Bliss meditation to support healing mitochondria

Meditation can recharge your cellular batteries and support healing

Traditional meditation usually includes quieting the mind, focusing on the breath, and observing thoughts and feelings as they come and go. This is a great idea, theoretically. But in practice, it can feel abysmally terrible – especially if you’re healing chronic pain or illness.

If you’re in the thick of healing, sitting and feeling anxiety and symptoms while watching yourself suffer not only feels like crap, but can actually get in the way of healing. 

Meditation traditions exist, however, that feel truly good – even if you’re healing chronic illness, pain, or Lyme disease. These traditions range from ancient to contemporary. In my personal experience, meditation that feels like eating dark chocolate cake, sitting on a warm, sunny porch is the kind of meditation that helps support healing on a cellular level – even restoring health to mitochondria.

Bliss meditation supports healthy mitochondria 

In the book Power Up Your Brain by David Perlmutter and Alberto Villoldo, Perlmutter, a renowned neuroscientist, describes the experience of unconditional love as synonymous with healthy and high-functioning mitochondria. What???

Mitochondria are tiny little microscopic bacteria that have evolved to live within every one of our cells. They are responsible for converting our food into energy.

Mitochondria power every one of our thoughts, feelings, and actions. Without mitochondria, there is no energy. It will come as no surprise that many forms of chronic illness (especially Lyme disease) can knock out mitochondrial function, contributing to symptoms of chronic fatigue.

Unconditional love has been celebrated in many religions and cultures over time. Connection to unconditional love is part of our human, healing inheritance. According to Perlmutter, we not only experience love and joy when our mitochondria make energy, but we can intentionally bring it into our bodies through meditation.

An ancient love meditation for healing

Even when we’re suffering symptoms of chronic illness, we can open our energetic system to the flow of universal, unconditional love and life energy. Here’s a basic introduction to a Buddhist meditative healing practice; people have been using variations for thousands of years. 

• Create a mantra

  Sit or lie down comfortably. Create a mantra of unconditional self-acceptance and love, just for today. For example: “I accept all that I am, and all that exists in this moment. I release all struggle and strain. I let go.” Repeat your mantra, either silently or out loud, allowing it to help you relax more and more deeply.

• Open your heart chakra

  Turn your attention to the energetic space around and within your heart. Imagine this space as an open channel where energy moves and flows into you. Your heart chakra is a place where universal, love energy can flow into your body, nourishing your healing, and your mitochondria.

• Trust your experience

  As you practice, you may feel sensations begin to build and grow in your heart chakra, like warmth or humming. Trust and enjoy them! Pay attention to these good sensations, and they’ll most likely increase, bathing your body and mind in healing, mitochondrial energy.

 Annie Hopper’s DNRS program

One example of a contemporary meditation program created specifically to heal symptoms of chronic illness is DNRS; Dynamic Neural Retraining Systems. DNRS was created by a Canadian woman named Annie Hopper, to heal her own extreme chemical sensitivities.

Hopper was inspired in part by Lightning Process and Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) – practices that work with language and emotion to help rewire the brain toward healthy function.

DNRS teaches us to use affirmation, memory, and fantasy to purposefully flood our brains with feelings of happiness, bliss, gratitude, excitement – the more intense the good feelings the better. Dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin; according to Hopper these feel-good chemicals literally heal neural circuits. DNRS also asks that we commit to observing our thought patterns full time, interrupting worry or obsessive thoughts with positive language and feelings.

The success of DNRS shows how very effective pleasure can be at healing our brains and bodies. Healing neurologically affects all levels of the body, very much including mitochondria.

Spiritual Warriors

Healing requires that we honor self-care. Self-love, rest, softness; these qualities bring unconditional love to our bodies and souls. Our brains, our immune systems, and our mitochondria need this constructive rest to heal and thrive.

I’ve used both the above meditation practices a zillion times throughout my healing journey from Lyme disease. I still use them, and variations on them, if I hit a bump in the road. They never fail to help me find my way.

If you need help starting (or rebooting) your practice, try guided meditation. I created The Cells’Breath, a meditation album, specifically to support those healing chronic illness or pain.

Thank you so much for reading. I hope your meditation practice is a healing space you return to again and again.

Shona