Tag: gratitude

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Free Parking and a Piriformis Injury

The man in front of me stiffened, squinted, and drew himself closer to the ticket machine. He pressed a button, but nothing happened.

Confused, he turned to look at us, the half dozen people waiting behind him. Our faces were probably blank, bored, or irritated, and offered no help.

Saying nothing, he turned back to the machine and rubbed his forehead with the fingers of one hand in a gesture of frustration.

“Oh, no,” I thought to myself, “Something’s wrong”. And that was when my heart dropped into my stomach. A sense of dread began to build within me. I really didn’t need this right now. I could feel that hot, searing pain in my right leg start to build, and I shifted my weight away from it. It didn’t help.

Suddenly, an older gentleman stepped up from behind me, walked up to the machine, and took charge.

“Try taking your card out,” he suggested. The man took his credit card out, and there was a slight pause as we waited for a reaction.

Nothing changed.

The machine still wasn’t printing out his receipt, and without a receipt, the man couldn’t leave the parking lot. And if he couldn’t leave, then none of the rest of us could leave either!

I shifted my weight again and winced as the now-familiar pain shot through my leg. I felt hot and desperately uncomfortable.

Now the older gentleman became frustrated too. He pushed the “call” button at the front of the ticket machine, and suddenly, we could all hear a distant phone ringing.

No one answered.

Undaunted, the older gentleman pressed the “call” button again.

Still no answer.

So, he pushed the button again, and again, and again, in a never-ending series.

I could hear the people behind me began to shift, sigh, and grumble. A few more people entered the tiny vestibule and joined the growing line in front of the ticket machine, their faces clouding with confusion. What was going on here? Why was the room so crowded?

The room began to feel tight, airless, claustrophobic. My leg throbbed. I felt anxious and trapped.

Suddenly, a man in uniform appeared to my right. “You can all go,” he said, tiredly. “I propped open the exit gate, so you can leave without paying”.

I didn’t take longer than a second or two for his comment to register. People immediately began to rush for the exit. The older gentleman was almost running, pushing past others to get out the door as fast as possible. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a room empty so quickly in my life.

But I couldn’t run. I couldn’t even move quickly. In fact, I could barely walk! While the others flew around me, I hobbled out the door. Step after aching step. All around me, car doors were slamming and engines were revving. As I passed through the parking lot, a car drove in front of me, driving a little too quickly towards the exit gate.

Suddenly, the situation started to feel just a little ridiculous, and laughter began to bubble up within me. Laughter at the way we all dashed to our cars. Laughter at the way the cars rushed toward the temporarily free exit. Laughter at my ridiculous hobbling. And all to avoid paying a $4 parking fee!

In case you’re wondering, I injured my leg a couple of weeks ago while doing Locust Pose. It’s a pose I’ve done hundreds of times before without harm. I chalk up the injury to me pushing myself too hard, and not respecting the stiffness and reduced elasticity of a post-menopausal body.

Technically, it’s not even my leg that’s injured, but the piriformis muscle in the centre of my right butt cheek. A muscle I never even knew existed a couple of weeks ago, but has now begun to dominate my life.

I’ve been seeing a chiropractor twice weekly to help heal my injury, and in just a short period of time, there’s already been big improvement. Or so my chiropractor says. When I seem down, he talks to me about lowered expectations. “At this point in our treatment, if the pain is reducing, we’re doing well!” he says, cheerily. “If your walk has become straighter and more even, then we’re doing well!” And I feel reassured.

The last time I saw him, my chiropractor and I discussed all the little humiliations that come with lower back, and/or sciatic injuries like mine. Humiliations like the sudden inability to walk normally, or the difficulty getting into and out of bed, the struggle to get up off the toilet, and even the strain of putting on your socks and shoes each morning. Such simple things, and yet they’ve all begun to seem like a climb up Mount Everest every day. It’s been incredibly humbling.

Recognizing my frustration, my chiropractor tries to put things into perspective for me. He reminds me to take real pleasure in all my little gains. If I’m already experiencing a considerable reduction in pain, that’s something to celebrate! If I can now walk in strides instead of hobbling, that’s tremendous! He trains me to focus on all the real progress I’ve made, however small, rather than obsess on what I can’t yet do.

So, when I’m finally able to put my socks on without wincing, he says to me, “Hey! Great putting-your-socks-on this morning!” and he gives me a high five.

