This Body is Fleeting

"So then, banish anxiety from your heart and cast off troubles of the body, for youth and vigor are meaningless" Ecclesiastes 11:10

I am focusing on teaching therapeutic yoga. Particularly, a group with multiple sclerosis. I have so much to learn. I need to learn not only how to rearrange the yoga poses and make them more accessible, but also how to relate to and empathize with my students. What a challenge for someone whose body has always been mostly healthy. A few weeks ago, I was surprised by my fear when I merely had a stomach virus, which carries none of the gravity of a diagnosis with multiple sclerosis. My fear wasn't so much based around my immortality, but in my identity as a healthy, young woman.

I have a friend with MS who is already teaching me more than she realizes. She comes to the therapeutic yoga class I have begun to assist at Lighten Up. She's my age. She is kind, beautiful, and courageous.

We had a discussion a couple weeks ago about whether it is appropriate to call someone with disabilities "courageous". Is it courageous to simply deal with the circumstances that you had no part in choosing? I think so because what she has chosen is how to approach her disabilities. She encourages me by the way that she embraces her life, including her diagnosis. It seems that it would be so easy to mentally run from her diagnosis, live in a level of denial.

Instead, I watch her embrace her diagnosis and reach out to others. My friend is a leader of the WNC chapter of the Multiple Sclerosis Society. At their last meeting, she showed me T-shirts they were having printed that say"I'm not drunk, I have Multiple Sclerosis". She is so quick to smile and laugh, so easy to embrace. Not to say that she is never visibly frustrated or discouraged, but rather that she posesses a self-awareness and acceptance that I imagine must set her far ahead on the ladder to enlightenment.

In our discussions of MS, my friend's explanation of those first few months before diagnosis reminded me of my recent experience with panic attacks. They started last summer...suddenly being pulled strongly into my body, of my body leading the way instead of my mind...the pulling tightness in my chest and in my palms. The body forcing me to pay attention, to listen to what it had to say: Sit down, slow down, stop this whirlwind of existence...

My panic attacks forced an awareness on me, a presence of mind. I imagine my friend's experiences are similar in that she is often more present and aware because her body forces her to pay attention.

One thing I have learned is that every person with MS has a different story to tell, and every person with MS's experience's can change dramatically from day to day. This is so difficult for them in so many ways. But one thing their experiences can bring to them is these qualities that my friend so embodies- self-awareness and a presence of mind.

The intention in my meditations and practice these past few days has been about seeing myself beyond my flesh. Just as a person is still a person seperate from their disabilities, I am still me if I am not healthy, or young. This body is fleeting.