by Bina Pattel, 52 yrs, London, UK
At the age of 45 – I was 14 weeks pregnant, had a miscarriage and did not stop bleeding for 11 weeks. After 8 internal examinations by different doctors, I told my husband I would rather die than have another doctor examine me. I thought this was the worst time in my life. I had no idea that worse was yet to come.
I collapsed at home and the ambulance came and picked me up and dropped me off like a parcel on a stretcher to the super busy A & E department at the local hospital. I vaguely recall a nurse passing by me twice and looking concerned. She pulled my eyelid down, saw how pale I was, and went off in haste. Before I knew it, I was on a drip and told my blood count was very low and I needed 2 blood transfusions and there was no time other than to give my consent, which I did.
At no point did I ever consider the seriousness of what my body was telling me.
My periods started aged 11 and I had problems in that department throughout and did my best to ignore any symptoms. I thought it was normal that every month I was in severe pain and had heavy bleeding. Even 4 miscarriages made no difference to my mind, which was telling me: “Focus on getting your work done”, and that’s what I did. I had a mobile phone in one hand and a blood transfusion going in the other arm.
The truth was – I just could not stop. I was like a spinning top where you wind it up and let go and it keeps spinning. Even though I had physically been stopped, I could not stop the internal momentum. I hated it when someone told me to just: “Allow and be still”. What on earth did that mean or even look like or feel like?
Stillness for me was a word to describe lazy people, who were boring and laid back and could not multi-task. I was not one of them or even contemplating ever becoming a still woman. Yet I felt a tension in my body and that was felt as physical pain – the internal fight between who I was and what I chose to do. I was fighting a natural inner stillness, that is who I am as a woman, and over-riding it with motion. I was racing around doing three jobs and lots of commuting, adding to the non-stop doing, and nothing could stop me.
Fast forward 8 months later and I had a hysterectomy. I had been diagnosed with a fibroid tumour which could not be removed any other way, and I recall the surgeon saying that my ovaries would be left, as there was nothing wrong with them – like that was a bit of good news. All I wanted was to get on with my life like it was before all this happened. So I agreed to have my uterus and cervix removed.
Before the surgery I asked Serge Benhayon for help. I told him there was no pain, so I did not want the surgery. He recommended following the surgeon’s advice and was clear that having no pain did not mean the tumour was harmless. He was right and my surgeon confirmed this when he told me that my tumour had grown significantly in size and needed to be removed.
As my health had deteriorated so much, my husband gave up work to look after me and we were financially struggling; so again my mind kicked in with plans on how I could get better fast and start earning money. Of course that did not happen, but what did happen a few months after the surgery was I burnt my hand severely and this was another 3 months off work. I really loved the drama and the stress it brought, which distracted me from just surrendering and listening to my body and feeling the truth of what was there to be felt.
It really does not pay to ignore the signs when things are not feeling right with your body. How on earth did I think I was going to get away with 35 years of ignoring my periods and expecting to be ok? Yes I had endometriosis, cysts and fibroids but that never stopped me doing anything. These were all big fat signs to tell me something was clearly not right about the way I was living. At that time I did not know how to take care of myself, and I did not have a drop of self-love. Loving me was not my thing, as it just felt uncomfortable. It meant that I would need to pay attention to my body, which I deeply loathed and really had no time for. I was far too busy working and trying to save the world. I was constantly on the go looking to do the next thing and getting these physical conditions was a gross inconvenience, to say the least.
For the 6 years after the surgery I applied simple and practical ways, as presented by Serge Benhayon, to develop a connection with my body that led to a deeper level of stillness. I got an understanding that what was missing was the stillness – as my body had so much motion from all my years of being on the go – and that made sense to me. Of course my physical health started to change as the old way of living fell away.
What was really hard was learning how to stop during every single day and take time out to rest or just take a walk with me. What was even harder was learning to cook for myself and eat food that truly supported my body. The biggest change that helped me get to the stillness that I have today was looking at my sleep routine, which led me to waking up feeling me, not thinking I am superwoman and can multi-task and force things to happen.
Allowing myself to feel and using my body as a compass to guide me how to live really helped me to come back to me.
These simple truths have stayed with me; it has been a slow step-by-step process to have a real close relationship with my body, and now I finally know what stillness is.
