Involuntary Vipassana

Yesterday I asked what sort of practice I should pursue given my current limitations (e.g., shortness of breath, persistent hacking cough, pink eye in both eyes, constant sniffling and sneezing and so on) to continue on the #365yoga journey.


After my last post, I started brainstorming practices to accommodate my current condition. Any practice that caused me to change positions or modify natural breath cycles was immediately disqualified. I figured that jumping into The Life Divine (Sri Aurobindo) was out, given that sitting under bright lights was mildly irritating with conjunctivitis. After some consideration, I settled on spending Monday evening listening and responding to the CD that accompanied one of my recent yoga book purchases on Amazon: The Language of Yoga: Company A to Y Guide of Asana Names, Sanskrit Terms, and Chants (hey, I've gotta work on my Sankrit pronunciation skills!).


But today I woke up with ZERO voice! Again, #365yoga fail!


It dawned on me in the middle of the day that I was participating in an involuntary "vipassana" practice. Funny, because like running a marathon, attending a 10-day Vipassana retreat has always been on my bucket list. I always wondered whether I had the nerves to be stuck in my own head with no ability to focus on external notions.


In fact, when I have attended yoga retreats in the past, when an option to practice the art of silence for a portion of the retreat was offered, I was generally the first in line (and the first to request to extend the commitment to silence for the remainder of the retreat!).


I feel like the ability to take ACTION, to "do", over the past week has been stolen from me. As someone who generally prides herself on the number of items she can cross off a "to-do" list in a given day, I have felt like a fish out of water. Not to mention, my hacking sounds like a cross between a honking goose and a man sobbing uncontrollably. I've been asked to work from home, but now I can't even take phone calls. Life has literally come to a halt.


Guess this is another opportunity to learn. Learning to let go to tendencies is quite a bit harder than I anticipated.