Swelling

Saturday, January ?, 2010 (14, 15, 16?)

Okay, I'm sitting here. The chair is comfy. Check. A freshly poured cup of fair trade coffee. Check. Just finished yoga. Check. ...and now I feel my inspiration slipping away because I can't remember today's date with certainty. I could go into how that is symbolic of life...enjoy the moment, be in the here and now to the extent that you don't even know when the now actually is. Funny, I just realized my watch is at home lying on the vanity waiting for a battery with enough energy to keep it going (the metaphors just don't stop coming.) I really am in the moment. I have no point of reference with which to orient myself...unless I get up from this chair and look at the wall...or I dig into my bag and pull out my phone--the keeper of all information. I guess the trick is to win the battle, defeat the urge to inform myself with information that is only going to take away this moment of freedom I have. Right here. Right now.

My wrist is aching. The yoga practice will be hard on it. I'm not sure now is the best time to try to write.

Last week after my first yoga class (in almost a decade), I found a tender spot while showering. It was my left hip. As I explored the "problem" with my left hand I realized that the tender spot felt swollen. There was an obvious difference between my "regular" hip and this new, raised topography on my hind quarter. As I finished showering, my mind wandered through the potential culprits for my newly discovered swelling. I remembered that I had experienced discomfort in the same area as I rolled over it when moving from one yoga pose to another. At that moment in class I made a mental note that I would need to accommodate this tender spot. I haven't been able to put any real pressure on it for at least 2 years--likely more. I don't really remember. Now I found myself in the shower connecting the two and wondering what the hell I did to my butt in yoga class.

I got out of the shower, towel-dried, and stepped before the mirror to collect more data, the visual sort. Prepared to find a bruise or a least a redness, I looked over my shoulder and saw nothing new. Seriously, I turned from side to side searching. "Oh, I thought it was this side but it must have been...no...hmm...that's funny..." Visual data was not triangulating with conclusion drawn from sensory-motor data, return to sensory-motor method of data collection...yes...swelling still present...now employing mixed-method design by simultaneously collecting sensory-motor and visual data. With this approach, I found it. I could see the perimeter separating the swelling from the pre-existing rotundness of its location. Or at least, I think I did. To be sure, I gave it a poke to see if it hurt. "Ouch." Yep, it hurt. But I was confused. It didn't look like a swelling. It looked like, like, a new deposit of fat. "No! Really?!? But it hurts. It can't just be new lumps on my lumpy butt." More data needed. A control sample. I turned to investigate the right hip. Looked like I remembered it. Now the poke test..."ouch." Hmm, this one hurts too. Poke-test conclusion--poke pain associated with diminished muscle tone due to less than optimal use (a phenomenon I was familiar with as I watched my grandmother and now my mother and aunt age).

So there I stood, towel on the floor, gazing into the mirror at my latest addition to the topography of my backside. What positive place can I take this one? It took a few days to find it, but the Universe gave it to me this morning, again, in the shower.

I am swelling. I have been swelling for quite some time and I am finally reaching a point at which I can no longer ignore it. I am "swelling" physically--not in any acute injury-related way but in the, "hmm, these jeans used to be comfortable" or "hey, when did that roll that has moved in to assume the space that had been my waist arrive?" kind-of-way. But I have not really been too concerned about that swelling. I've more been observing it and experiencing it rather than fighting it. The swelling to which I refer comes from within. I have been swelling with a desire to nurture my spiritual center. I have been swelling with an interest in honing the insights I receive from the divinity within me. I have been swelling with a restlessness to clear the pathways and open the channels so that the divine can freely flow through me. Which brings me to this moment. Here. Now. Admittedly fighting the urge to look at the clock. This is my quiet time after my newly embarked upon yoga practice. I figured if I was really going to try to do this that I must really start from the inside and make this a journey of body, mind, and spirit. That said, I hope to ease the swelling by removing the blocks that interrupt the flow of energy within me and through me. I don't want to remove the source of the swelling, but rather to eliminate the barriers that create the pools, the accumulations, the excesses.

As for the changing topography of my backside, I am happy to say, for the first time in my entire life it is not my motivation. I do not want the peace treaty that has ended the war that I have been waging with my body--my weight my whole life to be compromised. Rather, my hope is that it will be enhanced and whole wellness--physical, mental, and spiritual--will ensue.