ch:1 vs:13
I recently took on a new goal, well an old thing I did and stopped doing because of my pain index. I love music, I love sound more but music of many varieties, styles and instrumentations, truly it is a place for me, a deep place, a vibrational place. In my education of Hatha, learning mantra was an aspect that truly resonated with me, haha!, but seriously it was a part of something I understood deeply, sound. I am musical, I play many different instruments and I have been a professional sound engineer my whole life. It was, the vibrations, the physical aspect of something being produced by the body (or animal or thing) and invisible once produced yet audible and sensed by the body (or microphones) as waves, that blew my mind in my youth and it was now coming full circle. Wow! I get this, I understand the potential of the physics of things but I never applied it to a (or my own personal) healing process, or to understanding the potential of the mindfulness of this practice and how it manifests. The new goal; to play music again. Live. Present. And True. It came to this, I played at a local open mic night with a number of talented artists and performers. It was my first time playing out in 10 years but playing out and being present in what I was doing… a good 15 years. I sat in a folding chair on a stage in front of people and played from my heart, a truth I had not come to in some time. I was in deep physical pain but meditated for that moment that though I did not have much I would give what I have, right there in that moment. Being in chronic pain changes you, changes your understanding, changes your view and your perception of that view, changes your trust in your own body, and mind, changes your friends and the ones you make are ever lessened by the chronic ‘stuff’. My chronic Stuff was so fucking loud, and it created its own vibrations, bad vibrations, bad vibes dude (“pain-brain”). I was totally being manipulated by my condition, since I broke my neck, I was a marionette being manipulated and prisoner being confined by this pain, I did not have what I used to have. But up on that stage? I had something new and refined (Vyasa) through my Hatha practices. The strings cut and released of pains confinement, I had 15 minutes of being in a place where Pain did not exist, My Constant, was Gone, if only for a brief moment. It was a profound moment, I owned and even shared, too. Aside from forgetting lyrics to a cover song due to nervousness, I felt good at this ‘place’, there was a peace. I din’t know how good it sounded or what I looked like (except for some photos that were taken, see below) it didn’t really matter, I didn’t - for even a second feel Pain. I felt butterflies, haha, I was certainly nervous but I felt presence, a presence I have only had for brief moments, if even that, since I was at the top of my career over 14 years ago. One of my senior teachers said to me during my Hatha/Ayurveda training, when I asked her in reference to living with chronic pain; “What about pain, chronic deep pain?” she so effortlessly responded with direct eye contact, “there is no pain in the present moment”. I, well my analytical pain brain, was like ’yeah right, I’m in friggin pain right now! and I can barely sit here!…’ but I meditated on the reply and let it be in my ‘process’, and it has been in my practice since that day.
[If I am here now, focusing on what I am doing, now, in this moment, presently, I will not be able to hear/feel the pain]
[There is also the practices of sitting ‘with’ the pain and learning to find a certain intimacy in it, helping refine its criteria, its location, its truths and then practicing techniques to recognize when you are heading into pain brain or flare-up and to use various ‘micro- practices’ to find focus in the Present]
I have come to this direct moment, nearly 3 years from asking the question, to realize that I I was sitting on that stage, my body had rampant and debilitating pain, yet my mind was not IN that Pain. “I” was Not In That Pain, it may have been happening in my body somewhere, everywhere, but for those few moments, it was not happening to Me, where I was, in the Present Moment. Sound and music and emotion were happening, in some direct unrestrained form I had not known for too long. I end elated and clear to a quite complimentary audience… The following day a fellow performer responded to a photo I was tagged in posted on social media, “…his set was badass..”! Friggin’Ay! I saw this and realized even deeper the power of Presence. I was there in a truer form than I have been most places in too long.
ch:1 vs:13 tatra sthitau yatno ‘byasah - from these (abhyasa/practice and vairagya/non-attachment), practice is the effort to be fixed in concentrating the mind (or practice is the effort to remain [there]).
This leading to ch:1 vs:14; “a prolonged practice”
I mean; after that experience who wouldn’t want to have more of those present moments tied together?!?!?
Thank YOU @isabellalaos @painisbeautybella for the awesome photograph!! XOX @clubcongress