I am now well beyond 200 days of meditation. I meditate every day. In fact, I now do 3 sessions a day. I was starting with a meditation before I got up, but I would fall asleep again during the meditation, so now as soon as I wake up, I tell myself, up you get, it’s meditation time. I am getting up better, I get washed and dressed, maybe a shower, then I do some pre-meditation stuff. I foot wipe, I get a drink and then (weather dependant) I go out and ground my feet on the grass in my garden, I love it when it's damp. I might do malasana (deep squat – bottom to the floor) and do a bit of weeding, but only as an excuse to hold malasana as long as I can, I also do my gait analysis exercises, when I come back into the house. Oh, yes and I open my journal and write about 3 things I am grateful for.
I also do a lunchtime meditation session (this is the newest addition) and then another one before I go to bed, but I don't lay down, I usually fall asleep in this position. I head off to the conservatory with lots of cushions to hold me upright. Yes, I know it's a big investment, but my current priority is to heal myself, that way I have more time for others. I am waking up earlier and going to bed a bit later.
I have always enjoyed Malasana, until I broke a bone in my left foot in November. I broke my 5th metatarsal bone (the bone behind the little toe) but didn’t realise until about 4 weeks later (call it denial). And since then, I have been dealing with postural issues. Initially, I couldn’t put weight on the outside of my left foot, it took 2 weeks before I could weight bear fully on the outside of my foot. Once I got my strength back in my foot, I knew that I had other issues, my right knee was uncomfortable sitting cross legged (I became a yoga teacher that couldn’t cross my legs !! or do pigeon, that was excruciating) My inner left thigh muscle was painful at the attachment point in my groin and my left foot was always sore and tight. But in addition to that the pain went into my shoulder and neck on the left side and into my jaw.
I do gait analysis, so I am my perfect and worse client, it sooooo helped me to understand how the body adjusts itself. How can I have all this discomfort just from hurting my foot?
I think it’s because of my thoughts?!?!?! My thoughts as soon as I wake up in the morning are, “I wonder what’s gonna hurt today?” So, I have been working on my thoughts, picking a specific thought, working out where it came from, usually my childhood and then I would work on letting it go. Somethings are harder to let go than others. I have also realised that one of my habits is to hide my true feelings, I like to give the impression I'm in perfect health, after all I am a yoga teacher. But, I have had varying degrees of pain since I hurt my back playing squash when I was 13. I now pick my meditations wisely to help me.
Since I have been doing my 3 meditations a day (10 days now), I have started to notice subtle improvements. For about a week now, I don’t have pain in my left inner thigh/groin/hip area and my right knee, I can cross my legs without discomfort. I know there is plenty of work still to do as pigeon pose is still tight in my right knee, but to remove two discomforts is fabulous.
So, is it possible, that in comforting my mind, I am improving my body? Does this pique your interest? It's one of my favourite subjects. Happy to talk more. You might be interested in booking a session to discuss your options....
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