meditation

I had the most intense meditation session I've ever had this morning. I did ten minutes of spinal pranayama and twenty minutes meditation with a mantra, cross-legged. The pranayama was alright, I am getting slowly better at visualizing the breath going up the spine to the third eye. I went into the meditation, trying to sit in the most comfortable upright position, trying to get my crooked back to relax into a more natural posture. It did somewhat, and I had the urge to twist my back, to make it crack. But this time I waited, knowing I could relax more now and twist at the end.

Then my foot started to hurt, like it was falling asleep. In the past I have usually just moved it, figuring that if it was distracting me from my practice, it wasn't worth trying to suffer through it. Today I felt differently, like there might be something more to it than just my foot falling asleep. They say that as you progress, sitting cross-legged is not so difficult anymore. I also know it's not a flexibility issue, I can bend it just fine. So I wanted to stay with it, and see what would happen.

The discomfort quickly became painful, and the pain shot up my leg in a bizarre way. I felt an emotion underneath, a ball of sadness in my stomach. I tried to maintain my breath (versus holding it in) through the pain and let myself feel what was in my stomach so I could process it, instead of continuing to hold onto it. I had never gotten so deep before. It was always so annoying to hear that all physical pain has an emotional root, because if you're not in a place where you can get to that root, you feel frustrated, like there's nothing you can do because you can't see it no matter what what. Finally seeing a piece of that made me realize how deep people's issues go--so deep that we can't expect to always be able to go there. And I don't think you have to fully understand the root to experience it and let it go.

Anyway, the pain got very very intense, but I kept with it. My body started jerking intermittently. I felt like vomiting. The medicine from Peru is still with me, it felt like that--that I needed a psychic purge. I was moving more and more and some air came out of my mouth. I felt a slight layer lift. There was much more that could have been done, but it was so intense and the twenty minutes was up. I opened my eyes and changed my posture and it all stopped. It's good to pace yourself. Another ten minutes might have been great, but it might have been too much. I had to lay down after that, for awhile, breathing deeply, letting feeling return to my legs. I felt so relieved. It helped me so much.

Roman was sleeping lightly, on the other side of the bed and had a dream that I said to him--thank you for letting me do this. Then he saw that I hadn't actually said that, I was still meditating. But the dream was true.