Get me a bucket!

"The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it."
— Eckhart Tolle

So my son was "sick" sick for the first time ever last night. He's always been pretty resilient to stomach-bugs, and has never thrown up (besides baby possetting) until late yesterday evening. Poor thing is a tactile baby, hence the most upsetting thing for him was not the feeling unwell (post-sick he proceeded to run around and keep playing with his toys) - it was the fact he'd got himself wet and messy. He's not a great coper with having dirty clothes, messy hands, or being wet. Something as simple as a piece of sticky-tape stuck to the bottom of his sock is enough to make him get semi-frantic, so 8 rounds of throwing up all over himself was disastrous for the poor little mite.

I've learnt I'm relatively good at dealing with it. Probably my nursing background helps - I deal with it as I would a patient or client on the job. Keep my composure, get everything cleaned up, and the sick itself doesn't really seem to affect me at the time. So the experience has taught me I can be pretty low-key about it all, which I think helped Tyler bounce back from it too. But at the same time, I do talk about it to other people. I rang my mum and dad several times throughout, and recollected the account to a best friend, and look - I'm even blogging about it!

However in contrast, I don't cope with being sick myself well AT all... Tyler's upset tummy was clearly viral, and no amount of nitrile glove wearing, hand sanitiser rubbing, Canasten hygienic laundry washing was going to stop me picking it up too. So lo and behold, at 3:30am I woke up feeling foul and intensely thirsty. I walked out to the kitchen to get a drink and needed to lay down on the floor feeling faint. Within minutes I found myself being sick into my favourite decorative vase-bowl (only thing within my reach!) and sobbed wishing someone would come along and look after me. Yep, I'm a real sook...

However what I wasn't expecting was how AMAZING I felt afterwards! I felt like I had purged a nasty demon from my body! I felt fantastic. Cleansed and renewed. I cleaned up, went back to bed, slept a happy 4 more hours and woke up feeling invigorated.

The process I went through made me refer to Eckhart Tolle's teachings about "the pain body" and how its presence and manifestation can be felt through various channels, such as sadness, anger, and even physical pain and illness. Tolle surmises that a negative energy can occupy our bodies and mind, it's a collective of negative emotions hung onto from past experience (whether that be recent past or deep past). We can consider the "pain body" to be parasitic to our emotions and feelings which as a result can manifest in physical states also. The "pain body" within us likes to feed and thrives on negativity, and can cause us to find ourselves in negative states or situations which nurture this "pain body", and will gain strength through the expression of this negativity (ie. will relish in your physical pain, your illness, your ire or your despair).

In retrospect of last night's experience, I could associate the "food" my pain-body was thriving off as being the stress that was created from the situation I was in with my son, and the drama I chose to create surrounding it. As much as I dealt with the tangible/physical aspects of Tyler's illness easily, I succumbed to making some fuss over the ordeal through talking to friends/family about it. I could have not done so, and the situation would still have been physically dealt with, but without the emotional/stressy drama I unnecessarily created about it. So then, when I found myself feeling sick and woeful, it was like I was purging myself of what had created. And instead of giving in to the pain-body, feeding it further by letting me feel upset and dreary about being sick myself, I consciously chose to let it go and felt the goodness from it instead.

This may all sound nuts - and a lot to be said about what essentially just boils down to my son having a tummy bug and me contracting it to - however I'm using it as an example to create some awareness of the pain-body concept, as I recommend more people look into the concept and take from it anything they can. Further reading can be found here: The pain body by Eckhart Tolle

It's definitely a good thing to be aware of the negative energies that exist within us and manifest itself through emotions and physical states, as once the presence of the pain-body/negativity is acknowledged, learning to not give into it is easier attained. I'm very grateful to the person who first introduced me to the concept, and I know they are further grateful to the person who taught it to them... If only one of you takes something from this post, then that's a good thing :)

Eckhart Tolle's book "A New Earth" can be followed via Oprah's Website (I'm not generally a huge Oprah fan, aside from the fact that I love her production company is called "Harpo" which is "Oprah" spelt backwards...! :P) however on her website there's a few activities and exercises which can be carried out whilst reading the book. I've not been reading the book for long, but I do think there is some benefit to the exercises on her site, so I'll include the link to that as well: A New Earth: Exercises for Your Awakening - Oprah.com.

Peace out - I'm off to enjoy my day :)