......going deeper

Dear Yogis,

It's been 5 weeks.  I can now do a mindful yoga practice, go for gentle walks and…..halleluiah! …..sleep on my stomach again for part of the night. Movement is weaving its way back into my life.  Starting to find my flow.

But – have I learned anything?

When someone is going through a challenge our instinct is to want to make it go away for them.  “I hope you get better really soon.”  “This must be so hard for you.”  “Have you tried this treatment or that medication?”  We hate to suffer and so we don’t want others to as well.  We resist and try to hurry it along.  But difficulties are life’s way of asking us to go deeper.  An opportunity to dive into our inner most sense of self and uncover where we are blocked. 

It isn’t that I want to continue in pain or never get well.  I know without doubt that I will physically heal.  But this injury, as all, is only the symptom.  The cause lies below, and if I don’t resolve it, the symptom will simply return in the body, or show itself in some other fashion.  Again and again and again, knocking a little louder each time. 

Is it my posture as I sit at my desk all day?  Perhaps it’s how I hold the leash when walking Phoebe?  Is my chaturanga pose to blame or how I put my arm up under my pillow when I sleep?  One of these could indeed be the culprit, but yet again, they would only be one layer deeper.  I need to sink below the surface.

Millions of people sit at a computer all day and not everyone ends up with nerve pain.  Just as we all leave a party where someone decided to attend even though they had a fever, yet only one or two of us will get sick.  So something is causing me to tense. To hold. To block the flow. 

The other day I was putting away some freshly laundered long sleeved shirts in my bottom dresser drawer.   I noticed, yet again, that in order to close the drawer I had to push down hard on the top layer of shirts so as not to catch one of them in drawer’s edge.  Instead of gliding, the drawer struggling to close against its overstuffed contents.  This drawer has most definitely lost its flow.

When I look into the drawer I see that it is only the top three layers of shirts I ever wear.  As for all of the ones below, when I do decide to pull one out it feels lifeless.  Even having a strange smell to it.  The bottom of my drawer has become stagnant.  No flow.  Yet when I start looking through to clean it out, each shirt has a story to tell.  I am attached to them and don’t let them go.  I bury them back under for another day.  So therefore there is certainly no room for anything new to flow in.

That is what is happening in my body right now and it has made me feel stiff and creaky (hopefully not smelly.)  There are clearly life situations or emotions or ideas that I am holding that are creating a dam – hence tension.  I am not 100% clear on what they are yet but will keep listening.  I don’t want to ‘hurry up and get well’ just to mask the pain.  The true getting well is when I let them go….

I will start by cleaning out my drawer.  Anyone need any long sleeved shirts?

Hi moon,
SARAH