In my early thirties I had several 'slipped disks' and was diagnosed with varying degrees of severe 'lumbago'. The causes were clear enough: poor posture, long office days with a lot of sitting, stress. One consultant added a fatalistic note when he concluded that there was probably an unspecific genetically inherited degenerative process taking place in my vertebra, just as my father too was very slumped all his life, so there really wasn't anything anyone could do about it. By my mid-thirties I was in a state of continuous pain. Anything I looked to for alleviation such as sport, fitness studio, exercises didn't work, and I think I was only half-hearted about them anyway. I had resigned myself to the pain; I felt I could live with it, so I just got on with things as they were.
You might know an old song by Val Doonican that goes Walk tall, walk straight and look the world right in the eye. A friend of mine started to hum it to me to annoy me, and that really hurt, because I couldn't. I was not able to stand straight; it hurt too much, and I didn't even know how to.
My first experience with meditation was trying to sit zazen at a workshop in 2006. I wasn't able to, and I couldn't imagine how anybody ever could. It was very uncomfortable, and it only got worse as time went on, but somehow I managed to sit through the weekend and the hunch I had from the start became certainty: zazen meditation is a powerful practice for releasing stress and tension in the body and quitening the mind.
I got to know ZEN Bodytherapy® in my mid-forties (I was born 1960), and I realized immediately that this was something different. I didn't like much the idea that I had to play an active part myself towards getting better, and I found the treatment sometimes painful, but the tension usually went away quickly - and what a liberating feeling it was to experience a lack of pain! ZEN Bodytherapy® is very focused on aligning the body. That is meant in a very practical way; it means learning to stand well, to breathe deep, to release muscular tension and to become aware of bad habits (how are you sitting whilst you read this?), and to correct those habits all the time. The effects are fabulous: freedom from pain, and a general feeling - a certainty - of purpose and well-being in life. There's another line in that song … be proud … and hold your head up high. That only works if you have good posture.
I enjoy sharing the knowledge I have gained in years of meditation and intense training to become a practitioner of ZEN Bodytherapy® and ZEN Triggerpoint Anatomy®. It's a journey we go on together, towards freedom from pain and more healthy attitudes within ourselves. The goal is simple: let's start living a life without fear, pain or greed.