Which brings me back to that incident at the parking lot and the mad scramble to leave before the exit gate was lowered. I must have been the last one to reach my car, because by the time I finally arrived at the exit gate, no one else was waiting.

And despite my anxiety that I might be too late – that my slow hobble might have caused me to miss the opportunity for free parking, that I might yet have to turn myself around, and limp back into the building to find some way to pay – when I finally arrived at the gate, I found it still raised, and was able to pass through it without incident.

A big smile came to my face as I re-entered street traffic. I felt slightly silly, but why shouldn’t I smile? Why shouldn’t I celebrate this random piece of luck? It may be a small thing, but isn’t life really about the small things?

What small challenge have you overcome recently? Have you, perhaps, finally mastered a new skill at work, after weeks of frustration? Have you finally been able to lift more weight at the gym? Has your baby finally been able to sleep through the night?

Even if there have been no recent changes, can you find simple gratitude in the fact that the sun is shining, or that you are still able to do something as simple as put your socks and shoes on without pain?

Whatever your small gain is, make sure the pleasure counts. Turn up the volume on it. Soak it in. Marinate yourself in positive feelings. Let yourself grin.

Or, do as my chiropractor would, and say, “Great putting-your-socks-on this morning!” And then he’d smile and give you a high-five.

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The Season of Gratitude – Part 2

In my last blog post, I wrote about my difficulties feeling gratitude in the past and how allowing myself to feel all the feels opened up some space in my heart, allowing the gratitude to finally move through me.

In this blog post, I’d like to delve a little deeper into all those murky feelings and then talk about choice.

Back in 2010, when I was in the thick of my struggle with CFS, I remember watching an interview with Karen Armstrong. In case you don’t know her, Armstrong is the author of many books on comparative religion, and during this particular interview, she was promoting her latest book (at the time), Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life.

I was not paying particular attention to what she was saying in this interview until she openly admitted to feeling bitter. Very bitter about life. That got my attention. An expert on religion, and author of a book on compassion, was declaring herself to be bitter? I wanted to know more.

She spoke about her past as a nun in training in Ireland, and about the Superior who was responsible for her. This nun had had a very difficult life, going deaf at an early age, and then being sent to a convent. She happened to be dying of cancer and was in extreme pain, yet she had still spoken kindly to the nuns under her watch. As Armstrong said, “she had trained herself, through all those difficult years not to become bitter, not to think, why me? Why am I deaf? Why am I wasting my life? And as a result, she has remained in me as an icon of what a good person should be”.

And then Armstrong said, “Becoming bitter is always a choice”. In essence, she was saying that life is a road with two very different paths, both equally valid. The decision you make will determine the quality of your life going forward. You can either decide to be bitter and angry about the difficulties and injustice in your life, or you can choose to be compassionate instead.

Her comment really resonated with me because I was slowly coming to the same realization myself. Stuck in bed and unable to accomplish any of my life goals, I was feeling frustrated, angry, and yes, definitely bitter. But I was also realizing that this was not the kind of person I wanted to be.

I think it’s the same with gratitude.

We are living in difficult times. A lot of people are struggling. In many cases, basic needs are not being met. The climate is worsening. Wars are being fought. Everywhere you go, people are suffering. It is very easy to feel hopeless and despondent at the number of crises surrounding us.

It is at these times – often especially at these times – that we realize we have a choice. We can either choose to become bitter, or we can aspire to something a little more noble.

During my years of difficulty, I would often console myself with the beauty of my neighbour’s garden. I may not have had the energy to care for a garden myself, but I felt grateful that I could still enjoy the gardens of others around me.

I became spellbound by the gracefully arching branches of the tree outside my window, watching its many moods as the seasons changed. I may not have been able to spend much time outside, but being able to watch that tree outside my window was a lifeline for me.

I was also deeply consoled by the laughter of the neighbourhood children as they walked past my home on their way to and from school. I may not have been able to see them, but I was grateful for my ability to hear their small voices, and to feel the bubbling energy of their youthful selves.

I know it’s been said before, but it is often when life is at its most bleak, when we are grasping at the smallest example of beauty or kindness, that possibilities for gratitude are fully revealed to us.

This doesn’t mean we don’t also acknowledge our pains and our struggles. It means that, while still feeling our pain in all its fullness, we make the choice to be grateful anyway. It’s a powerful choice. I can’t promise that it will magically make your troubles go away. What I can promise, is that it will make your heart lighter, and your burden easier to bear.

