Drishtis

Several weeks ago I picked up a book on Taoism called Scholar Warrior. My meditation teacher introduced me to the book a few years ago when she was exploring Taoism with us. In it I rediscovered a set of qigong exercises called the Marrow Washing Classic. This is a set of 24 exercises that work and stretch all the body’s major muscle groups, joints, and tendons, making it a nice full-body workout.

In her classes, my meditation teacher had us try some of the exercises. At the time, I found it difficult to understand the exercises simply by following the written directions and illustrations provided. But now that I have been doing qigong for a while and I’m more familiar with the movement vocabulary of qigong, I found it much easier to do the exercises. I have to modify some of the forms that include deeper twists (which I still have issues with), and a few of the exercises are too vigorous for me at this point, but I have found I am able to complete about three-fourths of the exercises.

I have really enjoyed the Marrow Washing Classic. I do feel like I get a nice, though gentle, full-body “worked out” feeling. Indeed, I feel cleansed and refreshed after completing the set. The next day I can feel a slight soreness–the “good” kind–especially in my upper back, one of the areas where I am weakest right now. That lets me know this is the right level of exercise for me right now.

It takes me about 45 minutes to complete all the exercises of the Marrow Washing Classic. I’m still learning and have to back up and figure out the instructions every so often, so I am sure it will go more quickly as I gain more familiarity with the exercises. I am trying to do the Marrow Washing twice a week. As I get stronger, I should eventually be able to do all of the exercises in the set.

We’re a month and a half into 2010, which means I’m over a month into my New Year’s resolutions. Let’s see how I’m doing, shall we?

My major resolution was to better integrate my spiritual practice into my physical exercise. I know plenty of visualizations, breathing practices, and meditations I could be doing, but it seemed that unless I’m doing a structured practice like yoga, I tend not to integrate them into my exercise. So my goal this year is to really work at forming the habit of better integrating the two practices: physical and spiritual.

So far this year, I’ve been doing that in three ways. First, during some of my stretches I imagine cleansing energy flowing into the space I am focusing on–mostly my back. In his book Taoist Cosmic Healing, Mantak Chia writes that light green-white will help clear an old injury, so I imagine green-white energy swirling into the painful areas of my back. I imagine the stuck chi in those painful knots being loosened bit by bit. I ask any sick energy to go down into the earth where it will be recycled, telling it, “You will be happier there.”

I have also increased the amount of qigong I am doing. Some days I just do a few exercises as breaks during my work day. Other days I have time to spend a half hour doing qigong in the evening. I enjoy this practice, with its focus on moving slowly and consciously, concentrating on the breath. What a change from doing exercises at the physical therapist’s office, with a therapist who insisted on chatting with me, and a background of country music.

I am still doing PT exercises once a day at home, usually in the morning. One of my exercises is Dwi Pada Pitham, also known as moving Bridge. I do this exercise 15 times, with a five-second hold in the up position. I have started mentally saying “Sat” on the inhale when I lift my hips up, and “Nam” when I exhale and drop my hips back down–basically adapting a Kundalini yoga kriya to my needs. I’m not sure if I have noticed any effect from this yet, but I figure it can’t hurt!

I am doing well in with all of these adaptations, though I have noticed that I sometimes forget –or I’m plain too lazy –to do the cleansing color visualizations. I think that one might really be helping, so I really should try not to get lazy about it. It’s much easier to remember when I’m in pain than when I’m not, but if it’s working then flagging in the practice will encourage the pain to return! I need to keep at this one.

One practice I would like to do more of is the Six Organ Healing Sounds, a qigong practice for full-body cleansing and healing. I truly think doing this will support the acupuncture work I’m also getting. I have been doing it occasionally, but I would like to make time to do it more often. I’m not sure when, though. The practice takes about 15 minutes to do completely, and I’m already spending at least half an hour twice daily on my practice as it is. Apparently it is better to do the practice in the evening, so I can try to add it to the end of my evening practice on days when I have a bit more time.

Overall, though, I think I’m doing pretty well at keeping my New Year’s resolution. My back has definitely been improving, so it seems these practices are having a positive effect.

I’ve been trying to figure out what to write here for some time. I want to continue this blog, but it’s clear to me that it needs to be taken in a new direction. My back is still healing…yes, over a year after I first started having major problems. I can, and do, some yoga poses–restorative poses, yin yoga, cat and cow–but poses that require a strong back or any twists are beyond me at this point, and probably will be for some time to come.

My physical spiritual practice is now oriented much more heavily towards the Chinese art of qigong. I also maintain a daily routine of physical therapy exercises and stretching. I want to include more pranayama as time permits, and some kundalini yoga as my back gains strength. So while I want to continue to write here, and I think it will be valuable, the focus of this blog will be shifting somewhat to more of a wider focus than just yoga.

