Category Archives: story

The elephant is in my living room, but I can’t see all of it yet

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Meditated this evening, after work, errands, dinner. Feeling a little achy during session and now. Hip joints, left SI joint, adhesions in left thigh, left trapezius.

Chandler Collins, DC, says we’re moving towards him adjusting my left ilium, and that 95% of the time, it’s a permanent adjustment. It’s almost unbelievable that this end is in sight. My body has been twisted up for decades, and it’s taken over a decade to get to this point of untwisting.

I expect to feel less pain on the zafu and off.

Today’s body scan again was about releasing muscle tension, and it took some time.

During sitting, I felt drawn to my second chakra/dan tien/hara, noticing the rise and fall of my lower belly with each breath. I have an OM tattooed there. Long story, and now’s not the time to tell it.

Whole body awareness. Awareness through the whole body. Awareness with the whole body. Awareness is the whole body is awareness. Awareness is existence, is being, is experience.

Awareness seems both personal and impersonal. Personal in that it’s my body/mind, this body/mind experiencing the wonder of itself–these eyes, ears, this skin, this nervous system at work, this vastness of all that is. Impersonal in that it’s so vast, and so much is beyond my control.

Of course I’m familiar with the concept of oneness. At various times, I’ve experienced various degrees of merging. But it never occurred to me until these last several days that awareness unifies existence.

It’s still too big for me to really grok. I’m still looking at it sideways. I don’t think I’ve really seen the whole elephant yet. But I know it’s in my living room!

The power of thought

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I sat this morning, then went to my monthly cranio-sacral therapy session, then to work. After work, came home, fed cats, changed clothes, and went for a walk at dusk. Sat in car for 10 minutes before going to the first night of a weekend Contact Improvisation and Vipassana workshop.

So it has been hours, or a lifetime, since I sat this morning.

The main thing I remember is that I attended to my back some more. I realized what a marvel the lumbar vertebrae in particular are. They are big and strong, like a tree trunk. They support the weight of the upper body, with a bit of help from the abdominal muscles in front.

Nina was working with S2, a sacral nerve, again. The sacrum has embryological sutures, where plates of hard bone connect. Nerves come through it. My S2 has been recalcitrant, difficult.

She was curious–what did I know about my birth? First child, born 7 weeks early, weighed 4 lbs. 1 oz., amidst fear I wouldn’t survive. Doctor wanted to keep me in the hospital, but a nurse gave me to my mother to breast-feed, and once the milk started, they couldn’t stop it, so I went home with my mother a week later.

Nina thought the nurse probably knew what I needed.

My mother said when I was about 7 weeks old, one day my energy was different, like I was ready to be born, only I had already been born.

Nina asked me what conclusions I could draw. In hindsight, I must have been pretty tough for such a tiny little baby. I experienced 7 weeks of life outside the womb when most babies are still inside. I don’t know if it was overwhelming to me.

I was an adventurer perhaps, and clearly a survivor.

The power of thought: May whatever is holding S2 back be reassured that it’s okay to come out now and experience its full glorious expression. I made it. I am HERE.