Gathering Storm

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My day did not start well. Maybe one day I will be evolved enough that PMS won’t turn me into a thoughtless, self-centred toddler. In the meantime… I send my heartfelt thanks to the Heavens that I got through the day without physically harming anyone.

Other things to be thankful for:

• Yesterday’s date night: a lovely meal on the Via Italia followed by a free Windsor Symphony Orchestra concert in Alexander Park. Until Sylvain has seen Fiddler on the Roof, there’s no point in my trying to explain why Sunrise, Sunset makes me cry.
• Sylvain’s thriving container garden on the back deck, which has provided me with fresh tomatoes and fresh basil for my latest addiction: insalata caprese. I supply the bocconcini, extra virgin olive oil and freshly cracked black pepper. Voila!
• Paula has given me her “I love your blog” award. Thank you so much, Paula! Your words mean so much to me. I added the badge to my side bar and soon I might even follow the “pass it along” rule.
• Marianne’s link to this fun site. Fractals meet spirograph. I could do this for hours.
• The angels who came to me today as I sat by myself in a Tim Horton’s parking lot feeling sorry for myself, ego voice ranting and railing against all that wasn’t going “right” about my day and my life. They came in the form of a little group of sparrows and a yellow jacket who all wanted me to share different parts of my snack. They woke me up, brought me out of the mind trap.

289 kilometres for a hug

Driving back from a visit to my old home town, I tried to pick up NPR so I could listen to Garrison Keillor. Instead I found the most wonderful, whimsical, fun, intelligent radio program on the planet. One minute it was Erik Satie and the next minute this crazy cow song that made me almost giddy. Do you know how long it’s been since I felt joyful enough to bounce? This music was healing and magic.  I pulled over at a rest stop to write down the station and name of the program: “Skylarking” on CBC Radio with Andre Alexis. Now I’m waiting for this weekend’s playlist to be posted so I can look for more music by these artists.

I haven’t cared about music in over a year.

Then the host was talking about FIVE, a film by one of my favourite directors, Abbas Kiarostami.

But then…did I hear him right? He says this is his penultimate show!?!

Sigh.

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Yes, I sneaked off to Waterloo this weekend. I say “sneaked” not because Sylvain cared if I went. He supports me in anything that is good for my soul. Rather I felt like I was sneaking because I know I don’t have the energy to visit each and every one of my friends and family during a two-day trip. So I feel a bit sheepish to face the friends I didn’t tell I would be in town and didn’t visit.

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BUT!

It felt SO good to kick my shoes off (which all Canadians do indoors anyway) and pull my legs up under me, snuggle into my girlfriend’s comfy sofa and sip organic tea and just talk. We ate plums right off the tree.

It felt good to wander into the indie bookshop and get a copy of the Shambhala Sun, which I devoured cover to cover over the next two days.

It was great to meet Violet and Coffee’s boys for the first time. They are sweeties! And it was good to sit and talk to Violet and Coffee while the charming little boys went off to play in another room. Oh, and we ate tomatoes right off the vine, still warm from the sun.

I saw my old pal Anatole (whose new signs say “I NEED ONE DOLLAR”) and delivered a message to him from some folks in BC who still think of him and hope he’s well.

My friend K and I saw Amal at the Princess, my old haunt.

It felt good to get and give hugs. Lots of hugs.

It felt good to be me, a me I recognize… a me who doesn’t feel a need to hold anything in or back.

It was a long-overdue, much needed escape that left me feeling recharged and a few degrees saner than when I arrived on Saturday morning.

Teaching Myself the Dharma

Teach yourself the dharma. That’s what Ani Pema says we can do when we get hooked, when our shenpa is triggered. When you read books and listen to teachers, some things resonate with you and stick with you. Put them in your toolbox for when you need them.  Bring in tools from different traditions, that’s fine. Whatever speaks to you, use that. Teach yourself the dharma.

Lately my toolbox is full of teachings from the Getting Unstuck retreat CDs.

Rumi’s poem”The Guest House” speaks to me in a powerful way. When I remember it, it always helps to move me out of ego and into the big Love space where I relax and allow to be what already is.

Jon Kabat-Zinn’s, “It’s already here, let me feel it” helps me so much.

Mindful breathing for one year is…as Tolle promised…proving more transformative than anything I’ve ever undertaken.

In the morning when I unload the dishwasher if I feel even the slightest resistance to being where I am doing what I’m doing–an impatience to have that chore done so I can leave the house–I say to myself, “With love or not at all, Kel. With love or not at all.”  Then I look lovingly at the fork or glass in my hand and slip easily back into mindful dish unloading.

