Leaning On

There are times when a leaning on is necessary.  No longer able to be a free standing part (at least temporarily), a wall, another becomes mandatory to rest upon.  It's a relief, if not an unfamiliar self-reckoning.  We take comfort in something/ someone taking the weight.  The image to the left here is a wonderful example of a spiraling reliance.  Very separate (yet related), distinct components bearing the weight of the whole. Everything is in balance, everything dependent on everything else to create a whole. Without the cooperative parts, the balance, the miracle of its wholeness would be lost.

And so it is now, as many of us soften into the darkness of the short days, relinquishing the more sentinel vertical we prop ourselves up at other times of the year. We lean on a fire at the hearth, music of the season, cultural ritual, even the warmth from a winter coat.  This time of year calls us back, asks us to return to that which is more still.  Interestingly, the hoopla and frenetic energy seems to go arm in arm with the quiet beckoning.  Contrasts.  Paradoxes.

" All truths wait in all things."-- Walt Whitman

In our confusion and tension over these paradoxes and the grief of losses, current and past, the stillness appears to be the thing we lean on.  Mercy. The words of others appear as solace.  That which is burdened, wounded, in sorrow rests.  Poetry surfaces.  Art becomes a salve to the spirit.  Wisdom and courage are found in unlikely forums:  a child's observation, a store clerk's calm and benevolent smile, the poignant wit of an elder.  Breath re-enters, becomes more spacious having lost some tension.  Fear and intrepidation take a break.

"Morally, spiritually, we are fettered.  What have we achieved in mowing down mountain ranges, harnessing the energy of mighty rivers, or moving whole populations about like chess pieces, if we ourselves remain the same restless, miserable, frustrated creatures we were before?  To call such activity progress is utter delusion.  We may succeed in altering the face of the earth until it is unrecognizable even to the Creator, but if we are unaffected wherein lies the meaning?  Meaningful acts require no stir.  When things are going to rack and ruin the most purposeful act may be to sit still."-- Arthur Miller

Leaning On.  A respite.  Meaningful acts require no stir.

Resistance

photo: Irene Becker

The experience of resistance in life has many nuances.  It often comes from our human propensities to not want change or an unwillingness to move out of a comfort zone.  It also can manifest from an unknown part of ourselves who knows better, who is waiting, not willing to act just yet.  These sublime aspects of ourselves are a mystery very often.  Why not take that advice given by a loved one, it makes sense, is well meaning?  Why skip that daily walk today?  "Why" does not seem the appropriate question, but "where" is that sense of resistance coming from perhaps the more expansive approach. The "why" question to resistance is an open and shut, black and white, brief and easy dismissal of myself.  The "where in myself" approach produces a quiet, possibly still opening for further inquiry.

"Where in myself" is another direction. It drops me down into a deeper layer of the possibility of an understanding and the unknown that is resisting.  It is not a question to ruminate on (although that temptation is ever present).  It's a question that begs for more of me to be present with it.  It begs to just Be. There is rarely a cognitive response to "where", but a more fuller experience that unfolds if one can stay with it.  The problem is I don't stay with it.  Once the window of the the walk I am resisting has closed, I go on to the next thing.  Or after the initial  dismissing of the advice has transpired, I move on.  What is of value in resistance is the staying with it in a fuller, experiential way.

To stay with the resistance would mean to bring a subtler, more quiet attention to it, even if I have to move on to the next thing.  Staying with resistance means allowing the resistance to drop into the great unknown, the black hole of myself I have some practice already going to (hopefully).  The "I don't know" place that probably has some tension and frenetic energy waiting for me.  Because of my previous experience in this unknowing place, the tensions can be more minimal.  Possibly, it is not so frightening; perhaps patience may prevail.  I can even be intrigued to find myself there, knowing it won't be as endless as previously feared, that a time being in the dark also will inevitably change.

Who in me resists?  And who asks that question?

I am not as willing (I have resistance?) as I was to assume self-deprecatingly that it is the automatic, lazy, "sleeping", fearful or weak self that resists. It would be superficial, partial and truly automatic to maintain that position. This organism is dimensional.  How could I possibly know this if I limit the interest I have of it to trite write-offs.  Yes, it is automatic.  Yes, it often takes the path of least resistance.  And yes, a part of me is absolutely unforgiving of that.  It is this lack of forgiveness, the propensity to judge she who resists that keeps the bigger understandings from me. There is no room for the scary black hole to emerge, the "where in me" questions to exist.

