Yoga - unbelievably happy and boastful email!

This is copy of an email I just sent to a friend. It's as flippant as you might expect, but I wanted to post it, just so that anyone reading this blog with ME gets the idea that recovery is posible! Too often, the "myth" of non-recovery from ME is taken at face value, and I feel it's important to share good tidings when they come, to help shatter this.

I did yoga last night! In a normal class and everything! It may have been slightly too much, but that's because I'm an inactive, essay avoiding slob atm, but it may also have been just enough, and I'm the tiniest bit whateverish cause I slept in this am. Was so very very very cool! The teacher was really good at telling me what not to do, and because I [actually] listened (full orchestral fanfare) I lasted the whle 1 hour and 15 mins. Then we had a lovely relaxation which was a bit yoga nidra and a bit something else. Oooooooooooooo I did it! I feel so proud - 3 years ago, reading crappy women's mags was the hight of my intellectual advances, and sometimes the bath room was too far away, and the stairs were a nightmare. Now I'm doing a full yoga class and reading up for my theoretical essays and getting a grip on the fear behind all of it, albeit very slowly lol. But it's just so cool! ........... So many explaination marks!!!!!!!!!!!

In slightly more serious mode, deep and grateful bows to all those ME recovering angels (doesn't feel right to call of you Boddhissatva's which I'm more used to, because you're not not all Buddhists and I want to choose a less loaded but still appreciative term) I've met along the way. May you appear for all people with ME and may they have the courage to listen to you (takes me long enough lol).

Email Alert

I've put in a little email alert thing over to the right to see how I get on with it. Basically if you want updates of when I infrequently update (and I know some of you do, as this has been requested....), try signing up and see how you get on.

Happy

Well, the great guinea pig controversy rumbled on, I ended up apologising to some folks, and hidden inside my apology were my reasons for what I said. Thinking about it, although I dont like apologising as much as I do, now I'm learning to contain it and use it only when necessary, an apology can actually be a respectful thing. I always felt it was manipulative in some way, and maybe when I was younger, it was a way of avoiding the blows. I guess now I'm older, and I'm not being hit on a regular basis anymore, then although my apologies may still have an element of manipulation in them, they are now more about informing the other person, and respecting their feelings. In a way it's still pain avoidance though, as I really felt like I neeeeeeeeded to apologise to the people concerned. Once I did, the whole ickiness I talked about in my previous post lifted, and I was happy. It was quite cool, because although my apology didn't go the way I wanted to, I didn't go into my whole "needing to get it right thing". Out of nowhere my happy self came out. What a blessing! I'm now glad for the whole guinea pig thing, it's so cool to have seen that I value my happiness.

This is an interesting link. Particularly in light of what I'm talking about above. Makes me very glad I'm a Buddhist, I need a kick up the bum to remind me to be happy. My physical state was not enough, so it's good it's coming from somewhere.

Working on two essays at the moment, plus stuff for the animals. Definitely not a regular poster right now!

Comfort Blanket

This is going to be an interesting post to write.... First of all let me start off by sharing with you, that I feel all scrunched inside. Totally scrunched and it's through a really paralysing fear of trying to get it rightness. As you may well know this is a pretty constant companion of mine, so why am I drawing my attention to it, yet again. The answer, dear reader, is that my constant companion seems to be attacking the pies, and is getting well, rather considerably bigger.

It's been a nice feature of having had ME that my companion could only pop up now and again. Normally when I went to a teaching or similar, I would do something not quite right, my companion would pop up, I would spend a couple of weeks agonising over and simultaneaously sitting with my companion. Unexpectedly he didn't become much bigger after I started my studies recently - until I come up against my essay deadlines. Then my companions asserts a frozen glow, and I find it impossible to write, becoming more and more afraid as the deadline looms.

Now, with my latest activities as trustee of a local animal charity, my companion is getting very greedy. After last weeks meeting when 99.9% went really well, my signage proposals were applauded, but the guinea pig controversy gave my companion something really good to feed on. He lapped it up. I think he eats to form spaces so that he then needs to eat more to try and fill those spaces, but all that happens is those spaces become bigger and bigger. The space is a little cold clammy feeling round my solar plexus, kind of tight and disagreeable. I tihnk I would be, if I had to feast on worry, tedious diatribes about ones inadequacies etc.

We went out last night with 2 frinds from the animal charity, and ooooooo my companion grew.... The guinea pigs were not really mentioned so I decided there was An Ulterior Motive, and my compaion duely came to table.

What I'm interested in is that I feel I needed to be ill to take refuge in myself from my companions rapacious hunger. I think I used to feel him gnawing away all the time when I was at work before, and I wonder if he ate my energy from the inside? I wonder what would happen if I could ever learn to feed him with love, would he then need to eat less, would we then be able to experience the stillness and is-ness together?

Sea's of change

This has been my pretty constant companion these last few days - namely that I feel like I'm a sort of a spot within a great ocean of stuff. Waves and waves of it keep crashing down, and in my fear I grip harder and harder to what I imagine is my place. I get all grumpy faced, and the tension makes my sinuses squirt (probably the salt water), and then I feel icky, so I cling even tighter. Recently i've been trying to let go, and you know that's also impossible. In a way I am the sea as well, so I dont really go anywhere - but I have a better time when I can sit back and enjoy the show, as oppposed to clinging on to my spot. I figure this is Dharma in action in big red letters, so I'm trying to take notice. It helped last night, I was in a meeting for a local animal trust and we had a disagreement about guinea pig care, with me predictably on one side, and other people on the other side. I guess that's what makes a disagreement after all. When I sat this am, I started to admire the passion and great big good hearts of my colleagues, really admire that compassion in action, arising quite forcefully to answer the challenge. Now I dont take it so seriously, and I can see my own stains of comprehension floating away on the ocean. Something like that anyhow.

This is-ness that I can sometimes feel around the edge of my happiness, I feel it must be everywhere, I tihnk that's what Dharma talks about. I think it's easier when we're happier, as we're probably clinging less, but it's been an interesting one to trace that is-ness wherever I am. It's helping when I'm dealing with all the grief and and anger about all the deaths in the last 5 months or so. Without being melodramatic, it has been tough! Using the is-ness I can recognise that I'm actually ok to just feel the feelings. That it's actually quite ok to just be , and if I find in that being a load of anger, grief, well so be it. I''ve been putting so much into resisting them, so much clinging, so much saltwater. Deep bows to Rev Mugo and Rev Olwen who have both pointed out to me that these things do just need to arise and fall.