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The Season of Gratitude – Part 1

Over the past couple of decades, I’ve been often reminded about the importance of being grateful. I admit, there have been many times in my life when I’ve fallen into the trap of thinking I am not good enough, that my life is not exciting enough, or that I don’t have enough of the things that I want.

By and large, I think it isn’t just me that struggles with this. We humans have a natural tendency to want more and better, no matter the abundance that we already have. And then, the western economy is also built on this idea of lack – that there is always something more we should have, some other experience we need to feel, in order for our lives to be complete.

In acknowledgement of my problem, I kept a daily gratitude journal for years. In the evening before bed, I would list off 5 things for which I was thankful. On the whole, I think it’s a very good practice. And studies show that when people show more gratitude, they are happier.

But I have to admit, the practice started to falter for me when I noticed that I tended to list off the same things every single day: gratitude for a roof over my head, for my loving husband, for healthy kids, and the regular presence of my furry dog. I began to feel that I had only those 5 things to be grateful for. And even though those are not small things, depression started to set in, as it often does for me. The daily gratitude practice no longer seemed to be helping.

This past week is Thanksgiving in the US, so I’ve been thinking a lot about gratitude recently, and those struggles I had with it in the past. I’ve also been wondering why I feel so much more gratitude now than I did then. Why didn’t that daily gratitude practice work for me? And what has changed now?

For an answer, I turned to my herbal studies and its discussion of feelings. Interestingly, in Chinese medicine, feelings of all types are held in greater regard than they are here in the west. In fact, they are considered such harbingers of illness that, for thousands of years, doctors treated people by helping them to resolve their feelings with counter-feelings, rather than prescribing herbs or acupuncture.

Here in North America, feelings are given nowhere near that amount of respect. If anything, feelings are thought to be a problem, an obstacle that gets in the way of forward progress. We are advised to ignore them, stuff them, or push past them. People who dwell on their feelings are considered soft and weak.

But feelings have a seriously negative effect on your health. In Chinese medicine, it is well known that anger congests your liver, sadness constricts your lungs, worry weakens your spleen, and fear depletes your kidneys. Before you dismiss this concept, understand that western medicine is starting to come around to the same conclusion. Gabor Mate, a Canadian physician with particular expertise in the treatment of addiction, trauma, stress and childhood development, has written a number of best-selling books on the negative effect emotions can have on your health. When the Body Says ‘No’ and The Myth of Normal are the two most recent.

In the intervening years since I kept that daily gratitude journal, I’ve done a lot of work with my emotions. I’ve spent hours sitting in meditation, I’ve discovered the power of restorative yoga for processing my emotions, and I’ve also spent a lot of time thinking through my triggers and trying to heal the emotions behind them. Although scary and difficult, I have found this work to be transformational.

Liver and gallbladder flushing can also prove tremendously helpful and many of our customers have testified to this. Your liver stores a lot of your emotions. Anger, frustration, envy, moodiness, and depression are all common emotions for people whose livers have become stagnant. When herbs are taken to clear away congestion in the liver, these emotions tend to leave too. It’s a fascinating process.

Once all those negative emotions are cleared away, a space is created for more positive emotions like gratitude, compassion, and love to take hold. An important discovery I’ve had as I continued my healing journey, is that emotions are things. They are not ephemeral nothings; they have weight and space and can’t just be shrugged away. If you avoid feeling them, your body will just hold on to them for later processing. And the longer you hold them, the sicker you can get.

If you’re struggling with gratitude this holiday season, consider the possibility that you’re holding on to some difficult emotions. It’s not unusual. We all have them. I know it’s scary, but the next time you feel them, recognize where the tightness is. It’s often in your chest, but it can also be in your belly or your shoulders. Try to soften into those places in your body, and when the emotions arise, allow yourself to really feel into them. But be gentle with them. Show these feelings kindness. They are there to take care of you.

One good practice I learned is to go to a quiet corner where you won’t be disturbed, and then purposely feel the emotion in all its intensity – really push it to the limit! If you feel anger, allow it to build and build and feel it to its completeness. Welcome the anger. Really revel in it. If you stop this process and still feel a residue of anger inside you, it means it hasn’t been fully spent yet. Cultivate it even further! Trust me, if you take the time to feel it fully, it will disperse.

Emotions need to be felt. Pushing them away only makes them toxic. So, try accepting them with kindness and grace instead. Allow them more space. By accepting them and allowing them, they usually start to shift a little. And into that space, amazingly, there will be a possibility for more joy and gratitude. And who doesn’t need more of that?