Time to Regroup

My lifestyle was very different in my 20s – I had less responsibilities and no one but myself to please. It was the perfect combination for creating a life of inward focus.

Now, though, in my 40s, I have a ton of responsibilities and a whole family to think about – not a good setup for living a life of perfect connection to one’s body.

But, too bad.

As of today, I am intensively going back to the path I had in my 20s, in which I connected deeply to my body. I’ve had to do this periodically before, but never so thoroughly as now. I feel buzzy inside too much, in a frantic way and not my usual happy hummingbird way.

Not for any reason, really. Just a conflagration of events: my day job is randomly intense and randomly numbingly boring, with bouts of emotional abuse thrown in at random. It always eats the majority of my week, even though it gives the least back to me in any but financial terms.

Then there’s PoleSkivvies, which I adore, but which is taking an increasing amount of time and always pushes me to the edge of my comfort zone, forcing me to learn and adapt on the fly.

And then I have a family. Isn’t that crazy? I have a family now. I have a wonderful boyfriend and stepdaughter, plus my furry beast and a persnickety cat (albeit, with an inviting tummy).

And pole dancing. Because it’s hard to feel I have the right to talk as much as I do about pole, if I never go pole, myself. And pole is, quite honestly, as exhausting as it is invigorating.

Basically, my mind is always on. And my body, which needs a lot of rest to stay healthy, is hanging by a thread.

The wilderness years

Back in my 20s, I was having a lot of problems with my Crohn’s disease – lots of pain, a bowel obstruction, and, in the end, surgery to remove a lot of scar tissue blocking my intestines. The thing is, my pain returned within only three months.

There was no concrete reason for this. I wasn’t having a flare-up. The obstruction had been removed. I should have had a reprieve. But, instead, there I was again, right back in square one.

I took myself on retreat. I figured the problem had to be something I was doing. I wanted some quiet time to puzzle out what that might be.

A way out

What I learned was, I needed to be in my body every moment, to feel what she was doing and how she was responding in every situation. I put myself on a very regimented schedule – every minute of every day was blocked out.

But this wasn’t rigid; it was freeing.

I no longer needed to think about what had to get done and when would I find the time to do it. All I had to do was whatever was slotted for that period of time, and all would be fine. And while performing whatever the given task was, I had to pay attention to how I felt.

This turned out to be a life-changing thing for me. In the end, I noticed my abdominal muscles constricted while I ate, and I learned to relax them. I learned my breathing didn’t go into my lower abdomen, and I started breathing deeper. I learned that my gut was so messed up that it would take five days of eating nothing that bothered me whatsoever, in order to make up for one day’s bad choice. I learned that if I made that poor eating choice again in that 5-day window, the window started over.

It took me a few years to figure it all out, but in the end, the pain was gone. The bloating and gas was gone, and, on the rare occasion it would reappear, I knew what had caused it. And I knew how to undo it.

That hint of precognition

It’s not by coincidence that this is when I’m also dealing with a ton of body pain, all stemming from being frozen in one position too long – sitting too long, standing too long, typing too long.

It seems synchronistic that I’m joining forces with Mark of HowToStretch.com at this moment (look for it this Wednesday!). As if I knew subconsciously that I was reaching my limit and would soon need to rearrange my world – starting with my body.

So, in keeping with the case study I’m doing with Mark, I’m also taking a page out of my 20-something life, and introducing a set time to meditate and stretch, every morning and every night. First thing, last thing.

I don’t know much about how other people meditate, but, to me, it’s a time to move my body and breathe into her. Find where she’s stiff, see if emotional pain is hiding away somewhere, waiting for release. A time to center and regroup on my own goals, personal and spiritual, and make sure I’m living my life in keeping with them – or find a way back to that path if I’m not.

On some level, I think my being knows the next year is going to get real busy, and this is my way of letting the rest of me know the time is now to get prepared. Not just so I can handle it, but so I can thrive within it, rather than succumbing to it.

Be sure to check out Mark’s guest post, on stretching your shoulders. We’ll be doing a series starting this Wednesday, using me as a case study. You’ll see how I progress with his DVD!