the-chronically-in-pain-yogi

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Grover and his kitten 

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Modern Janice

Stay Tuned for Janice Guitar Pics

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The Lovers

Kaja Horvat, 2024

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Kevin the Kitten and Satan the Cat 🖤 Artist: 📸@vanessastockard

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nights lately

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RESOURCE for any folks in pain/experiencing intense emotions: Tara Brach's RAIN (Regocnize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture) meditations are effective in sitting with intense sensations that may arise within your body -- physical pains, emotional pains, mental pains, soul pains. Tara Brach is a fabulous resource for anyone who is searching for free guided meditations or spiritual teachings in the form of casual discussions, book, or podcast. A quick google search of "Tara Brach" should render significant information. I have come to her teachings to heal from physical/medical and emotional traumas, and I truly hope others out there find peace through her teachings.

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For people who live with/in chronic and overwhelming pain, it's imperative that we learn to sit with this pain; to recognize it, to allow it though it is scary (sometimes horrifying) and hard and may take so much from us on any given day, to investigate all of our feelings about it, and finally, to nurture those feelings and ourselves while we deal with it. Including this RAIN process in my daily yoga/meditation practice helps me and my body not turn into a haunted house and has been a great tool as I have cultivated a relationship with my differently abled, painful body.

((Teacher's note: this practice has historically worked best in a meditation setting. This meditation setting must be comfortable so that the practioner can go inward with confidence and peace, as this is sometimes a complex and difficult process. This note is not to discourage but to set you up with more knowledge of the process to enable success. If the still position you are sitting in causes discomfort or pain, it may be best to adjust and find a position that alleviates these sensations. For example, if legs crossed in a seated position on the floor is uncomfortable, try laying down in savasana pose or seat yourself on a chair with a sturdy back and plant your feet on the floor.))

Metaphorically speaking, the only way to "heal it" is to "feel it". I mean this, too, for the things that don't heal all the way or will never be "fixed"; this doesn't mean there isn't still internal "healing" to be done or peace to be made. And to make peace, we have to first sit in a bunch of scary and uncomfortable truths and sensations, and commune with our shadow selves. (Please note: this work is hard.)

The truth of the matter is that my body will never not be in chronic pain; I will never move the same way I did before. I will never be able to get into some poses and experience flows that I found so much joy and power in my teens and 20s; they are gone as they were and they are gone early from my life, as some things are unfortunately. I miss them, and I have mourned them and the losses of motion within my body. This is life. And as Tom Petty sings, "Some days are diamonds and some days are rocks". Some days, I must conjure the RAIN method in order to sit with my grief and my body that feels as though it's a gnarled-up, old, angry tree. Other days, I feel springy, joyful, and light, and RAIN can still be utilized to cultivate a relationship with my more positive emotions.

The song attached is one of my favorites to bring to my yoga practice or mindfulness exercise when things get scary, hard, tough, difficult, overwhelming, etc. etc.

"Keep me an open heart in hell

Give me the courage to feel it all

The beauty of the fall

When I want to run away

When I wish to run away

Oh, lord, help me stay."

RAIN

with Tara Brach

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As a lifelong yogi and aspiring yoga teacher, this is some of my biggest work, over and over and over again with this beautifully catastrophic life.

Are you stressed? Are you so busy getting to the future that the present is reduced to a means of getting there? Stress is caused by being “here” but wanting to be “there,” or being in the present but wanting to be in the future. It’s a split that tears you apart inside. To create and live with such an inner split is insane. The fact that everyone else is doing it doesn’t make it any less insane. If you have to, you can move fast, work fast, or even run, without projecting yourself into the future and without resisting the present. As you move, work, run — do it totally. Enjoy the flow of energy, the high energy of that moment. Now you are no longer stressed, no longer splitting yourself in two. Just moving, running, working — and enjoying it. Or you can drop the whole thing and sit on a park bench. But when you do, watch your mind. It may say: “You should be working. You are wasting time.” Observe the mind. Smile at it.

Eckhart Tolle

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In case anyone needed a new song to add to their yoga playlists.

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Reminder: no mud, no lotus.