But to update since my last post:

My back had a relapse of pain last October, and I’ve been working steadily to heal it ever since. I had quit getting acupuncture treatments for the back pain after I came back from the vacation in Colorado, and I think that was a mistake.  After the relapse I started getting acupuncture for my back, but I strongly felt that I wasn’t going to heal completely if I didn’t figure out what was actually causing the pain and find some stretches/exercises to address it. I went to an orthopedist, who gave me a prescription for physical therapy. I went to PT for about a month, but the pain, instead of diminishing, actually increased as a result of the PT.

I believe that the therapy was simply too aggressive for me, but the doc ordered an MRI for me to rule out nerve or disc damage. The MRI was negative, though it did show that I have some mild osteoarthritis in my spine (which I had figured out on my own already).

I quit working with the physical therapist, since their treatment plan wasn’t working for me, but I have continued a daily routine of some of the exercises I was given there. I have been writing out a treatment plan for myself each week so that I can track my progress and slowly increase the PT exercises I’m doing.

I also began exploring more qigong exercises and including them in my daily practice. I have found that including this gentle, flowing kind of exercise is much more beneficial to me than western PT exercise alone. Now I do a combination of PT, qigong, energy work, and stretching that seems to be working well for me. My pain levels have been pretty consistently at a 1 or 2, only occasionally spiking at a 3 (which is where I averaged during the month I was going to the physical therapist). I am to listen to my body much more, both the physical signals of pain or tightness, and the intuition that guides me to a particular activity.

In this way, I am gaining understanding not only of my body, but also towards an understanding of Traditional Chinese Medicine and a Taoist understanding of energy. I am exciting about the deeper level of learning of these modalities. I hope to start to better use this blog to talk some about what I’m doing and learning. I invite you to read along with me. But if you’re more of a yoga person, and qigong isn’t your thing, I completely understand if we part ways.

I did hatha yoga this morning! For half an hour! It was Kripalu Gentle Yoga, nothing vigorous, but still, I did Down Dogs and Warrior 2! I’ve done a few gentle poses here and there before, but this is the first time I’ve done a full yoga sequence in 2009!

I know I haven’t written much here recently, and I’m sorry. Quite a bit has happened. I had planed a trip to Colorado for the first week of September, not really knowing how fit I would be by the trip. As it happened, my back was well enough for me to be able to use my elliptical trainer for about six weeks before the trip. I trained pretty hard in the last month before we left, both on the elliptical and with targeted muscle exercises. I really wanted to be able to do some hiking while I was there.

I had some trouble with altitude (we were up as high as 9,000 feet), but I was was pleased with the amount of hiking that I was able to do. I had to stop often to let my cardiovascular system catch up, but my legs and back did great! I call that remission!

I also got married while I was in Colorado, which was the primary reason for the trip. Colorado allows couples to marry themselves without an officient (possibly the only state to allow this), so we simply took the marriage liscense up into the mountains and had a short personal little ceremony.

I came down with a cold a few days after we got back to Ohio. I swear I picked up something on the plane, plus my body was probably in shock from being back in a humid environment after the extreme dryness of Colorado. The cold had all of my usual symptoms: sore throat and sinus congestion. I had an acupuncture apointment a few days later where I had them work on alleviating the cold. My intern put needles in points in my arms and legs that she said were to “dissipate heat”, and indeed I felt chills go down my arms during the 30 minute treatment. Usually I feel the movement of the chi as heat, so the coolness, like cool ripples along the surface of my skin, was a really neat feeling.

That catches me up almost to the present. I have another entry or two to write about the past week, which I hope to get up here by the end of the week.

I had a lovely meditation last night.  As has been my habit for a while now, instead of sitting quietly I used Taoist visualizations to direct chi within my body. I began by being aware of a circuit, which the Taoist call the Microcosmic Orbit, from the base of the spine up the back, over the head, down the middle of the front of the body to the perineum, then back up the spine to complete the circuit.

Then I simply followed where the energy seemed to want to flow while helping it along with visualization. Eventually I opened each Tan Tien (head, heart, and navel) to the six directions (front, back, right, left, up and down), and opened my awareness to the universe above and below me.  I felt as though I were floating within a sea of energy, perfectly supported and protected. I asked that the chi flow to places that needed to heal physically. I smiled to these places in my body.

I stayed in this blissful place for the last 10 minutes or so of the meditation until my teacher pulled us back.

Kudos to anyone who read my last entry all the way through to the end.  The bottom line is that I love it. I’m hooked. The procedure, the meridians, the sensations the treatment engenders, the changes I’m feeling–I’m fascinated by all of it. If I am ever again able to give massages (I have a massage license) I absolutely must take a class in acupressure massage.

