I’ve been sitting for 56 years. You’d think I would have mastered it by now.<\/p>\n
But no.<\/p>\n
Today I couldn’t sit at the table and eat breakfast. I hopped\u00a0around, doing dishes, doing laundry, noshing on random bites to eat.<\/p>\n
At my desk\u00a0I shifted, adjusted my chair, stretched, got up again. Jumped from one browser tab to another. Got a snack. Got some tea.<\/p>\n
Driving\u00a0to Atlanta, I clenched my shoulders, pounded my hands on the wheel, made gestures at other drivers.<\/p>\n
By the time I got to the clinic, I was in serious pain from my lower back.<\/p>\n
Hold feelings inside, tighten up in “fight” mode: It stresses organs and joints. Do this for years on end, and you will end up with pain so bad that you will do anything, anything, anything to make it stop<\/a>.<\/p>\n You don’t need a medical degree to know that being tense is bad for your health. But you do have to listen to yourself and feel your body. You have to sit with it.<\/p>\n So I sit in the clinic chair, waiting for my name to be called. Close my\u00a0eyes and breathe. Feel myself\u00a0sitting. What’s my\u00a0body doing? Where is the burden?<\/p>\n I carry the needs of so many other people. Because I believe that those who can carry should carry.<\/p>\n I carry more than I should carry. I don’t carry it with the right posture, the right balance.<\/p>\n I can’t relax because thousands of years of my farmer ancestor genes tell me that relaxing is lazy, and leads to starvation.<\/p>\n I was built\u00a0to work, and that’s what my body tries to do, all the time.<\/p>\n All\u00a0in my back and shoulders. Carrying. Lifting. Supporting.<\/p>\n So little in it for me. More precisely, so little for spirit. I’m stingy with myself<\/a> and stingy with spirit<\/a>. I can’t seem to just sit with it.<\/p>\n And so my back hurts.<\/p>\n Today’s penny is a 2014, the year I first had sciatica.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve been sitting for 56 years. You’d think I would have mastered it by now. But no. Today I couldn’t sit at the table and eat breakfast. I hopped\u00a0around, doing dishes, doing laundry, noshing on random bites to eat. At my desk\u00a0I shifted, adjusted my chair, stretched, got up again. Jumped from one browser tab … read more Day 79: Sitting with myself<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5642,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[318],"tags":[36,291,83,290],"class_list":["post-5641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-refraction","tag-36","tag-carrying","tag-pain","tag-relax"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5641"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5646,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5641\/revisions\/5646"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}