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 
There’s no reason why we should keep things in and try to ‘do life alone’. Doctors, nurses, teachers, police and other professionals are there for a reason – to support our society to live vital lives, learn things, not accept abuse and so forth, and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t seek their help when it is called for.
So simple, so obvious and so true – we live our lives based on our realities, ignoring the truth of our bodies and wonder where illness and disease comes from…?
Great to read this again today and feel the power of your commitment and the love that you are unfolding. Also great to read your comment in response to Fumiyo and to feel the steadiness and self love that comes through, the quality is lovely to feel.
Waking up and thinking that your are a superwoman who can do anything at the expense of your body and get away with it is, I reckon, a pretty normal state of living for many many women. And what strikes me about this is how you are actually a very super woman, you are strong and powerful in your expression and much much more, but none of this needs to come at the expense of your body.
It is great how you share you did not know how to stop or take care of yourself as I suppose many women feel the same. And it shows how important it is for all of us to be aware that medical care alone is not it and must be complemented with self-care to see where and how this could happen in the first place. To basically show that there is another way than just keeping going.
“I love myself deeply and would never choose to harm my body again – ever” – this is so profound and I really hear you, as I sometimes find myself being hard on myself because I was not being loving in my attempt to love myself, and that is the toxin I give myself the most.
Great Fumiyo that this bit touched you about choosing never to harm my body again – ever.
I know from past experience that hard thoughts made my body feel hard and it was polar opposite behaviour to the gentle natural state of my being. In other words, who I truly am.
Next – I would just like to expand on your comment a bit more, as the blog is a bit old and there is now more to say.
My take is that we have levels of self love and it is a forever deepening process, if we choose to allow things to unfold. So with this example – my intention to never harm my body is still there but the awareness has changed. By that I mean that I am more aware of things going on like foods I eat that may be harmful to my body.
OR
If a tiny thing like a knock happens and it is negligible to most, I would reflect on that and apologise to my body and take note of where it was on the body and have an internal conversation, not obsessive or anything like that but just so I can feel what happened and why, with no need to be critical or judgemental in any way.
It would be true to say that the way I live will support me to continue knocking out even more self harm as in my world I now know – anything that is not Love is actually harm.
Thankyou Bina for also reminding us about those little knocks and bumps we can so often have during our day, but equally so often ignore them as being nothing. Nothing is ever nothing as everything is everything and deserves our full attention if we are to really deepen the love and care we have for ourselves. More internal but tender conversations with myself are definitely on the agenda!
‘Hard thoughts made my body feel hard’ – I can totally relate to that, and how when we think about life in a ‘what needs to be done’ functional and driven way, our bodies become like that too – hard, functional, driven and joyless. What is starting to return the joy into my body is really basic self-care, and paying attention to how I’m actually feeling right now, not how I’d like to be feeling or think that I ‘should’ be feeling. When we get real and accept what’s actually going on and how we’re feeling right now, we have something to work with and move forward from – and there’s a simple settlement in that.
It is quite gorgeous (and unfortunately and sadly too rare) to hear a woman state that she deeply loves herself. Thank you.
‘Loving me was not my thing’ – I can so relate to this, it wasn’t mine either, but equally I felt that there was something missing in my life, and tried every single distraction going to try to find this ‘thing’ – i.e this more to life that I knew must be out there, somewhere. What has been incredible is feeling that what I was looking for was actually with me all along: this complete sense of knowing who I am, this settlement and deep contentment that needs nothing to keep it going from the outside. I can’t say I live like this 100% of the time, but I at least now know what it feels like to live like this more than ever before, and the very simple choices I can make, like basically looking after myself, and loving myself more deeply, that are making this solid, real and practical way of being and feeling become a new level of normal.
Thank you for sharing the reality of how it was for you a step-by-step process of building more awareness of your body and taking care of you and that it didn’t just all change overnight, but that it’s worth building that consistency of using your body as a compass in your way of living.
It is so beautiful to acknowledge how our body keeps bringing us back to a stop until we finally get the message that we have to surrender to what the body needs and start living from the inside out, rather than the outside in.
“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.” Our body really does tell us what we need to know – if we choose to listen and then make the necessary changes in our lifestyle.
