The Day I Spontaneously Popped a Blood Vessel

The day I spontaneously popped a blood vessel had been building for some time.

There were a million little and some big things that had happened to lead up to this point.

Some big T’s, some little t’s, which culminated in a well and truly fried nervous system.

It was time to release some of the build up of pressure whirling through my body, physically, mentally, most definitely emotionally and likely spiritually.

On this particular day I was driving to the second yoga session of a 6 week course that I had signed up for on nervous system regulation. As I was making my way there I could already feel the emotions welling up behind my eyes. Unbeknownst to me from where they came.

I felt detached, dissociated, yet highly emotional.

As we moved through the session, the teacher clearly explaining the window of tolerance and what happens when we go outside the margins of what is comfortable to our nervous system, I became profoundly aware of just how narrow my window of tolerance had become.

That a series of circumstances both big and small had led up to this moment, in which I just felt vacated from my physical form. Disconnected. Out of touch. Like I could not go on.

Yet I couldn’t stop crying.

I moved through the session in a spaced out state and at the end of the class the teacher sat with me, listened and guided me back to some kind of state in which I was able to leave the session.

I felt numb. Yet managed to get a coffee, buy a notebook and get myself back home.

A few hours later I went to get on the treadmill. I had just turned it on when I glanced down and saw this big blue bump protruding from my arm. What the f***?!?

I immediately got off the treadmill and went straight into panic mode.

I don’t know what I even thought it could be that was so scary, yet often it is exactly this that frightens us.

What we don’t know.

What we cannot yet see.

What we are unable to make sense of.

Texting for opinions, scrolling the internet for available GP appointments that afternoon, frantically applying ice and then checking and rechecking how it was progressing, I was in a state of activation and complete fix it mode.

And then I stopped. I realised that I had a choice.

I could text work to say I couldn’t make the meeting and run to the GP anxious and stressed out, to be told any number of different “diagnoses” of what had happened, or I could go to work, calm down, and settle the anxiety it had raised.

I knew the emotional release that morning had triggered this spontaneous physical release, this blood eruption under my skin of things I had been holding in. And I knew too that in that moment the likely-hood of this being understood in a 15 minute consult on the deeper level it signified for me, was low.

And so I went in to the meeting. I soothed my mind. I nurtured my body. And strengthened the voice of my soul.

And you see the 3 other doctor’s opinions that I was given at work were all different, of course, one of which was frightening, the other ridiculous and the final one was what I thought too, a simple haematoma (bruise).

So you see sometimes we are faced with fork points, cross roads.

And sometimes these are major, like staying or leaving a job, relationship or country and sometimes they are smaller, like rushing in a state to the doctor, or self soothing and moving on with your day.

But we always have a choice.

We cannot control life.

We never have been able to and sadly never will.

Life happens for us.

Our particular circumstances, as painful as sometimes they may be, are a gift from the Universe to connect us more deeply with our soul, our true self and get to a point where the meeting point between soul and human personality sticks.

We are constantly being guided.

Our job is not to direct our will on life, but rather let life guide us.

Sometimes we don’t even know what it is exactly, that we need.

And sometimes that thing can even be right in front of us staring us in the face.

But ultimately, the more we step back, surrender and let the flow of life move through us, we can connect each day a little more with the truth of who we really are.

And it is this, that is what life is truly about.

It doesn’t matter what job you do, what role you play, what you do to fill the hours of your time each day.

What matters is that it is directed by you.

Your soul.

Your truth.

Your way.

Will you heed your call?