home practice

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!

My elderly kitty, whose diabetes has been controlled for years with a special diet, now has a blood sugar sufficiently high that she has to go on insulin. The vet discovered this because she was drinking a lot of water while she was being boarded over Memorial Day weekend.  Last week was busy with several visits to the vet, a special trip to a pharmacy to buy (expensive!) insulin, and getting used to giving injections. And worrying over her health.

She has to receive injections twice a day, as close to 12 hours apart as possible. This means I can’t stay late in town to attend my usual meditation class, but instead have to get home so I can give my kitty her injection. I am teaching my partner to give the injections, but until he’s comfortable giving them, I don’t feel I can really leave him with the task.

This means I have had to miss my meditation class two weeks in a row now.  I can meditate at home, but I haven’t made it a habit to do so regularly, preferring instead the experience of meditating with other people at my weekly class. Why is it that when we most need to meditate, those very stresses of life that create the need seem to conspire to keep us from the practice?

I have been able to keep up a yin yoga and qigong practice to some extent, and that helps, but isn’t a substitution for meditation.

I may not be able to go to meditation class tonight, but I promise myself that I will make time for an hour of meditation this evening. I truly need that quiet space for myself, especially now.

Yin yoga has also been my primary practice for the past month. In yin yoga, you hold gentle floor poses (seated, prone, or supine) poses for several (2-5) minutes. Holding the stretches for so long encourages my muscles to really just kind of melt into the pose. It seems to be a magic bullet for my back pain. The long-held stretches are doing wonders for keeping my back muscles relaxed and the spine healthy. I am almost completely pain-free most days.

Recently I have added ujjayi breathing with breath retention to the yin yoga practice: breathing in for 8 counts, holding the breath in for 4 counts, breathing out for 4 counts, holding the breath out for 4 counts. In this way 2′45″ (the current length I am holding each pose) takes about 10 breaths.

It is said that the real purpose of the asanas is to prepare the student for meditation. That certainly seems to be true of yin yoga. Sometimes in this practice, I find my mind disturbed with unrest. Not full-formed thoughts exactly, but a jitteriness or prickliness that is hard to describe. Maybe “mental white noise” comes closest as a description. I find myself irritated at the music I’m listening to (I often play Pandora’s Spa Radio station), wishing I could get up and skip forward to the next song. Unrest.  

I have experienced similar sensations at times when I meditate.

Then sometimes when I’m doing yin yoga my mind is calm and untroubled, peaceful and relaxed. This I have experienced many times during meditation.

One thing I would like to do, but haven’t found time for, is meditate for at least 40 minutes after my hour-long yin yoga session. I bet that would make for a nice, deep meditation. I had hoped to do that last night, but traffic was slow and I got home later than I expected. I’m not sure I’ll have time tonight, either. Soon, I hope.

As I left my chiro appointment yesterday…my back full of trigger points, Dr. K told me…I wanted nothing more than to relax into a session of yin yoga. I just wanted to relax into a pose, not thinking about how I should push into the stretch or how long to hold it, but just let myself be in the pose. As I haven’t done yin yoga in months, I set my interval timer to two minutes per pose, so as not injure myself in a pose held too long. I also made sure to avoid certain poses like twists or cobra that I though could have stressed my back.

Afterwards I felt emotionally tender. Yin yoga can do that. Today, though, I feel great. My mind clear and intelligent, my emotions hopeful and positive, my back more at peace than it has been for days.

I meant to go to meditation last night, I really did. The last couple of times I’ve gone the hard plastic chairs have irritated the trigger points in my back. Lying on the floor does the same thing. Obviously I should cultivate the ability to meditate sitting on a cushion, without a chair. But…not there yet.

I did, in fact, pack an armload+ of soft cushy pillows in the car, intending  to meditate resting against them, then leave them in the meditation room so I don’t have to carry them in again.

But it didn’t work out. I think Wednesday is just a bad back day for me. I do PT at the chiropractor’s on Tuesday afternoons, and by the end of Wednesday I can be feeling tight and sore. At least that’s how I was last night. I decided not to do anything that might aggravate my back further, and went home instead. I was disappointed, but I can certainly meditate at home where I will be more comfortable.

On the plus side of life, I have consistently been doing my morning pranayama practice for the past week, and I’m loving it! I am not a morning person by nature. It often takes me a while to get going in the mornings. But with just 15 minutes of energizing breathing before my morning shower, I feel awake and  clear-headed. I feel less need for caffeine to get going, and my energy level remains high for the first half of the day. That’s a habit I really want to continue to make time for, if I can.

The pranayama class I gave two weeks ago seemed to go well enough. The new person who was there has come back to the weekly meditation classes (led by the usual teacher, not me) for the past two weeks. So at least I didn’t scare her away! I still have a few nerves when I teach, though. It’s not nervousness that I don’t know what I’m talking about or what I’m doing - I definitely do. I think it’s more that I’m a strong introvert, more used to listening than being the center of attention. Teaching takes a different kind of energy than I’m used to. I want to keep at it until it feels comfortable to me.