I’m tolerating my job a lot better these past weeks. At times I’m even enjoying it again. The TrueHope EMPower+ probably has a lot to do with unwinding me and helping me float through the day meeting each situation with equanimity as it arises. Certainly Chodron’s teachings around shenpa are proving to be a HUGE help. With her teachings, I am learning a new way of viewing and approaching situations that make me feel uneasy or anxious. “Hard” things are becoming so much easier to deal with.

I am learning to move out of the ego’s “MUST. FIX. THIS. UNDESIRABLE. SITUATION. NOW” mode into a stance of curiosity, humour, warmth and loving kindness toward myself and the situation.

Sometimes it helps me to think of my life as the path up a mountain. Isn’t each foothold interesting? Don’t the rocky, steep parts make me stronger and a better climber? Don’t I want to experience fully those parts of the journey, too, rather than trying to run from them?

I especially appreciate Chodron’s caveat: expect relapses. Just expect them. Without those, I would just become arrogant and have no patience for those who don’t attain enlightenment by noon. Expect the spiritual backlashes and be grateful for them, too. They might not be fun, but they keep me humble and compassionate.

Reiki in Windsor

Anaa Registered Massage Therapy & Holistic Health Services is located at 378 Devonshire in Windsor, ON. That’s right next to Taloola Cafe. I picked up a pamphlet from the door the day I met Holly for tea and ended up finding out about the Windsor Bloggers Meet-up.

There is a lot available at Anaa. Barbara Osborne is a Registered Massage Therapist and also does Cranial Sacral Therapy, Reflexology and Reiki. Appointments can be booked by calling 519-999-0496.

Cynthia Gall does Therapeutic Touch, Ayurvedic Marma Facial, Ayurvedic Full Marma Facial and Bliss Treatment. Her number is 519-990-0157.

Dan Bogess does Thai Massage, Acupressure, Iridology and Naturopathic Health Counseling and Reiki. He can be booked by calling 519-791-3010.

I saw Barbara Osborne for a 60-minute massage ($70). I felt good about the space as soon as I entered the waiting area. I went over to the book case and pulled Care of the Soul from a shelf, sat in a bamboo chair and began to read while an oscillating fan blew cool air my way.

When Barbara emerged from the treatment room, she gave me forms to fill out, including a comprehensive health history. We talked about my answers to the health questionnaire and my reason for being there. She told me about her philosophy. She said that even when giving a massage, she doesn’t believe in limiting the treatment to massage alone. If while she is working on me my body tells her that it needs something Reiki-wise, she will stop and do that work. So if she stops and holds her hands in one place, I shouldn’t think she’s fallen asleep.

I told her that was fine with me.

Had I blogged this immediately after, I could report details. But it’s been several weeks and I don’t remember much. I remember that it all felt very good, and I remember her telling me how tight and tense I was, how I was carrying the worries of the world on my back.  Also she told me I wasn’t releasing.

Hoping for better results, she had me lie on my back for the second half hour. Now I started belly breathing and sliding more easily into mindfulness, staying with her in every moment.

A tape of sea sounds played very softly in the background.

When she was done, she rang a bell like the one Ani Pema rings at the end of meditation. Or did I dream that? She left and I put my clothes back on and made my way slowly out to the waiting area. Barbara was out sweeping the stoop. She came back in and asked me how I was.

“I feel… so…SPACIOUS,” I said.

I did. I felt as if my energy field was three times bigger than usual. I was all spread out. Expanding.

She said that was so odd, nobody had every described it that way before, but that was exactly the goal.

She said I looked much better, that I had a big smile on my face now.  Did I?  Oh, yeah. I guess I do have a big, relaxed smile stretched clear across my face. She spread out her arms in a welcoming way and gave me a nice, long hug.

Out in the street, I stared down at my car keys, trying to remember how to open the car door.

Hmmm, better not try to drive just yet.

I sat for ten minutes or more waiting to “sober up” so I could drive.

I don’t know what parts of what Barbara did were Reiki or cranial sacral therapy. I just know it wasn’t like any massage I’d had before.  I’m going back soon.

The Bees are Quiet

Maybe it’s the TrueHope EMPower+ that I’ve been gulping down with every meal for over a month now.

Maybe it’s the mindfulness practice.

Maybe it’s the sun.

Maybe it’s the Be Brave Project.

Maybe it’s that I finally gave up trying to control things, trying to resist what is. Pretty silly, especially for a purported Taoist. Ha.

Maybe it’s all of the above and forces beyond my awareness, to boot.

All I know is it is a blessing, a sweet blessing to have my ego quietening and leaving me in peace for long stretches these days. It is a blessing to have a respite from the buzzy bees in my chest, which is how anxiety feels to me on a physical level.

I dared not say anything the first totally anxiety-free day. It was followed by another. And another.

My energy is returning.

For months Sylvain patiently encouraged me to go out and do fun things or just take a walk or bike ride with him. Sometimes I complied to make him happy and ended up glad I did. But many days all I wanted to do was take a nap.  Go back to bed. Go to bed early.  I mustered the energy for my chores, carefully scheduling them so that no two fell on the same day.

