I’ve written many times about the benefits of being compassionate with yourself when you’re sick or not feeling well. While I haven’t written about it before, I also recommend that you do the same thing for any part or parts of your body that are hurting or not functioning the way they are supposed to.
When something hurts, like an inflamed joint or a head or stomach that aches, most people focus on it, wonder how long it will last and if it will ever get better, and worry about how they will do all their tasks and chores and get through the day with the pain they’re experiencing.
Until a few years ago, I did the same. But since then I’ve learned that both I and the part of me that hurts feel much better when I give it care and compassion. I do that by focusing my attention on my ailing body part, and then feeling compassion for it. I also gently and lovingly stroke it, or if it’s my stomach or something else I can’t stroke directly, I caress the skin that’s right above it. And if I’m hurting all over, I’ll give myself a compassionate hug.
In my experience, doing this doesn’t always make all the pain go away, but it virtually always lessens it. And besides having less pain, I also feel more peaceful afterward.
A little while ago I came across some fascinating corroboration of my results. In his book Quantum Healing, Deepak Chopra describes an experiment at Ohio University, in which rabbits were fed a very high cholesterol diet so their arteries would become blocked. The researchers were puzzled because one group of rabbits had 60 percent fewer symptoms than all the other groups. When they investigated further, they discovered that the anomaly was due to the fact that the student who was feeding those rabbits liked to fondle and pet them, so he held each rabbit lovingly for a few minutes before he gave it its food.
I hope you will give compassion and TLC to yourself whenever and wherever you hurt. And given the results of that rabbit experiment, you may want to also do so before each meal.
