My friend Jen has this little changing emoticon on her blog that registers her mood. If I had one of those, right now it would read “weary”. I just had a massage and I slept through, or drifted in a sleep like state, through most of it. When we’re stressed out with emotions, or whatever is bothering us, we all do this sort of bracing thing where you clench your body. It’s the fight or flight mechanism that we’ve evolved as part of our survival hardwiring, your muscles are tense and ready for action – but there is no actual low flying pterodactyl approaching, just your fear. [ Informative tangent: I’ve borrowed that image from Adam Smith’s book (no, not THE economist, but AN economist) Powers of Mind – which I highly recommend to all as primer to our current paradigm. I used to use the first chapter to teach the paradigm concept to my Writing as Critical Thinking students.]

Often you don’t know you’re clenching your body until you experience what a state of release is like. Everyone who reads this, do yourself a favor (and do everyone that knows you a favor) and get a massage form a holistic massage therapist (non-holistic therapist tend to have a mechanical view of the body and often lack what can best be described as flow). I actually feel worse now than I did before the massage because I’m clear enough to be aware of what shitty shape I was in before the massage – I just wasn’t letting myself feel it – I was bracing for the next thing. It’s not uncommon to feel worse after a massage as your body has just released a ton of toxins into your blood stream – drink lots of water and flush those toxins out!!!!

“The next thing” is that my boss’s son was beat up last night at the Fat Tuesday parade. Several men attacked him, stole his phone, took his beads. I don’t have all the details yet, but his nose was most likely broken. They won’t know until the swelling goes down. Humor is a panacea, Tom said, “Well, the swelling has gone down enough to be able to breathe through both nostrils, so that’s good for alternate nostril breathing.” Ha, alternate nostril breathing is a yogic practice for channeling energy in the body – you’re thinking to yourself, “Well, how is this beating going to affect my yoga?”

I’ve been thinking about God big G a lot lately. I’ve been thinking about my mortality and what all this nonsense is about. I was raised fairly conservative Christian and I am not that now – now I am an open question mark.