Now I’m saying yes to the film festival and yes to the wedding the next day and yes to his coworker’s BBQ the next day. Sylvain is beside himself. “You don’t need to rest a day in between?” he asked me.

A list of TO DO items no longer hovers over us, getting longer rather than shorter as we drown in our own propensity to procrastinate and think of every excuse why today is not the day to tackle that one. There is almost nothing left on the list. Dreading has turned to doing.

I have found a massage therapist. She also happens to be a Reiki master. My first session with her was like nothing I’ve experienced. I’ll have to tell you about that in another post before long.

I have my first appointment with a new chiropractor tomorrow.

Restorative Day

I took yesterday all for myself. First I took myself to breakfast at a humble little diner.

Then I browsed through an art gallery and two antiques shops.

Next I went to the library with my algebra book and laptop. The algebra book was lying over on the right side of the desk while I read emails and blogs. I was alone for a while, but then heard someone getting settled in at the carrel behind me. There was the sound of plastic bags being unpacked, uncrumpled, spread out.

Rustle, rustle, rustle.

It went on for a while.

Then without any warning there was an little man in a little wool suit and thick-rimmed round glasses picking up my algebra book. He laid it back down as if suddenly realizing it wasn’t his to take.

“High school?” he asked through a thick accent with excitement in his voice.

“High school algebra?” he asked again before I’d had a chance to recover from the surprise of the conversational ambush. He pronounced algebra with a hard G.

“I don’t know,” I said, wishing I could be more helpful. “It’s a library book,” I added.

“High school?” he asked again, stroking the book.

I pointed to the spine label. “It’s a library book,” I tried again.

A light bulb seemed to go on over his head. Waving his hands sweepingly toward the stacks, he asked, “Where? Where algebra? Where mathematics?” He was almost giddy; we couldn’t get to the math books fast enough.

“In the 500s,” I said, again pointing to the Dewey Decimal number on the spine label.

“You show me!” he said, almost taking my hand.

I hesitated for a moment. If he was part of a team, his buddy would snatch my laptop while I took him to the math books.  (Yes, I was raised in a high crime area.)

I walked him into the stacks. “See? You follow the numbers,” I said as I pointed to the 100s and 200s we were passing. “These are the 300s, so we keep going.”

Just three aisles later I parked him in front of the low 500s.

“Algebra? Where algebra?” he said.

“Well, this is math,” I said. “Look, here’s a pre-calculus book. We’re close. It’s somewhere in here,” I said gesturing toward the math books.

“Thank you! Thank you!” he said as I slipped away and back to my carrel where my laptop had not been stolen.

My tummy told me it was time for lunch, but first I made use of the facilities. When I emerged from the washroom, I saw the suited gentleman animatedly talking to the clerk at the circulation counter. I walked back to the carrel to collect my books and saw a tall stack of algebra books at his carrel, kept company by his array of plastic bags.

After a picnic in my car, I drove to the marina to sit and watch the gulls. The water was teal, the sky steel grey. Jimmy Buffet songs drifted from a party going on aboard a docked yacht. I slid my seat as far back from the steering wheel as it would go, kicked my shoes off and did algebra problems while a lightning storm passed through. The sky cleared and I was facing a double rainbow.

Another storm came and went.  And another.

It was a peaceful, restorative day.

Sunny Glades

Sylvain has now posted his account of Monday’s excursion.  I have to say I’m really glad Sylvain kept bringing it up until we finally put it on the calendar. It was neat.

I didn’t feel anything one way or the other before we went. I wasn’t dreading it but I wasn’t terribly excited, either.  I like long drives in the country and I like sitting in the park reading or studying, so when Sylvain said it wouldn’t bother him if I brought along my algebra book and sat at a picnic table much of the time, that made it easier to trade away a whole day of my long weekend for it. Plus I knew it would make a groovy blog post.

What I liked most about the experience was the equalizing effect nudity has. Gone are the Tilley and Land’s End and Tommy labels. You have no idea who arrived in rags and who arrived decked out in Armani or Gucci.

Sylvain and I both noticed a warmth among people similar to what we felt at Point Pelee during spring migration when total strangers go out of their way to help each other locate that rare warbler.  You’re among strangers, but you already know you have one thing in common.

That’s how it felt at Sunny Glades. We didn’t know anyone’s name, but somehow there was an unspoken bond between us and others from the first moment we stepped onto the grounds…a bond based on the mere fact that we are in that minority who can enjoy indoor and outdoor activities without clothing and who have taken the step from wondering what it would be like to doing it.

We saw almost nobody under 40. Do you suppose that’s because it takes a few decades to become that comfortable in your own skin?

