On the path to recovery. Treading the road to wellness. Realizing that so much of my healing needs right now center around the same lesson, core strength.
The areas I’m currently tending with most tenderness are: my lower back and my gut. Interestingly, this is different pieces of tending the very same core of me. I’m excited about the tools I am using to become strong again.
I am nervous about what I face to fix it all too. I know what it means that this the work required here is core – yep, the emotional equivalent will be equally real in this journey. Often when I do a cleanse of any kind emotional issues also surface, when you are focused on cleaning yourself out it is often true you are trying to clean it all up. And so life rises to the challenge.
…whatever that means for you, cleaning the house, cleaning out old baggage, cleaning out unhealthy relationships from your life. During times when I’ve challenged my will to stay strong while committing to ingesting only liquids, I’ve ended up having to take action on other life items that are a statement of my will. Synchronistic parallels of life experience, emotion and vessel are common.
I’ve lost my ability to workout in ways that are what I know are effective due to my lower back issues. No more running is a hard pill to swallow, though I was never a “great runner” I ran for my spirit, to release anger, to feel strong and I ran because it is very hard for me to burn fat any other way. The doctor says no more running and I must find another way. I will. And I’m scared.
The weight gain since celiac diagnosis haunts me. I’ve revolutionized my diet to accomodate my new needs and my bloodwork shows improvements but my weight holds at a number I’d never seen before. And so the internal gut healing must happen.
All of this, well, it’s a lot. And frankly it feels like a lot. I swing like a pendulum full of optimism and self-love and purpose, remembering I’m on a path to better and forgetting that there is anything but obstacles in my way. Yet, still I wake up each day and so I must make the best. I must find my way. The path demands strength. CORE STRENGTH. My epic warrior center. She is there. She is scared but that is why she is truly a warrior, because she is brave and she will see me through. We begin the journey one step at a time and I remind myself that the goal is not an ultimate outcome like I love to set for myself in the workplace, in life, the goal is the journey.
My journey back to center has begun. I am locked in and committed to the path. I’m well aware that anything which does not serve my core strength will be shed from my life along this journey. I will work to recognize these items lost as a service to my betterment even though they may rock me, as change and loss generally do. I call to the angels, ancestors, and my guides and ask that they help my journey to higher good, help me to feel my core strength and to empower it.
I create a new ritual for working out. Physical therapy stretching and incremental muscle building for the core. Again, this will challenge the shape of vessel I find most appealing, likely to make me thick with muscle instead of lean and long as running and yoga do, but the strength that should be my reward is what will help me maintain the actual quality of life I want. The real question in wellness is not, what will give my vessel the look I want? Rather, what will give me the vessel I want to use to achieve all the rest of the things I want in life?
I see my path to health, it makes me scared and asks me to rework so much. But here I am, facing my inner-child who loved me for things that had nothing to do with vessel and she smiles and dances and reminds me loudly FEEL GOOD, she says. I feel scared and I’m met by my warrior self and she sees me and she says, YOU ARE STRONGER THAN EVER – FIGHT ON. And I know, this may be a messy path to tread, I’m sure to learn a great deal, I shall ask the universe to guide me with care, gently teaching me.
It is time. My body has told me so. Core strength. Here I come.
The Moon Maven 