I am in the last day of a three-day juice detoxification process, recommended by my beloved Jubi, who is also my live-in functional medicine physician.
I ache as though I have a low-grade flu.
The inner voice that complains about the aching needs a mind shift. Here goes:
My pain today is the natural and desired result of, first, living a life of accumulating toxins and, now, deciding to detoxify. The pain is simply the felt experience of poisons leaving my body, an experience I have chosen out of my evolving consciousness and self-love.
It is time to abandon the notion that it is punishment, and embrace the notion that I was doing the best I knew how (and could) for 65 years, and now I know something else as better and possible.
In this sense, this pain is the literal consequence of expanding consciousness.
So, I celebrate it.
As Peter O’Toole’s Lawrence of Arabia noted about tolerating pain, “the trick is not to mind.”
So, this is both a literal description of my embodied present experience, but also a metaphor, a pointer toward many forms of self-care. If, for example, I have been slothful lately, then my first excursion back into working out will cause some pain, often described as “the pain of weakness leaving the body.” If I have not done any stretching exercises in a month, or a year, or a lifetime, my first serious re-entry into stretching may be painful, until it is not. If I have not sat on my zafu in a while, my untrained consciousness may experience some unease as I renter my zazen practice.
Self-care can sometimes result in inconvenience, discomfort, or even pain.
The trick is not only to not mind, but to be grateful.
“I am loving myself. Thank you.”