Apr30
Posted on Apr 30 by Ruth Davis
You may be tired of hearing about my sciatica, but I’m learning so much about myself through this experience. And folks have written, thanking me for verbalizing what they’ve experienced with their own chronic pain. I was so happy to return to work last week, driving to a client’s house, sitting for two hours and then driving home. I iced between activities and continued my regular stretching on my yoga mat. I was even able to sit comfortably through the entire dinner my Dad made on Saturday night. I still had the neuropathy that felt like a hard waterfall down my thigh for the first few moments after standing up, but I felt good. Strong. Stable. I was even going on short walks with Mabel. On Thursday I went to my favorite gentle yoga class at Desert Song Yoga. My teacher focused the practice on hip and heart openers. It was like she was talking directly to me, “If you have back issues, pay attention, don’t over do it.” She reminded us to engage the tops of the thighs,...
Apr23
Posted on Apr 23 by Ruth Davis
Imagine how your life might change if you did just ONE of these things every day! The other night I asked Marika if she wanted to plan a vacation with me that we didn’t have to go on. Where do you want to go? Philadelphia, she said, to visit her aunt. And Longwood Gardens, I added. And we’ll invite all of my relatives to meet us at the diner on Roosevelt Blvd, and we can go to that art museum that your mother was talking about. The Barnes Foundation? Yes. And we can get real PRETZELS. And maybe we can go to Baltimore. How far is Baltimore? I’d love to go back to Visionary Museum and they have a great aquarium, too. We could take the train. And a bus to the harbor. It would be an adventure! It was fun to let our imaginations go wild, to stretch and envision without considering logistics, money, time….to just play. That afternoon, after spending over an hour helping Marika look for jobs online, she was flipping through an RV supply...
Apr16
Posted on Apr 16 by Ruth Davis
This summer my friends Maya Stein and Amy Tingle are bicycling 1,400 miles on a tandem bicycle through America’s heartland, writing free poems & building Little Free Libraries. They made tiny little books for people to complete and add to the free library. This book was sent to me with blank pages and just the title. It was up to me to write the contents. I am thrilled to share my first published book. Click on the picture to see the whole book. And click here for more information of Maya and Amy’s Tandem Poetry...
Apr09
Posted on Apr 9 by Ruth Davis
Like with any behavior, thought or pattern we’re trying to release, if we focus on it, it continues to manifest. But if we shift our thought and attention to what is NEXT, even AND ESPECIALLY if we don’t know what that is, then that first thing loses energy, lessens its hold on us and it eventually releases. For the last four weeks I’ve been in pain and for the last two, I’ve been writing about it. Because that’s how I needed to move through it. To get to know it, describe it, feel it with words. I needed to engage with it, be with it, learn from it. And then, at some point, even though pain was still with me, I didn’t want to give it my full and undivided attention anymore. I was ready to release it. I stopped using the word pain and now I simply notice the different “sensations” when I sit or stand or bend my legs. Sometimes it’s tingly, then more like thumbtacks poking, with fire. But just a small fire, and it...
Apr02
Posted on Apr 2 by Ruth Davis
It is Sunday, day 23 of this sciatica journey and it is still too uncomfortable to sit in a chair for any length of time. So I am lying on my back in bed with the ice pack under my right butt cheek. My computer is propped between my belly and my bent knees and I have two pillows tucked under my neck and shoulders so that I can see the screen. Yes, everything hurts a LOT less than it did a week ago. I am able to stretch my arms above my head without feeling the clenching in my hip. I can bend at the waist and get up and down from a chair with no pain. I can even lie on my back with both knees tucked into my chest and rock. But I still can’t sit or stand long enough to drive or enjoy a meal, much less work with a client. I remind myself how big a shift this has all been, emotionally, physically, even spiritually. And that healing takes time. My muscles...
Mar26
Posted on Mar 26 by Ruth Davis
I have been lying on my back for the last two and a half weeks with the most intense episode of sciatica. I’ve had lower back pain before that has left me on my heating pad for several days. But this sharp, lightening bolt pain that shoots down my leg is like nothing I’ve experienced before. But then, this place in my life is like nothing I’ve experienced before either. Yes, it started with some irritated disks, but, with my back already tender, I didn’t slow down. Instead, I must have moved just enough to tweak something in my piriformis, the muscle that stretches across the lower back between the pelvis and the head of the femur. The muscle tightened and shifted my hip in the socket and somewhere in the midst of all of the shifting, my sciatic nerve got caught in the middle. It was as if all of the things I was dealing with in my life – a shift in my work, the grief that was triggered with the loss of my first best...
