Learning from a Virus

Tis healthy to be sick sometimes
Henry David Thoreau

The Bug

Well an influenza bug has entered my body and my body is reacting and resisting big time! It is pumping the thermostat up to make my body a hot, inhospitable and unwelcoming place for the bug to settle in.  It is sending WBC's  and inflammatory markers to every joint of my body thus creating an experience of pain...even my skin hurts. It is marching  out the royal army to fight and defend its trillions of cells from invasion.  It is producing extra mucous and triggering a cough mechanism so I expel the intruders from my respiratory tract. It is making me so tired that I do nothing but rest. The body is resisting the invasion of a very virulent little virus with an incubation period, it seems, of less than four days.  

The Body's Resistance

It is the resistance to the bug and not the bug that is giving me what we see as illness.  This resistance is a natural mechanism...a life saving gesture...yet we often resist and react to this resistance instead of letting the body do what it is designed to do.  We pop Advil or Tylenol for the fever and joint pain.  We take medication that will reduce the mucous and the cough. We may push ourselves physically despite the fatigue and the body's cry for rest.  We resist the body's resistance and therefore the illness and therefore the very moment we feel ill in.  We are resisting the form the moment provides instead of accepting and allowing ...observing, learning and growing from thee experience.

What?  You expect me to learn and grow from this nasty bug?

Yeah...I think we could learn a lot from our experience with viral infection and we could actually grow from it.  It is like a practice lesson in surrendering and allowing.

Guess what...if you are like me right now...you got the bug and your body is fighting it...it is what it is.  No matter how you resist, complain or struggle against it...the virus has landed and is having a party in the RNA of some of your cells....spitting out baby viruses faster than a rabbit in heat. Your body is triggered to get that virus out....thus your nasty symptoms.

 You have three choices. You can remove yourself from every symptom and delay the body's defenses.   You could resist it by complaining about it, adding drama to an already busy moment....denying that you are sick or looking at it as another "Why me?" thing to add to a victim's story .   Or you could simply accept it and say "C'est la vie". I prefer the last option.


C'est la vie!


Viruses are random and not put on this planet to make each of our lives miserable.  They do not have a personal vendetta against us...they just are moving forward in the biological evolution of things...they just are. And our bodies have, when we become infected,  somehow walked right into their path. The virus sees a nice juicy apartment to raise a family in and it is just doing as viruses do.  Our body, in turn,  sees each virus as an intruder that snuck past our defense system so it becomes angry and aggressive in its impulse to get this extremely large and quickly growing  family to leave!

It is actually quite cool when you look at it from a distance.  Maybe I have spent too much time studying and teaching anatomy...but the whole process of viral infection  fascinates me.  The bodies response ( resistance) to such invasion fascinates me more.

I elect to allow the body to handle this on its own as much as possible.  I won't take a fever reducing drug until my fever is over 38.5 which it was last night.  I don't like to take cough suppressants either so the body can eliminate the intruders on its own.  I don't make an enemy out of the virus with my mind even if my body is doing so.  I try to see it for what it is...something that is evolving, mutating/ changing and surviving to make it in this world.  It doesn't make me sick...my body's response to it does.  So we really can't blame the virus.

Accepting Illness

Accepting illness as it occurs is a doorway into accepting the suchness of our living experience.  We accept the form the moment is taking when we accept that we are ill.  That doesn't mean we have to avoid doing anything that will make us feel better...oh no...it just means we can put down our mental struggle against the infection and allow it to pass as all things pass in due time.

In the meantime, be good to yourself: rest, drink your fluids and take part in any comfort measure you deem necessary to help you get through this.  Do your best not to pass it along ...some people out there have weakened immune systems and may not be able to survive a simple virus.  Wash your hands, avoid crowds and cough into your elbow.  Most importantly, allow your body to do the resisting, not your mind.

Hmm!  That makes sense?

All is well.