James: I’m in a hospital rehab now trying to piece my life back together after a fall at home caused by pain medication. I’ve been in three hospitals which were a lot of suffering with various operations and treatment. I have felt suicidal a lot and would rather die than go thru it again. I may still have some kind of good life left. It’s just unknown now what my brain and body will be able to do. (link)
Hi James,
Welcome back and good to hear you are much better after your fall at home, and that you say that you “may still have some kind of good life left”.
While you are recovering and mainly inactive, here is a way of experiencing being here via being aware of the variety of your sensate experiencing –
Richard: ‘… if one were to close the eyes one will find there is a sensing, or perception, of being oriented in space (of space all around including behind the body) … and this has as much to do with balance, acceleration and/or rotation in space, orientation in a gravity field (if there be one) as it has to do with the proprioceptive senses proper in the muscles, tendons, and joints.
The proprioceptive senses are part of the somatic sensory system (somaesthesis/ somaesthesia) which is the faculty of bodily perception (sensory systems associated with the body) and includes skin senses (cutaneous receptors for hot/cold, pressure, physical pleasure/pain, for example) and the internal organs sensors (cardiovascular or circulatory receptors for blood pressure, heart rate, and carbon dioxide and digestive tract receptors for hunger and thirst, for instance) as well as the equilibrium sense, or sense of balance, already mentioned.
Thus proprioception is the ability to sense the position and location and orientation and movement of the body, and its parts, because of the proprioceptors in the muscles, tendons, and joint capsules (in combination with the sense of balance, acceleration and/or rotation in space, and orientation in a gravitational field, of the inner ear or vestibular organ).
In other words: the sense of being here, in space, as a body is not just because of sight (visual perception), sound (auditory perception), touch (cutaneous perception), smell (olfactory perception), and taste (gustatory perception). (Richard, AF List, No. 44a, 10 Jul 2003).
The definition in the Abditorium about proprioceptive sensing gives even more details (link).
I wish you success in getting back to feeling good.
Cheers Vineeto