Meditations for Nausea
Feeling nauseous - one of the most uncomfortable and universal experiences in all the animal kingdom. I’ll talk about it more below. But in case you are feeling nauseous now, here are some meditation practices that I’ve found helpful for nausea.
Visualizations
As I breath, I focus on my nostrils or tongue. I feel the cool air passing across and into my nose or mouth. Sometimes I picture the air as an icy blue. I imagine the cooling sensation continuing into my body. I imagine that even the warm breath I exhale, is actually cool.
I imagine I am held. Sometimes I am in a breezy hammock, but most often, I am held by two giant invisible hands, cradling me like they might hold a kitten who has fallen asleep. These hands can belong to whoever I need them to, and often it changes moment to moment. Whatever I experience, whatever happens, I am still held, watched, and cared for.
I seek immediate comfort moment to moment. If that means lie still and don’t move, I do that. If that means arch my back or stretch my toes, or lay my face on something cool, or drink some ginger, I do that. The listening to each moment becomes its own meditation.
Phrases
I like to say in my mind the following phrase: “this too shall pass.” Then with each inhale, or exhale, or wave of discomfort, I repeat: “and this…. and this… and this too…”
“Things are moving through me”
“I will be ok soon”
If all else fails, there is the tried and true prayer, “Please.” Please is my prayer, meditation, and last resort medicine and it is a powerful one. Please, as many times as needed. No words or specific requests need follow. Simply, please.
Oh nausea…
I have a long-term relationship with nausea. Since my single digits, I’ve felt it, feared it, fantasized about making a deal with the gods to get rid of it. I think back on school field trips with my face against the cold bus window, asking silently: “Please if you make me not nauseous, I will never ask for anything again.” By the time I graduated high school, I thought of nausea as an inherent trait of mine, like brown hair or strong thighs. This wasn’t to say I’d accepted it. I fought it with everything from ginger to Zofran (a prescription medication for nausea and my favorite pharmaceutical drug if we’re getting personal). As I reached adulthood, I could predict it, see it coming, and begin the prayers. The funny thing is, even though I was desperately afraid of vomiting to the point of phobia, I rarely did. I had a couple of bad stomach flus, each of which took me to the emergency room (I had that awful kind of cyclical barfing that could only be halted by two bags of saline and you guessed - Zofran!) But 99% of the time I didn’t barf. I didn’t gag. I never even got food poisoning. I just had the nausea.
I didn’t grow up with religion, not even church or synagogue on holidays. My Presbeterian-Jewish family isn’t particularly religious, and my parents decided to free my brother and I from it altogether. But you’ll notice, the holy spirit slid easily in regardless. I needed her. As a kid, it didn’t occur to me that the conversations I had in my mind could be defined as praying. And if I was praying, I must believe in some higher form. It all just came from a place of need.
In 2016 when my Lyme symptoms ramped up to approach their peak, nausea led the way. During the day, it was low-grade, usually arriving after I ate. I did the experimental food dance, trying to figure out what triggered it, but there didn’t seem to be a food-dependent pattern. The pattern that did emerge followed the shape of the day. As soon as the sun went down, the contents of my stomach began to rise, and rise and rise until …. nothing really. I spent every night that year with a bucket beside my bed, and never once filled it. It was just nausea. Like a fever dream or some kind of curse, I lay in bed wrestling with the waves in my stomach. And again I felt the need or presence of something spiritual.
I feel a little sheepish saying that nausea brought me closer to god or a higher power. I don’t know if that’s true. Maybe I can just tell you what it was like and not derive any further meaning from it - not try to explain it.
The nausea that I experienced came in waves. It required that I lay in bed with my eyes closed, usually on my side, sometimes head over the bucket. Each time a wave arose, I felt myself lifted higher. I sailed above reality and above day-to-day existence. There was no other moment or experience than this. When I’d reach the peak, the most unbearable height of sensation, the image that most often came to mind was that of clouds. Or sometimes water. The way in 2nd grade we stretched layers of blue silky fabric across the classroom to represent the Nile River in Ancient Egypt - it was like that. These long layers of water and air. And in my mind, I had floated all the way up to them, like an airplane about to breach some stratus clouds. I was so close, my face grazed the damp folds of air. And I would stay there, floating in peak, hellish discomfort under these gentle damp clouds. And eventually, the wave of nausea would abate, and I would float back down to Earth. Then I would prepare for the next wave.
Each morning, I woke up with the nausea completely gone. Like it had never happened. And I would wonder just for a second, did it, really happen? All I had to do to confirm was wait until the next time the sun went down.
Happiness is the absence of nausea.
These days I don’t often experience that level nausea. I’ve been treating Lyme and co-infections for five years, and it has helped. I can eat a lot more foods. I usually feel ok when the sun goes down. I know longer awake each morning, full of relief, thinking, “happiness truly is the absence of nausea.”
I am lucky today that nausea is not at the forefront of my mind anymore. And the day to day stuff is low-grade. But anytime I push too hard at work or accept two social events per week instead of my healthy average of .5 social events per week, I feel it coming. I call it “nap or die mode.” The nausea sneaks back so fast. And I know that if I don’t lay down and cover my eyes immediately, I will be right back where I used to be, escaping my earthly reality on waves of holy nausea.