Making it Personal

So although Sensei Sebastian was born after me by a generation, he nonetheless comes before me regarding martial arts. Holding black belts and sashes of various forms, he’s a real martial arts master devoted to his calling. He invited this old yoga teacher to his Brazilian JuJitsu classes. I surrendered to the yoga practices beginning with asana under Kumar’s direct attention more than three decades back. Yet recently, the body and mind needed something more, needed fresh movement, fresh friction. I joined in at Samurai Inti Martial Arts.

All had been going well. My body felt good. It liked responding to the punching drills, and to the “rolling” of playful spar on the mat. The aggressive demands woke up my body from a slumber of martial arts last practiced more than 40 years ago.

It’s a given that white belt beginners are the most dangerous because we don’t have the same knowledge/control as the advanced belts. White belts are problems so I felt grateful just to be there. I wanted to be as good as I could be without pretentions. I wanted to challenge myself in how to respond to the grappling, chokes, and joint locks. As stated above, the body felt good, sore in my joints from the prior weeks, but a “good sore.” I was doing my best and trying to not be dangerous but rather responsive. Some of my yoga people asked me why in the world I’d choose to grapple this way, why I’d risk my livelihood of yoga teaching. The only thing I can say for myself is that it makes me feel alive, and that I have confidence in my body’s ability to respond, to grow, to continue learning, and that barring total paralysis I can continue to teach. The yoga brings odds in my favor.

Dukha

Three weeks ago while grappling, I took a head spear into the right side of my chest at the 4th rib. The spear came down sharply, its impact from that 4th rib pretty much crushing and splatting me into the floor. Yeh, there was a pain but more significant to me was that I lost function of my right shoulder and arm. It wasn’t paralysed. I could summon movement. The arm muscles responded but my whole right side had no anchored strength. There was pain. I couldn’t breathe fully into my right lung. I finished the evening without bringing attention to it. I went back the next session for more. That’s when I knew my grappling needed to take a pause. I could not laugh, sneeze, or get a full breath into that right lung. No sleep position allowed rest. The right shoulder and arm clearly could not respond. Yes, there was some pain but the problem was not clear yet. Sleep became difficult.

I began to analyze the problem. The difficulty reminded me of times in the past when I had “turned a rib” in yoga but there were other factors. Sore to the touch in the chest, my right side of the diaphragm seemed like it was a leaky tire. My breath could not get a grip. By resistance, the breath became shallow and slow.

I went to my chiropractor, Homer, who performed on me a modality called NetWork, very aligned with the functional energy patterns of yoga practice. Network is not “bone-cracking” or forced skeletal alignment popping. Network Chiro work is more of a “pranic alignment” practice. ( more on Network in a future post) Homer’s treatment helped take the edge off the pain, and restored basic function of the shoulder. The problems remained, however, with pain and limited movement of the right shoulder region, originating in both front and back ribs.

To sleep deeply became impossible. No position was comfortable. I share this because perhaps you can relate. Reclining for sleep brought all my attention to the limitations of the ribs. Without alternative, I began to look inside.

I went to Linda, my trusted friend, a therapeutic massage trainer and somatic resource of long experience. Linda identified my body’s form in its limitations and began to reconstruct the impact.

Pratyahara and Svadhyaya

Don’t let Sanskrit words intimidate or repel you. Basically, Svadhyaya means “self examination,” and Pratyahara is a proces of guiding the senses, ultimately to direct them inwardly, illuminating awareness, and unlocking the cycle of sensory reception and habitual response. I had begun to look inside when sleep eluded me. Both terms signify an internal focus and illumination which, like the modality of Network Chiro, we must unpack in a future post. Suffice to say, my attention turned toward the real source of the problem in order to restore myself.

With pratyahara and svadhyaya, with Linda’s help plus several more Network treatments, I began to observe more clearly.

Check out the following images, and look for Dukha, Part Three.