I went to the Wicked Faire yesterday.
Sunday Meditation: Breathing through Pain
Roberta blogged recently about living with pain, so I thought this would be a good time to talk about how meditative techniques can be used to manage pain.
First, start with breathing.
No matter what you’re feeling, whether intense and agonizing, or dull and throbbing, as soon as you can, focus on your breath. If you are overwhelmed, it will be hard, and probably impossible at first, but as soon as you can, find your breath, and turn your thoughts to breath.
If I am helping someone who is in pain, I force eye contact and we breathe together. If you look inward when in pain, you’ll tend to look at the pain. So if there isn’t a partner to help you with eye contact, find an outside focal point; a window, an object, anything. And look at it, hold it in your field of vision, and breathe.
Breathe.
Once you’re breathing, do a muscle sweep. You will probably find that you are clenching a lot of secondary muscles—muscles no where near the hurt part. Your jaw is tight, your hands are balled into fists, your feet are curled up. You are in the posture of resistance.
What happens, though, is that tight muscles hold more pain than loose muscles, so loosening these muscles will help. Plus, your muscles work in groups, and as you relax your hands and feet, the muscles near the pain will also start to loosen. Even though you haven’t been thinking about that painful area.
Breathe.
Unclench your feet. Open your hands. Let your fingers be soft. Relax your jaw and let your mouth fall open a little.
Once you feel as relaxed as you can, start breathing that relaxation into the pain. The breath runs over the pain like the soothing and gentle stroke of a hand. Stay with this image. If the pain starts to increase, look away from the pain and go back to your focal object and your secondary muscles. If you’re not able to breath into the pain at all, that’s okay, just do the breathing, the muscles, and the focal object.
Practice this technique when you’re not in pain so it’s available to you when you need it.
Thoughts following hot sake
I should like to ruminate, however disjointedly, on the notion of the first date.
What do you look for? Who is the person across the table? What’s the goal, here?
I kind of thoroughly reject the notion that the goal is to find the other person sexy. “Sexy” tends to derive from our subconscious stuff, our dysfunctions and sick expectations and bizarro wishes. All the “bad boy” stuff that doesn’t serve you in the real world and is best left in fantasy.
Yet while rejecting it, we hope for it. Because, y’know, why can’t I meet a nice guy I like who is also sexy to me? Fundamentally, the artificial confines of “date” world make that less likely. But then, if your ignition isn’t lit, you go home with the wondering. The ‘he’s a nice guy will he ever be more?’ thing. Because there are a finite number of dates you’ll go on with such a guy.
There was a guy I dated about 2 years ago. Exactly three dates. And I thought, if I knew this guy for like a year, if we hung out in the same social circle and sort of saw each other and were proximal to each other, I bet we’d hook up. Because we really do like each other and we really do connect to each other. But not in the boy-girl way. No spark. No sexy. And no time in which for it to develop. Again, “dating.” So artificial. Three is really as many as you can do. Especially because he wasn’t exactly local. So sometimes I think we kill the possibility of relationship by dating. But what else are you gonna do?
So you eat a nice meal and have a nice drink and you talk. And what I mostly notice is the persistance of me. How I can’t stop being me in all the ways I annoy me. How I am charming and funny and over-monopolize the conversation. How I distrust a man being charmed by me because I know I’m too good at that. And how I wish I had the trick of silence because I want to listen more and I don’t.
And here he is. Nice man. Not sexy to me tonight. Doesn’t mean he won’t be in the future. Doesn’t mean he will be either. And there is nothing to do about that except ride it out.
We are bad at creating relationship in this culture. We suck at it. I have Hindu friends with traditional arranged marriages. And I think, who are we to look down on that in our patronizing Western way when we don’t have a better answer? Our answer is to be lonely and to struggle and to hope. And to eat nice dinners and talk and wonder what it all means.
Anna Nicole Smith
I want to think about Anna Nicole after the autopsy results, after I can process this strange news in some kind of context.
Meanwhile, one thing I didn’t think I’d be doing this morning was reading an amazing and beautiful poem about Anna Nicole’s life and death.
Friday Catblogging: Cats on Chairs
Fanty on the ottoman
The weirdest comment spam ever
I am now getting dozens of spam comments that say “You have so much spam here” or “This is spam, delete it!”
It’s metaspam.
I feel naked
I left the house without earrings this morning. I feel totally undressed. And weird.
And normally I’d have gone back into the house and gotten the earrings. But it’s six degrees outside. And the thing is, if I’m late for work, I end up in the back of the parking lot. And it’s a looooong walk in six degree weather to the entrance to the building. Just for earrings.
It’s amazing. Every morning since this cold snap, I’ve been totally motivated to get to work on time.
Edwards Campaign Musn’t Succumb to Swiftboating
I was so impressed when John Edwards decided to hire two of my favorite bloggers.
Predictably, they’re being swiftboated. Story here and here. Now there are rumors that Amanda & Shakes are going to be fired (story here and here).
So, here’s what I wrote to the :Edwards campaign:
Dear Senator Edwards and staff:
I would be appalled if you allowed the excellent bloggers Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan to be swiftboated off of your campaign.
Bill Donohue has long taken bigoted and anti-Semitic stances. He is the last person who should be dictating Edwards campaign policy.
Please know that I am still in the process of evaluating which candidate I will vote for in the Democratic primaries. A candidate who caves into far-right smears and pressures is not one I will support.
Regards,
Deborah Lipp
Write with your own (polite) words of support.
Answers for Trivia of 2/6
You all answered so fast, I didn’t even have to wait until Thursday! Good job, folks.
