Mindfulness & Feeling Sick: A meditation

Today as I write this, I’m waiting for a Covid test result.

Breathing — without difficulty, thankfully...

Feeling the rise and fall of my chest...

Right now noting the deeper pulsing that signals uncertainty, and a taste of fear.

Like a dull gray weight, it presses through my diaphragm, ebbing and flowing in intensity.

Sinuses feel sort of thick, and the light fog that feels like a sock around my brain makes articulation harder...

Also, my throat hurts.

On days like today, a favorite grounding practice is to be present with Seeing.

Today, with mindfulness of Seeing, what normally vaporizes into a blurry background comes back into full focus.

Outside the window, firecracker spurts of cape honeysuckle point skyward, darting up from the familiar, bushy green tangle that needed serious trimming a few months ago.

Noting the mind’s desire to label and catalog…

Inviting inner stillness.

Now taking in the blue gray layers of mountain, sky, foam and ocean that paint my visual field with light, texture, shade, jagged angles, points and curves. Noticing thick black and silver lines criss-crossing the horizon. Paintbrush-y green shapes and shadows growing like fur on rows and columns of woody giant bones, and the surprise flicker of a brown-gray feather bundle shooting like a punchline across this moving canvas of my visual field.

In silence, so much shows up, now available, revealing the light and shadow that arrive as sight.

Grateful that today, no matter the lab result, no matter the nature of body challenge this day will bring, I can pause... breathe... and return to grounded presence with mindfulness of Seeing.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

For a six-minute guided audio recording on Mindfulness of Senses, which includes mindfulness of Seeing, click here and scroll to "Sense Into This Moment."