Closer

It's a toss up today, whether to rant about unhelpful things people say or share my process of coming closer. Aha, I see my title points to the latter, although I will mention that my love of complaining gave birth to a dynamite support group called Complaint Company. I highly recommend at least a lightning round of everything negative. Anyhoo...

Closer but a long way from where I think I should be. Closer but exactly in the only place I can be. Closer and closer to my goal as I define it. My thoracic spine has collapsed. My bones are severely osteoporotic and my lats and lower traps and intercostals are atrophied. So when I try to raise my arms or lift something or even breathe deeply, my spine bends to try to accomplish the task, which is exactly what I don't want. My goal is to lengthen my spine, strengthen those dear distant atrophied muscles. And so my intimate question to myself is, what is the best way to get near to that goal? 

The technical name for this process is successive approximation. You'll find behavioral psychologists using it to get you closer to the snake you fear, or Feldenkrais practitioners guiding you from imagination to tiny movements to something brand new. 

How can I inhibit the habit of curving and get closer to lengthening? Well, a prop helps. If I hold a chair or even my belly with one hand, the other can rise a little bit. I can also imagine the vertebrae between my shoulder blades opening. I can practice micromovements on my back, feeling the initiation of the movement in each vertebra, just a tiny bit to the left, to the right, closer to the floor, away from the floor (this practice is described in an excellent series of Feldenkrais lessons). Tuning in, I'm amazed that I can actually locate these little bones. I don't know if I'm actually moving them but I know the intention produces a very different experience than pushing through at any cost, which is what I happened to have spent my whole life doing.

No, this disease is not a fucking gift. If it were I would send it back and ecstatically appreciate what I used to take for granted. But here it is. There is no way forward without an intimate excursion into my broken body, ever so carefully distinguishing this from that, before it becomes THIS and THAT. It may seem as if I'm barely moving. I may be doing this barely moving instead of answering emails or making phone calls. 

Stand down, I say to my inner judge. This is the work right now. Maybe forever. Dropping all I cannot do, dropping all but this, the universe opens. 

January 29, 2021