i had this VERY important lesson i would like to share.... i have a bad back..muscle spasms..turn the wrong way and i can feel it "tweak" and i am down for days....big knots, and pain its awful
well last night i "tweaked" my back AGAIN... in times before, i would curse my karma, curse the situation...fighting it/ resisting it, while i cursed it.....this time???? i ALLOWED it.....i gave my "consent" for it to be here...it was hard, giving my consent to this god awful pain, but i did.....i have a technique for rubbing out the knots, where i lie on a mesh bag of tennis balls and i lie on my back with them underneath the pain site and i "roll on it"....this time i got on my tennis ball "massager" and i ALLOWED the pain, i "went with it" breathed deeply as i rolled on the tennis balls, massaging and carressing the painful spot....and i just kept saying to myself, "its ok, its alright, i am allowing this to be here" and as i rolled on my tennis balls, i could FEEL every time the balls would roll over the spot....i allowed my self to "FEEL" it, to "ride with it", and the massaging began to actually feel good....
i did it for about 20min and i got up and i was actually weak, kind of....i did take 1/2 pain killer (which normally did not touch the pain) and i could feel its "buffering" the pain....i breathed deep and ALLOWED myself to feel the pain and i noticed that the lactic acid was spreading about from my "massage".... i drank a ton of water to flush out the lactic acid i had disbursed, and i actually slept quite well last night....
this am, it was icy on the roads so i didn't have to go into work, and i was not very painful at all, in fact i only needed a tylenol.....i rested/ "went with it" i did NOT resist it....i "went with the flow" and today i am not so painful, in fact i am MUCH better....good enough to do LIGHT excersising to strengthen it.....
this is a real milestone for me....to NOT fight and resist a negative condition, but to "roll with it" "accept it" "give consent to it" that does not mean i LIKE it, but i ALLOWED what must be......the end result??? less pain today and probably a faster recovery.....because i am NOT giving it any resistance.....i am "making friends with my situations"......i asked my higher self, if i must be poor and alone, to enable me to make "friend with it" to NOT resist it, but to consent to it...be WILLING to be poor/alone....and to enable ME to meet my needs........
by doing what i did, i did NOT feed the darkness any energy....i starved it!!! by "consenting" to something i didn't want, but was WILLING to feel the pain, it subsided considerably and i am better today.....it looks like this "episode" may heal faster than the previous ones.........
i just wanted to share this experience.....ALL my life i have fought my "bad hand" but no more....i ask my higher self to enable me to ACCEPT/ make friends with the karma i cannot change....to enable me to change the karma i can....and to know the diference.........thanks for listening
Thank you very much, Rosie. That helps me to understand the concept of 'acceptance' a bit more. We don't have to like it, or want it to continue,, but we accept the reality of the situation so we can realistically deal with it better. You know, that kind of goes for accepting our selves also... we have to accept how we are before we can change it. Our Step 4 shows us how we are, and then Step 7 invites changes, while 8 and 9 start the actual changing by amends making.
tennis balls, eh? sounds like you are an innovative and creative person. I finally got a pad that goes onto a straight back chair that has a massager in it for $100 from one of the chain drug stores. Want to ask at you big chain drug store if they have these massagers available?
love in recovery,
amanda
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do your best and God does the rest, a step at a time
I understand exactly where you're coming from Rosie. I've got titanium plates in my neck (where discs used to be), cold weather some days almost incapacitates me. Since getting sober, I'm learning to "listen to my body", something I never did before. If I can't make it today, I just can't make it and I must take care of me..........Keep fighting the good fight, girl.
Doll
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* We eventually realize that just as the pains of alcoholism had to come before sobriety, emotional turmoil comes before serenity. *