What’s really not being comfortable for me right now, though, are the hard plastic deck chairs in the room where we meditate. My back is still very sensitive. When I meditate at home I sit on a soft cushy couch with multiple soft pillows behind my back. (I have been sitting on an exercise ball at work, which takes pressure off my back and helps a lot). Yesterday I took one of those big cushions with arms into the meditation room, set it against the wall, and sat on the floor with a pillow under my butt. I still couldn’t get comfortable! I couldn’t meditate. Lying on the floor isn’t good, either. Anything hard against my back hurts.

I have one more idea. If I could bring some sort of soft cushion to lie on, I might be able to meditate on the floor in Savasana. I do have such a cushion, a twin matress topper, that just might work. As long as I can carry it tucked under one arm. I draw the line at carrying multiple armloads of cushions and pillows, as I end up just feeling silly. I can meditate perfectly well at home, though I do like meditating with other people, so I hope this works out for me.

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My schedule has been a bit wonky the past couple of weeks, leading me to need to get to work a bit earlier. As a result, I have stopped my morning pranayama practice. I am not a morning person; I find it difficult to get going in the morning. The past couple of weeks it has been particularly difficult to get going. Well, this morning I did a bit of energizing pranayama, and what a difference it made! I hadn’t realized how much my morning breathing practice was helping me to be awake and happy in the mornings until I stopped. It may make me an extra 15 minutes later to work in the mornings, but if I can afford it, that extra 15 minutes is really worth it.

I was able to find an hour to meditate the evening that I wrote my last post.  Meditation really does make everything feel better. 

I have also decided to add Alternate Nostril Breathing to each of my pranayama sessions. It’s supposed to balance the right and left halves of the brain, so maybe it will balance my moods, as well. And, for now at least, I’m not performing the bedtime internal retention pranayama. I think I need a rest from it for now; I’ll try it again later. Hey, I made it 10 days.

This evening I teach the second of my classes on pranayama. Last month I taught Pranayamas for Cleansing and Energizing.  Tonight I’m teaching Pranayamas For Calming. My source material for today’s class is almost exclusively B.K.S. Iyengar’s Light On Pranayama. I love the precise, detailed style of his writing.  Occasionally he spices the text with metaphorical description, such as this gem: “As a jug is filled from the bottom to the top, so fill the lungs from their base to the brim.” I am very reminded of the style my massage textbook, which asked the masseur to “knead, as a baker kneads dough (J.H. Kellogg, 1903).” 

During the meditation following last month’s class on energizing pranayamas, I found myself battling thoughts and emotions, and never felt the nice drifty meditation space. I also heard from one other person that she had trouble sleeping that night. That makes sense, since the pranayamas we did that evening were pretty focused on pumping the solar plexus; we probably stirred some stuff up.  Good to know. The next time I teach I won’t do as many of the energizing exercises all in one night, but end with several calming pranayamas.

My meditation after today’s class focusing on stress-relieving pranayamas will hopefully be more peaceful.

My pranayama practice has fallen into a nice pattern recently. In the morning, if I wake up early enough, I do several cleansing pranayamas: Kapalibhati, Nasal Cleansing Breath, Dog Pant Breath, sometimes Breath of Fire. These raise energy and heat, and cleanse the system. They take about 15 minutes to do. It’s a nice way to start the day.

After work I study the pranayamas I am planning to teach at my next class (I’m gearing up for a class this week). Right now these tend to be calming pranayamas, as I taught energizing ones last month. I usually spend 20 to 30 minutes doing this.

For the past 10 days I have been performing a pranyama from the Kundalini tradition before bed. It’s basically a breath retention after an inhale, combined with the mantras Sa-Ta-Na-Ma and Wahay-Guru. This one I do for 11 minutes. It helps me fall asleep.

That’s a lot of breath work. A lot of spiritual movement. I’ve heard that when you do a lot of meditation or spiritual work, one thing that happens is that you pump energy into the personality. You become more of who you are. After a while this effect calms down as you become more able to handle the increased energy.

Who I am is an emotional person who sometimes had mood swings. Over the seven years I have been meditating and doing spiritual work, my mood swings have stabilized a whole lot, and the peaks and valleys of my emotions have evened out. I am much calmer, more even-tempered, more consistently happy than I was before.

The past week, though, I’ve noticed my emotions being a bit more intense than they had been, and I’ve definitely noticed an increase in mood swings. I know this will pass as my capacity increases. But right now it’s uncomfortable. The Kundalini practice, in particular, is pretty intense. I had decided to do it for 40 days, but I’m starting to wonder if maybe I should back off for now and try again later.

Edit: There is another reason why I might be feeling moody and emotional right now. A beloved cat died this time of year a year ago. I’ve heard that people often get emotional around a death anniversary.