Forest healing

hour by hour

I grew up deluged in all things Catholicism; constant bouts of giving away my power to a man I never really believed in. It wasn’t until I grew into my adult self still caged in childhood religious dogmas that I realized how much of myself I’d given to this higher being - eventually realising that power of healing was always inside of me. My childhood was symbolic crosses’, Mary statues and praying; now it's a mindset and trust in myself. 

I became a cynic of the religious brainwashing, moving away from the catholic doctrines and eventually understood that the healing process is in me, in nature, in all human beings. Meditation and breath work are a new form of spiritual exploration in this period and so is the forest healing in my backyard. 

Nature is a constant reminder that everything is in symbiosis, everything comes back to homeostasis. I am not indifferent from the other creatures on earth, I may have distinguishable behavioural modernity that defines me as different through evolution, but I too am a creature of sharing particular traits; innovating, procreating, eating, sleeping and hypervigilant of my surroundings. Finding equilibrium and stabilising my internal environment for survival. Trusting in my body's ability to adapt to changes and challenges; like the brain injury I’m experiencing now. 

I’ve entered a healing period. At 31 years of age never did the idea cross my mind that it would be spent re-training and re-wiring my brain and exercising my organ to create new neuroplastic pathways inside of it. My body and mind have been running off fight or flight, cortisol and adrenalin mode for some time. Something I thought was the normative for years. 

Some days the pity party comes along and puppeteers me against the normatives of society - why can't you just sit up and move and contribute to the world like everyone else? I drench myself in unkind comments. Most of the time I try to flip the thoughts and enter beast-mind mode, ‘I am strong, I am determined, I trust this recovery, I am showing up every day to put in the hard work’ I say to myself.

I lie there for 3 sessions a day, making figure 8 arm movements, retraining my saccades (eye movements) to focus on a cross dispersed evenly across a page, and turn my head sideways controlling where my eyes are focused upon. I press the green, blue, yellow or red coloured button on my phone app to challenge my cognitive flexibility and speed processing. Learning to retrain my near and far sight with letters on a page in the distance and up close. I journal my heart rate levels, my emotions, feelings and symptoms, and how the session went. Then I repeat a few more times throughout the day, afterwards I focus on breath work and meditation in between. It may seem minor, perhaps even pointless to you reading this, but it’s the most challenging exercises for me and my brain. Learning to follow targets again, to not allow my neck to control the movements, and to stay calm and focused.

Sometimes I move too quickly in the mornings and my head is down a toilet bowl, vomiting and nausea become the theme of the day. On other days, I am triumphant. I sit on a bike and ride for 20 minutes not allowing my heart rate to exceed 125 bpm. It’s a form of completion and succession to just sit on a bike and ride without any symptoms on a good day.

A couple of weeks ago I drove to Melbourne to seek chiropractic-neuro knowledge from people specialising in concussion and rehabilitation (the only profession to have validated my brain injury experience). I heaved myself into his office, a headache going on 5 weeks straight and slumped into his office chair. I was anxious for answers, nervous for potentially having no answers. We spent the next week testing my brain; my vestibular system, neurocognitive functioning, reaction time, oculomotor functioning, balance, and autonomic function. Those sessions were challenging; nausea, vomiting, dizziness, lightheadedness, and memory issues all took centre stage. But I had answers, my brain was reaggravated.

The chiropractor validated every bit of symptom and emotion I had, (most of the time he spends the time verifying the experience to family members because of the hidden aspect of this injury). We found that my heart was working 3-4 times harder attempting to move from lying down to standing up against a wall - something referred to as POTS. Fatigue and now dizziness setting in on my body from vestibular damage and an impaired mid-brain. I had answers and now I had a plan.

I retreated from Melbourne to the far south coast of New South Wales to heal in the tranquil environment of the bush. Melbourne felt conducive to the healing, and home felt where it could be enacted. 

