Those Times You Descended Into Hell? What Did They Give You?
Life has a glorious way of reminding you how many things you are yet to experience - the good, the bad, the tingly, the confusing and the weird. The longer you live the more you become aware of the patterns woven within you that created a certain certainty about the world, that time slowly - and sometimes shockingly - dismantles.
It can be a little scary but where the equation balances out is that at the same time, you are also accumulating more tools, more spiritual supplies and the golden perspective of age that sloughs away a lot of things you may once have agonised about.
Here’s a little tale of unexpected newness…
I’ve had migraines since I was 10 years old. One gammy somersault and a migraine supportive lineage and BANG, 40 years of migraines to inspire me to refine and refine and refine. I know many of you experience these inexplicable events - like a horrific glitch in the operating system that comes with, literally, mind-blowing pain. They are terrible things and from my own experience and years in the clinic, I can safely say, they need a lot more attention than they are getting. Still one of nature’s great unknowns.
On the weekend, I experienced physical pain unlike any other (and yes I am including child birth in this summation). Like my bones had shattered and my brain no longer fit inside the container in which it was caged. I’d love to tell you a really extraordinary tale of high misadventure but after three days in hospital, a visit from the senior doctor concluded, in essence a ‘perfect shitshow’. Viruses and a severe delayed reaction to an iron infusion, triggering some unhappy reactions in my stunned little heart and an array of never-before-seen levels of clusterfucking misbehaviour from my migraine-ready neurons.
Talk about a little trip to the underworld. Deep meditation, constant breath holds between rounds of vomiting, across three days on drips and ivs, and this little drama queen crying like a baby with gratitude at the care received from so many beautiful humans. It was something I would like to never experience again. Thank you very much.
In these clarifying times I always come back to wondering ‘where would I be without a yoga practice???’ And ‘how does anyone cope without one'??’ And by yoga practice, we are NEVER just talking about what shapes you make with your body on your mat - although they are great! We’re talking about how you look at each action in a considered way through a lens of minimising harm and propagating compassion, joy perhaps, safety, discipline, whatever the moment needs for yourself, for others and this big beautiful, harrowing, curious world.
New experiences, or new levels of an old experience, they change us. They give us a clearer vision. Particularly the tough ones. They multiply our neurons. They dissolve synapses. They refine our life choices and they decondition us, revealing things that are not true for us anymore. They give us new life views. And THAT is very, very special.
And the best thing is, is that we as individuals can choose the newness. We can choose the things we’ve never done before and of course, life will simply throw a whole lot at us that we don’t choose, so condition yourself to be great at newness so you’re match-fit for when it arrives uninvited.
Lissie x.