing.
Other people with CFS may find the same thing – meditation hurts and they can’t explain why. This is my explanation.
This makes sense to me, but it’s not the only thing going on. I am very aware of strong pain when I try to meditate – I usually dissociate the pain away but the meditation means I have to be aware and not dissociate. But I think there’s something else in my brain that makes it hard to meditate. Perhaps it’s just psychological – it doesn’t really matter I don’t think. The important part is to find something that calms the mind and works for me.
- Ricky Buchanan
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