I cannot turn back the clock, but what I can do now is live every day taking deep care of myself and this is what I have been doing and it works. I love myself deeply and would never choose to harm my body again – ever.
Today I feel a real woman who does have an inner stillness, which feels amazing and keeps me grounded.
The biggest tip I could give any woman, any age, who knows something is not right in the woman department is to first go and get it checked out with your GP and then consider how you are living that is possibly causing the issue.
Thank you sincerely to Serge Benhayon, Universal Medicine and all the amazing practitioners who, with the way they live their lives, are able to reflect that there is another way – and it starts with stillness.
You may also be interested to read this blog by Bina on the menopause
Medicine and Serge Benhayon 
I can relate to what you are saying Bina
“I could not stop the internal momentum. I hated it when someone told me to just: “Allow and be still”. What on earth did that mean or even look like or feel like?”
I had no idea what allow and be still meant, it has taken me a long time to develop a relationship with my self so that I now can actually feel my body, I was numb from the neck down. Now I’m the complete opposite I love my body, I love to take great care of it because within me is my connection to God and the universe.
“I really loved the drama and the stress it brought, which distracted me from just surrendering and listening to my body and feeling the truth of what was there to be felt.” I can relate, I need to really settle into surrendering more to my body at the moment to allow it to communicate what changes are needed, but the resistance in me has been great. It’s confounding at times being a human being because I can see what’s needed and understand with my common sense how to respond, yet see myself doing the opposite and adding to the problem. Getting a handle on the fact there is a wayward part of me that acts contra to my own best interest helps, but reining it in when it’s had such control over my life is quite a task at times.
How many women struggle with their periods and say and do nothing about it? I know a young woman who has painful periods has been to the Doctor and was so badly traumatized by the event that she will not ask to be referred to a specialist who may be able to support her. And I wonder how much pain she will suffer before she is forced by her body to go and seek some support. When we leave something so long then there are bound to be repercussions because of the delay.
“The biggest tip I could give any woman, any age, who knows something is not right in the woman department is to first go and get it checked out with your GP”. Great practical advice.
I can concur with this sharing of a life of drive, drive, drive, and being stuck in the doing.
This life many of us often live, demonstrates that we don’t know what it is like to be a tender woman or a tender man. Until we have our stop moment, then we have the offering to review everything we do and are in life.
In those moments we start to feel the harshness of how we have lived, even feel this in others by how they reflect back to us. What you sow, reaps.
This experience or whatever experience it is, demonstrates that we have the opportunity to change and change you did. Anything is possible and appreciate how far you have come to, and in that, more will be offered. Inspiring sharing.
‘Today I feel a real woman who does have an inner stillness, which feels amazing and keeps me grounded.’ Bina, how very far you have come. Inspirational!
The enormous change from ‘spinning top’ to grounded, vital, deeply loving woman today was enabled by you looking at your sleep routine.
Is this why I have neglected my sleep? because living with an unsettled sleep routine would disturb me enough to take me further away from stillness? Lack of sleep is very disturbing, always leading me to anxiety and sugar cravings. When I have looked after my sleep, I feel settled and feel like whatever comes my way in the day will be water off a duck’s back.
I have underestimated the importance of sleep and am only now starting to really support myself to sleep better. This blog reminds me that stillness is an essential quality that we all have, it’s almost somethng that runs us like a fuel. It reminds me of the essential importance of sleep.
I had began to think there were some people who were just great sleepers and then there were people like me who were light sleepers and for whom it would be normal to always have unsettled sleep and wake up exhausted. But I’m reminded in this blog that just as stillness is our natural way to be, so too is sleeping deeply and undisturbed, our natural way to live.
What a steadily built transformation; that was clearly not an easy thing to master but something you clearly knew you deeply needed- something your body couldn’t hide from you. It is actually incredible how you have completely turned all the ways that you were living upside down so that there is no sniff of harm anymore, only nurturing.
I can also relate to thinking that stillness was boring, and frustrating – how could we do anythig if we were living in slow motion? But stillness is a quality in which I can do a lot of things as I go about my days. And what stillness can look like to one person, can look different to another, so we don’t have to all look and do things the same way. That was another perception I had about stillness – that it would make us all act and look the same.