Often in the healing moment working with others, there is a palpable trace of resistance present; of the next action to take, or comment to say.  It is powerful.  It is potent. It is a moment full of energy.  The middle ground.  The Unknown.  The moment of resistance brings me back to the present and what Is. I have come to fully respect the resistance that can be occasionally present in another.  The energy of the healing wants to move forward, but there is resistance.  The client is not ready, the client is fearful.  So, let it be.  In the holding of that, there is plenty of worthiness to be had.  It is not a missed opportunity.  Everything in its own time. Resistance is to be respected if for no other reason that it is a voice needing to be heard.

A Redeemable Injury

Two weeks of limited movement and a lot of stillness. Two weeks of forced sitting, mandatory repose, elevating an injured foot.  Two weeks of watching the garden grow, the weather moving through it. Examining where and when the light and shadows hit the raised beds at what time of day and subsequent thoughts on what plant would want to go where.  Listening to rain fall on new leaves, gutters pouring their contents upon porous brick, cats claiming territory on dark nights. Two weeks watching the foot, touching the foot, wondering about the surprising green areas and the purple stria surfacing in the most unlikely places.  How the swelling increases than subtly improves, how small indications of articulation return.  Two weeks of quiet fascination of the body's adaptation and mending process, of nature's burgeoning insistence.  Seeing, hearing and sensing things I never would have known if I wasn't glued to a chair, leg propped for hours a day, looking at the same things in a near empty room over and over,  obligingly renewing themselves for me.  Upon arrival to the acupuncturist, I uncharacteristically zero in on the same therapy chair several days a week.  I depend upon that chair.  The chair with a view of the under canopy of a tall tree seen through a skylight.  I depend upon that chair with a view.


And then there was the gross motor movement experience.  The strange sensations of the rest of the body making the compensations necessary to walk, accommodating the injury. Two weeks of not experiencing grace or flow or a right relationship with the other functioning parts.  Two weeks of a host of new and unfamiliar tensions. Missing flow in myself.  Watching much older people move in their own semblance of grace and having a longing for what I remember to be myself in movement.


And some unexpected things happened.  The forced stillness and the watching had me falling in love, or at least appreciation, with the house, specifically the light in the house coming through the tall windows in various beguiling ways through the day.  I fell in love with the dear foot and all its surprising revelations and its natural knowing.  The miraculous tendency to go toward healing and return as it does, in its quietly triumphant way, to Function. I realized a benefit of a 35 year meditation practice, the experience of moving in and out of a busy mind back to the body over and over and over.  Somehow, a tendency for an active inquiry and an interest in the Now had become planted in willing soil along the way.  And that somehow, transferred onto a life off the sitting cushion.  These days show me I am interested in what Is, frequently.  There is a curiosity inextricably linked to a type of joy that actively lives in me. Even in somewhat bleak circumstances for a kinesthetic-based person to be made to grossly limit her movement for days on end, I somehow fell in-interest if not in love with intriguing aspects of the ordinary.  Incredible.


Depending upon that chair with a view.  The (healing) touchstone, the place that helps a resonance with Other, nature. The place that softens the accumulated tensions, allows breath to surface into its rightful rhythm. The place of Return.

"Seeing what is small is called insight.

Abiding in softness is called strength."- Lao Tzu

Energy Field Surveillance

Double-sided Chakra illustration

Everything is energy.  We are an energy field.*  We are constantly emitting and/or receiving energy.  Our energy field doesn't stop at our body's edge, but continues seven layers beyond.  These energy fields are impacted moment to moment by our experiences of ourselves and the world around us, by all degrees of stress and trauma.  These surrounding energy fields thin out, even get "hole-y" depending on what kinds of stress we are subject to.  Compromised energy fields impact the subsequent layers until it reaches the body's physiological level.  If the integrity of the layers of energy fields around us aren't addressed, our bodies are then subject to the accumulated dis-ease and will begin to manifest illness.  In my mind, "prevention" begins with an awareness and consciousness that I am energy, that I am surrounded by energy and need to take care of these energy fields impacting my physiology, that which constitutes my life force, my vital energy.

Our body's adapting mechanism is a double-edge sword.  On one hand, stress happens, we (sometimes) note and sense it and then our bodies adapt to it.  And then stress happens again and very efficiently, the body adapts to it again.  And so the pattern goes.  We are constantly adapting to stressors and also accumulating layers upon layers of it without resolving it.  This impacts our energy fields and life force as mentioned previously.  An akin metaphor would be, we enter a room with a bad odor.  The body notes it but within seconds adapts and "gets used to it"; the olfactory stops noting the bad odor (even though the odor has not gone away).  This is very like how the body deals with stress. Our bodies are designed to adapt, adapt, adapt, giving us a false sense that the stress is no longer present nor been absorbed.

