Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Kinda' Suits Me Anyway

I've been thinking over some recent conversations with women friends a decade younger than me, all  having physical problems - knee injuries, intense leg cramps, joint pain, rotator cuff injuries, difficulty sleeping- you name it, someone has it. As did I at that time in my life. Can you remember when you began to make grunting noises getting out of a chair? Were you 55? 50? Perhaps even 45?

When it is no longer possible to youthfully ignore increasingly painful and demanding complaints,  we begin trying to right the wrongs of a half-century of disregard, begin to pay the homage demanded by the body that has taken us hostage, and start paying attention to it. I had almost forgotten the extreme frustration I felt, not with the aches and pains but with the time it took to address them, the trail and error experimentation, the constant scanning for improvement - or not - embedded in what seemed vast periods of required activity aimed at effecting change. This pissed me off.

Which is why I was delighted to read Chuck Nyren's Huffington Post piece on "mindfulness," The Path to Bodily Enlightenment, recommended by one of my favorite bloggers at Time Goes By.  I am interested in how we focus and so have read a lot about mindfulness, although in my own definition it is a slippery concept. Perhaps it is most like my full-frontal-focus, except that it seems to be a more passive version. Never mind. After Chuck's explanation, it fits better into my overall Simple Elegance paradigm, where some things are just easier because we are experienced and confident enough to believe it.

"In my younger days how ignorant I was! I’d just go about my life, paying no attention to the body unless it needed something (food or use your imagination). I was barely aware of its existence except if I stubbed my toe or banged my head. If I sprained an ankle, it hurt. In a few days it was all better.

Fast forward forty years. Nowadays, all my attention is taken up by internal and external experiences occurring in the present moment! Life has never been more all-encompassing. My entire body and all its parts continually radiate awareness!

Example: those knees. . .never was I really aware of them. Now, I’m so happy to report, I’m aware of them all the time! They’re glowing beacons of enlightenment. And let me not leave out my feet, hands, shoulders, elbows. All glimmering, coruscating corporeality!"

I am happy to discover that I practice mindfulness along with the rest of my generation, ready or not:) That the new habits are indeed now habits, and I am not so grudging as I was. I also hurt less. If you are paying attention, you sense the pain train early and can often intervene to derail or at least neutralize it. Maybe take a little prophylactic aspirin before you go wildly weeding; resist wearing those siren red heels; remove the kitchen sink from your purse.

You aren't 40 any more.

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