Meditating When You Have Ulcerative Colitis

I have always had an aversion to traditional medicine. My mother worked for a doctor briefly in her youth, and she had horror stories about the things she saw in the business. Doctors more concerned about money than their patients, prescriptions destroying people's bodies. While she understood that sometimes allopathic medicine was the only answer, I was raised to always look for the alternative first. The truth is, prescription drugs are made of chemicals. Chemicals should be a last resort for healing your body.

Because of this part of my background, my diagnosis of ulcerative colitis lead me on a journey to find a way around the steroids that were prescribed to me by my gastroenterologist. I found many things along the way that have helped. Herbal remedies, the acceptance that my body doesn't tolerate meat, etc. However, one thing that has certainly helped me in this journey to a healthy body (which, I am now in complete remission) has been meditation.

I use visualizations during my meditation to help aid in my maintenance of my health. Airy-fairy as it might seem sometimes, I truly believe that this visualization has helped in my recovery. I start out with breathing exercises to relax myself and come to a place of mental quiet. Once there, I visualize my body with red light emanating from my intestines and digestive tract. This red is representative of irritation and pain in those areas that I have experienced. I then focus my mental energy on cleansing the red from my body, usually replacing it with clear blue light. This is just what works for me.

Even this visualization itself has played no part in my remission, it has certainly helped in other ways. One of the huge triggers of an ulcerative colitis flare-up is stress. During times of tension and worry, sufferers of UC will often experience an increase in symptoms and a worsening of their overall condition. My visualization, and my meditation in general, have helped reduce my stress levels over the last few years, and I know that this has help me avoid ulcerative colitis symptoms.

Even when symptoms do occur, meditation can help in that it simply makes you feel better about everything. If you can be at peace with yourself and the world around you through focusing your mental energy, you just might find that a few ulcerative colitis symptoms, while annoying, don't have to be your focus. Through calming myself physically and mentally, I have been able to let go of the emotional pain and suffering that accompanies UC, and this shift has allowed me to enjoy a better quality of life no matter what happens with my digestive tract.