So, what is required are three things: a more acute sensitization and awareness that my being is currently being subjected to difficulty, or stress, a sense of internal (and external) groundedness that acknowledges the disturbance and finally that care is taken.

Meditation or mindfulness is a very useful practice in this regard.  By slowing the mind, feeling-center and body down, sensitizing our awareness, we begin to have a consciousness of the subtle and oblique in ourselves.  With regular practice, the organism becomes "primed" in this awareness, so outside of our meditation time, a relationship within ourselves to ourselves (and occasionally others) is more likely in experiencing this subtly in our every day activity.

Many of us as young parents (of a certain generation) taught our children about the "uh-oh feeling". That feeling one gets, that's not seemingly justified, but none-the-less real.  We taught our children to respect that uncomfortable sense in oneself and seek help and safety even if those surrounding us at the time didn't have a similar feeling. This "uh-oh" feeling in my mind, is somewhat related to intuition, but I also think it's a body awareness that is quite subtle,  possible messaging from our energetic field.

Kirlian Bio-electrography (electricmagnetic energy field)

                        of an disturbed and intact human body

An experience I had recently ties all of this in to a cogent (for me) understanding.  Over the course of several weeks I had a series of stressors/trauma that ranged from mundane to quite disturbing.  As a "good and responsible" adult, I shouldered all of it and kept moving through, so-to-speak.  This good body, adapted beautifully (as it always does).  It adapted and I continued to function ostensibly quite normally.  Along with these events, there was a part of me keeping track of these harsh occurrences, just noting them, noting my organism's mild to reactive response.  After a period of meditation, several weeks down the road I had a very light "uh-oh feeling".  I sat up to this sensation and listened a bit closer.  Something in me (one of my more quiet voices) laid out the accounting of these hostile experiences I had been through one by one and validated there had been a rough accumulation this organism had sustained.  An inner-eye did a cursory once-over of my body while quietly sitting there and the impression was, my energy fields were not quite right; thin in areas and maybe even a bit hole-y.  This brought my awareness to "how am I feeling".  In a less sensitized state, the answer would have been "fine".  But in this more quiet state I became aware of not quite feeling myself, the energy was ok, getting by so-to-speak, but I felt a type of internal laboring. Now, in tandem with this more acute awareness of myself, there also was present she who tends to be in denial, is ok with everything and doesn't like to make a big deal, and is only concerned with carrying on (with no fuss) and maintaining the convenience of not altering anything.  My "assessor", the thorough note-taker, was in charge (thankfully) at the time, and decided it was time to take some care.

I did three specific things toward “smoothing” out (both reinvigorating and nourishing) my energy field. Over the course of the next three days, I took an aromatherapy bath, did a session of QiGong and went to an acupuncturist.

Aromatherapy’s essential oils (eos) work on a vibrational level. My aim in using them was to have the deeply relaxing, replenishing chemistry of these eos work on my energy field.  I took the bath at 2pm and slept afterwards for 4 hours (unusual for me), waking very refreshed and feeling renewed.   My night sleep was not disturbed but a normal, 7-8 hours.

QiGong is also a type of energy medicine.  “Qi baths” basically draw energy up and over oneself, connecting oneself to the earth and the heavens (per Chinese ideology).  “Scattering Rice” is pulling energy into your belt line (dantian) and releasing it behind you.  Done repetitively (along with the deep breathing that is part of all Qigong work) this ‘rights’ and balances one’s energy.

On the third day I visited the acupuncturist.  During the session, I fell asleep for an hour and was ‘rosey-colored’ when I awoke.  I did a few low key errands afterwards and noticed a subtle, sublime feeling of joy and that my sense of myself, my “inner smile” as the Taoists say, had returned (I hadn’t realized it was missing).  I walked around the co-op with a buoyancy and a sense of deep, quiet happiness. I slept 11 hours that night.  My energy fields are feeling pretty intact at the moment.

Preventative medicine for many people is getting an annual check up. I think a broader awareness and attention to one’s energy fields should be a big consideration in addressing prevention. As was illustrated we are dealing with varying aspects of ourselves;  there is an assessor, a denier, parts of ourselves that sense the delicate, other parts that are rather obtuse, only wanting the comfort of sameness. We know stress impacts our health. Why wait until we have a full blown symptom or disease? Why not take care by addressing one’s energy field before the damage effects our physiology?

*Human Energy Fields