Transcending an Autoimmune Condition

I want to let you in on a personal journey I’ve been on for the last four years—one that’s taught me what becomes possible when we begin to identify less with pain, and more with the presence that can hold it. About how healing is a reorganization from the deepest layer of who we are. Really, it’s a story about the mechanics of loving ourselves—or at least, sharing some aspects of how I’ve learned to love myself lately.

Four years ago to this week, I developed pericarditis from the vaccine—inflammation of the membrane surrounding the heart.

I remember that first summer. I was moving through waves of uncertainty while trying to run my business from my laptop, in and out of emergency rooms, navigating a body I no longer fully recognized. It brought me in touch with these really raw layers of my being. I felt more vulnerable than I ever had been. And it allowed me to lean into asking for help—which, if you know me, I like to do things on my own a lot of the time. I learned to slow down. To receive. Two of my best friends came and lived with me. There’s a different kind of strength that emerges when we allow ourselves to be seen—when we allow ourselves to feel worthy, even as we feel held.

Over the months, the pericarditis evolved into an autoimmune condition that responded to even subtle changes in the atmosphere—particularly barometric pressure. Any extreme shift—if the weather suddenly moved from rain to sun, or if snow began to fall—would send my body into a flare: inflammation, pressure, and pain surrounding my heart. If I was in a space that was too hot, or if I overexerted physically, the contrast would trigger a reaction. It was a season of learning to listen to my body on a new frequency.

It taught me how to live inside the unknown. Each time a wave of pain would arise, I’d witness my mind move toward the worst-case scenario: I’m going to die. Over time, I got better at not believing that narrative and allowing the wave to move through.

This is one of the reasons I moved to sea level. On a physical level, the shift supported my healing. But in truth, this journey has always been one of the heart. I’m proud to say I’ve healed from pericarditis naturally.

Yoga and breathwork, in conjunction with bee venom therapy, supported me in recognizing the subtle holding patterns within my body—layers of fear, contraction, and protective response that had crystallized over time. These modalities helped me meet and tend to what was coming up, rather than resist it—and eventually allowed me to move through it.

Bee venom therapy, introduced to me through a dear sister and fellow meditator, Kate Hinkens, became a crucial part of this process. Bee venom helps reduce the expression of inflammatory cytokines—signaling molecules that trigger inflammation in the body. In people with chronic illness, these are often overexpressed, creating a loop that’s hard to break. Bee venom helps normalize the body’s inflammatory response and improves mRNA expression of inflammatory mediator genes. In simple terms, it alters how the body reads certain parts of the DNA sequence, leading to a decrease in the signals that perpetuate inflammation. When chronic illness becomes a cycle of reactivity, bee venom helps the body restore its capacity to regulate and begin again. For me, it acted like a carrier—helping mobilize what had been stagnant.

Once my system began to stabilize, contrast therapy (alternating between hot and cold exposure) helped me condition myself to handle extremes again without being thrown into an inflammatory response. It reintroduced resilience. It re-patterned the fear of contrast itself.

Naturally, a significant shift came through my practice of Vedic meditation. This practice allowed me to transcend the surface-level narrative of fear and return to the deeper field of who I am. From that space, I could meet what was arising—not as the story, but as the witness— awareness itself. Not as the pain, but as presence. Over time, the process of healing became less about fixing and more about remembering. Less about managing symptoms and more about stabilizing identification with pure awareness. From this perspective, everything we go through is a vehicle for transformation, if we allow it to be the raw material for a new expression of who we are.

For all my Vedic meditators reading this—we know that every time we drop into that ocean of being, eyes closed in our practice, we allow for another wave to roll through, another narrative to loosen, another layer of the system to reorient toward wholeness.

But the real integration begins with eyes open. The question becomes: how do we carry this brain, this nervous system, this inner knowingness into daily life?

Moment by moment, life gives us opportunities to experience the same structure we touch in meditation—out here, in activity. Eyes-open transcendence means choosing to love the aspects of our individuality—our emotions, our sensations, our circumstances—and to see them through the eyes of pure awareness. To meet them through the lens of love. To allow that same structure to open within us again and again. Loving ourselves by knowing ourselves as pure awareness—that is the stabilizing force.

I’ve never blamed the vaccine. I never will. One reason I stayed quiet about this for so long was because I didn’t want the conversation to become politicized. Many of my friends chose to speak publicly—and that’s beautiful if that’s your role. It simply wasn’t mine. What I’ve come to understand is that I had a reaction to an exogenous substance that interacted with an unresolved holding pattern— the body keeps the score..

It was a catalyst. This entire process became the raw material for healing, yes—but also marked a major shift in my consciousness from identification with some of my most limiting narratives to that of awareness itself. I learned to love myself in the let go and faced a beauty in being raw. I traveled to blue zone areas and felt nature recalibrate my body. And, I quite literally followed my heart to make the ocean my new home.

This journey has been one of taking responsibility for tending to the ways emotion, memory, and identity live in my body. And learning to let them move to restore wholeness.

Know that you are not alone. This is what we’re all up to—as consciousness having a human experience. As humans remembering who we are.

And know deeply: you can heal from anything.

Xx Victoria