Oh Bee Hive!

For the past several months, I’ve been taking a yoga class. Today’s class was especially relaxing. We always start and end with shavasana, which involves lying down on a yoga mat. It doesn’t get any gentler than that.

In between the two shavasanas, we do some mild stretching, yawning, twisting, rocking, and balancing … nothing difficult. I go there for the relaxation factor. It’s literally the most relaxing part of my whole week, including the parts of my week while I’m asleep.

Today we did something at the end of class, during shavasana, that was so enjoyable for me that I wanted to share it with you. It was a guided observation that went something like this:

“Imagine yourself holding a mortar in your left hand, and a pestle in your right hand.

Now imagine everything that makes you sick or causes you pain dropping into your mortar, pebble by pebble.

Now take your right hand and grind your pebbles into a fine dust.

Now blow the dust away. Let it disappear.

Now imagine that every cell in your body is being filled up with a beautiful golden light.

Let the light warm you and envelop you. Enjoy your beautiful golden light.

(After a minute or two of enjoying the sensations created by our imaginations, we continued.)

Now release the light into the atmosphere. Just let it gently fade away.”

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I’ve experienced relaxation exercises before, but never like this. This one was special for me. I think it was because it began with the image of something very tangible: a mortar and pestle that I could hold in my hands. The directions were very specific. Mortar in left hand, pestle in right. Grind, grind, grind. Blow. Pouff! Gone.

And then, cells. Lots of them. And warm golden light. All very physical, very real to me. I imagined myself as a beehive.

 

I really liked this exercise. Grinding the pebbles into dust made me feel strong. Blowing them away gave me a sense of relief. Then each cell in my body filling up with warm, golden honey made me feel like I glowed. I think my head was even buzzing.

I didn’t want to release the light, but I knew I couldn’t lie there in shavasana forever, so I came back to reality. But even after I had done so, some of the energy of the golden light remained. I felt calm and energized at the same time.

I thought it was a very effective imagery exercise, and I just wanted to share it with you.

 

Zen and the Art of Muscle Spasm Maintenance

It’s been three days now.

Three long, tedious, mind-numbing days of lying in ungainly positions with multiple pillows arranged under, behind, and beside the various and sundry (as in unmentionable) parts of my body. My back is my Achilles heel, and three days ago it decided to kick me in its own ass when I tried to lift a heavy box.

If you’re surprised to hear me talking about my very own back that way, consider this: I’m on the maximum dose of ibuprofen washed down with half a glass of Sauvignon Blanc. I’m lying flat on my back with an ice pack tied around myself using one of my favorite, now probably ruined, scarves. My hands keep falling asleep from holding my iPhone up in the air while I type this. My back does, indeed, feel exactly as if it twisted itself around and planted its heel squarely in the middle of its own ass. But things could be worse.

About an hour ago, I made an important scientific discovery: Pleasure cancels out pain.

How did I stumble upon this amazing fact? Well, as we all know, great scientific discoveries are often borne of necessity, and this one is no exception. Earlier, I had been a bit hungry, and my empty stomach needed something in it to keep the ibuprofen company. I’d tried to walk to the kitchen to grab a cracker, but my back rebelled, driving me back to bed in a hunched up fog of pain.

It was too early to gulp down any more painkillers, so I lay there for about twenty minutes until Chuck came home with groceries, and then I asked him to fix me up a little lunch. Even though it meant having to sit up in bed in an even more painful position, I decided to try and force myself to eat something.

I moaned and groaned and finally had positioned myself for minimal food spillage. The food was arranged on a cutting board and balanced precariously on my outstretched legs. I grimaced and resolved to get this over with as quickly as possible so I could go back to painfully lying down instead of painfully sitting up. But at the moment that I tasted my first mouthful of the delicious food Chuck had prepared, my taste buds exploded, and so did the pleasure receptors in my brain.

It was only a microwaveable meal from Trader Joe’s, the kind that looks like an upscale TV dinner. I must have been really hungry, because that Chicken Marsala with Mashed Potatoes (emphasis on the mashed potatoes) tasted like Thanksgiving dinner. And, for that first fleeting second or two while I savored the surprisingly delicious flavors (emphasis on the Marsala), my pain disappeared! It seemed I was incapable of feeling pain simultaneously with pleasure.

Unfortunately, the second that I paused to consider this, the pleasure receded and the pain came rushing in to fill the void. But all it took to send the pain away was another forkful of food.

I then took two sips of wine that I’d had the forethought to ask Chuck to place next to me on the bedside table, and this helped matters even more. Then I went ahead and took two, or maybe six, more sips. There. Much better.

I also started thinking about how I really should try to meditate in order to relax my back — and no sooner had I thought this, than again I felt a slight easing of the pain.

And occasionally, instead of thinking about meditation, I just took another sip of wine.

I continued this cycle of “eat-sip-think about meditation-or-sip” (TM) until my Trader Joe’s meal-in-a-tray was gone, and then I was feeling so much better that I decided to write this post about it.

I am now a firm believer in the “eat-sip-think about meditation-or-sip” (TM — or maybe © ) method. And I’m shortening it to ESTAMOS, Spanish for “we are.” It makes a great hashtag.

But, unless you’re determined to get a stomach ulcer, please don’t mix ibuprofen with alcohol. The label says there can be some nasty results.

I hope to be fully recovered from my back problems in time to accept the Nobel Prize for Home Remedies next year. And just to increase my odds of winning, I’m going to try some actual meditation now. If it works, I may change the name of my method to MEATS (meditate-eat-and-take-sips), but I’m afraid PETA (People Enraged by Trite Acronyms) might not like it.

Haiku Hour

Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

Haiku Hour

Can’t sleep, up at five
check my phone for messages
someone liked my post

I eat my breakfast
granola and some coffee
now to get to work

I could try haiku
I get a pad of paper
broken pencil point

maybe I’ll give up
go back to bed and dream of
being late for school

but something tells me
try again, you idiot
so what can I do?

another coffee
a sharpened pencil this time
and an eraser

it’s five thirty now
the sun has not arisen
birds are still asleep

my street is quiet
I don’t hear any traffic
writing time is now

ten minutes have passed
I have not written a word
the page is empty

maybe I should try
a little meditation
and see what happens

find a quiet spot
close my eyes, breathe in, breathe out
repeat my mantra

buzzing in my ears
I feel like I am floating
a dog is barking

five barks in a row
silent for a moment, then
seven barks, then five

secret learned today:
all the world is poetry
glad to be alive.

© Lori Bonati, 2017