Recently I have been feeling very tired and under the weather and my body has been wanting to rest. At first I wanted to ignore these signs from my body to slow down but the feeling in my body became greater and greater till I had no choice but to rest. I was having restless sleep and getting up at midnight to do some work for a few hours before having to lie down again. Finally I surrendered and stopped pushing myself in any way and I had the best night for a long time. I realised that I was eating more than I needed too and sometimes the food I was choosing made me feel tired in and of itself. Pulling myself up and listening carefully to my body I began to get some life back and I feel now I have turned a corner so to speak but it has been a few weeks and I still feel to treat myself with the utmost care….not just now but from here on in.
Bina I find your blog very humbling, as women we can do a LOT and we can multitask and work incredibly hard but it can never ever be at the sacrifice of a) the love we have for ourselves and b) the quality we have inside us.
Action can get us very far but harms us when we overdo it. In my experience and Bina’s seems similar, when action replaces effectiveness we can (will?) get into trouble. Life is more than action.
This is such a rock solid epic line: “Stillness for me was a word to describe lazy people, who were boring and laid back and could not multi-task.” Because I reckon this is how most people feel, and it goes to show the incredible importance of words chosen well for each person’s situation. That words cannot simply be flung around and expected to be understood. Everyone, we all, need to be communicated with both for where we are at in our respective journeys and for what potential we each hold. Thus is the art of a true and loving correspondence.
Yes, words can be great pointers to the truth and very harmfully misleading. Either is very much possible.
Indeed words spoken without the living intent of our innermost are merely a reinterpretation and can be very misleading.
At least Bina had an idea of what stillness was, I didn’t have a clue, not even a conscious inkling as to what stillness was. The amazing thing is that now I recognise stillness as something very, very known to us all. A quality that we have all lived and breathed before and one that stretches out endlessly within us all.
This is such an amazing turnaround. I can totally relate to living in absolute drive, constantly feeling the need to work and do, and to never, ever stop. What you’ve shown here is that it can be done. Absolutely, and with no question, as soon as we allow ourselves to get real and honest about the way we’re living, and how we’re being with ourselves: loving or abusive.
Me too Bryony, I remember feeling such an incessant need to be doing something that I had to fight the urge not to polish my silverware whilst having a cuppa with a friend.
” not thinking I am superwoman and can multi-task and force things to happen.”
The difficulty of forcing things to happen is that it’s never truly what needs to happen.
Bina it is very true that there are the two types of busyness or excess motion, one is the physical one and the other is the internal mental one. Once the body gets stopped, often through illness or accident, what’s left is the momentum going on inside, the body can be physically still but on the inside it’s still racing at 100 miles an hour. The internal raciness has been the one I find hard to stop. Your words also about how you recognised you were fighting yourself to maintain the doing is interesting because this may be in some cases the cause of the excess busyness – we may be fighting simply being still with ourselves.
“I cannot turn back the clock, but what I can do now is live every day taking deep care of myself” – this, I need to tell myself more often. I am living the consequences of the choices I made in the past, but the choices I am making and will be making now will guarantee what I am to be living. We are that power-full.
Super honest blog Bina, I guess there are a lot of women around the world that join you in the fact that you couldn’t stop doing what you were doing ( which was very obviously not supporting yourself and or your body) caused by this internal momentum. Your body forced you to listen in the end and you started to allow yourself to feel and use your body as ‘a compass to guide me how to live really helped me to come back to me.’
Like adventurers who conquer mountains, or entrepreneurs who overcome all the odds, we like to pride ourselves on battling through, on achieving things despite all else. So as you illustrate perfectly Bina we champion what we can do today despite our body. We celebrate it ‘not holding us back’ when all along it was supporting us and attempting to let us know the truth. Imagine what we would be capable of if we just started to listen to what it has to say instead of ignoring it and pushing ahead anyway.
Isn’t it amazing what we call normal. You thought it was normal to be in severe pain at that time and that was normal for you. For some people it is normal to beat up their partner. For some it is normal to go for a walk every morning. Some find it normal to sing and for some it is normal to drink a bottle of wine every evening. “Normal” has lost any value meaning and has no relation as to whether something is healthy or not and yet we behave as if it does.
Bina I love the honesty in which you write this with, we champion our ability to multi task, to get jobs done without giving our body a second thought, when we truly know we have to look after ourselves to support what there is that needs to be done, by actually connecting to our body, we get a feeling of what supports us, and what undermines it.
‘It really does not pay to ignore the signs when things are not feeling right with your body.’ Through your lived experience, Bina your words of advice really do come through with power and wisdom. Thank you for sharing. It can be all to easy to power through life and not take heed from the body with signals that it sends us. How loud do the subtle signals need to get before the body begins to shout louder and louder about the way we choose to live?
