Building a bough

I've figured out some things this week.

I've been putting these posts in chronological form so that I can mould this into a book some day, and I'm struck by an insight I had in the first week that really frames this entire adventure.  Post-traumatic sprouts.  This was a phenomenon after the ice storm of '98.  The worst storm in Canadian history. The ice was so strong and so thick that many trees lost major boughs.  In subsequent years, sprouts would appear, but they weren't strong enough for life as a major bough. Rot would set in and they would die.

I grew up in a place of trauma.  My father was an alcoholic. His father a child who had to bear the entire weight of his father, the son of a single mother in Portsmouth, and WW1 veteran who never successfully reintegrated with the family on his return from arguably the worst war in the history of humanity.  My mother the daughter of an Irish Catholic immigrant mother who never said the words "I love you" her entire life, and a loving, but spoilt Glaswegian.

My parents marriage was an ice storm that is still going on.

Some days I feel like a trunk with spindly branches and rotting sprouts that never make it into branches.  But some days, I recognize one bough that is strong enough to support a lot of aborted growth: my meditation practice.  And on another day, I recognize another bough: my writing practice.

I'm reading a fascinating book right now, How Emotions are Made.  The theory, and it's a good one, is that our bodies are in a constant state of flux that is the interaction of Valence, the pleasure/displeasure values, and Affect, the calm/arousal values.  Low arousal and pleasure, for instance is a state of serenity.  High arousal and pleasure is elation.  Medium pleasant is gratitude.  High arousal and displeasure is distress.  Low arousal is depression.  Medium unpleasant is garden variety misery.

Graphing my meditation practice to this, I realize that sitting meditation puts me in low arousal.  Standing puts me in high.  I did both this morning and I can clearly see the difference. I can feel the high arousal that courses through my body.  It's even stronger that walking.

To build some other boughs, healthy eating for example, I need to be able to achieve equanimity within the entire spectrum, because when I'm triggered, I eat.  And I need to stand, because sitting meditation on its own risks keeping me is such a low arousal state that I'm still susceptible to depression.  Another reason I eat.

If I'm going to finally make peace with the hungry ghost that lays waste to every effort at growth that I make, I need to construct a place for both of these practices in my life and nurture this is though my life, and Ben's life, depends on this.  Because it does.

traumatic sprouts

This morning on the cbc I heard a scientist talking about the post traumatic damage to trees that is still going on ten years after the montreal ice storm. So many healthy boughs were frozen and fell off during that storm. Branches grew in their place, but these are tiny branches not quite up to the task of life as a major bough. They are more susceptible to rot, infestation, disease.
And they are much more likely to break off in the winter repeating the cycle again.
This strikes me a great metaphor for the cycle of trying to recover from any kind of psychological trauma. We create these behaviours in reponse to loss and grief and pain because we want to grow, we want to flourish, it's our nature. But they aren't up to the strain of life, so they die, only to be replaced by more behaviours, plans resolutions.
It's a rigged cycle, but we can't just not grow.
Today I had a completely different zhang zhuang experience. Yesterday was all about floating in the ether. But I forgot to mention something. I felt my body re-alligning. I felt and intense growing kind of suffering, almost like the fear and excitement of losing your virginity. It was terrified, but suddenly I felt my body and my psyche re-alligning and I felt my tan tien, felt exactly where it was supposed to be.
When I started practice today, I started from that allignement. But there were problems. This allignment forced a stretch in my spine that brought back memories of major back pain. That memory made me less willing to hold the position. If I disappear, lose self-consciouslness I'm afraid I'll shift in such a way that puts strain on my spine.
So I'm careful. I want to stay close to the new allignment, but I don't want to risk putting too much stretch on my lower back. All of this self-awaress makes the experience much more internal. I feel the energy collecting in my tan tien, like a water baloon holding me in place. I feel a cold energy, which is weird because the literature usually tells you that it's warm. I feel it still, and I also felt a cold energy begining to flow along my lower spine.
It's new growth, I feel it. But I have to protect it. I don't want rot to set in.