The Best (the only?) App That Gives You Meditations about IBS and Pooping and Farting
I am in HEAVEN and it’s all because of an app I found for people with I.B.S. I don’t even know if I officially have I.B.S., but after a free week-long trial and then a $60ish payment, I officially have the Nerva app.
It’s forty degrees F outside and there is no snow or ice on the ground. The wind is raging, and the clouds are racing across the sky to somewhere else. The sky keeps getting bluer and bluer. I feel a new relationship with the wind, like the wind outside that blows the branches is not unlike the wind that is inside of me. And wind, although it gets stirred up, it is completely natural and it can also subside.
This morning I was lying in bed, listening to today’s Nerva meditation, Healing Water — Breathe. Every meditation is read by a women with a lovely English accent, and she reads slowly, hypnotically. She could be coaching me to rob a bank and chances are good I’d have dollars spilling out of my pockets or I’d be in jail in just a few weeks time of listening to her..
I breathed in and out and counted to ten. I breathed in and out and counted to nine. (You get the picture—this went on to zero.) This kind of breathing helps to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, a trick I learned in yoga class. If you live happily, loose-limbed, and calm in your body, you are well acquainted with the parasympathetic part of your system because it allows relaxation. It’s not that part of your being that kicks into gear when a car is headed toward you in your lane. That’s the sympathetic—the part that screams, Dude, WTF? This is bad. We gotta get out of here!
For me, part of being relinquished and adopted was a lifetime membership in the Sympathetic Club. I practically live there. Stress hormones flood my system so often it feels like that is what life is supposed to be—a steady bath in stress. It’s like I live in a building where the sprinkler system is almost always on even though the fires are just matches people strike to light their cigarettes.
When I ran track in high school, my stomach would often cramp. I didn’t know why, I just knew that I’d often have to either slow down or stop to bend over and wait for the pain to pass. In daily life, I lived with butterflies in my stomach, and since I’d never experienced another person’s stomach, I thought this was normal. I thought everyone felt on the edge of panic and just knew how to hide this feeling behind silliness and smiles and awkward silences.
The other day a friend told me she remembered sitting on the edge of the bathtub when we were children, waiting for me to poop. “It took you a long time,” she said. “Your poops were like rabbit pellets.” I do not remember that, but I would embrace rabbit pellets because decades later, my poop has become a threat to the ease of my daily life. I worry almost all the time about pooping my pants since i never know when it’s going to happen.
And farts! They are the worst! They are relentless! I’m the old woman who farts when she moves, only I’m not old yet, at least in my book. This was not a life goal. Farts keep me from going on dates because I’m sick of trying to make a joke out of them. I’m sick of my body embarrassing me.
In today’s meditation, I was led into warm mineral waters. The Lovely Voice said, This mineral water soothes your esophagus, dissolving any discomfort, any sensations like reflux or nausea just melting away. Enjoy the meditations of relaxing in this healing place. Lower gastrointestinal symptoms similarly drifting further and further away into the distance as you continue to become more and more relaxed with each moment that passes.
The Lovely Voice calls farts wind, and I love her for this. The wind, it blows, is so much more manageable than I ripped a huge fart during the movie. The Lovely Voice said, Abdominal pain, discomfort, bloating, and wind are no longer a problem for you. Any issues you once had with your bowel is now a thing of the past. Your bowel now works easily and effortlessly. You are in control. Any sensations that would have been uncomfortable before are not uncomfortable in the same way any more and I believe her. My body believes her. Granted, I’m on Week 3, Day 4 and still tooting like a train, but I believe I can get better. I believe my gut can heal. I didn’t get this way overnight and so I am willing to continue with the meditations for, I don’t know, ever?, because my body feels buttered and soothed from the inside out each time I listen, and this can’t be a bad thing. Something good is blowing in the wind. I can feel it.
