Back in January, I pulled this card to set an intention for the year. I cannot remember its exact message, but the take-away for me was, and continues to be: Is this moment meaningful? Yes, you could say I'm Marie Kondo-ing my daily moments. It's a new practice I'm trying out. Because when I'm not deliberately asking myself if I'm okay with how I spend the day, I always sink back into old habits and addictions. This is how I'm currently finding meaning, by creating it on the daily.
A life update: For a few months, I stopped being friends with yoga. And I also stepped away from journaling by association. In truth, I was experiencing severe vertigo and practising even the simplest asana made me nauseous. My doctor suggested it may have been Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) and told me to come back if the problem persisted. Whenever I moved my head (especially while lying down), I would feel the world spin, similar to when you sit on an office chair and spin around really quickly. And I’m not someone that usually has this problem. But it happened anyway and I was having a hard time living the unbalanced life. It felt like I was floating somewhere just above my body. Needless to say, I was ungrounded.
I tried some exercises to reposition the crystals in my inner ear, but those made everything so much worse. I would get so nauseous that I was basically MIA for half a day. It was frustrating that the problem would not go away. So what did I do? Nothing. And especially not yoga. Now I hear you say, “But yoga is so much more than asana! What about meditation or pranayama?” Just, no. When my head is spinning, the last thing I want to attempt is breath retention or focus my mind on thoughts & whatnots. Like I said, even lying down and slightly turning my head was an issue. Restorative yoga was that much effort. During the worst days, I simply slept.
The vertigo came and went and came back. In the end, it left on its own accord, unannounced just as it came. We are many weeks later and I’m finally feeling like I’ve returned to my body. I still sense fleeting moments of it on rare occasions. I don’t know what first triggered it (the doc says it just happens sometimes), but I suspect not having the basic holy trinity in check (eating well, drinking a lot of water, and sleeping sufficiently) is the culprit. Living unbalanced, literally. I’m sharing this story to assure you (and myself) that yoga is not always the answer. It’s true that yoga usually helps me feel balanced and grounded. However, at that point of no return, I had gone astray for too long and practising to “fix” myself only amplified the vertigo.
I’m slowly (and I mean, very slowly) getting back into the practice. Not because of guilt, but because it feels good to move the body again. I’ve been doing chaturanga’s daily and have reintroduced short yin sessions into my days, but what I love the most is taking meditative walks in the woods by myself. Also, with less yoga in my life, I had more time to unearth and dust off old pastimes: studying languages (currently deep in Tagalog), drawing & painting, and practising ikebana. I’m finding a lot of solace in spiritual gardening as well. And this reminded me of something I once learnt in one of my trainings, a tool for coping with pain that one facilitator called the “comfort measure pie.” Basically, write a list of the activities that make you feel good (in a pie chart, if you want) and refer to them in times of distress. It was introduced to me in the context of pregnancy & childbirth, but it’s a neat little tool for general everyday use.
🌑 ♋
Deck featured:
Elle Qui Oracle (Arwen Lynch-Poe & Melanie Delon)