Accepting Self, Others and Life: The Experiment II

I was amazed by the realizations that I was having.  I was relieving anxieties I did not know I had, patching relationships I did not know were strained.  When I began to have a negative or judgmental thought of someone else, I practiced my yogic breath and sometimes even chanted the Gayatri Mantra to help center myself.  I was in control of myself and everything was going according to plan.  It was the night going into the third week of the experiment and I felt great and reflected on how thankful I was for choosing ahimsa.  I woke up that night with intense pain in my abdomen and to make a long story short, ended up in the hospital with appendicitis.  This was not part of my plan.  I missed the entire next week and a half of school and the experiment seemed over.  I was cut off form the world, assigned to bed rest, and prescribed painkillers.  Work stopped, axis yoga stopped, asana stopped, my world was put on pause without a notice or a choice.  I tried to stay optimistic about my recovery and quickly rejoining the rest of the world.  I was strong, determined, and in every other way, a healthy individual; I would be back on my feet in no time! I did not see the trap I was setting for myself, the impossible expectations that I was creating.  Towards the end of the first week of my recovery I could feel myself becoming depressed from boredom and immobility.  I went to yoga training and sat in class, I became more depressed knowing I could not fully participate.  I went to work six days after the surgery and went home in pain and overcome with complete exhaustion and had to take two more days off of work.  Instead of accepting life and healing, I was still setting impossible expectations and despairing when I could not meet them.  I was harming myself; I was no longer practicing ahimsa.

In the last few days, I have tried to slow down and be more patient and accepting of my recovery.  I have tried to actually listen to the doctors instead of my own expectations.  This is not easy for me.  In my perfect world, I could have finished the experiment and felt good about how well I did and how much I changed.  Life happened, I wasn’t ready for it but I am still trying.