The Lighting Process

Well, I have been absent for a very long time, but I am back to report on my greatest success. I no longer have ME! My life took a turn for the worse late 2013 and I struggled greatly. As a result my health deteriorated again and I was close to despair. My desire to recover from CFS/ME reached its highest level and all of a sudden things began to line up. My sister reminded me of the Lightning Process. She had mentioned it to me some time ago and I read Phil Parkers ‘An introduction to the Lighting Process’. But at that time although I found the book very interesting I didn’t feel ready to try the Lighting Process for myself. But all of a sudden in December 2013 I felt I had nothing to lose. Almost everything I valued in my life was gone. And I felt the only way to rebuild my life was to recover and be healthy again.

I found a practice that taught the Lightning Process near me – Neurologica – and I phoned up and had a chat with Sam who takes the courses. I had quite a few concerns which we discussed. My main concern was ‘what if it doesn’t work for me?’ Sam told me that that the only barrier would be how determined I was. I laughed – it was the best thing he could have said. I am incredibly determined and never give up once my mind is set on something. He wasn’t going to be doing a course near me until January, but suggested that I come on the next course he was doing in Highgate that weekend. I was slightly thrown… but I could see no reason to delay. I spoke to him again later in the week and we went through a sort of assessment to see if I was in the right place mentally to do the course – thankfully I was.

That Saturday morning found me driving to my sister’s home near Kingston and getting a train into central London. This was followed by my first solo trip on the tube since being ill. It was tiring and hard. I got to Highgate and had a ten minute walk to the venue. As you might imagine by the time I arrived I was pretty worn out. The first session was very interesting. I learnt the basics of the Lightning Process, LP, that afternoon. That evening I met my sister and her husband to go to a party. I had to constantly keep doing the LP, and it was quite a struggle. We got back to my sister’s very late. I was exhausted but I struggled to sleep. Thankfully I was able to use the LP to get more sleep than I might have done otherwise and I began to see that if the LP could help me sleep it could work to relieve my fatigue.

The Sunday morning started badly. Due to engineering works loads of trains were cancelled and it was a huge struggle to get there and I was late. I was also even more tired than I had been the day before. I learnt the rest of the LP that afternoon and went back to a quiet evening with my sister and brother in law. 

The LP really helped me get some good sleep that night and I set out for a walk down to the river the next morning. I was stopping constantly to do the process and mentally I was struggling to believe it would work for me. I sat down on a bench by the river. It was cold and damp and misty – a typical December morning. I knew some people needed to work for quite a while before they got the LP to work for them, and I was resigned to the fact this would be me. Despite this thought there was no way I was giving up. I could already use it to shift the fatigue slightly for a few minutes. Just nothing dramatic. I did the Lightning Process yet again in my head and stood to continue my walk. As I did so the fatigue descended heavier than ever, but something woke in me ‘No!’ and I slammed the last part of the process back into my mind as I walked off. As I did so I suddenly felt the fatigue lift off me as if a physical weight had been resting on my shoulders and was removed. It was such an incredible feeling of relief that I could feel tears welling up in my eyes, in fact I feel them again, at the memory as I write this. I walked along in a blurry daze, revelling in the lightness of my body. Finally I had to turn away from the river, and the fatigue descended again. But it was nowhere near as bad, and now I knew that if I kept up the hard work of using the LP I could rid myself of the fatigue permanently. 

My trip to Highgate that afternoon was almost a joy. I revelled in being able to walk up steps and not feel heavy and tired. I revelled in my walk from the tube station, feeling energised by the exercise. I told me story to the rest of the group, delighted with my progress. It was an amazing day. I was still doing the process a lot, but the results were getting better and better. I stopped on my way back to buy myself a ready meal and a small bottle of wine and some pudding to celebrate as I was on my own at my sisters that evening. I revelled in being able to stand in a queue without feeling like I might collapse; I revelled in the walk back from the station. I revelled in feeling alive. 

Since then I have started working again and have fully resumed my career. I went back to see Sam for some follow up a week after and when I was done I got off the tube in central London feeling ‘what now?’ For the first time in my life the busy city suddenly seemed interesting and bustling rather than stressful and noisy. I spent a good long time in one of my favourite shops off Oxford Street. I thoroughly explored John Lewis and enjoyed a coffee and some lunch. I got the train back to my sister’s and as I was leaving Waterloo I saw the London Eye and wistfully wished I had the whole day to spend and could go on the Eye then and there. Well, the Eye will have to wait for another day. But I feel my life is starting over. Not only do I no longer have ME, but I haven’t needed to use my lightbox for SAD since doing the process. My sleeping tablets were down to the minimum dose, and within a week or two I stopped them completely. Chronic pain problems I had suffered with have vanished. I cannot believe how all my health problems have evaporated. I feel as if I have woken from a terrible nightmare, that I hadn’t even realised was a nightmare until after it was gone. Never in my life have I felt so strong and healthy.

The Lightning Process itself is a very clever tool - the more I use it the more I learn about how versatile it is. If you are interested in it, please read the book. It would not help for me to divulge it to you here. Suffice to say, if someone had shown me the process before I did it and said ‘this will make you better’ I would not have believed them. The journey isn’t the Lightning Process itself; it’s more getting to the point where you are prepared to put the effort in to make the LP work. The Lightning Process isn’t a journey, it just marks the end of my CFS/ME journey and the beginning of the healthy and happy journey that is the rest of my life.

I doubt I'll be here much in the future. But I hope that other CFS/ME sufferers will find this blog and take some hope from it. Recovery is possible! Believe! Take control! But now my life is calling... I'm off to live it!