The wringer.

This morning I woke up fresh – the first non-dreary morning in a week or more.

It is also the first morning in a week were I woke up relatively pain free. No jolt of muscular spasm to sharply tear me from dream state to awakened reality. [More about the sore back realities in a moment] 

Just moments before I had dreamt that I was being wrung through a wringer (although it was a half awake sleep state, so whether it is a dream or something else…).  Literally, my body squeezed, flattened, massaged through one of the ye-old-style hand operated laundry wringers. Funny enough; the feeling-the experience was okay. It was still and peaceful. Not full of pain sensations that must accompany the actual experience of being wrung out to dry. It was more like being squeezed down to the essential elements. And I woke up light and fresh.

It has not been a week to write home about. And I have not felt like writing. Or doing. Or being. I have just laid flat on my back, moving under sufferance. Low level pain constant, gasp inducing spasms of muscular pain taking me unawares – although the cycles of movement reveal the patterns.

"I've done my back" as they say. Precisely what I have done to my back? I’m not sure. But I am going to take our local shop keepers diagnosis and say "perforated disc". It sounds impressive and decisive. And he did sum up the movement that I think might just have kick started this little roller coaster – “don’t take much, ya know. Just a slight twist here [movement to the right looking very much like the crooked non attentive posture I took to my computer desk more than a week before] and there ya have it”
 
“It’s been a week for swearing and grumbling!” I remark to our local shop keeper as I shuffle in to get milk on one of my first tentative outings. “That’s every week for me” he smilingly replies. It’s kinda true. Today’s shopkeeper smile might be tomorrow’s scowl. Some days there’s a good healthy place for ‘this is fu#ked’. No attempt at earthy, spiritual, emotional, psychological, helpful strategies. Just a direct expression of the frustration and the fury.
 
And then there is the calm spaces in between.
 
And then there is distraction. I’ve  binged on things good to my mind and soul: catchups of ABC’s You can’t ask that! Listening to some of my favourite podcasts. Trawling through the archives of  On Being made for some great listening . I read a few books, the amazing autobiography Child of the Earth
by the inspiring Glen Ochre was a heart-social activism-teary highlight. A must-read, great Christmas present! And I’ve binged on a fair amount of crap too – chocolate and wine (counter indicator to the anti-inflammatory tablets - but good medicine in its own way).
 
Then there is the calm places in between.
 
And then there is the darkness. This is not my preference for a week. My regular week includes three-times regular outdoor group fitness session, walks round the oval with friends at the kids various after school sporting activities, my precious yoga class 5:00 – 7:30 on a Tuesday morning and my beloved meditative jogging practices. The Natural Space to Be sessions on a Tuesday and Friday. My own spirit-full practices each day in between. This week I do nothing. No thing. Interestingly, I had had it in the back of my mind that November might be a month of stepping back a little, creating space for preparing for our upcoming travels to Europe and Asia at Christmas and into 2017.
 
In all truth though, the darkness is more than the not-doing {isn’t it always}. I cottoned onto the delights of not doing a while back now and lead a pretty spacious life. The pattern of this back injury is long time familiar. [I remember as a 14 year old (at a guess) lying stuck on the lounge floor – back muscle spasm preventing movement left, right, up, down]. 

The cycle intensified in the 'early on the hip-child rearing years', with frequent bouts of week long acute muscle spasm, easing back into movement, back into strength. Only to be jolted back by some insignificant (yet in retrospect likely) low key movment [I remember hand watering the vege garden – with a hose because I was being proactive and careful and not lifting buckets. I tilted slightly forward with the hose to water that just out of reach plant and bang! another cycle started]. So there is a bit of darkness there to sit with. I have been 'building discomfort resilience' as Pema Choedron describes it in this audio.
 
And then there is the natural calm place in between.

 So as I emerge back into the world. I decide to celebrate with the special outings. I will visit a close friend who had her 2nd baby a week or so ago. I will sing with other dear friends. And when it feels right, I will clean a much overdue house and mow the much overdue lawn. 
 
As I emerge back into the world it feels like a little discipline might come in handy. And for a helpful tone in this endeavour - I am grateful for the image and inspiration from the Practical Mystic.

To return to the clothes wringer. I have actually washed my clothes using a old style hand-wringer. Mittagundi and Wollangarra; two special organisations offering simple living (no electricity, wood stove, vege gardens) rural opportunities  to young people, ask the young people to wash their sheets at the end of each course. The slow methodical squeezing, brings with it a quietening, a tuning down. I like the wringer. The active relationship between hand, effort and outcome. This wringer-like week has asked me to lay down still, be in the dark and find the peaceful presence in between.

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