Remembered Wellness

Remembering being well is not just having a fleeting memory of feeling good, but it is a sense in the body and whole being. Some people have compared this feeling of remembering to be well to a feeling of coming home or having a feeling of safe space, like getting out of the cold and stepping into a warm place. It can be a quiet moment when you remember life can actually feel okay, even for a few moments, and you can feel okay. Though this moment can pass quickly, it is also true that the difference between pain and suffering can be made during such moments - especially when the brain is focusing and paying attention and noticing these moments.

You would think that the confirming energy that things are going well is excitement and pleasure. Of course, sometimes that is the case. But extremes have a cost. Too much joy, as when you are in love, can keep you up at night and make you lose sleep. Too little joy, and you become depressed and you might sleep all day. Being in the middle, right in between the extremes, you can remember that you can be well right in the middle of existence. Noticing that little moment of being in between things is really the key to freedom. Being in that place can feel like waiting for the next thing, or it can feel like a relief after getting through something tough. It is a reminder that things are okay, and this life is meant for you and the next thing you choose. The next thing you choose is really okay and just waiting for you.

When you think about it, this is how we all start out for the most part. A human birth is a big converging of energies, and a lot of things can go tragically wrong. Even so, with all that can potentially go wrong, people are born and they go on to experience life and living. It is amazing that this goes well most of the time! Life can be complicated, messy, and inconvenient, and yet here we are.

So it can be a powerful thing to remember being well, to remember that, when you started out after being born, things were wide open and possible. As your oldest friend and steadiest companion, your body remembers this. This is like being reminded of a capacity to be well. That's your capacity, my capacity, the capacity of all human beings that are born. In fact, the body is always trying to exercise that capacity to be well and to get back to that state of balance and possibility, back to that readiness for life, for the next thing. When you remember being well, it is like reassuring the body that this idea of returning to a state of balance is on the "to do list," (you are on it!), and so the body can relax and take a breath and not send another "reminder" to the whole system in the form of tension or pain. Simply noticing what it is like to remember being well with open and relaxed attention, with all your heart, starts to create a feeling of wellness in the body and in the mind and in life.

Herbert Benson, the Harvard researcher who coined the phrase, “relaxation response,” describes remembered wellness this way. Remembered wellness is what is in play during the placebo effect that can occur during research where test subjects experience benefit not from taking the medication being researched but by taking the “sugar pill” and experiencing a sense of expecting to be well. The key here is in the expecting: The test subjects have a strong expectation that the “medicine” works and that the medical attention is good, and that they are surrounded by others who also believe that they can get well. There is a sense of high expectation that things will go well. In theory, under such conditions, the test subject’s healing instincts are already turned on and ready to do their healing work way before they take any medicine, whether it is a sugar pill or not.

This can also happen outside of medical research situations. There have been countless times when people have made appointments to deal with a certain condition, a pain in the foot, menstrual problems, or whatever, and so they make an appointment in the spirit of “taking care of business” and going about a life and seeking help from a medical professional when needed. Then the day comes to see the doctor: the person gets to the doctor's office and finds all the symptoms are gone. Herbert Benson might say that the person’s remembered wellness got activated and exceeded expectations by eliminating the need for medical attention!

Well, that’s fine for miracles and the placebo effect in clinical trials, but my case is different, you might say.

Your case is a killer, and you gave up hope way back when, thank you very much. If you are thinking this, I know what you mean. That's what I call feeling you are "unhealable." It is sad and dark. I know this well. I have experienced this myself and have plunged into depression and pain and lived with that "black dog" for years at a time. Not having any interest or energy in life is hard on the body and the mind. So, this is when I invite you to ask yourself quietly and when you are alone (so it’s just you, and you alone): "how do I know that?"

Everything changed when I asked myself that one little question.

You have every right to give up and sometimes giving up hope is actually a good thing when you let go of the distracting quality of hope that can send you down blind alleys to try thing after thing that might make a difference. Giving up hope can actually help you see what you are really dealing with and remind you that it’s up to you to take charge of how you are being in a situation and make a decision one way or another. That’s a good thing.

But giving up hope is not the same as exhausting all possibilities or seeing your future clearly.

"Exhausting all possibilities": that's infinite! That can take an eternity if we are talking about getting through ALL possibilities.

And can you really see the future? No, not really. But you can see trends, and you can influence likelihoods by what you choose to remember on a regular basis.

It’s in that quiet moment when you can remember, even if just for a moment, that wellness exists. Wellness is possible. For you. You can remember an okayness that is not exciting or forceful or hard. Remembered wellness is a quiet thing that you feel deep in your bones, in your body in quiet sometimes unexpected moments. Once you have one moment like that, you are likely to have another and another. And in those moments, it is the body that is “looking” for how to get back to wellness, and it is the body getting reassured that it is on the right track. Then you, as the one remembering what it is to be well, can make those small and big decisions to take yourself in that direction.

The poet rapper that goes by the name of Drake put it this way: “Though your past is dirty, your future is spotless.” When it comes to health and wellness, yes, if you are remembering what it is like to be well and expecting to be well, I’d say Drake is spot on.

Learn more about Herbert Benson's "remembered wellness" idea here.