Julia Marh

Spoken in English. Their words, as they said them.

I am in silence. My tinnitus has gone.

I am feeling free in the silence.

It's been very stubborn for quite a while. So it only goes away at night. In the day, it never stops.

And usually in the silence, it's really loud. So to hear, to I've had it it's been gone for about five minutes. I've just been checking in. Are you there? You're not there. Yeah. Thank you.

It's not not just about being silent, it's about being present and holding a space and not running away from the feelings it brings up.

But saying hello to them. But sitting in, sitting with them and going through the other side into them, it was quite a golden place on the other side. It felt very it felt love. It felt gold, and I saw a lot of gold light around this whole area. It felt like a nourishing place to go.

But you have to give it time, and that's, that's I think the challenge for me to to create that time because even doing a body scan is active. You know, this this wasn't This was just enjoying being near another human being quietly. Wasn't I wasn't doing a body scan, I wasn't on a guided meditation, Just me and you.

And and so delicious not to have a squeak in my ear during the day. I mean I have it at night, but it never goes away in the day. So, it's a real, gift.

Actually tinnitus is, well, it's just there, isn't it? You have to learn to be friends with it. You have to learn to say hello. What do you want? What do you need from me today? What do you want me to do? Because if you just scream back at it and tell it to go away, it gets louder.

It's part of a balance disorder that came it felt like it came out of nowhere but of course it didn't. But in terms of, I mean I was incredibly fit and I taught dance and then overnight I couldn't move without falling over. And and that was basically just I just went pain. Just too much performance anxiety, too much tension, too much burden of getting it right, too much responsibility, Too much being a container for everybody. Not paying enough attention to myself. And literally, I lost my balance and went ping. And some kind of some kind of something blew up on the right side of my, you know, no obvious bacteria, disease, virus, nothing obvious at all. It felt fantastic the day I got ill. Felt great. Talked to you dance classes. Felt great. And then, 02:03AM on the 09/17/2017, and I have had a very different life since then.

And the tinnitus I think is the final little message to take time out, reduce work when it's getting too much, cancel going out, just keep, just listen in, nourish myself, be quiet. It's like my little guide. So as much as it's so nice not to have it right now sitting here with you, I'd I'd like something else to replace it because it's quite invasive and intrusive.

But I know that I'm not quite ready to not have any kind of guide. So it has its purpose, but it's so nice to not hear the squeal right now. So I'm very grateful.

It was like running a marathon without any training. But I think that's part of who I am and that's why I got ill in the first place. Overextension.

So classic, I would choose to go and try and be silent for forty eight hours, when actually, I had done no training in that discipline at all.

No. Good learning.

Well now I do more of a risk assessment, but on a holistic level I think and get a bit more real with how resourced I am and what I can do and boundaries, saying no, you know, letting people take responsibility for their own stuff instead of me feeling like it's my job to do that. Of course it's not. And you interfere with people's path. And it's who is It's almost like an ego. It's an ego getting in the way. So, no. Need to let people do their thing and you know, with love and kindness and be there but not be their container. Otherwise you interrupt their own journey and learning and then it all blows up anyway. So it's, I've learned it's better too. For me and for them to respect They've got their journey, I've got mine and having difficult experiences is part of what makes us who we are so.