A Positive Spin

I know it's been quite some time since I posted an entry here. Admittedly, the content of my previous post was a bit on the gloomy side but the experience of writing it evolved into something surprisingly cathartic. I'm lucky to have lived to tell the tale and I am forever grateful that my days of running from the Devil are behind me.

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I first read about the new gay cancer in the summer of 1982. Barely 18, my hormones are continually escalating and men are really starting to notice me. There are so many things I want to try with them but it isn't worth dying over.

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After my previous post on essential oils, I received more inquiries on the topic than any other, by far. This made me feel hopeful for the HIV-positive community. Many of us are so bound to to Pharma that sometimes it's refreshing to have somewhere else to turn to support our compromised health and complement what modern medicines have to offer us.

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In my opinion, it's a travesty what Advertising has gone and done with the word Aromatherapy. The powerful chemistry found within a single drop of essential oil -- inhaled from a warm washcloth, a steamer, a carrier oil or right on your wrist -- has such a profound, almost instantaneous and usually beneficial effect inside our bodies and minds; to cheapen it by putting inferior quality imitations into room sprays and Glade Plug-ins and calling it Aromatherapy is a crying shame.

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In the course of our twenty-year friendship, Russel and I have seen each other through thick and thin. During those years, including eight working side by side, there was nothing I couldn't tell him or ask him and I suspect he'd say the same about me. These days, our semi-weekly power walks at dawn provide us time to explore a wide spectrum of subjects, including life with HIV, as we pant, climbing the massive hills of San Francisco.

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Talk about a final test. If I treated myself with the same compassion and tolerance that I would offer a kind stranger, my life, at the very least, would have gone a lot smoother and been considerably more fun. Luckily, it turns out you can teach a middle aged dog some new tricks, and it appears I've still got some decades left to use them. The past eight weeks I practiced and cultivated some pretty useful skills and I have a damn good feeling that some of them will enable me to eventually become the man I always hoped I would be.

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When I re-read what I just typed, I instantly became aware how contracting HIV has honed my instincts. I suppose survival will do that. Through too much of my life I believed that I should follow the advice of those who knew more about something than I did, even when deep down, it didn't feel right. Forty-six years and a million mistakes later, I now know that there is no authentic replacement for that kind of inner truth that rarely steers me wrong. I just have to remember to honor it.

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This week in place of the Body Scan, I used both the Standing and Lying Yoga exercises found in the workbook to cultivate mindfulness. I've been hooked on yoga and the stillness it consistently provides me for over ten years, so to be honest, these both felt comfortable and safe. For those that have a hard time sitting still, I don't think there's a better way to quiet the mind than yoga. Doing the poses my body is kept so busy that thinking becomes harder to do and so much less important than breathing.

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I love this definition from Jon Kabat-Zinn. I realize that patience is the difference between smart and wise and have come to understand it's something that only years of experience can provide us.

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Fell off the mindfulness wagon for a couple of days. I regressed back to my old ways, becoming involved in a complex project over the weekend, and found it hard to start up again. I discovered why I've kept both my mind and my body so busy, particularly since testing HIV positive. But instead of judging myself like I normally might, I simply noticed my discomfort around feeling emotions and gave myself space until I was ready to begin again on Tuesday.

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