Friday, January 9, 2009

Learning Things


Until the past four months, I really did not have a deep personal understanding of how intimately our bodies and spirits are interwoven with one another. Grief brings with it exhaustion, sleeplessness, too much sleep, joint pain, muscle pain, headaches ~ sometimes I feel like my body is 100 years old.

Some conversations over the past 36 hours have cracked open some new possibilities of vision. Three completely different contexts, and yet a unity in what I heard.

But ~ oh ~ the lower back pain is relentless.

Western medicine being of little help in this regard, I decided to google "chakras + lower back pain." The website I surveyed says that the issues connected with the first chakra, located at the base of the spine, are "survival, stability, acceptance, self-preservation, deep-rootedness, perception, grounding, fear and safety."

Of course.

*****

The image can be found here. I rather like its precise depiction of the pain, although I'm not at all sure that that was the artist's intention.




6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, doesn't that make a lot of sense. When one considers how stress can cause headaches and muscle tension, it's not hard to imagine how excrutiating emotional pain will be felt in the body.

Interesting image on many levels.

Mich

Magdalene6127 said...

Yes. Yes.

(((Gannet Girl)))

Stratoz said...

Your post brings the writings of Jon Kabat-Zinn to mind. The first thing I read by him was Full Catastrophe Living. He is a medical doctor who uses mindfulness to take on chronic pain at U Mass.

Gannet Girl said...

Wayne! What a great idea. I have that book and I need to go and find it right now.

Elaine (aka...Purple) said...

I continue to listen to you...

Stratoz said...

I hope you found the book. and for your latest post... my bet is the bulbs and your body will respond to warmth and light. Hope runs eternal. My Monday 4-- parasitic plants, supernovae, rosemary bread, and friends at church talking about our need to worship, and too add a fifth--- snuggling, which is about to happen.

the other day I had a word verification that looked like this "Christ" I was going to sell it on E-Bay for a million and retire, but figured I would just keep teaching for now.

peace

(I finally got a letter off to our silent friend, any reason to solder some glass together!)