That’s what I was asking myself after I injured my back at the end of a five-day yoga immersion. But I already knew the answer: I over-did it. I didn’t pay close attention in executing a morning of intensive spinal twists. And I was showing off. After five intense days, my body was strong, flexible, and balanced. But I had forgotten humility, and this was my painful lesson. I re-opened the trauma of my old low back injury, and it was just as awful and incapacitating as it had been 22 years ago. All the benefits of yoga were out the window, or so it felt.
Over the course of several days, yoga (AKA attention and intention) helped it heal quickly. I had to start at the beginning, with the most basic movements. I had to practice raising my arms over my head and extending my spine long. I had to practice forward folding, slowly and carefully, focused fully on every little movement of the folding and the unfolding. And oh, God help me, I had to practice twisting. Slow. Attentive.
This event got me thinking about physical injury and trauma. When we get hurt, our bodies develop compensatory defenses. These coping mechanisms throw off our alignment, reduces our strength and stamina, and creates long-term discomfort among other problems. Physical therapy must often focus on re-teaching us how to move in a healthy way.
The same process happens with every emotional and mental injury and trauma. As a child/young person developing in an unhealthy culture (which includes media), there are many injuries and traumas that can occur. We come to this world innocent, and we are soon tainted by violence, negativity, and perversions of all kinds. We end up making compensatory adjustments in our experience of the world, which are often fear-based, limiting, and negative.
Just as we must remember/relearn how to heal a physical injury, we can do the same thing for our spiritual injuries.
What does “spiritual” mean? To me, it’s the integration of the body, mind, and emotional states. It’s a person’s “comfort quotient,” in a sense. The spirit can be healthy and function easily, authentically, and fearlessly. Or the spirit can be unwell, and feel uneasy (dis-eased), phony, and fearful. “Spiritual” is a word that can describe how well a person is “doing” their life. I ask myself (as examples): Am I acting with self-control, or am I in reaction mode, with no control over myself or anything else? Am I listening to my greatest, wisest, most courageous self, and conducting myself accordingly, or am I sleep walking? Am I grounded in the only moment that exists, or is my awareness scattered to an imaginary experience? Am I at peace with reality? Then I study the answers, often writing (righting) them out in wild journal entries.
The hub of a wheel supports all the spokes and the rim. It connects to the axle, so that the wheel can turn and function as such. The core of the body (the abdominal muscles, essentially) supports all the limbs to move more effectively, safely, and powerfully. To re-align and heal my back, I had to focus on “my front”—the abdominal muscles of the core.
In the same way, this moment is the hub from which life unfolds. Life only happens now. Choices and adjustments can only be executed now.
When I find myself uncomfortable and constricted, I generally discover that the problem lies in the fact that I have strayed away from this moment. I’m living in the past or the future, which doesn’t exist and brings weird stories to make me think it does. This moment is sweet, full, and simple. It’s just the perfect, bite-sized nugget of experience. And if it isn’t sweet, full, and simple, then it is the perfect moment to untangle whatever knots of confusion have me bound.
This moment is the opportunity to study myself, my mind, emotions, and my spiritual functioning. I suffer in ignorance and gain wellness with self-study. I must learn what adjustments help improve my spirit, my comfort quotient. What feels better, healthier, steadier, stronger. More importantly, perhaps, I examine what detracts from the moment. What ideas and emotions limit my experience of this one and only moment?
Why me? Because I seek the highest, easiest, kindest, bravest comfort quotient. I seek Supreme Being. And that involves painful lessons and opportunities for self-study of the discomfort. The process is gratifying.
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