My Father's Daughter

Photo by Cayusa, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

My parents dropped around the other day and, a funny thing, Dad is also currently having problems with sciatica. What's more, it seems that we've both been experiencing sciatic problems for about the same period of time. Is there some small glitch in the cosmic universe or maybe some psychic connection between father and daughter?

In some ways we are similar: we're both perfectionists, stress-heads and workaholics. And we both have ventured into Eastern practices for Western problems.

So, there we are trading war stories:

• Dad has resumed his Qigong practice and I've returned to basics with the Pawanmukthasana Series Part 1 asanas and yoga nidra.
  

  (Interesting that, intuitively, both of us are trying to remove the energy—aka prana or qi—blockages from our body and quieten our minds)

• Walking around the block helps him whereas it seems to have made things worse for me
• Remedial massage helps me whereas he finds relief with heat packs

(Now why didn't I think of that? Much better than hot showers that only provide temporary relief and waste water.)

Then Dad mentions that he went to the doctor's but refused to take something to ease the pain. The reason? As long as he felt the pain, he knew he had to do something to manage it.

And then it struck me—isn't that what this journey is all about? We need to experience life, its ups and downs in order to understand it, to gather the strength to weather the changes, and to find the real ‘we’, the atman.

The difficulties of life are intended to make us better, not bitter.
˜Anonymous

Do you agree?