What do the Boston Marathon and Mount Everest have in common? They seem to be the two most common stories I hear referred to as an (im)possible dream. A dream so big, the dreamer knows it could take them years to achieve, but one which they believe the sacrifice will be worth it.
I’m not sure if I’m remembering correctly, but in my neurologist’s office (on the day he told me to start my holistic healing journey), I think there was a photo of him in running gear near a finish line. I think he mentioned the Boston Marathon. The reason I’m not 100% certain, is that I was in my ‘colander-duck’ mode, and resistant to his (un)solicited advice. Put simply; I was in a mood. Thinking back on it, I am 99% sure it was a marathon story he was telling me, and that he was reminding me that you can’t just turn up and run on the day, you have to make up your mind to go and then train to get there.
I on the other hand, was more of a Mount Everest kind of person. I had been one of the first girl Boy Scouts in Sydney, and climbing Mount Everest felt like the ‘ultimate hike’. When I was 19 years old, I was hanging out with some fellow university students when I mentioned to a guy that one day I was going to climb Mount Everest. He said it was his dream too, but rather than go ‘all the way’, we should go instead to Annapurna Base Camp. It’s essentially the highest point in Nepal you can get to by trekking without needing to do any mountaineering.
Long story short, I spent the rest of the year applying for scholarships and saving my pennies, and off we went. We spent 4 weeks making our way through breathtaking India (Delhi, Agra, Varanasi) and then backpacked through Nepal (Pokhara to Kathmandu), and made our way (mostly) up the mountain. But before we left – we trained. He ran, I swam. We always took the stairs. We sought out tall buildings to deliberately take more stairs. In reality, nothing fully prepared us for what we would go through, but no training would have seen us fall way shorter.
You know how much I empathize with you for your chronic pain, but here’s my tough love moment: whishing your pain away won’t work – YOU have to work.
Decide you’re going to live a more-pain-less life, and then, (sorry to be a bully but you need to hear this) every day, to the best of your ability, do something that’s going to move you closer to your goal.
You have to work – every – single – day – and – don’t – stop – until – you – feel – better.
If I could pick my top three things for you to take on TODAY, they’d be the simplest and most profoundly helpful things I’ve done so far:
- Feel your face (learn to reduce the tension in your face),
- Breathe better (breathe deeper and slower), and
- Learn about your vagus nerve so that you can shift your body away from the yucky ‘fight and flight’ mode towards a much nicer ‘rest and digest’ mood.
Every journey starts with a first step; take yours today and feel your face.
No seriously – right now – feel your face.
Take care, Linda x
The Mindful Migraine 
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