As of yet the power of the work and teachings that Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy offers hasn’t failed to amaze me, both mentally and physically. The ability of the body to hold emotions and memories is uncanny. Our bodies want to speak, we just have to be willing to learn to listen and hear their innate wisdom.
On the day I left for training I somehow managed to hyper-extend my back. Ouch. The sensation was so bad as of yesterday morning that I thought at one point that I was going to be stuck on the floor for an extended period of time. A sort of deep clockwise pulsing variety of feeling. Totally consuming.
After our lunch break we were watching a demo when suddenly out of nowhere the reasoning behind my back pain became clear to me, along with some other odds and ends that had happened throughout the past two days. This feeling was an indication of an opening in my first chakra, something that has been chronically blocked and anything but present especially in the past few vata intensive weeks. This opening and grounding represents the ability to stand in myself, in Hannah, in my true nature. I don’t’ have to reside in the monkey mind of my brain and in the past few days that part of me has been joyously quiet. Even with the struggle about working out I have been calm in my thoughts, both waking and sleeping. For the first time in a month I am sleeping all the way through the nights!
SInce I stood up Wednesday afternoon my pain pain has disappeared. Rather odd for something so intense. It was as if pain was the only way I was going to hear my body. Pretty amazing? At least I think so!
Richard Simmons has been waxing and waning in popping up in my head. I’ve been walking to and from where I am staying to the training center, about a mile each way, but he can interject into my thoughts with that not being enough since it isn’t really “working out.” The past two nights I have also gone to a modified Ashtanga class and then a full Primary Series, but again, not enough. I wasn’t dripping sweat and hadn’t lifted any weights besides my own body. Thus a back and forth struggle. Will I be able to tame this beast for the next 12 days? I hope so. What will happen to my body? Will I really turn into that pile of mush I so fear? Perhaps I will emerge stronger and more able, allowing me to become a stronger support for both myself and others, an opportunity to step into the stillness of the work I advocate.
Have you ever had to step into stillness to find your truth?
Wow. For some reason, this post has brought back vivid memories of the key moment in my own recovery. I hadn’t even realized the parallels with your experience until now. So my apologies, but I’m going to tell a kind of long story.
My final breakthrough was absolutely triggered by an incident where my body violently interjected its “body-ness” into my consciousness and I was forced to step into stillness.
I was away from home – teaching in China, actually – when I became incredibly ill. Of course, building up to the trip I had pre-exercised and restricted food because I knew I would be WAY out of my routine. But when I was there, I also overexercised – I pushed my body way past its limits, despite the 120 degree heat and miles of walking we had to do each day.
I ended up in the hospital for three days, and, especially at the beginning, I thought I might be in serious trouble. I had nothing to do but lie in bed in my malfunctioning body and think. I thought about how scared and alone I was, thousands of miles away from home, in a place where no one spoke English. Then I started to think about how, even though this was the scariest thing that had ever happened to me, I was doing it. There was no avoiding being in that hospital. That brought the realization that I COULD do it. That I was much stronger than I thought, and that I didn’t need the eating disorder to protect me from things that would be hard.
Being so scared that my body would fail me – not by getting fat on my watch, but by actually failing to function at all – and realizing that ED could do nothing about it – made me appreciate what a gift health is. I thought about how stupid it was for me to have been abusing my body for so long – and for what? To what end? There were things I wanted to do in life, places to go, people to love – and I had been missing out on all of that because I was too focused on counting calories? Seriously?
I can’t say that I immediately changed all of my ways upon returning home, but the China trip marks the beginning of my recovery process. After seven years of battling ED, I started to get better, little by little.
I guess I needed a dose of extreme body failure and forced stillness to find my clarity.