Breaking the Fever

Good morning!

I have to confess that this morning, in fact since Friday morning, I’ve been thinking a lot about a not very pretty topic. Not only is it not very pretty, but I’m pretty sure it will conjure a big “ugh” from most people when I simply say the word. Inflammation. Yes, inflammation. Just not a pretty word. Not a pretty sight and not a pretty experience.

This late summer time here in the Northern hemisphere is renowned for its combination of damp and heat. Dampness arrives each day as thunderstorms, huge clouds and copious amounts of morning dew. Heat arrives with the sun and stays on through the night curated by the damp causing the feeling to be one of almost suffocation on occasion. This combination of damp + heat, damp and heat being medical terms in my world, well, this combination equals inflammation.

Usually when you think of inflammation, I’m pretty sure you will imagine red swollen joints; ankles, knees, fingers or even jaw as in toothache. Damp makes then swollen and heat makes them red. But today and most days, I’m thinking more about the inflammation of the spirit. I was inspired to think about this inflammation of the spirit by this poem, titled Inflammation. And, I was struck especially by this line:

Inflammation

is a fight response from the body when the immune system
leaps into action even when there is no visible injury.

No visible injury. Somehow this little phrase struck me like a thump to my heart. So many injuries are invisible. Injury can be defined as “damage to a person’s feelings.” But who would know? And how would they know that it is your feelings that have been injured? We are fighting things we cannot see. But they are things we can feel. But what if what we feel is fight, the rising up of energy that includes rage, grief, fear?

When a joint is swollen, it can be seen. When a heart is swollen, red, holding to all that has occurred, staying alive in the midst of hurt, it is felt as a dampness, a kind of blur, a kind of dullness, and then perhaps a sadness, a grieving. And it is felt as heat, as blistering pain, as itching, restlessness, anger, agitation.

For me, these days I often feel inflamed inside and out. I can hardly keep up with the stimulus for these feelings, but I know my body is tracking each and every moment. My body says my hands ache, my belly burbles and my chest is heaving. My body cannot decide if it wants to move or simply lay in the sun allowing the heat to burn away the sensation. My body says there are things here need tending. How, then, to honor, care for, respect, even heal, the invisible wounds?

You might think the suggestion I have here is too simple to be helpful, too literally available. Yet, it is also exactly how you can manage all this dampness and heat. You can breathe. Yes, breathe. Breathe into your very bones, allowing your body and your skeleton to relax with the swelling of breath. Then, exhale from your feet up through your spine and out through your mouth, giving to the air all your air, everything you have reached into with your breath, just give it away to the air.

The air will take as much heat as you can give. The earth will take as much dampness as you offer. Your dampness is your willingness to feel as you breathe in, your willingness to have all that the moment has given you. Your heat is your honor, your knowing that you have truly felt something alive in you and you share that aliveness, that moving knowing right into the world.

Now, your dampness is no longer holding you down, your heat is no longer keeping you isolated. Instead as you give your dampness to the earth and your heat to the atmosphere through your breath, you create presence, stability, awareness that nourishes. That nourishing awareness actually reduces inflammation.

I know you know I am not kidding but you may not know that it is scientifically proven that breathing in this way reduces inflammation. It works even more quickly if you are willing to stand barefoot on the earth, but it works nonetheless. If you google it you will find many articles and studies that have shown that breathing like this can reduce inflammation.

You might wonder what makes breathing work? It works through awareness and sensation. Obviously the kind of breathing you are usually doing isn’t working when you find yourself inflamed. But when you breathe intentionally, allowing all of what you feel to be alive in you, well, then, that very breath can bring relief.

The room is a clover field of hide, luck, and chance, but the burning
tenderness of their inflammation wants out.

Out, the inflammation wants out. Breathe out.

I am doing a lot of breathing. How about you?

I can’t resist reading you the whole poem. I can’t get it out my head. Here you go: