The mind body connection (and how it relates to transplantation)

“the two most important phrases in therapy, as in yoga, are “Notice that” and “What happens next?” Once you start approaching your body with curiosity rather than with fear, everything shifts.” Bessel Vanderkolk

3 years ago, when I began my training to become an embodiment coach, I was pre-transplant, a year or so out from a devestating pregnancy loss and planning my own funeral. I was not the person anyone would want teaching them how to be embodied, and if anything I went into this training to be witnessed myself. During our live class sessions, I remember laying myself out in the sun, focusing on my breath and thinking “If I survive this…”

I knew somewhere deep inside me that the most pivotol thing I could do for my own healing pre and post transplant was to learn how to be with myself. I still stand by that. I could have read hundreds of articles on the surgical process of transplantation, and what happens in the body. I could have spent hours hyperfixated on getting my body into peak state for surgery. And I did those things. But the most important thing I did, and the thing I tell everyone now, is I learned to be present with my own self, to feel pain without trying to hit the eject button.

Weeks after my initial transplant I woke up with a second transplant, a deceased stranger’s organ inside my body, an unexpected addiction to narcotics, multiple other complications and amnesia. What I had in that hospital room was me. Could i be with myself in those moments of excruciating agony? Could I allow myself to feel the pain, and know I wasn’t the pain?

Those questions started me down a healing journey I then documented, and have turned into my career. And if I was telling a fairytale story, I would say I learned how to feel the pain, pain got better, crossed it all off my list and onto the next part of my life. But life isn’t a fairytale. And the pain didn’t get better. The necessary surgeries created scar tissue that fused organs together, the incision lines destroyed abdominal wall muscle and with it my digestive system. It didn’t get better, it just changed form.

I was talking to someone about this idea of mind body connection, and they mentioned the use of breathwork to calm anxiety. This, when we think of mind body connection, is what we think of. Our thoughts affect our bodies, and vice versa. I’ve spoken many times on this idea that when you are physically ill, mental illness usually follows, and the healing of physical symptoms is then affected by one’s mental state. Trauma, I’ve also learned, can manifest as physical symptoms in ways one might not even be aware of.

And its toxic to think that one can think their way out of pain, or by focusing on the positive can “cure” themselves of chronic disease. I tend to think of health as an ecosystem, and different parts have different roles. There is no one size fits all solution. Positive thinking doesn’t correct physical problems, and treating trauma won’t address the physical manifestations of it. What we need is a symbiotic relationship, each part coming together.

So I had a transplant, which started the cascade of other deeply complex and multifaceted health issues, and no amount of positive thinking was going to fix it. It wasn’t breathwork to fix an acute moment of anxiety, and thus far the pain has not miraculously vanished, my abdominal wall has not miraculously knit itself back together and the scarring did not miraculously dissolve overnight.

And the question became, and remained: how do i sit with myself here? how can I accept myself here? how can I choose to be curious about rather than fearful of my body when all these things are happening that even surgeons cannot understand? And as I have this medical mystery status, how can I become literate in my own body?

Transplant became this great opportunity for me to learn my body in new ways. As I quite literally had a stranger’s organ in my body, I asked myself what death and grief feels like on a cellular level. Could I hold that? When I am in intenense pain, can I sit with that for just a minute longer than last time, disecting my identity as a person from my place within pain? Can I support my healing rather than numb my symptoms, and what does that look like?

I struggle every day. I have had to acknowledge there is no “better” for me. Symptoms may improve, my body can heal, but I will always have this status as a transplant recipient, and how does that feel? The mind body connection, and embodiment, is really about being in the body, getting curious, asking better questions, feeling my feelings and holding space for my own self.

I wrote in my journal what does it look like for embodiment to be another form of self expression? Can I notice what I’m feeling and can I give form to that emotion in some way?

I’m going live on transplantlyfe tomorrow to answer all your burning questions about the mind body connection, embodiment and transplantation. I’d love it if you would join me. Pop in, ask your questions, no topic is off limits!