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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The problem has always been that my room has been cluttered and filled with cheap, mismatched furniture. There hasn’t been enough room to do my yoga there, and even if I cleared space, the feeling created by the mismatched furniture and little nick-nacks scattered about is too chaotic and cluttered for me to feel comfortable doing my practice there. My current plan is to clear the clutter and unify the decor to give the room a peaceful, zen feel. (I promise to post pictures when it’s done. :-)

My back’s flare-up a couple of weeks ago was actually the result of my starting to do some of the necessary organizing and redecorating. I had to drop this work due to the flare-up (and I mean that literally: I dropped piles of stuff in the middle of the floor). However, during my meditation marathon last Wednesday I realized I wouldn’t actually have a whole lot more straightening to do to make the room workable.

So, last weekend, moving very slowly and gently, I cleared enough of the piles to feel comfortable with the space. I even put up a small altar as a focal point for my practice.

The only real way to get comfortable in the space, though, is to use it. Sunday evening I did my pranayama there, followed by an hour of meditation. It was nice and cozy. Unfortunately, though, I think my study just might be the loudest room in the house. You see, my house is situated about 400 feet from an Interstate and this room is on the side closest to the highway (the living room, by contrast, faces away from the highway, which really dampens the noise levels). I normally don’t really notice the traffic sounds when I’m just hanging out in the room, but when I was trying to meditate they were quiet noticeable.

I made like a good yogi and tried to work the sound into my meditation, and I *was* successful in meditating. But it was still annoying. I think next time I will try meditating to music using headphones, instead of playing it through the stereo speakers. I could also try using ear plugs and tune into the inner sound. That’s always good.

Even with the traffic noise, I had a really nice practice. It was nice to use that space. I am looking forward to feeling the energy shift as I use it regularly for my practice.

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.

Meditation has also helped the pain, at least one time.  One day last week I was having a bad pain day. I took a long, hot bath, which usually helps, but this time the pain was still there even after the bath. I finally got myself to meditate for half an hour. During the meditation I concentrated on sending energy to the places that hurt, and after the meditation the pain was gone! I have experienced lessening of pain during a meditation (as well as an increase in pain), but I have never had pain go away entirely and remain gone after a meditation!

Meditation is turning out to serve as an indicator of my progress, as well. At the place where I meet other meditators for weekly meditation, we sit in hard plastic chairs–the kind that are often sold as deck furniture. I have gotten in the habit of bringing a small pillow to put under my lumbar spine to ease the pressure there. Even then, as my muscles relax during the hour-long meditation, I often find that I become aware that I am not sitting straight in the chair and need to adjust my position. And I feel a strong need to crack my neck and back. I know I shouldn’t move during meditation, but I usually end up bending my neck to the side to crack it at least once during the hour. 

Last night I never felt the urge to crack my neck. Not once, either during or after the meditation. Halleluiah! I did feel the need to readjust my position once. Hopefully this need, too, will disappear if my chiropractor is able to correct the scoliosis in my spine. But it was lovely to lose track of time because I didn’t feel the need to crack my spine.