The Language Of Love
I have just said goodbye to Boc; I thanked her a lot for opening my body up so much; she gave me a gift of Thai herbal soap and we had our photo taken together.
We will never forget one another.
I said 'Khuṇ k̄hxbkhuṇ; Khuṇ k̄hxbkhuṇ' - 'Thank you; Thank you'.
We put our hands together in the namaste position - and bowed to one another...
We smiled a lot and she said 'look after your body madam...'
She followed me to the door and stood on the step - we waved to each other; I walked down the road and turned, she was still there standing smiling after me. I waved again, I walked on a bit and turned back, she was still there; I waved until I couldn't see her anymore...
My new friend Boc...
On my way there I was passing Laan's restaurant - he stood in the road with his arms outstretched as I came towards him S̄wạs̄dī Julia... I outstretched my arms to him S̄wạs̄dī Laan.
His colleague came out of the restaurant and she beckoned for me to sit on the step with her, so the three of us had a chat; not a lot of language was shared, but a lot of joy. At one point Laan said something to her and she turned to me and translated... 'He says that joy comes out of you' and touched her heart...
Joy is in all of us, and in relating with Laan and Boc, the limited language means communication is essentially only through the heart, the language of joy and love.
Ideally we use language to enhance this, but often this isn't the case and words are used to wound rather than as a balm to the mind and body.
The soul knows all is well, but while we are experiencing a human journey our every word and our every thought makes a difference to us, the unconscious mind doesn't know the difference between what we give and what we receive... it hurts us to hurt another in any way...
I was glad of my massage today, Anadi and I went for our gym session this morning and all the cardio machines were in use when we arrived; two of the gym users were 84 years old... I know this because we have to record our age as we go in and I checked out the ages of all assembled!
When I had only been on planet earth for seventeen years, I was recovering from an achilles injury then, like I am now... As part of my training and rehabilitation I took to doing five hundred half squats with a twenty kilo bar in a stand that slides up and down...
They have one here, which is what reminded me of that session....
Five hundred squats took me twenty minutes all those years ago; it took me twenty minutes today!
I then used the X trainer to unravel my legs a bit, before I executed my running faster plan...
A session I used to run on the treadmill, suggested by my friend Rob Harley, was to warm up, stop and set the belt running at 18kph... Then... jump on it and run for 30 secs, jump off for 30 seconds and repeat 20 times...!
Today I did the modified version...
Not having run much for a long time 14kph felt plenty fast enough!
And - I did ten x 30 seconds, rather than twenty... But it felt good to move faster and Achilles has responded well to some extra stretch!
My daily massage with Boc has become a place of really getting into the held bits in my body, she goes in deep to my muscles, but my pain threshold is high and I go into that floaty place that is almost like being asleep....
I believe my pain threshold has always been high, maybe in part why running hard is natural to me; but when I was in my twenties I found myself in a place where I was afraid of the pain.
I was afraid of the pain I believed I would have to put myself through to attain a goal, a destination I saw was possible....
Nigel, my husband back then helped me a lot with this by suggesting that I don't perceive of it as pain, but as a place where I am extending myself towards what I see as possible....
Relaxation even within movement makes all the difference to the sensation in the body; tensing up against it creates anxiety and a perception of greater pain. This is the same for any experience in this life, tensing up physically creates a 'flight or fight' reaction in the body...
I find this the same with deep tissues massage that could be described as very painful! Relaxing into it creates for me an opening and a discovery of what is possible, a powerful metaphor for how vast our experience can be if we let go, how much more there is than we ever imagined...
Sunisa who has served us coffee all the time we have been here told us that she would be working in a different place today; we promised her that we would come and find her... We took a route that first went to the rocks to take a photo of the white Buddha - who was hard to see as he was sitting in the clouds ...! Then we paddled along the shore to find our friend and celebrated once more the joy of connection, beautiful open hearted Sunisa who expressed genuine joy at our arrival and showed her appreciation by bringing us extra little biscuits with our coffee...!
The multi faceted language of love ...