Flesh and Bones: Meditations on Flexibility and Rigidity

Flesh and Bones

As my ankle heals, I am reflecting on the duality in our bodies of stiffness and softness, of stability and movement, of stop and go.

These things live in constant relationship, affecting each other and depending on each other.  These apparent opposites NEED each other in order to do their jobs well.  Firm and flexible, strong and sweet.  Furthermore, a loss or imbalance in one creates a corresponding loss or imbalance in the other.  For example, the loss of stability in my ankle makes me stop being able to move with any flow.  The return of some stability brings back a return to some flow, but my flow is in constant negotiation with the pain and resistance in my ankle.  Stop and go. Go and stop.

And balance is what we want. 

We need both our bones and our flesh.  Bones can seem to get in the way of stuff, but look at any yogi, and tell me bones get in the way!  We need the firm rules, AND we need the creative soaring beyond the "box."  

Okay.  Enough with the metaphors.  Let's get specific.  Let's get concrete.

What are BONES?  Bones are rules.  Bones are guidelines and laws.  Bones are the police and locks and barriers. Bones are STRUCTURE in all its forms.  Crappy structure equals system collapse and nothing can get done.  NO rules means no order, no sequencing, no clarity, no direction.  (That's an extreme, because there are always some rules in some form, like gravity.)  We need "bones" to be stable.  We need them to hold up, to support, to carry, to anchor, and to withstand. That is their purpose and their job.

What is FLESH?  Flesh is intention and desire.  Flesh is CONTENT.  It is the WHY.  (Hmmm.  Not very concrete....)   FLESH is the stuff that happens in the hospital building, as opposed to the building itself.  The ability to provide medical care is the flesh.  This need requires a place and it needs tools to be fulfilled.  The building and equipment are the bones for the flesh of getting the job done.

Abandoned buildings are like skeletons.  They have no life. Maybe that's why we make skeletons a symbol of death.  They are a concrete symbol of something lifeless.  We all have seen the horror of bumping into "stupid rules"---where we completely see the lifelessness of a barrier or law that is obsolete.  We have all seen someone enforcing a rule without understanding its deep "why," and how much harm that can do.

Isn't it funny that a pile of muscles doesn't have that same archetypal resonance with death?   It might evoke something kinda creepy, like "the blob."  But it just isn't energized the same way, eh? Though it is hard to imagine how I could accomplish anything without any bones, we don't use "bare muscles" as a halloween image.  (Sounds more like the Chippendales!)

Anyway, it is the metaphor of the interdependence of our bones and flesh that is interesting me now.  It is the need of the one for the other and the other for the one.  I get mad at my physical inflexibility sometimes, the same way I get mad at the inflexibility of some aspects of life.  But my inflexibility isn't actually due to my bones.  Bones don't bend, sure.  But it is my soft tissue that is overly tight, or weak, that gives me the inability to move every-which way.  Yoga has been showing me that.  It is my tissues and ligaments that can learn and be trained to be more expansive, less tender, more strong AND more free.

Just some thoughts.
Alison

The Colour Purple - Thoughts on Pride and Self-reliance

So my life took a dramatic turn yesterday.
Actually, my ankle did.

In an innocent moment descending some stairs, I caught my heel on the front edge of the final step.  As my weight kept transferring forward, my toes dropped to full extension, then past full extension as I continued forward over my ankle to sprawl on the floor.
Embarrassment, several swear words, and a registering of the nasty crunching that had just happened in my ankle all pressed forward as I rolled onto my back.  I propped myself up against the wall, trying to calm my breathing and assessing my next move.
I was in a secluded public stairwell.
"I realized with dismay that there was no way I was going to be helping my congregation serve the Easter dinner at the soup kitchen in an hour."
My primary feeling was one of shame.  I was thoroughly embarrassed that I had allowed this to happen.  On top of that was shock and nausea and a tremendous amount of ankle-pain.  I breathed and rested and trembled, knowing that sometimes these ankle-turns can settle down quickly and not be as bad as they first seem.  After a bit I got on my hands and knees, then reached up to a hand rail on the wall.  I took a firm grip, and placing as much weight into my arms and my good leg as I could, I attempted to stand.
No go.
Weight on the injured ankle was like an electric shock.  I realized with dismay that there was no way I was going to be helping my congregation serve the Easter dinner at the soup kitchen in an hour.