These are epic experiences with your body that lead you to make changes, and now enable you to support other women to not go through the physical and emoitional pain that you went through. But to relay the experiences alone would not inspire. It is the transformation to the woman that you are today that really inspires.
Interesting perspective on stillness, and considering it as ‘boring and frustrating’ and yet when we see a newborn, that’s all they are, still. We feel the disturbance of when they are upset and melt when they are sleeping.
There’s only one stillness and to truly get there, requires more to be revealed in order to feel the next quality. Just as you have mastered it, then another form is offered – all we have to do is embrace it.
‘The biggest tip I could give any woman, any age, who knows something is not right in the woman department is to first go and get it checked out with your GP and then consider how you are living that is possibly causing the issue.’ Down to earth advice that no one can argue with.
This should be on t-shirts ‘It really does not pay to ignore the signs when things are not feeling right with your body.’ ….. and billboards! It might give us a bit of a wake up call.
If the photos on cigarette packets of decomposing body parts don’t give smokers a wake up call then I wonder if slogans on billboards would get us to reconsider our relationship with our bodies. We seem almost hellbent in our determination to carry on as we are and unfortunately things are going to have to get considerably worse before we’re prepared to take an earnest look at our part in either our own health or the health of the world today.
“Allowing myself to feel and using my body as a compass to guide me how to live really helped me to come back to me.” Love this Bina our body is the best compass and barometer for our health, and all we have to do is take notice and be aware of what it is offering us, and to ignore this is to dismiss the early warning signs of ill health.
That wake-up-call from our body is the alarm bell that all is not well and we have to call on the emergency services to support us. It is equally an alarm bell to look at how we have been living, as in, being so ‘busy’ that we have not realised that the iron has burnt through the ironing board, or we have left a pan on the stove to burn our the pan.
From deeply loathing and having no time for, to feeling, loving and stopping for it every single day – what an amazing change in the relationship you have with your body. We so often place the body at the bottom of the list and keep ignoring it unless it becomes absolutely crucial and there’s no other way out but still with much reluctance – but we can choose differently.
The biggest tips are always given from a sustained livingness of them, from an honest balance between repose and motion. Then, we are able to share more love with others, because we are living it more in our own life.
‘The biggest tip I could give any woman, any age, who knows something is not right in the woman department is to first go and get it checked out with your GP and then consider how you are living that is possibly causing the issue.’ Awesome advice. I couldn’t agree more…and the sooner that visit to the GP is made the better. And if you want a woman doctor ask for one and if you don’t like the first one you see ask to see another – there is nothing more important than honouring and looking after our bodies.
Reading the words ‘Women’s department’ made me smile, it’s usually a term used by men because they either find it too personal to actually name the parts of a woman’s body or that they have a limited understanding of a woman’s body and therefore lump everything into the ‘one department’.
This has inspired me to look at my sleep pattern as it is not very supportive at the moment, thank you.
I had my periods stop for 4 years and it was great in that it got me to really look at how I was living and address it with the support of my GP’s and Esoteric Healing. My relationship with my body is far greater now than it was before it stopped.
This is inspiring Leigh (as is Bina’s story). To know that if we listen to our bodies and the signals it sends through symptoms and illnesses, honouring ourselves and dealing with the root cause of the issue we can come out the other end more vital and healthy than ever before. Whilst so many of us may curse the illness and want to get on with life as we did before, as offered here we can choose to see the issue as the blessing that it truly is as the sign post to a more true way of living.
Stopping can be really hard when you are constantly on the go and working really hard – I still find that, but I also know without doubt that having that balance of being able to stop and truly rest and take care of myself invaluable for myself and my work.
The greatest thing we can give ourselves is to connect to the stillness within… all else is taken care of.
If we saw every disease and illness as a wake-up call then we would have very different chronic disease stats by now.
My goodness – yes. Simply a bump on the elbow or a stubbed toe can say a lot about what our choices have been let alone a chronic illness. If we were to take seriously the stubbed toe or bump being honest about the quality we were moving in, we wouldn’t have to have the more extreme forms of illness that are on the rise, alarmingly so.
Bina this was a great reminder for me of how we can use work to distract the things we really need to be paying attention to, our body is one thing we really need to pay attention to no matter how distracted we want to be, this is a fantastic example of how our body brings us to a stop so we have to stop and listen and from there we get an opportunity to make changes.