WOW “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.’ I feel many will be able to relate to what you have shared because many many, including myself at times, do not stop and listen to what the body is saying even though sometimes it is really loud. I love the advice you have given here ‘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.’ Yep absolutely go to the GP but definitely look at how we are living as this is the reason the illness or dis-ease happened in the first place. I cannot wait for the day when this is common practice for all of us.
Coming to a stop to reconnect to that inner stillness allows for the development of a connection that we can take back into the flow of life.
I used to think I was boring without all the drama and busyness of trying to do it all. Now I deeply appreciate the stillness and quality I bring which offers a reflection to others that we don’t need to get caught up in the drama and doing to be a vibrant, productive part of the world. The opposite is true – the drama drains us and leaves us depleted and lacking full capacity.
When we focus on getting everything done at the expense of our body how can we ever think that it will not eventually break down and become ill.
Yes, our motion suffers when there isn’t sufficient repose.
A beautiful exposé showing how long sometimes our momentum can continue until we are able to stop it.
This is such a pertinent blog for many women, I would say too much motion and lack of stillness is one of the main ills in women. Serge Benhayon offers so many ways in which we as women can find stillness within, and this blog demonstrates the importance of taking steps towards this truth.
We can be stubborn creatures, I speak from experience and love when I say that. I want to thank you though, for every time I read about women who are very active and are able to find their way back to self love, I feel like I have a chance, god knows I need a little help in that department. I can get so caught up in all the things I need to do, that sometimes I forget to love and care for myself enough.
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It is a shame that sometimes it takes a super loud message from our body to get us to stop and reconsider the way in which we have been living. How beautiful however that you have since chosen to rebuild a relationship with your body based on a truth you now feel and from that experience a stillness and worth you can now not deny.
The bodies wisdom is simply divine and has all the patience in the world, so when we may not get something first up, the body finds another way to get our attention. Love it.
So true Julie, when we look at this as a true gift of love we can then see that all ills are an offering not a hindrance.
“…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…” The self loathing issue is such a key and common trait for women, that unconsciously influences choices, habits and behaviour pattern we may develop into – and thus eventually erode a woman’s health. For a woman to re-aquaint back to the stillness within her body, in ways that you have described in your blog, starts the process of deconstructing this self loathing and reintroduce love back to the expression of being woman. A great sharing Bina, thank you.
I am really interested in this part about burning your hand Bina and then how you talk about enjoying the drama and the stress as a way to avoid feeling the truth of what was there to be felt. This is amazing because how often am I, and are we, given so many stop points along the way to consider what I and what we are doing and the impact these choices are having on ourselves, on myself, on each other.
Bina, thank you for sharing your story, for we can all learn from this…how far do we let things go before we are actually going to put a stop to it and make some changes? This is a question for all of us to sit with and ponder deeply.
Gosh I can relate to what you write here…and I cried reading it today. Learning to love, honour, accept and appreciate yourself deeply is a loving work in progress for me, but really is the most important steps I can take.
Bina with all the amazing work that you do today and the inspiration you show people in how to deeply care for and love themselves, it’s powerful to read the process you went through in building the deep level of love you hold so true today. It shows no matter what a person’s particular issue is, anything can not only be healed but life can transform if we choose.
This is such an inspiring turn-around Bina. It is a part of our divine design that our bodies are in tune with the greater body of the Universe that so holds us and that when we begin to move out of rhythm to this, our body is the messenger that will alert us so that we can then take the necessary steps to bring our movements back into accordance with this Universal pulse. Therefore it is not illness that is a curse or bad luck but simply a sign that our body is doing its job in trying to re-establish order when things have gone a bit wayward.
I love the honesty of how you share you loathed your body and were far too busy saving the world to take care of yourself. It is completely insane isn’t it that we can imagine we are helping or even can help others when we can’t even take care of or love ourselves.
ha ha love the honesty where you write: that you loved the drama and stress of your injury and the troubles it brought so you could continue to avoid the almost unavoidable that was being presented to you. How many of us admit that we often invite such situations because we want to avoid the truth at all costs.
I am not sure we appreciate in full how the body can naturally respond when we offer it the gift of surrender and true care.
