Stroke: emotional and spiritual meaning

What a stroke is

A stroke happens when blood flow to part of the brain is cut off. A clot may block an artery, sometimes one that began in the heart. Or a vessel may burst and bleed into the brain. The result is sudden damage: a face that droops, a limb that will not lift, speech that will not come. Minutes matter. High blood pressure, a previous clot, and an irregular heartbeat are among the risks a clinician will treat afterwards. A feeling of pressure does not open a blocked artery or seal a bleed.

The emotional meaning of a stroke

The spiritual interpretation places this accident in the blood and in the vessels, and so in love and in the joy of living. It hears a very strong reaction, a categorical no to an equilibrium that has already broken. The fear underneath is of losing the means to direct one's own life.

In a bleed, an artery bursts and blood spills onto part of the brain. The image offered is a tension, at home or at work, so great that it releases itself as a bursting of the joy of living. Blood, in this language, carries that joy, and also the sorrow of the situation. Take that as a picture of a life under too much strain. The vessel still bursts for physical reasons, and the first response is the emergency services.

The side of the brain is given a simple pair. The right is heard as the intuitive side, the left as the rational side. The question, once the emergency is over, is which of those two has been left out of any peace you have with yourself. Recovery belongs to rehabilitation, to time, and to the plan your doctors set. It is not a light you picture around the cells.

A gentler way to hold it

• After the emergency, name the pressure that had nowhere to go.
• Ask which side of you, feeling or planning, needs to be included again.
• Peace with yourself can be practised in small pieces. The medicines stay in place.