I collapsed in tears, frustrated and angry.  Self-pity and "poor me" soon joined in. To get to my car I would have to cross the lobby, a wide paved landing, ascend about 6 concrete steps, cross a road, then a large expanse of goose-poop littered grass, then about 30 yards of paved parking lot ... crawling.  It was about 5 degrees out. (40 degrees Fahrenheit.)
The more the new reality hit, the faster flowed the tears of frustration and pain. And on top of everything else, I was mad at myself and ashamed that I was crying.
I called  my son to advise him of my situation and asked him to come get the car.  Then I called 911.  As I was speaking to the dispatcher, two women came in, chatting away with coffees in hand.  They glanced at me as they went by and then slowed to a stop on the stairs as I answered the dispatcher's questions, tears still flowing.  "No," I wasn't bleeding.  "No," I wasn't having trouble breathing.  The two women had a quiet whisper and then one asked, "Are you okay?"
"To get to my car I would have to cross the lobby, a wide paved landing, ascend about 6 concrete steps, cross a road, then a large expanse of goose-poop littered grass, then about 30 yards of paved parking lot ... crawling."
More tears coursed down my cheeks as I shook my head, no.
The dispatcher assured me an ambulance was on the way.  The one lady stayed with me while another went to fetch help.  I kept on feeling angry with myself and embarrassed, mixed with gratitude for the kindness.

A first aid worker brought ice and propped my foot on a chair.  That's when I noticed that my ankle had a large egg-like swelling where my ankle bone ought to have been.  That was just plain unnerving.
The police arrived next, (both with shaved heads.  Randomly I thought, "Do all police now want to look like 'Ed' on Flashpoint?" but couldn't figure out how to ask that.)  Then the ambulance arrived, and the three ambulance gentlemen quickly had me assessed, splinted, and on my way to the hospital.
"Randomly I thought, 'Do all police now want to look like "Ed" on Flashpoint?'"
So I could choose to write about the professionalism of the paramedics, or the goodness/brokenness of the Canadian health care system, or government budget cuts, or any number of other things.
But what I want to reflect on today was how hard it hit me to realize I needed help.
I have done my fair share of noticing how "this" person or "that" person's stubborn self-reliance has gotten them in trouble, and thought, "If they would only admit they need help and ask for it...." or "Why are they trying to do everything alone?"  It has been easy to decide that their pride was getting in their way.
But it is a whole new thing when it is me needing help.  Why is it such a hard thing to accept?  I suspect that I am not alone in this.  I even sometimes minimize how hard someone else's struggle might be, assuming that *I* in their shoes, would handle the same problems much more easily.... But at least I now have had enough humbling personal experiences to know that such minimization is probably a lie.  I suspect it comes from my fear of experiencing such vulnerability myself.

So there I was, (and here I still am,) chewing on the amount of shame and anger I felt yesterday, and wondering about their sources.  They certainly weren't "logical" (she said, in a Spock-like voice.)  I cannot see how either the shame or the anger served me in any positive way.
I suspect some of my fear of dependency comes from being raised American, where complete self-reliance is valued so highly.  And I know enough about myself to know that I do take a lot of pride in my own self-reliance.  But this runs deeper than just pride, though pride is certainly there (as if I could take credit for the privileges and benefits I have known, or for being born with a creative mind that problem-solves pretty decently.)
Upon reflection, the shame and embarrassment were not so much about anyone seeing me down, but instead were a response to an immediate inner chorus of criticisms, as though a host of nagging, ruthlessly critical older siblings live in my psyche, ready to jeer at any foolish move.  "That was stupid!"  They shout.  "Why weren't you watching where you were going?"  "What an idiot!"  "I knew your multi-tasking would get you in trouble!" "You and your stupid Blackberry." etc, etc, etc.
I think the deep embarrassment and shame were in response to those thoughts.  Had I had nothing but compassionate and curious acceptance of this abrupt turn in the road, my journey would have been so very different!  I could still have made note of the contributing causes to my spill and resolved to pay better attention to my footing, without needing to beat myself up inside with abusive self-talk.
"Had I not been so ashamed and angry, I might have been fascinated by the illogical quality of the emotions running through my being."
THAT is what I'm noticing.  That even though I am resolved to rewire my thinking to be more supportive and compassionate and solution-focused, I still have a long way to go.  The habit of self-criticism and name-calling runs very deep indeed, it seems.

But there was more.  I truly believe the tears also came from a deep fear of vulnerability.  It felt fairly primitive, as though now as a cripple, I was a liability to a tribe who could easily abandon me.  And abandonment by the tribe, especially now that I was wounded, would mean death.  Had I not been so ashamed and angry, I might have been fascinated by the illogical quality of the emotions running through my being.  "Really?  This brings up the fear of abandonment and death?"
It certainly seems as though stresses can bring out some pretty illogical, primitive emotions.  Am I am the only one who experiences this?
 "Really?  This brings up the fear of abandonment and death?"
With my foot up on a pillow pondering life from a sofa, thank you for listening.

 Alison    http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2012-04-06/