Beginning in beauty

In beauty I walk.

With beauty before me, I walk.

With beauty behind me, I walk.

With beauty below me, I walk.

With beauty above me, I walk.

With beauty all around me, I walk.

It is finished in beauty,

It is finished in beauty,

It is finished in beauty,

It is finished in beauty.

'Sa'ah naaghéi, Bik'eh hózhó

—from a Navajo Ceremony

(Four Masterworks of American Indian 

Literature, ed. by John Bierhorst, 1974)

I start radiation therapy tomorrow. Of every part of my journey so far, this is the one that seems to draw the most negativity from people. I have heard that radiation will make me hot and uncomfortable, and I will want to lie for hours under a cool ceiling fan. I will get a sunburn. My skin will break down and ooze. I should take the last couple of weeks off work because I will be in so much pain. I will get very tired during the end of the treatments, a fatigue that will last for months afterward.

Yikes! That sounds horrible! At some point yesterday I realized I had been taking these experiences too much to heart. Believing that would be my experience as well, it was almost as if I was already living in this painful future.

That’s no way to be.

That New Age phrase “you create your own reality” usually makes me cringe. It seems an overly simplistic platitude. There is some truth to the concept, however. My attitude in a situation makes a huge difference in how I experience it. Just think about my experience with getting blood drawn. When I’m relaxed and calm, I have little pain or bruising. But when I’m anxious, I experience more pain and more bruising afterward. 

One way that I have found to shift my experience in this way is to practice reframing, or finding alternate ways of viewing situations. Needles become “spears of healing” instead of simply being torture devices. Or I visualize my body as made of butterflies; I simply ask the cancer butterflies to fly away. 

Since it seems that everyone’s experience with radiation therapy is slightly different, this could be a very good place to practice some reframing.

An approach has started to emerge that draws on my past experience with Native American spirituality.  Instead of a difficult, potentially painful, pain-in-the-ass thing I need to get through, why can't I instead reframe this as a sacred time of healing? Maybe a six-week-long shamanic healing ceremony? 

With my thoughts along those lines, the Navajo prayer that begins this post arose in my mind during this morning’s meditation:

With beauty before me, I walk.

With beauty behind me, I walk.

With beauty below me, I walk.

With beauty above me, I walk.

With beauty all around me, I walk.

What a lovely antidote to the unpleasant images I have been hearing about radiation! I love it!

And since taking walks in the woods was my favorite part of my healing process, and a habit I plan to continue during the course of radiation, this lovely prayer can be a way to bring that happiness with me into the treatments. 

I’ll have to ruminate on this some more. My radiation sessions are first thing in the morning before work. Maybe I will pull out my drum or rattle each morning? Make offerings of herbs? It’s been a long time since I walked the shamanic path. Perhaps it is time to bring some of that back into my life.