Meditation for chronic illness has myriad physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual benefits. Did you know that you can help to heal your vagus nerve with meditation? Meditation reduces cortisol and epinephrine in the body, chemicals that lower immunity over time. Brain research confirms that meditating even for a few minutes per day makes a significant difference in your ability to cope, in resilience, in your quality of sleep, and in your stress response.
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Table of Contents
What is meditation?
Meditation is the act of bringing your attention to one thing, whether that is focusing on your breath, repeating a mantra, following someone’s voice in a guided meditation, walking a labyrinth, or chanting a sacred word or phrase, to name but a few examples.
What stops you from trying meditation for chronic illness?
The barriers to meditating in our fast-paced world can be daunting, including feeling you don’t have the time, not having a space to do it, and not knowing how to start. And if you have a chronic illness you might feel like you can’t fit one more thing into your life. But meditation can actually be part of what makes you feel better. And once you start a meditation practice you are halfway there!
Here are some tips to help you start and maintain a meditation practice:
- Prepare a dedicated space in your home/room where you will always meditate. Have the cushions or whatever you need set up, so you don’t have to do anything but sit or lie down there. By consistently meditating in the same place every day, you begin to create an energetic imprint that makes meditation easier. It doesn’t have to be fancy, just functional.
- Set a consistent time to meditate, a time during the day when it is most likely for you to be able to meditate regularly and stick to that time. Studies show that if you repeat an activity for 40 consecutive days, it becomes a habit in your life. Don’t beat yourself up if you miss a day. Start again tomorrow.
- If you pair the act of meditating with another activity that is already part of your daily routine it will more easily become something that you do automatically. For example, if you do yoga at a certain time each morning, go straight from that activity that is already part of your routine to your meditation space. By doing those two activities in succession over time you build the neural “pathway” in your mind liking the two activities, making it easier to transition to meditation with less mental work.
- Choose a style of meditation that works for you. There are many ways to meditate, and if you don’t have a chosen style, try different styles.
There are myriad ways to practice meditation for chronic illness
Choose whichever methods work for you:
- Gently focus on the breath;
- Silently repeat a mantra or seed sound. For instance, “OM,” or “Love is all around me”;
- Center your attention on a certain part of your body, for instance, your heart. Watch whatever quality you notice there with curiosity. Does it change over time?
- Use guided meditation audio recordings. You can find many different kinds on the Internet;
- Chant aloud one of the many names of God, such as Yahweh, Allah, Jehovah, etc.;
- Listen to sounds and audio tracks specially created to foster a meditative state, such as binaural beats. Look Online for audio meditation recordings that encourage mental qualities such as concentration.
- Walk a labyrinth, engage in mindful candle gazing for a few minutes, or practice mindful eating.
- Here is a list of helpful Apps:
- Calm app – for sleep, meditation, and relaxation
- Omvana – access to meditation sounds, music, and guided meditations
- Headspace app – a guide to mindfulness
- Insight Timer – cultivate peace of mind, improve sleep, and manage stress
- Relax Melodies – sounds, music, and meditations free on the Apple App store
- Omvana – access to meditation sounds, music, and guided meditations
- Calm app – for sleep, meditation, and relaxation
Do what works for your body
Once you have found a meditation style that works for you, stick with it. Don’t sweat the details. If it works for you to meditate lying down, do it that way (but try not to fall asleep). If it works to be in a certain yoga pose, do it that way. Find a comfortable position that works for you and stick with it. Many meditation guides insist that you need to sit upright to meditate properly. But if you have chronic pain and if it means you will be uncomfortable — and therefore discourage you from meditating — it doesn’t make sense for you!
The bucket theory
The bucket theory offers a helpful analogy for understanding symptom reactions with MCAS.
Think of your body as an empty bucket that you want to keep from overflowing. Different foods and activities fill your histamine bucket at different speeds but they combine to form the total level of histamine in your body (how full your bucket is). A fuller bucket means you have more histamine symptoms. When you manage triggers, reduce exposure to known triggers, and take medications and supplements to reduce histamine, you can manage the level of your bucket.
Know your typical symptom progression
Knowing your symptom progression in a symptom flare is the key to developing your own rescue plan. In this post, I discuss how to determine your own symptom progression. Once you know what typically happens in your symptom progression you can design a rescue plan to address those symptoms.
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Be kind to yourself when practicing meditation for chronic illness
Dawson Church, EFT practitioner, author of Bliss Brain, and the founder of Eco Meditation, suggests that the most important work of meditation is acknowledging that you got distracted and consciously shifting your mind back to focus. Our minds evolved the Default Mode Network to watch for distractions for survival, but having constant vigilance against predators makes for undue stress and anxiety in our modern culture.
Meditation is the practice of continually retraining your mind to return to focus after it inevitably shifts into its accustomed practice of scanning for threats. The act of returning your mind again and again to focus builds the neural pathways in your brain for meditation. Don’t beat yourself up if you are constantly sliding away from focus! Just give yourself some grace and try again!
Mindfulness meditation for chronic illness
Brain science has proven the benefits of meditating — for brain health, relationships, mental health, longevity, blood pressure, and so many other things. The traditional Buddhist practice of mindfulness meditation (sati) is a type of meditation that has been explored in psychological studies discussing implications for the brain and relationships. One study on meditation found that mindfulness created more self-control. Other research found that meditation fosters “less reactivity in relationships” and revealed that meditation enhances executive control as correlated with emotional acceptance.
Using meditation for chronic illness to cope with difficulty
Sometimes it’s not possible to avoid negative events, people, or energies. It is good to be prepared with an inner skill such as meditation to foster resilience because unpleasant events will happen. One such meditative technique is to practice going to your “happy place.”
When you meditate, imagine being in a place that is safe, supportive, and loving. Feel how safe you are in this place. Feel how you can be yourself in that space. See the surroundings (forest, beach, etc.) and experience it with all your senses.
Go to this place daily in meditation. Then practice going to this place when you are at the dentist, waiting in line, or during moderately unpleasant situations. Building your skill at accessing your “happy place” will prepare you, as much as possible, for when you find yourself in a truly negative situation. If you build this skill, of imagining your happy place in your mind’s eye, it will be available to you no matter what external situation you may find yourself in.
Having a tool to address negative situations does not make the negative situation okay or negate that you are suffering during the negative situation. The goal is to get through the event intact, so that you can process it later with a therapist or trusted advisor, or using other therapeutic tools, as appropriate.
Visualization
Visualization is another type of meditation. There are many guided visualization meditations available Online. Visualization is a meditative tool for envisioning a reality that you would like to experience. It’s used extensively in sports and business as a way of visualizing success. It’s also a powerful tool for changing your experience of the world.
Here are some of my guided meditations to get you started!
I am a spiritual director and sacred healer, and I created some online guided meditations on my YouTube channel that accompany my first book. They are a great starting place for your home meditation practice!
Golden Cord Grounding Meditation – This guided meditation helps you to ground yourself into the earth when you are feeling spacy or floaty.
Forgiveness Meditation – This guided meditation walks you through the process of forgiving (yourself) for something or someone that is causing you distress.
Light of God Meditation – This guided meditation fills you up with the Divine light that is your birthright.
Meditation to Meet Your Guide – This guided meditation introduces you to your own spiritual guide(s).
I challenge you to start meditating!
Begin a daily meditation practice. Choose a type of meditation that will work with your lifestyle and schedule. Practice your chosen meditation style for at least 40 days. If you miss a day don’t sweat it. Just pick it up the next day. Note your impressions, challenges, successes, and insights from meditation in your journal.
What do you think?
Does meditation work for you? Let me know in the comments!
