Lunch blog

About pain, of course, but it's not what you think.

No whining.

For the past couple of days, the back/sacrum pain has kind of cracked open and become malleable. Energetically, or psychically. The intractable, everpresent lump of pain now has a more diffuse, more differentiated, quality. As if it has come alive, somehow, and become more accessible.

This may be, at least in part, due to the chiropractic adjustment. And it may be, in part, due to my discussions with Crim Girl about energetic sensibilities and sensitivities.

Anyhow, the pain has gained a kind of coherence, which somehow makes it more accessible to my conscious mind. And to my imagination. And that somehow makes it more possible to resolve. I'm not sure how the mind/body interface works--all I can say is that it is somehow manifesting. One morning this weekend I woke with a lot more pain, and the next, I woke with absolutely none. Now it is oscillating. In the midst of all this, I've had so many dreams, all kinds of memories from the past, and little glimpses into the future. Then the pain resolved into this intense energy--almost like that "restless leg" thing that can happen--in my lower back. "Oh, so this is what people mean by blocked energy," I thought. Energy that can, potentially, be unblocked and manifested as mobility, flexibility, possibility.

It's scary, and it's hard to conceptualize, but it's real.

I had the thought this weekend, "I should learn to do bodywork," meaning bodywork for other people (this after a discussion with Crim Girl about cranio-sacral work). I had to kind of laugh as I realized that, as yogis, we are all bodyworkers. It can be hard to trust oneself, though. That's what makes the adventure.

What if I undo these structures I've created subconsciously? What will be left? Will "I" unravel? Am I undoing nature? What authority do I have? What training?

Yup, a challenging adventure.

And all of this reminded me of an excerpt from Richard Freeman's article "Fundamentalism and the Middle Path":

Freedom in yoga is not a single experience or a belief, or even the giving up of a belief: it is the ability to enter and to release theories and experiences to find direct experience of the living process. This freedom of the awareness appears as a Middle Path between our mental processes of mapping out reality and then leaving those maps. This Middle Path is hard to define, subtly serpentine, and it is where yoga systems meet their perfection. It frees us from politics without making us apolitical. It frees us from religion without making us irreligious. It frees us from thought without making us thoughtless. It has been called love, but it’s not what you think. For the present moment, we should keep on looking, avoiding jumping to conclusions.