One of the main reasons I started the journey that ended up with Be Activated was to help reduce the physical pain in my body. I have written another story telling the longer version of how BA ended up changing my life, but this story is focusing on the one pain that was my biggest fear.
I started the journey for anwsers for many reasons but the anwser I really wanted was why I had chest pain on the left side and how to manage it. In the middle of 2015 I started getting stabbing chest pain on the side of the sternum shooting through to the midback and down the arm and up into the neck all on the left side. I had pain in a lot of places but this pain was the most scary one. It always made think of a heart attack. Cold sweating, hard to breathe and all the symtoms of pain for what I had learned was a heart attack. I went to the hospital after a few weeks and they said were are not allowed to send you home with chest pain, they ended up driving me with an ambulance to the bigger hospital to get checked out. They did all the bloodwork, elecrocardiogram and echocardiogram. All tests were normal and I able to leave the hospital. I later did a 24 hour ECG also showing normal results.
The pains and symtoms of a heart attack keept coming and I keep going to the hospital desperate to make sure the heart was okay. Everytime I was sent back home saying everything looked fine but my stress about the symtoms didnt go away. I kept worrying that something is really wrong and it constantly felt like I was dying.
To make a long story short, I tried all kinds of diffrent pain medication, therapy and diets but the chest pain was still there, coming back almost every week freaking me out. Much worse than the pain itself was the feeling of dying and stressing over something really being wrong.
I started my BA journey in 2018 with amazing result, pain and mental health was getting better in all aspects but the nagging chest pain was presisting.
In november 2019 I did another level 1 BA course in Danmark, and as always it was a amazing and profound experience. On the secound day of the course we had been going for 10 hours when we finished the abdominal and rotation activation and it was time for the thorasic activation. I remember it as Douglas was standing with his back against me and he said “Nils, are you ready?”. Almost as if he knew the whole time that this is what I needed.
I ended up getting activated on the table and when he cleared the 5th rib on the left side he hit a spot that almost made me black out, I screamed in panic and crazy pain. After catching my breath we retested the shoulder with amazing results, I was able to hold the test with ease. But then I stood up feeling something I had no idea I didnt know. My whole chest, spine and breath felt totally diffrent. I remember standing up and looking all the people on the course slowly in the eyes, feeling so safe and brave. How can you not after showing such vulnerability and ending up on the other side, infront of all these strangers? It was the most calming yet empowering feeling I have ever felt. When I sat down after the activation a memory came back to me, a memory I had forgot.
When I was 7 years old my dad fell to the ground in our garden with an heart attack. The ambulance showed up and brought him to the hospital. I didnt fully understood what was going on but I knew something was really wrong. Later that evening someone told me (I think it was my older brother) that dad had an heart attack and was staying in the hospital. I wouldn’t say I am a religious person and I wasn’t as a child. But the memory that came back to me was me lying in bed crying and praying to God. I remembered saying, Please God let my dad survive, I can take this, let me carry this instead, as long as he survives. Its probably the only time I have prayed to God.
My dad survived the heart attack and did a good recovery with about 60% heart function left.
After the activation my chest pain was gone and when I walked back to the train that night I felt the safest I had ever been. For the first time I had the feeling that I wasn’t dying, or with better words: I felt fully living. When my friends asked me “How was the course with Douglas”, I couldnt talk I only started crying. The week after I went to my shrink and told her about the experiance and the memory that came back. She knew very well about my chest pain and heart attack symtoms and she started crying. I had been going to her for about 4 and a half years at that point and it was the first time she showed any kind of emotion. She said “But Nils, can’t you see that you carried your fathers heart attack”?
Thank you Douglas for taking me to places I couldn’t go alone, for allowing me to face my biggest fear and end up on the other side of it. Forever grateful.