Exploring tiredness & vitality

I have been drawn to exploring tiredness recently.

In short: It’s tiredness —> it’s vitality.

It’s vitality. What do I find?

Exploring sense fields

When I label something as tiredness (fatigue, exhaustion), what’s really here? What’s here in sensation, as pure sensation? (When I put this back into words, right now, I find tingling in my body, a slight pressure on the forehead.)

What happens when the mental field comes in with a label (interpretation, story) of tiredness? (It appears as tiredness, it seems real, substantial, I feel tired, other stories around tiredness comes in, hopelessness, I feel I need to rest.)

The Work

Two of my beliefs here are my health is not so good, and it’s tiredness. 

The turnarounds are my health is good, and it’s vitality. 

I find that when the story of tiredness comes up, attention goes to symptoms of tiredness. There is fear here, and stories about what tiredness means, what it may lead to, and that I need to rest. When I believe the story of tiredness, there is a sense of fatigue and tiredness. Working with the turnarounds in daily life, staying with them to see what may come up, I find many examples that my health is good (my medical results are very good, people tell me they see me as healthy, I get up in the morning and do everyday activities, I seek to find clarity around thoughts, I travel, I visit friends, I take photos, I study and learn).

Combining sense field exploration and The Work

Exploring it’s vitality, I stay with what I have taken as symptoms of tiredness – how are these symptoms of vitality? It’s energy, a warm vibration through the body, aliveness. It’s vitality. As I stay with it, the label of vitality seems genuinely as or more true. What’s here are simple sensations untouchable by any label. And the vitality label is as or more true. I stay with this to see what more may reveal itself.

Simple daily activity

When I notice the story of tiredness, I can use this as a reminder for the turnaround and look for genuine symptoms (in sensation) and examples (in my life here and now) of vitality.

It’s vitality. What do I find?

Underlying beliefs

It’s tiredness and that means….

I cannot function. My health is not good. I can’t do what I want. I won’t be able to take care of myself. People will look down on me. I am a disappointment to life (God, reality), others, myself. I will be alone. People won’t like me. People will leave me.

Summary

It’s interesting that what I label tiredness, fatigue, fuzziness, are quite simple and innocent sensations: tingling in the body, slight pressure on the forehead. And these are genuinely, to me, symptoms of vitality – of energy, aliveness.

Update

Exploring this for a few days, I also include other experiences associated with fatigue such as a fuzzy head. Yesterday afternoon, I experienced my head go fuzzy and noticed that it was composed of (a) an image of a fuzzy head and stories about what this means, and (b) sensations of some pulsing and tingling in the head. When I brought attention to these sensations, I could more clearly see that the fuzziness and was created entirely by my image and the experience (identification with it) went away.

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From an inquiry facilitated by S.F.:

My health is not good.

Is it true?

Yes.

Can you be certain it’s true? 

No.

What happens, how do you react, when you have that belief? 

I feel sick, I pay attention to the symptoms, small symptoms get bigger in my awareness, my body feels tingling (this means I’m not well and tired), I get hyperalert about all different symptoms, all get big in my awareness, I tell myself I need to rest a lot, different things I’d like to do in the future seem out of reach as I am not well, I stop myself well in advance because I assume I am not well enough, interpret a lot of things as tiredness, I feel hopeless.

**my mother was invested in my health not being good, she was a nurse, she knew how to deal with it, she connected to me that way, I was more interested in spending time with my father and was more independent of her, she told me my health was not good, I had a weak constitution.

What do you get out of holding onto this belief?

I get to know my identity, it’s a known identity, an excuse to not do things, helps me to not be visible in the world, people are more considerate and understanding of me, I get care.

What are you afraid would happen if you didn’t have this belief? 

Without it I wouldn’t have excuses left, I’d have to be visible in the world (and this would mean….).

Whose business is it?

It’s God’s business.

Who would you be without the story? 

(In that situation, in early childhood?)

I feel vitality, I want ot express it/make use of it, run around in the garden.

(Here and now?)

My vitality comes into the foreground, the experience of vitality fills my awareness, feel more confident, I don’t abandon future plans because of my health.

Turnarounds

My health is good.

Tests showed good health, I can function – get up, shower, go for a walk, I feel quite strong, labels of healthy/not healthy are just labels – not inherant in my body and life, they are arbitrary, depends on what I choose to focus on, I had lots of energy and was very active as a child. I could do whatever my friends did – biking, wrestling as much as anybody else.

Insight: My mother insisted I had astma and poor health although I never experienced it. **My mother was afraid of losing me (belief).

My thinking is not good.

When I believe these thoughts about my health I make myself feel not healthy.

My health is not bad.

Tests show everything looks fine, I am able to do everyday things, I don’t have a terminal illness (apart from being alive), I do errands, I do this inquiry.

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Additional beliefs

My mother was invested in my health being not good.

My mother was afraid of losing me.

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