Here I am, lying on the ground of my home, with a stretched band around my upper thighs (controlling cerebellum brain exercises) and my eyes following a dot on a page. 3 weeks ago I could barely pull myself out of bed without a headache, dizziness or fatigue. Now, I’m slowly gardening and able to cook a meal every so often. I decided to test what threshold I had; and took myself into a woodwork space. I have been irritated by loud noisy places but in this environment, it felt controlled. Roaring machinery was a stretch, but focusing on a power tool meant I had to be present, in the moment and not be distracted by outside noises. Using a drop saw meant controlled and slow movements. The potential risk gave me a good nervousness, one I missed having. I stared at a woman teaching us how to build things; it stretched my ability to concentrate, retain information and hold the details in my head. Standing up for a whole 5 hours was exhausting and fatiguing, by the end of the day my brain was at its capacity. I took myself home to lie down. I did it, I made it through a day of noises and newness, I had a headache, but I expanded my threshold in an external environment. These are the small but grandiose feats that accompany the journey.

I have been engulfed in the rehabilitation process: breathing, stretching, writing, cold plunge, brain exercises, stationary cycling, and eating good, nutritious food. All working in conjunction to bring my body and brain back to homeostasis, or in this case, rewiring its neural system. 

My backyard is a forest of grand eucalyptus trees, the bed a cluttered foliage of leaves. Each morning and afternoon, I spot kookaburras and blue wrens darting between each limb. The same black and white butterfly darts over my head when I sit in the backyard to breathe; this creature a symbol of rebirth and transformation—reminding me that this is what’s transgressing. These animals are giving me hope that I, too, will be darting between the trees and frolicking in the oceans again.

Nature naturally wants to find harmony again and so do we. I take my feet off for a short walk in the backyard woods and sit in the present calmness, the sounds, the smell, and the sights building a better health inside of me. An eco-antidote to reconnect with myself again. The term ‘shinrin-yoku’ is what the Japanese call it. It feels silly to call it ‘forest bathing’ when it’s humans urbanising and industrialisation that is stuck in a hurried culture, disconnecting ourselves from what it needs. Nature reminds me that we are and always will be nature, to shift the gears back into a slow and present state.

I am attempting to balance the physical symptoms and awareness of what’s happening with the metaphysical - why is this happening? What am I feeling emotionally that’s contributing to these setbacks? Sometimes I am just moving too fast, automated by my natural state; rapid, multi-tasking and absent from what’s in front of me. Reminding myself that life moves hour by hour right now. To stop looking for the symptoms and just be. It’s hard to shake a 6-year consistency of checking for new and old symptoms of my head injury. 

I met my neighbour the other day, he struggled to talk and had trouble with his hearing. He stared at my lips to read the words as I shared my journey with him. Responding with his own story; he had been diagnosed with throat cancer, now without front teeth or the ability to eat much. We bonded over our pathway to healing. We both had a small amount of energy for a walk, he humbly and excitedly invited me into his place to show me his garden and house he built with his bare hands. It was the Garden of Eden; edible tomatoes, berries, strawberries, pumpkin, zucchini, kiwi fruits, bananas and more, I was astounded! A handful of chickens, a few dogs, and some more exquisite roses, palms and natives strung around his home. His garden had become his sanctuary, his return to healing, his purpose for the day. We shared stories, his wife reminding us both that healing is ‘hour by hour’. Not to focus on yesterday or tomorrow but what is here right now, in this present moment.

I left my neighbours house rejuvenated by this comment. It’s a lonely journey the internal voyage of healing. But I now had someone who understood the process, the psychological experience, and the intrinsic motivations to get better. I felt a little less lonely after meeting Drew, reminded that he and I had similarities and were healing with nature's boundless physiological benefits for our health. Drew gave me perspective, that others are experiencing their own journey of pain. This is the human experience to love, think, birth, aspire, reason, conflict, explore, endure hardship and allow perspective and morality to create the module of our lives.

It takes a little more time and effort to write these substack pieces. It becomes its own cognitive training; remembering words and laying them down here. Sometimes I find the days slow, long and sad. But mostly I see progression. I see healing. My bad days are a little more physical pain, but the good days are taking over. One moment I’m snowboarding down a mountain, the next I’m forming new neural networks inside my brain reminding myself what lessons I am learning and returning to the forests and nature to heal.