(No.10) To You in Week 12 of RHS and Beyond | When Facial Paralysis Strikes in the U.S.: The Prescription That Was Never Written — Vipassana Meditation

Prologue | What Held Me Up from the Depths

Through everything — from the onset of RHS to my recovery —
I have been held up by so many people, and by so many things.

Family and friends who sent me so many messages of encouragement.
The many doctors, and the knowledge of the specialists.
The ER staff who moved as one, in perfect teamwork.
The acupuncturist, sharp-tongued but warm at heart.
The physical therapist who worked out a program with me.
The counselor who listened to everything, all the way through.
The pharmacy staff who let me know the moment my medication came in.

The stranger I met in a restroom at an event venue,
who spoke to me with such heartfelt kindness.
The friends in support groups scattered all around the world.

My AI teammates, Memory-chan and Compass-kun,
who always had an answer ready, at any hour of the night.

And, and above all —
my husband, who stayed by my side and held me up through it all.

And not only people.
The steroids, the antiviral medication, the eye drops.
The supplements, the little helpful items,
the wellness devices that supported my routine.

And so, there is one last thing I want to introduce —
the one that held up my recovery from the deepest place of all.

It is a quiet miracle cure* —
and yet it is never prescribed, not at any hospital, not at any pharmacy.

It is called Vipassana meditation.

For this final chapter of the series,
let me tell you a little about why this meditation —
said to have been reached by the Buddha 2,600 years ago —
worked on the recovery of facial paralysis in the 21st century.

*This is my own personal experience, not a medical treatment.

Ten Days of Noble Silence

My encounter with Vipassana came long before RHS.
Twice in the past, I attended a ten-day meditation retreat.

For ten days, all means of communication are cut off —
speaking, writing, even eye contact —
and about eleven hours of each day are spent in meditation.
You do little but face your own self.
It is a fairly grueling retreat.

What you train there is one thing, and one thing only.

From the crown of the head to the tips of the toes.
The subtle sensations that arise there — you observe them
the way a surgeon operates, the way you peer through a magnifying glass:
objectively, just watching.

A pleasant sensation, an unpleasant one — you make no distinction at all.
Liked, disliked, important, trivial — you observe them all equally.
Just watching, as it is.

What is there to learn from this?
What is there to gain?
And why, in the first place, go so far to face yourself?

One thing only: that the experience of "Noble Silence" itself
would, somewhere in my life,
bring a meaning so essential it could not be avoided.
That much I sensed, vaguely, from the very beginning.

The Muscle That Doesn't React to "Reaction"

In truth, the "lessons" that came to me through those retreats
are too many to write down.

Let me share one especially precious one —
the lesson that resonated most deeply during this time with RHS.

When a human being receives some stimulus, a reaction arises in the body.
And without realizing it, we label that reaction "like" or "dislike,"
and then react, further, to that filter.

This insight, the one the Buddha arrived at,
I came to understand not with my mind, but with my body,
there on the meditation seat.

What matters is not to stop the reaction.
Reactions arise naturally. They cannot be stopped.

What you can do is — in the very moment a reaction arises —
simply notice it: "Ah, a reaction just arose."

In No.6, I wrote about "the 0.2-second freedom" —
that momentary gap of 0.2 seconds revealed by Libet's experiment.

Its true nature is far beyond what reason could ever grasp,
and yet, through those ten-day retreats, I had already met it —
with my body, before my mind.

And that became my refuge —
a stronghold I could return to
whenever the storm called fear, blowing through this battle with RHS,
threatened to swallow me whole.

The Moment I "Observed" My Paralyzed Face

And here — here is where RHS and meditation came together,
the heart of the story.

When the right half of my face stopped moving,
I — who had trained in observing my own body —
had a rather unusual thought.

"Let me place that paralyzed face itself as an object of observation."

Quietly, I turned my awareness inward.
I listened for a subtle sound I should not have been able to hear —

And then, in the right side of my face that should not move,
far beyond the bone, deep, deep within,
a faint vibration — something like the faint ache of a nerve —
came trembling through, quivering, quivering.

A sensation so small you could dismiss it as imagination —
a newborn, faint, faint pulse, heard from within.

Just a little before any scientific eye could prove it,
I was able to feel my own nerve
beginning to stir, quietly, from within.

Breath as Water, Nerves as Roots

Breath — the other pillar of meditation —
whenever I was drowning in anxiety, in fear, in anger,
gently brought me back to the here and now.

As the breath deepens, the heart expands,
and the fear of the future, the memories of the past, softly blur away —
until only the essence of this present moment, and the body, remain.

And a deep breath carries water and nourishment
to the wounded nerves.

And then every cell and tissue, joyfully, like grass and trees,
reaches out to extend its roots.

Suffering, Too, Keeps Changing

Another truth I learned at the meditation retreat:

The sensations of the body, like the flow of a river, like clouds,
shift and change, one after another.

No matter how strong the pain, no matter how deep the anxiety,
none of it can stay in one place.

For me, in the middle of the battle with RHS, this was the best possible news.

Pain, sorrow, anxiety, suffering —
all of it keeps changing.

It seems to stay, but in truth, not for a single instant is it ever the same.
Change will always, without fail, come.

Or rather — a state that does not contain change
does not exist in this world.

And So, Onward to the Next Journey

Thank you, truly, for staying with me
through all nine chapters of this recovery journal.
You've done so well to come all this way.

I wonder if it has been, even a little, of some reference or use to you.

With this tenth chapter, Rita Code's "A Record of RHS Recovery"
comes, for now, to a close.

But this is not an ending — it may be closer to a door.

To observe. Not to react. To return to the here and now.
To water the roots with the breath.
To know that all things pass, and nothing stays.

— These were, at one and the same time, methods for recovering from facial paralysis
and a practice for living itself.

For Studio JMC, I want this next journey to be one
of sharing more deeply, more carefully, with all of you —
Vipassana meditation, and the yoga that saved me thirteen years ago,
and more.

The paralysis of my face brought vividly back to life
so many things I had nearly forgotten.

That simply to be alive is, in itself, something precious,
something to be grateful for.

That if only we can observe all things,
we can always,
at any time,
find our way back.
Here.

Thank you, truly, all the way to the end.

May a warm and quiet light shine
upon your recovery, and upon your journey.

From Rita, with all my heart.
Thank you — and, Ganbatte!

(Rita Code, "A Record of RHS Recovery" — Complete)

Rita Code | Studio JMC

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