John Du Cane

John Du Cane

The Dark Healer

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“I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.”—Friedrich Nietzsche

Too often, Dark gets a bad rap. We prefer to rush with open arms into the embrace of his sister, Light. We sigh with relief to be held in that shining brightness—safe, we think, from the prowlers stalking us in that forbidding gloom. And yet… And yet… The truth of the matter is somewhat more subtle and mysterious, is it not? For without the dark, there can be no light—as there can be no darkness without the light to pierce it.

Dark Healer

So, let’s welcome the healing power of darkness. The Dark Healer rules by night, as we sleep and dream. It is as we sleep that The Dark Healer weaves his magic of restoration and regeneration and recovery and growth and cleansing. Without this diligent restorative work behind the scenes we’d quickly be dead in the water.

Darkness is nature’s natural time for rest and recovery. When we partied, we pretty much ignored the concept of rest and recuperation. We blazed through the night snorting and boozing and toking with our customary abandon—heedless and uncaring of the damage we were wreaking on our indignant bodies. Talk about burning the candle at both ends!

When we came somewhat to our senses, surveyed the wreckage and decided to clean up our act, we didn’t always add a good dollop of restorative rest to our recovery mix. We would continue to run ourselves ragged—just without the chemical companions… More than we may ever realize, though, we need the deep healing that the dark can provide us. Fall in love with the Dark Healer that he may love you back.

We may find it simply hard to fall asleep. Our over-busy brains, our shot nerves, our worries, our various aches and pains conspire to keep the light on—at our health’s expense.

So, here’s a great method to help you sink gratefully into the friendly, restorative darkness:

Lie down on a comfortable surface. Make fists and tighten both arms until they are ramrod stiff. Hold for a couple of seconds, then relax completely. Tighten your buttocks, abs and pecs as hard as you can bear. Hold for a couple of seconds, then relax completely. Tighten your thighs into rigid posts. Hold for a couple of seconds, then relax completely. Ok, enough of that! Let’s move on to the second stage:

Place your right finger-tips gently on your breastbone and place your left finger tips just below your navel. Inhale gently, while imagining that the breath is flooding into your heart area. Exhale gently as you send your attention into the stomach below your finger-tips. Repeat from five to ten times (or more if you like.) Finally, place both palms over your navel. Inhale into your stomach area, exhale into your stomach for five to ten repetitions.

Don’t be surprised if you find yourself drifting off before you complete the full number of repetitions. Welcome to the embrace of the Dark Healer…

I celebrate the power of darkness as it helps restore and strengthen my recovery.

Radical Dishonesty

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“The trouble with lying and deceiving is that their efficiency depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and deceiver wishes to hide.”—Hannah Arendt

It’s sometimes remarked with a wry smile that one definition of an alcoholic is someone who lies even when they don’t have to. Let’s call this compulsive need to dissemble, “radical dishonesty.” Not a compulsion any of us would really like to live with, right? But, many of us in recovery will shake our heads at the extent to which we were once the poster child for radical dishonesty. Our self-induced suffering knew few boundaries to begin with—our compulsive deceit just pushed those boundaries to the further edges of the horizon…

The dance of deceit is an ever more complex dance to perform—as we prance away from the simpler patterns that would otherwise represent our truth. As users—out of shame or fear of legal consequences—we burrowed ever deeper into our hidden foxholes. When we finally got rousted, ousted and busted, the cobwebs of our lies seemed to lace us in their gray tangle. Over time—and with much help—we started to brush off the cobwebs and disentangle ourselves from the mess of our deceit. But habits die awfully hard—and the habit to lie was once our second nature…

Opening up to others and getting real with our stories is one key to a healthy recovery. Embellishment is good entertainment. But when we distort and hide even the simplest stories behind a veil of falsehoods, entertainment devolves into a hollow script of furtive secrets.

Dishonesty

Pill-popping, snorting, spiking, sucking, toking, glugging and other chemical endeavors numbed us to the full pain and foolishness of our deceitful behavior. As we cleaned up our chemical dependencies, we began to deep-clean the behaviors our chemicals had enabled. Tough stuff, but essential if we were to remain on the path of recovery.

Today might be a good day to reflect on one of the dubious stories we may still be telling ourselves and others. Let’s take a minute to hold that tall tale up to the light. Perhaps it still serves a worthwhile purpose. However, perhaps it does not—and we can now safely discard it without losing our sense of self. Each of us would be the best judge of our own stories in this regard…

Was it perhaps anxiety-provoking to confront a deceitful story we had been clinging to? That would be pretty natural! Let’s handle that right away with a powerful breathing method recommended by the Lung Institute, amongst others. It’s called Pursed Lips Breathing, or PLB. PLB has numerous health benefits, including a reduction of stress and anxiety:

Stand or sit, with shoulders down and relaxed. Inhale slowly through the nose for two seconds with your mouth closed. No need to labor for a deep breath—just take a normal, gentle inhale. Exhale through the mouth for four seconds (the extended time period is very important). When exhaling, purse your lips as if giving a kiss. While exhaling, keep the breath slow and steady. No force. Repeat ten to twenty times.

It feels great to relax out of holding on to a needless deceit.

Watering and Weeding

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“The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.”—Bruce Lee

If we want to cultivate a beautiful garden, we commit to regular, conscientious care. Dumping a truckload of water once a year is not going to cut it. Nor is once-a-year weeding. Rather, we water and weed with consistent moderation. Feeding and clearing, feeding and clearing. The pleasing riot of color we wished for can then stand forth against its green, clean backdrop…

Watering Weeding

The deeper we cultivate our recovery, the simpler the recovery becomes. Simple, yes, but simple from diligent, persistent, wise effort. We become what we continue to cultivate. This way, the tortured complexities that choked off our serenity can be cleared away—to allow our simpler, stronger nature to blossom out.

