My meditation class is also working with colors right now. Last week my meditation teacher challenged us to figure out what colors we have around us most and which the least. Blue and green have been my favorite colors for years, long before I knew to use them in healing work. I surround myself with lots of green and blue: several rooms in my house are painted either green or both green and blue. Next prevalent I think is red, then yellow and orange. I also have a number of earth tones around me: tans and browns. But almost nothing around me is purple, save a few shirts that I wear, and I have no fuchsia in my life.

Her challenge to the class was to find ways to increase those colors around us. I took a fun shopping trip to World Market (one of my favorite stores) and picked up a few glass candle holders in purple and fuchsia, and a pillow containing both colors. They make me happy. Perhaps now I’ll be more conscious of those colors and try to bring them into my life more.

From a healing perspective it interested me to learn from the book we’ve been using that purple is a very strong healing color and can be used anywhere blue is used for healing. I had read this before, but I think I may have been intimidated by the strength of the healing qualities of the color. Reluctant to grab that for myself. Interesting.

In the meditation we did at the end of the class, I sent purple throughout my body. I had a lovely meditation and felt fantastic after ward. The purple was not difficult to visualize. In fact, it swirled through my body in a gentle, lovely fashion.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I immediately added stretches for the upper back into my daily stretching routine. I also began searching YouTube for gentle exercise for the the upper back. I wanted something similar to the yin yoga I have been doing that has been so much help to my middle and lower back.

I stumbled a video of Qi Gong for the Upper Back and ordered it. I have been working with this video several times a week for the past three weeks, and I have found it to be gentle enough for my underused muscles not to cause me pain. I have liked it so well that I think I may get his qi gong workout for the lower back, too.

But has my new qi gong and stretching routine strengthened my shoulders enough to allow me to return to normal activities? YES! Last weekend I was able to complete a pretty heavy reorganization of my closets. It was fairly vigorous work that took hours to complete. I had been wanting to do this reorganization for months but couldn’t because of my back pain. My shoulders were a bit sore for the next couple of days, but nothing worse than typical muscle soreness (DOMS).

It has been a long road (six months since I started chiropractic), but I am so glad to finally be able to do normal activities again!

On top of that, work right now is in a place of transition, uncertainty, and lack of focus. I have finished up old tasks, and have yet to be brought into new ones, so I don’t have a whole lot to do at the moment. I find blank days without clear tasks to be stressful.

How easy it is to start feeling sorry for myself. I try to keep a positive attitude, but, like so much in life, that takes practice and attentiveness. I realized a day to myself would help me regroup. So, since I have plenty of vacation time saved, I took a day off yesterday, stayed home, and meditated.

My goal was to spend most of the day studying my breathing practice and meditating. I flipped through Kundalini Yoga: The Flow of Eternal Power, which I recently bought. I can’t do any of the moving kriyas right now, but I did find a couple of pranayama techniques to try. One that I particularly liked was basically breath retention after an inhale, combined with a mantra (Sa-Ta-Na-Ma).

After the breath work, I spent much of the afternoon in meditation (almost 3 hours, with breaks every hour). The pranayama must have stirred stuff up, because it wasn’t until the third hour of meditation that I finally felt like I had a good meditation. Then I went to meditation class, where we meditated another 45 minutes!

After three-and-a-half hours I was definitely ready to be done meditating. But I got some clarity and peace about some things that came up. And I feel much, much better today. I have am so glad I gave myself that break. I needed it.

My practice last night was simple: a few minutes of pranayama followed by a 40 minute meditation. During the meditation I petitioned to accept the path of surrender.

Surrender to the physical pain, the forced inactivity, the emotional pain, and the memories. I must be open to the experiences as they happen, then allow them to drift away like clouds, like thoughts that arise in meditation…not to be followed or held onto, but simply experienced as they come, and then released.

I slept well last night. Today I feel more grounded emotionally, though I still need a heating pad to help with the physical.