The Body, Like Life, Knows What it is Doing

Listen to your body.  It is very wise.
-from just about everyone who knows anything :)

Sunny right now but it is not predicted to last.  There is a blizzard warning for our region later today.  Schools and classes already closed. Winter, our aging dancer, wants to make one more glorious appearance upon the stage. :) She is feeling a little threatened by spring, maybe...as she should be.  So she is intending to show us that she is not done yet.  Isn't that wonderful and inspiring... we can just sit back, allow her do to do her thing, watch and applaud her magnificent effort...finding the beauty in her last ( or at least one of her last) performances. 

The Choice of Thought

You know, I could resist this fact about the impending weather.  I could travel upstream with all my mental might.  "Oh it can't be...we are not suppose to have snow in spring...but we are getting more snow...that's all I need...and I thought it was over...what a bummer...life is like that, eh?  Just when you think you have it good...another storm hits...nothing lasts...I will never see spring and warm weather...I will be shovelling out for the rest of my life...life is work, work and more work!"  Yuck!
What a horrible way to think.  What a horrible way to feel. 

I don't have to think this way! I don't have to feel this way!  I can choose another way of proceeding, another direction. I can choose another way of being.   I  accept the fact that winter is not ready to leave, even if her contract has expired. This impending storm is beyond my control. What choice do I have but in my thinking? I can sit back, breathe and enjoy the show from Life's perspective, allowing Life to be the director.  I can let go trusting that Life knows what It is doing.   Resisting what is,  takes me away from  the peace faith provides...the joy of the flow down stream. So, knowing that, I choose to go back to my first thought about enjoying the performance.

I learn so much.  I apply so much of that learning to how I live my life...and at the same time I realize just how much I have yet to learn and apply.  That is where I am now. I am catching myself demonstrating a need for more practical education.

Learning from the  Body

As I sit to write today, I feel a certain subdued sketchiness within me.  I am not settling.  I watch my body position here.  I am leaning forward instead of back...sitting on the edge of chair.  My back is so erect, it is arching.  My shoulders are leaning forward.  My head is hyperextended ever so slightly backward as if it is preparing itself for a potential blow. I am braced on the balls of my feet.  I have, in fact,  the same position a scull racer would have.  My body is in the position to paddle upstream as if I was in a race waiting for the gun to go off!  I am not settling into life.  I am perched and ready to resist. I look back and realize this is how I have been sitting for weeks now for hours at a time.  No wonder why my shoulder is keeping me up at night.  My body is also talking to me again. 

I have one body issue, besides the bigger ones, (do I sound like a hypochondriac or what?) that resurfaces as a reminder that I am pushing too hard thought and behaviour wise against the stream: an old shoulder injury.  Think about it...what better body part to be showing signs of grievance at my paddling upstream to support this analogy of resistance to life flow  than a shoulder.  What type of injury do you think a scull rower is more likely to get? My body is telling me very clearly to put down the paddles! Yet,  I have a challenging time putting them down. I have a challenging time letting go!

I have been assured by my physiotherapist that the issue has little to do with the shoulder and more so with how I use my body over a period of time...if I am tensing up in an intense need to get things done, if I am posturally  out of alignment , if I am  not using my supportive core muscles to support me, if I am not leaning back  enough, if I am not "conscious" enough of my body position or where I am in space...it acts up. So what I am feeling now probably began months ago.  I have been slipping into an old bodily and unhealthy way of behaving over a long period of time.  It is going to take some time, then, to undo this tense body conditioning and  to retrain my body to find ease....the ease it knows so well...but has forgotten.

Is this not how our mental behaviour goes? 

Our belief system takes years to develop enough that it  effects the way we live. Dis-ease is an accumulated reaction to an extended period of self-depreciating thinking that leads to a lot of extra exertion in the form of paddling up stream. It has little to do with where and how it shows up...and everything to do with the paddling up stream when we didn't have to.  Extended periods of mental tension from resisting what is, not being aligned with what is intended for us, not leaning into the support of Life energy, not being conscious enough of who and what we are...will eventually lead us into exhaustion. It is going to take time to heal the injury we have done to our minds, our bodies and our perception of Life. 

My body is simply reminding me that I am not in alignment with my life; it is time to refocus and to be patient with myself as I do.  This is not a race.  I can lean back into the arms of the flow downstream  and simply enjoy the ride.

 Life knows what it is doing.

All is well in my world.