It’s not just what we do to our body, we literally keep ourselves from connecting to and enjoying who we are because of our behaviours. This is why the work of Serge Benhayon is so revelatory because there are these two sources of energy we draw from every day and their accompanying vehicles, the spirit and the soul. It’s so supportive to know this because behaviours can be so confounding – we know we don’t want to hurt ourselves but we often continually do despite our best efforts to change our habits and patterns. Your experiences Bina were a great example of these two energies, and the difference is felt now in how you live connected to the soul in stillness.
This is such an amazing and deeply honest blog Bina. I love how you lay out that you changes came with dedication and with that came a new relationship with you and your body. A great reminder that no matter what we can connect to our body if we choose.
Inner stillness is a medicine you can take into the way you are with yourself in every action.
I keep returning to this blog. Much like the story you share Bina, it seems there’s no end to the drama and complication that comes in my life when I ignore how I feel in my body. It doesn’t matter how ‘small’ or large the feeling is – whether I listen determines the quality and harmony of what comes next. It seems we will have to keep learning this lesson until a time we cherish and always honour what the body has to say.
Your words Bina Patel are all too familiar to me. The saddest part is in our drive to get things ‘done’ many people applaud and cheer us on for doing ‘good’ – all the while we are running a million miles away from what’s going on ‘under the hood’. This last weekend I pushed myself madly to get things complete, but only succeeded in upsetting myself, my partner and our whole house. When we have this momentum and past pattern of pushing on, we really really need to regularly stop and check where our internal compass is at. Many thanks for the powerful reminder.
Thanks for your honest sharing Joseph and this drive to getting things done never works.
I have come to realise that my to do list is a process and it is ongoing.
There are days in the calendar where cycles are closed and more gets done and other days where my body is saying “take another deep nap, you need it”.
I find it very hard now to override and ignore what my body is communicating so if I get this feeling of tired or need to rest and the opportunity is there I go for it. If not, I find myself thinking and wanting foods that I know are not good for my body and my quality of steadiness and stillness changes.
Generally, allowing things to unfold whilst keeping the day to day stuff going works best for me and I can feel what’s next as I get to the end of one task.
However, this rest stuff and going for my walk every day and drinking plenty of room temperature water, is equally important and that works too.
To be honest it is a way of life now so it’s easy and no effort required. A far contrast from this blog if you ask me.
I related to your initial reactions to stillness. I used to get really annoyed if people ever told me to “relax” and used to say “you relax” because often I saw it as them reacting to my getting things done. I too have learned about Stillness from Serge Benhayon and it is NOTHING like I used to think it is and it is also not about “relaxing” or “not moving”.
Stillness is spacious ~ in Stillness I have much more energy and actually get heaps more done – although that is not a goal but a by-product. Stillness totally rocks and is actually a quality of the Soul. Michael Benhayon plays the drums and moves in a quality of stillness that is incredibly cool and joyful. It is actually a faster vibration than the denseness of raciness!
Thanks for your honest sharing here Nicola about getting annoyed when people told you to relax.
The other thing I used to get that bugged me was ‘allow things to unfold’. That was like a red rag to a bull if you know what I mean.
The thought of sitting still for a second seemed like a waste and as this blog says even when I was forced to completely stop by my body, I had this spinning that was going on and never stopped. Might sound weird but it was true. Nothing in me wanted to change but once I got the understanding WHY from the teachings and presentations of Serge Benhayon, then things made sense and I was able to take small tiny steps in the right direction and knock out the nonsense behaviour that led to all those ill choices of deeply neglecting and harming my precious body.
The thought of calling my body ‘precious’ was not on my radar or in my language, so it’s huge how far I have really come.
Bina, in my experience you and everything you share is very, very precious and super gorgeous
An amazing story Bina, and a wealth of information gained and wisdom applied in your life since. If we listen to our bodies, they tell everything we need to know about the choices we are making and whether they are true for us or not.
I agree Jenny, the story here is amazing but the wealth of information that has been shared by way of comments, coming from my life since is pure wisdom and this expands the blog and keeps it alive if you ask me.
I am blown away by how smart and intelligent our body truly is.
Just a real life simple example is me wanting to eat a full dinner in the morning – very rare but true this week. Of course I get it, in an Aha moment at the end of the day, WHY I needed to eat then and at that time and what to eat specifically. My body knew way ahead of my mind what was best for that day and as it unfolded, I got it.
I am deeply deeply grateful for this incredible precious body I have which has a deep regard and respect now that was never there before – thanks to the teachings of Serge Benhayon.
Yes Bina, the body’s wisdom is endless, the more we listen, the more detail it communicates.