Yesterday I got sick and I laid in bed all day.

Yesterday I got sick and I laid in bed all day. Literally all day. It came out of nowhere, and knocked me on my ass. My body went into a bit of survival mode, and the only thing I could do was surrender to it. I was sick and there was no rushing through it. I did what I could and took the meds that I could, but outside of that the only thing I really could do was lay in bed, feel the sickness, let it be there, and give it the time it needs to pass.

The beauty of the body is it knows what to do.

Going through this experience, I noticed a lot of anxiety come up. I realized things that I had forgotten, and in my vulnerable state felt even more vulnerable. Old patterns started to arise and my anxiety levels went through the roof. You know the feeling: that internal quickening when you realize the world is moving and you are not.

So I leaned on the 12 Journeys. I had to let go. I can't control what happens tomorrow. I can't control what happened yesterday. I can only control what I do in the moment, and when you're sick it feels like there's not much you can do of anything.

Biologically, my system was just trying to keep me alive. Evolutionarily, we are wired to perceive physical weakness as a threat to our standing in the tribe, which is why the "Small Self" screams when we are forced to pause.

This is the dichotomy of command.

The word anxiety finds its roots in the Latin "angustia," meaning narrowness or a tight place. When I am sick, my world narrows until it is just the four corners of a mattress. I used to think of this narrowness as a prison, but I was wrong about that.

It is actually a filter.

I've got friends that are facing this daily and I got a small sampling of what it might be like for them to maybe have their plans and dreams and goals and visions and then find out that they just need to be sick. That the only thing they can do is survive that day. If you are like me, you try to fight the mattress. You try to research your way out of the fog.

But you can't think your way into a new way of acting: you have to act your way into a new way of thinking. Sometimes that action is simply lying still.

Today I feel the residuals of it, kind of like the passing of a storm: all the trees are torn down and the aftermath is there but the storm is passing and now it's time to clean up. Some days are like that. Some days you do really well and some days you just have to survive the storm.

Let the storm pass.

I am realizing that sickness and anxiety are not errors in the code. They are signals. They are the body’s way of demanding a deep rest that the conscious mind refuses to grant.

I still feel super tired this morning. My head is still foggy and achy, but I'm re-engaging. Not sprinting, by any means, but I'm re-engaging with life and I'll do what I can do today and trust that tomorrow will take care of itself. Sickness kind of teaches this: that when we're sick we just need to be sick, when we're anxious, we just need to be anxious.

We don't need to chase it away.

We don't have to solve or fix it.

We can do what we can to manage it, but at some point it'll pass and we'll be able to re-engage in a new and more powerful way.

This is the practice.

What storm are you trying to outrun instead of just letting it pass?

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I explore this in The 12 Journeys

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