Body and Mind

February 8, 2009
The reason I was so upset is this – I had worked until 3 or so yesterday, then did half an hour of yoga, which felt great everywhere except my butt, which felt as if I’d torn something open. Earlier I thought I’d maybe hurt the healing surgical wound because I’d begun bleeding there again. I hopped in the shower and realized it wasn’t the old wound torn open. No. I have a brand new hemmorhoid. Why? I have been doing all I was told to do! I have done all I can think of to stay healthy. I began yoga almost as soon as I thought I was well enough, and in fact, it might have been too soon. Maybe the asanas I chose were wrong. I don’t know. I’m just trying to do my best.
There is absolutely no way I am going through another surgery like that. So now I’ll have lived through that hell but STILL have hemmorhoids? It’s enough to make me scream. Makes me wish I believed in a God I could yell at.
I am not giving up on yoga, that’s for sure. My new plan is to go through Turlington’s book and find all the poses that are good for the colon, rectum, small intestine, spine, and right torso. Make a list, then figure out which asanas are the building blocks for those, and create a routine that enables me to learn and master the basic asanas, integrating the more complicated ones whenever I feel my body and spirit are ready. Make it so that there is a little variety from one day to the next. And then I’m going to stick with it. Every day. I hope that at least 3-4 days a week it will lead straight to meditation.
That is all I can think of to do. I feel like my body is so weak, so vulnerable. It just can’t take very much more. It needs a great deal of kindness. I was so angry at it yesterday. But how is that helpful? Or fair? Or kind or compassionate? It is not my body’s fault that it has been ravaged by shingles and an incorrect signal to attack itself instead of the shingles virus. I’m sure it’s very sorry. It is not its fault that its genetic code is programmed for weak rectal veins and endometriosis. Our only way out is to recognize that we have to work together. I need my body to stop fighting me, and I need to stop fighting it. Since I’m on the side (by definition) of the ability to have the symbolic idea, I need to lay down my “weapons” first.
No more hateful thoughts. No being angry at body parts for their failures. No skipping doses, no forgetting Activia. Plenty of sleep, vegetables, fluids and spiritual discipline. This is the best I can do. If my body continues to fall apart despite my best efforts, at least we’ll be friends while it happens. Maybe it can be more gentle, less fearful and anxious that way.
The “meditation from the mat” for yesterday was about Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. Why didn’t I just read that when I got it for J? It’s up next, after the Upanishads. Anyway, the eight-limb path of Patanjali’s, which he put together from the scriptures, is so straightforward one doesn’t really need a lot more commentary or instruction.
So how is it, again, that I always understood about the yamas and niyamas, but then jumped right into svadhyaya – self-study, skipping right over the other first two tapas, the asanas and pranayama?
The MfM describes pratyahara this way: turning inward, as “the mind withdrawing from the senses of perception.” Where dharana, concentration, can occur. “The Light of our awareness can begin to shine on our soul. The deepest form of connectedness is now possible.” P.5
Why did I believe I could get to the end by skipping two parts? I guess because the Upanishads, the jnana yogi way doesn’t stress it, nor does Krishna. But it is there – a constant given. Hatha is the underlying assumption they all took for granted and I, in my Western, Cartesian ignorance, kept leaving out.
The MfM concludes that all that is necessary to undertake a yoga practice is: “We must simply remain open to our own spiritual potential and be willing to take action on our own behalf.”
Chapter 2 of the KsU felt like it was tying right into what Stephenson’s [Neal – Anathem] characters were saying about consciousness. He has one of them arguing that the mind functions as if it were a multi-celled organism in which the indiviudal cells had evolved in order to communicate with one another across sensory modalities. i.e. one could hear, one smell, one see, etc. How does something that only hears communicate with something that only sees? Or smells? They’d have to develop a shared language mutually. Functionally, that’s how our brains work, how they deal with sensory information. I’d just read that, and then the KsU 2.1 says,”Brahman is breath . . . now, of this breath that is brahman, the messenger is the mind; the guard is sight; the crier is hearing; and the maid is speech.”
But the rest doesn’t explain any of this. It just says if you know this, you’ll have messengers, criers, etc. And that the vital functions or deities bring offerings to a knower without having to be asked. I guess that means that once you understand it, the vital functions are under your control and are generous with you, kind of like how my body isn’t, right now.
2.3 tells how to do a ritual to get objects you want. I think the significance is that instead of praying and sacrificing to the gods, one directs all the parts of the ritual to the vital functions – speech, smell, sight, hearing, mind, intelligence. More ritual instructions though 2.10.
2.11-13 reiterates stories fro the other upanishads, establishing breath as the pre-eminent, most important vital function.