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Story · Ajahn Brahm

She thought she'd had a stroke — it was dehydration

As told by Ajahn Brahm in Energy in our Body and Mind from Inspiration | Ajahn Brahm | 2 November 2018

1 min read

Content note: health

The story — as told by Ajahn Brahm (verbatim captions)

There's one of our as he's probably listening, one of our members of our three-month rains retreat over in in Joondalup, Perth, she know, she thought she had had a stroke. Cuz you know, she started really getting very sick. We took her to the hospital. The obvious, dehydration. She wanted to just meditate for long periods of time and if you just have water, you have to go to the loo. And so she thought, I better not drink that much. And sometimes people forget the easy things. The obvious solutions are sometimes the best. And after that, she was fine. Just need dehydration.

▶ Watch Ajahn Brahm tell it from 53:56 (to 54:40)

A reflection (in the spirit of Ajahn Brahm's talk)

A retreatant was rushed to hospital fearing a stroke; she was simply dehydrated, having cut back on water to avoid toilet breaks during long sits. Ajahn Brahm reminds us the Buddha ate, rested and slept well before his awakening. Look after the basics. A rested, relaxed body makes deep meditation easy.

In brief (our summary)

A member of the three-month rains retreat in Joondalup grows very sick and is taken to hospital thinking she has had a stroke. The cause is dehydration: she had been cutting back water so she would not have to leave long sits for the toilet.

Teaching point

The obvious, simple solution is sometimes the one meditators forget.

When this story may help

  • overdoing meditation
  • illness on retreat

Themes

Source & credit

Told by Ajahn Brahm in Energy in our Body and Mind from Inspiration | Ajahn Brahm | 2 November 2018 · 2018-11-02 · ▶ watch from 53:56 to 54:40 · Buddhist Society of Western Australia

Caption notes: YouTube auto-captions with machine-added punctuation; words left exactly as captioned.

The narrative is Ajahn Brahm's own telling, quoted from the talk captions. The summary and reflection are Being Mindful Stories's editorial notes. Please credit the teacher and link the original talk. Markdown version

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