Go getter halted by chronic pain

Dear KCY

My problem is that I’ve had chronic pain for the last 7 yrs (since I was 21). I’ve learnt a lot about listening to my body & have made positive changes as a result of it but I still feel that it is preventing me from doing things that I would like to do – like working and living out of home.

Every time I have started a job or course that I want to do & it prevents me from doing it completely or to my full potential and so I question why it is here. Especially as I sometimes feel that it is holding me back. I don’t want to be living with my parents forever. Maybe there is more that I am yet to learn from it?

Yours, Stunted Go Getter

Dear Go Getter

Often as yogis, and by your language I’m guessing you are a yogi, we are taught to look for the lesson in everything. And I am a firm believer in there being a lesson to learn from most things, sometimes that lesson is not clear at the time, sometimes its not clear for months or even years afterwards.

However, the downside of this belief is that when something really sucks, we torture ourselves with guilt wondering what lesson we should be learning and questioning if we are in the sucky situation because we’re missing it.

Sometimes things suck. Your situation sucks. Life is there for the grasping and you are landlocked and unable to reach out a hand to grasp it. Maybe the lesson of it all will show itself to you soon, or not but in the meantime, stop searching for it and what I mean by that is stop torturing yourself.

The wonderful Kundalini yoga teacher Gurmukh says ‘yoga is not about self-improvement, it is about self acceptance.’

I realise this is easy for me to say and far from easy for you to do right now.  I am not going to be so insensitive as to bang on about how you should surrender to your situation with total acceptance. Have you read my other blogs? If you have a spare ten minutes, have a browse and read my first blog on surrender in motherhood and a more recent agony aunt column featuring the story of Ashtavakra.

Anyway, I have never suffered from CP, I can’t imagine it, my heart hurts for you in having lived with this for seven years. You are so bloody brave!

From your email I imagine you have explored all the avenues open to you and it sounds as if you have made some positive changes to your life.  Again, you are so brave!

So what can you do know? What can you do to take steps towards surrender and santosha (contentment)?

Kundalini Yoga is a healing form of yoga for me. I don’t teach it but when I practice it, stuff shifts, lessons are learnt and I usually sob (a lot). Kundalini meditations are powerful. Traditionally performed as a daily sadhana (spiritual practice) for 40 days to truly reap the benefits.

I know for you, 40 days may not be possible and every day is a different day. So maybe the sadhana for you is the mediation when possible and when it’s not just the simple mantra repeated for ten minutes while lying down.

I spoke to my beautiful Kundalini teacher friend Sirgun about an appropriate meditation for you and she recommended  this one for letting go and surrender.  If you like to chant to music, you’ll find a hundred variations of the chant on itunes and then on those days when you don’t feel like meditating or chanting, you can just put the music on while you’re reading a book.

And if the Kundalini philosophy intrigues you, then message me and I’ll recommend some books to read and study.

Who knows, maybe one day you’ll become a kundalini yoga teacher! All the best teachers have been through life struggles and use them as the roots from which they teach.

Sat Nam.

finding time to meditate can lead to powerful shifts