Practice Journal/Celeste Roth 

Gratitude to my legs:

You hold me up, you hold me down. Strong, long beautiful. I admire you. Flexible, well-constructed. I am in love with you. I want to spend more time with you. Mmmmmm. I love to see the muscles and bones, feel them move. Perhaps you should have names like beloved children. I will see if names come to me. That I shall call you Wondrous, Counselor. The left leg is Wondrous, the right leg is Counselor. My beauty shifts from my face to my legs and feet. I find myself displaying my legs mostly to myself on my bunk whenever I get out of bed. They look so good to me. Later in the retreat I examine my legs more closely, looking at the skin. In fact it's not all that beautiful close up. I realize that it is not that my legs are actually beautiful, it's that I think they are beautiful. The idea of them is beautiful. They are beautiful because I love them. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

More lung stuff:

As I breathe I realize that I can control the volumetric expansion of my lungs. Actually direct it to push, prod, stimulate, massage the inner parts of my body cavity. Wow. This is a good idea. I can feel it different breaths, solar plexis, heart, rib/shoulder. I can use this to stretch my insides.

Earthquakes:

I see that my body is the same as earth quakes, which I read about in Scientific American. Relieving stress on one part moves the stress somewhere else. Ease my leg, I feel it in the shoulder. Ease the shoulder it's in my neck. Ease the neck, my wrist feels the pressure. It's not really predictable. But it also creates stress-free zones. Just like earthquakes relieve and create stress. Push it down the line. My thigh bone is a prop just like the stick that goes with Urvashi's station wagon to hold the back door open.

Analogies:

Sun day, night, me, rotating, I am the earth, my hands are the sun, rising, setting, it must go on. My legs are the night - spreading for my lover in the dark, his hands feeling. My legs are the turtle that holds up the earth. They are Atlas. My body wants to get stronger.

Third Day:

I can feel my legs are stronger already. I'm sure my arms, too. Shoulder mobility better. Can I really start to feel things like my bladder filling, kidneys working? Third day I face regularity. Wow, never in my life. Third day headache. Again. Lungs control in bed. Second year, third day, I realize I'm the only one in shorts.

String Vision

I have a vision, people in my life are strings coming out of my skin, anchored inside my body, much like a lizeroth (although I'm not sure how to spell that). But they aren't hard metal, they are flexible just regular string. People pull on me. I don't really like it, so I decide to cut the strings. But then I am disconnected, it's hard to stand up, I am alone, unsupported. I need these connections. So then I decide I can hold the strings if I want to. Hold one with my index finger and thumb, one under my big toe, one under my arm, one in my teeth, etc. I have more control, I can let go at any time, but I'm all clenched holding these things, it's a problem like trying to carry too many groceries upstairs at once. I have to work to hold the strings. So then I decide maybe I could tie the strings on. The strings are things like my employees, my children, my friends, my lover. So like tying a balloon around your wrist, I can tie these strings around a finger, toe, leg, arm, waist, whatever. This is a better idea. I remember "blessed be the ties that bind". We need them. A refinement comes to me. Instead of just tying the strings on with knots, as I was initially doing, I can make slipknots. It makes them easier to get on and off. little loops with the string through and around. It's more adjustable, comfortable. It has the added bonus of if I need to I can hold the loop in the crook of my finger for a minute or for awhile if necessary.

Wisdom

Your body contains the wisdom of all evolution and biology. Of all chemistry and physics. Your mind contains only the wisdom of a lifetime. You get one copy of each. Your mind is blank like a chalkboard, and you fill it up over your life. The body is your connection to something immortal.