The Root of the Matter

I never thought that my meditation practice would lead me down the path to having emergency root canal surgery, but that’s exactly what happened.

I was thrilled to be able to devote my entire summer to deepening my connection with body, mind, and spirit. It was the final segment of my four-year Feldenkrais training program. I was living in a laid back, granola-type town in Sonoma County, California, on a fourteen-acre farmhouse with other wonderful folks in the program. I mean, how much more in the zone of love, nature, and meditation could I get?

And the best part was that I had orchestrated the whole thing. I set myself up to have a summer of deep awareness and mindful meditation, surrounded by loving friends, in a beautiful place. So I was feeling pretty damned good about life. Each morning, I woke up when the rooster crowed, and spent time just being thankful for my life, the people I love, and the things I was learning.

In my training, we were learning how to use the breath to connect with our bodies. We followed three or four breaths from beginning to end, noticing where we held our breath, and how deeply the breath came into our bodies. They key was not to change the way we breathed or to judge it, but to simply notice what we did as we breathed. Invariably, this practice led me to drop into myself and be present in the moment. Three simple breaths and voila—I was there. Who knew meditation and awareness could be this easy?

And yet, this time it felt different. With each breath, I felt it. Deep, searing pain on the lower right side of my face. Damn it! What’s keeping me from relaxing into my body? We’d already covered pain in my training and how not to let it encompass my whole self, so I knew what I had to do. I took the pain and brought it outside my body. It was still with me, I just wasn’t focused on it. Pain was not going to control my world.