The oddest/neatest thing I’ve noticed in the past week or so is feeling various chi routes open up at random times. The feeling for me is a menthol “icy-hot” sensation at and just under the skin.  I have felt this before when doing a directed meditation to be aware of the meridian pathways.  I would expect that to happen during meditation, when energy is flowing through me anyway, but recently I have had this sensation at other times, usually when I am relaxed, such as when I am lying awake in bed before getting up. The neatest thing is that the meridians where I am feeling these sensations are not those that (as far as I can tell) have been stimulated by the acupuncture needles. My guess is that now that the chi less stuck some routes, it is “unsticking” in other routes as well. Which I think is pretty cool.

I’m definitely feeling more flexible physically. Stretching and exercise are easier as well. My 10 minute elliptical workout no longer hurts my waist. This is good.

I am experimenting with exploring qigong a bit more as a complement to the acupuncture. Mantak Chia has some free videos of morning qigong routines up on his website. In the videos he talks about how the exercises open up the chi routes and bring energy to the organs of the body. It’s pretty interesting stuff, and it feels good, so hey, why not try it?

In one of the videos he does abdominal rolling. I have read descriptions of abdominal rolling in yoga books, but I’ve never tried it. For some reason this week I was able to do it in a way that felt effective. It’s kind of a weird sensation, but did feel somehow cleansing.

I have now had an acupuncture treatments once a week for the past three weeks. I’m lucky enough to have a school of alternative medicine in my town (American Institute of Alternative Medicine). I knew they offered student acupuncture treatments, but I have never taken advantage of them before. But a friend at work who has had back problems about as long as I have (only hers are much worse) recently started getting treatments there, and swears by it. So I decided it was time for me to try it out.

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With my continuing back problems, I feel like I have a unique opportunity for the practices of non-attachment and renouncing the fruits of action. And yet, I am not doing well at this practice. I am impatient at every stage. I wanted the pain to stop. When I was no longer in daily pain, I was impatient to be able to return to normal activities like dusting and carrying without risking recurring pain. Now that I can once again perform those normal tasks I am impatient to return to a cardio and strength training fitness routine. Want, want, want! I am never satisfied!

But the body is never limitless; it always imposes limits on activities. Accepting this fact of human existence is one of the biggest lessons of the life, I think. It is why the yogis say that Corpse Pose is the most important pose to practice. We must learn the humility that there are limits to what we can achieve, and to the length of our existence.

My body has given me such a great opportunity to explore this knowledge for myself, yet I have felt that I am squandering that opportunity with my desire and impatience to return to health.

During my meditation Wednesday night I asked to accept my body as it is. I asked that I let go of the impatience and frustration, and be at peace with my body.

As soon as the meditation was over I found myself looking through the Cosmic Healing; book and found new healing meditations to try.  And yesterday I made an appointment for an acupuncture treatment next week. I made a promise to myself to schedule some sort of bodywork treatment (massage, acupuncture, etc.) for myself every Thursday for at least the next month. Understood in that promise is a commitment to stop feeling apologetic for the sensitivity of my muscles.*

So I am already making positive steps. On the other hand, I haven’t stopped complaining about the roundness of my belly or the tightness of my clothes yet. So I guess I have more work to do on accepting my body as it currently is. 

I include, as a reminder to myself:
 

*Massage therapists, as well as my chiropractor, are prone to exclaim “What did you do to yourself!” when they feel how tight my muscles are. This tends to make me feel like I should do extra stretching and relaxation before I feel like I can let myself get a massage. I have to accept that my muscles are simply sensitive and prone to tightness.

The qigong exercises I have been doing for the upper back and neck have made a huge difference, and I am rarely experiencing pain or tightness in the upper back. Now, however, my lower back is tight and achey. Dr. K says my spine is stabilizing, but the muscles still seem to be touchy and become sore easily. I did go ahead and order the accompanying video for lower back pain. I arrived yesterday, but I haven’t had a chance to try it yet.

With my recent renewed interest in Taoist exercise and meditation, I felt drawn yesterday to look through Mantak Chia’s book Cosmic Healing, which I first read a couple of years ago. I have been doing some of his Taoist energy meditation techniques in my meditations lately, and I wanted to review them. And besides, it is nice to flip through the book every now and then. Chia packs a lot of information in a few pages and you never know when something will strike you as useful.

Cosmic Healing gives several qigong visualizations designed to open both the yin and yang chi routes that I will begin adding to my morning routine. Mantak Chia’s website also has several free videos. I am particularly interested in this Tao Yin exercise that looks like it would be very good for lower back pain.

Along with the Lee Holden lower back qigong video I just got, these practices will hopefully unblock my yin and bring as much mobility to my lower back as the upper body qigong practices have done for my upper back.