Making it to the top of the hill
Published: Mon, 03/20/17
This morning I went up onto the Beeches, the highest point round here. There is a viewing spot at the top and on a really clear day you can just about see Glastonbury Tor and the Admiral Hood monument. I walked round the long way through the woods. I greeted a couple of early morning dog walkers and their dogs were keen to greet me. At the top of a hill is a great place to do the stances, there is a real sense of being in the landscape with the mass of the hill beneath my feet and the sky arching overhead. It is also fascinating to see the woodland gradually coming back to life. Trees are budding everywhere and the Hawthorn already has tiny leaves at the tips of its branches.
I know I have written about the Beeches before but today was special. Last Saturday my back gave out on me and I was pretty much disabled all week. Sunday and Monday I could barely stand. I did manage to walk around to the Stav Centre on Tuesday evening while Venetia took the Juniors class. I was exhausted from the effort by the time I had walked back again. Yesterday was the first time I was actually able to walk without a stick. Today I made it to the top of the hill with no problems and I was able to do the stances there. No sunrise as such because it was very cloudy this morning but worth it all the same.
I would like to say that doing Stav a performing the stances each day means that I don’t have any problems with my back. That would not be true, my back still gives way on me every year or two. Would it happen more often if I didn’t do Stav? No way of knowing really since a controlled experiment would be hard to set up. What does happen though is that when my back does go I continue with doing the stances, even if all I am really doing is just standing as best I can and pretty much imagining myself doing each stance. As each day passes I get a little further into each stance, especially Ur. After a week I am usually back to doing the full sequence. Do the stances speed up the healing? Again I would like to think so and, again, I can’t really prove it one way or the other.
What does happen is that I experience a new and fresh appreciation of the stances and my body’s capacity to be in each posture. It is very easy to get so familiar with a certain pattern of activity that it becomes stale and routine. Temporarily losing the ability to do something and only recovering the ability gradually and painfully can restore appreciation of the activity. This morning on the Beeches I felt that appreciation of healing and strength restored.
Maybe one of the real benefits of doing the stances is simply a check that your body is capable of doing what it should be capable of. When something goes wrong and takes time to come right again the stances provide a yardstick measuring your progress towards recovery.
Of course it is nice to think of oneself as an invincible warrior full of health, strength and vitality. However, the reality is that we have our periods of weakness and sickness to endure as well. The stances are there to keep it real in either case.
regards
Graham