There was a marvellous variety of bodies…old and wrinkled bodies, smooth skinned bodies and bony ones. I especially appreciated the woman whose belly sagged from each side of a cesarean scar and the voluptuous woman who looked like the model for ancient earth goddess statues. There were piercings where I didn’t know piercings could go.

What beauty. I felt like I was surrounded by walking stories, each body like the road map of a life. Bodies told stories of babies birthed and nursed, of motorcycle accidents survived, of the graceful inevitability of old age.

What we’ve both found amusing is that the people whom we’ve chosen to tell can be divided into two categories: those who say “ew,” and those who say, “REALLY? WHERE? How much did you say it costs?”

I did not anticipate how the outing would leave me feeling after.  I am not experiencing one tenth the euphoria that Sylvain is, yet there is a subtle high.

I can’t quite describe this high or pinpoint where it comes from, but I can tell you I’ve felt better mood-wise since Monday morning when I woke up anticipating the outing. I’ve also noticed a boost in my confidence levels.

Oh, and speaking of confidence? Yes, I called the new chiropractor.

One Person’s Brave…

…is another person’s cake walk.  We already knew that, but my adventures today with Sylvain really drove that truth home. Can you guess what we did today?  I will give you some hints.

We had to drive over an hour to do it.

We had something in common with the birds and frogs and butterflies around us.

Rain never felt quite like this.

We paid $15 each for the privilege of doing it.

I’ve done it before, but never in a context where it was not illegal.

We don’t normally require so much sunscreen.

We were allowed to take pictures so long as nobody else appeared in them but us.

Can you guess?

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We went to Sunny Glades Naturist Park Getaway.

Sylvain will have his own blog post about this tomorrow, so I won’t speak for him. As for me, this was not a Be Brave challenge. Sylvain kept asking me before, “you’re sure you’re okay with this?”

“Sylvain,” I said, “listen. I am not even the teeniest, weeniest bit nervous, anxious or in any way apprehensive. This is nothing.”

So yeah, I can spend a day nude in front of total strangers…nude in the cafe, nude on the trails, nude standing around talking to other nude people, yet I have spent 11 months tolerating lumbar pain rather than call a new chiropractor.

By the way…this week’s Be Brave goal?  Call the darned chiropractor.

Brave and Not So Brave

Some days the Be Brave project helps me push past that limit I’d set up with my mind, that comfortable boundary I’d thought I was better off staying safely behind. Other days the Be Brave challenge just makes me realize how stuck I’ve become these past 12 months. It’s as if being in this new sprawled out city living with these other people has caused a major regression, many steps backward with my social anxiety issues.

It helps me to read the blogs of other participants and realize I am not the only one fighting the temptation to compare myself to others, my brave acts to their brave acts.  I am not the only one, I discover, who manages many brave acts some days and none at all on other days.

I think I would do well to set myself some Be Brave goals or make a list of things I would like to do if I had more courage and more energy.

Looking over this meme drove home for me the fact that I have not always been this way. I’ve had periods in my life marked by spontaneity and wonderfully crazy acts of random kindness…like the time I bought the whole monster bag of red licorice at the movies and passed it around the theatre for everyone to have some. Is that person ever going to emerge again? I don’t know.

Like Olivia, sometimes I have a concrete brave act I can report and other times it’s just a series of tiny decisions all day that constitute my bravery. For this project, I’ve stopped A LOT of the procrastinating I was doing on a daily basis, especially at work.  I no longer set aside a file because I’m dreading making the call or consulting my supervisor on what to do. Now I make myself deal with each client’s case on a first come, first serve basis and quickly make calls without giving myself time to dread them. That feels good.

Last weekend we went to Toronto to the wedding reception of a friend of Sylvain. I was not looking forward to spending the next several hours in a loud banquet hall with 200 people I didn’t know, so my first thought as I slid out of the van and began the walk across the parking lot toward the building was, “the first thing I’ll do is visit the bar. A drink will take the edge off so I can relax and not be so uptight.”

It occurred to me that doing the reception without a drop of alcohol would be brave. So I did.  And it was fine. It was fun watching the Jamaican guests and the Italian guests dance together. We were seated with kind, warm people who made the night enjoyable.

This week my main goal for Be Brave was to pick an ad under RENTALS in the classifieds and call to arrange a viewing. I made the call and we both went the next night to see the place.  It was too tiny for Sylvain to make the turns from room to room.

Since then we’ve viewed a few more places, one of them gorgeous but a bit beyond my budget and another today that turned out to be dark and ugly.

On Thursday I went downtown by myself to look for a book at the big library. It took a little bit of a push past my comfort zone to try a restaurant by myself that I’d never been to before. It’s called Mazaar; I liked it enough to want to take Sylvain there next time.

Sometimes I step up to the Be Brave plate and sometimes I fold my arms and stick out my chin like a four-year-old and don’t budge one inch from the safe zone.