Bodily Grief

I might ask about this in a few other places, too, but it occurs to me that it seems that a number of people read this blog who might have some insight.

I am in almost constant physical pain, and have been since September. It moves around. For the first several months, it was my lower back, which most of the time felt that it was going to snap in two. Off and on, it's the muscles in my thighs; the pain often wakes me up early in the morning. Once I get up, it dissipates quickly. For the last week it has been my neck and shoulders. I thought that perhaps I had pinched a nerve, but as the week came to an end, I had to acknowledge that it was probably Hebrew: three hours a day, three days a week, sitting in uncomfortable chairs and trying to remain alert to unintelligible lectures. I've been fine for the last couple of days -- except, again, in my sleep. I think I must be dreaming about Hebrew and God only knows what else, as I awaken several times in the night needing to become fully conscious in order to figure out a way to roll over without experiencing agony down my neck and across my shoulders.

Maybe I need to pull out the Jon Kabat-Zinn books? A chiropractor is out of the question - I have a friend who is a physical therapist and he has communicated way too much about patients of his who had been seriously injured by chiropractors for me to feel positive about that option. The Lovely Daughter thinks I need to find a Chinese medicine practitioner. Yesterday I picked up a flyer advertising a woman who is offering yoga classes in her home, wondering whether she might do private ones in mine - but the classes she officially offers are for young mothers, designed to fit her schedule and theirs, so it's likely that any offhand comments she makes about her own life would more than offset any physical good she might do me.

As I write this, I realize how likely it is that my feeling of being utterly trapped is contributing to the particular pain I experience. Perhaps Full Catastrophe Living is indeed the place to start. A had always thought of the word "full" in the title as modifying "catastrophe," but maybe it modifies both nouns. Living in the face of full catastrophe? Living fully regardless?