So, yes, the practice of recovery is an attentive, daily practice. We cultivate our spiritual muscularity and emotional resilience by facing up every day to cleansing and feeding our inner beings. And, along with our inner beings, we care on a daily basis for our bodies, our outer beings, as it were… It is good to match inner and outer care. Lack of diligence in the one can easily transfer to lack of diligence in the other. Such lack of care can lead to stagnation and a slow deterioration of our composite well-being. In recovery, we can ill afford to take risks with our well-being, whether inner or outer…

Movement means life. And in recovery, daily physical movement is a must, when it comes to the “weeding and the watering”… Because, when we move, we stimulate the healing flow of fresh blood throughout our system. We stimulate synovial fluids in our joints—helping to reduce pain and discomfort. Movement with good breathing stimulates the lymph system, helping it to flush out the toxic crud which inevitably accumulates within us. It doesn’t have to be much, but let’s move some every day…

Here’s an easy, natural-feeling movement that will calm you and energize you simultaneously:

Stand in a relatively wide stance, knees bent so the thighs are at about a forty-five-degree angle. Tuck your butt under, so it’s not sticking out. Feel your thighs somewhat challenged in the stance. Keep the knees aligned with your feet. Start with your palms facing up in front of the stomach. On a long, slow inhale, raise your hands in front of your torso, above your head, slowly turning the palms, so they are facing away from you at the top-most position. On a long, slow exhale, circle your palms out down and around until they arrive in front of the stomach.

Now, reverse the sequence:

On a long, slow inhale, circle the palms out to the side and up until they are above your head. On a long, slow exhale, bring the palms down in front of your torso until they are at stomach level. Rotate the palms as they descend, so they are facing down when you complete the movement.

Start over with another sequence and repeat for a total of eight or more sequences.

It feels so good to be clean and energized today.

The Power of Positive Regret

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“Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.”—Henry David Thoreau

There’s a much-loved line in an old French song by Edith Piaf: “Je ne regrettte rien”, or, in English “I regret nothing”. While this is a laudable sentiment, it begs a bigger picture—particularly for those of us in recovery. For regret can be the very stuff of healing. The sociopath may feel no regret for his actions—because he is simply incapable of feeling. To regret is to acknowledge an error—to learn from it and to commit to a wiser path in the future. No regrets—perhaps, no lesson learned, no wisdom gained?

Regret

Like so many emotions in recovery, regret is a feeling to be handled with kid gloves. Moderation is everything. We balance between the need to acknowledge our mistakes and the compulsion to wallow in self-recrimination. Too much handwringing can lead us to the edge of relapse. Too little courage to face our faults and too little determination to make course corrections, can crimp the progress of our recovery. We step with care on the jungle path, alert, paying attention to the signals and responding appropriately…

Welcome then, to the notion of “positive regret.” Let’s take a minute to identify some serious mistake we made in the past. A mistake whose memory still snaps at our heels, dogging us with unease. Let’s take a minute to see the mistake for what it was: a mistake. Note the lesson—and what we’re going to do different next time round. Watch that mistake as it floats away downstream and now forever out of sight… Excellent! What a relief!

The ancient art of letting go came to our rescue once again. The ancient art is good that way: always ready to give a helping hand if we only just ask!

Here’s a movement to smile with, as you practice your positive regret:

Stand or sit with good posture, shoulders relaxed. Tilt your head back so you are looking up at the ceiling. Stay comfortable in the movement. Then, bring your chin as close to your chest as you can manage—without moving any other part of your body. Inhale up, exhale down. Do ten or more repetitions. By the way, this movement is superbly healing when it done on a regular basis. Consider doing it every day…

I feel complete as I acknowledge, learn from and let go of an old regret.

 

Redemption

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“No person and no character is beyond redemption, ultimately. That’s the great thing about playing a character that has kind of a dark side; there’s room to explore the opposite.”—Murray Bartlett

We lurched down into the darker reaches of despair, dragging our misdeeds in a bundle behind us. We were the despised ones. The “sinners”. The mongers of harm. The bad boys and girls who had hit bottom—and seemed doomed to end their days in unforgiven suffering. Such have been the stories of so many of us addicts and alcoholics, as we careened through our ever-more dysfunctional lives. Hope was a cruel joke played at our expense. We saw no light at the end of the tunnel. Just a darkening and a darkening of the gloom…

Then a miracle might have happened. A helping hand from out of nowhere. A band of friends and loved ones who saw beyond the exterior shambles to the trembling beauty beneath. We were dragged—often unwitting, often in resistance—to some kind of healing haven where we were given the chance for a new beginning. Our shackles began to fall away. We began to move again with a sense of purpose and hope. We were on the path of recovery—and the opportunity to redeem our past insanities…

Redemption

Being passive receivers in recovery doesn’t cut it, if we want to be resilient in our recovery. Instead—out of gratitude for the rescue—we can redeem ourselves by giving back. We can give back with the gifts we can best bestow on our others. Let’s take a moment to meditate on the gifts we have to offer. Our skills. Our special talents. Our hard-won wisdom. Our new-found care and love. The path to redemption—and therefore to a more robust recovery—can be trod step by giving step…

As we continue to reflect on the gifts we can give to others, let’s perform this simple, yet exhilarating movement:

Stand hip-width, knees slightly bent, arms to the sides. Bring the arms all the way above the head, palms facing away from you. Rise up on the balls of your feet, as your arms go up. Sink back down as your arms descend to their original positions. Inhale deeply as you raise your arms above your head. Exhale as you lower your arms and sink back down. Repeat for a total of ten repetitions. As usual, do more reps if the mood takes you.

I am excited to contemplate the many gifts I have to offer others.