Embodiment

6 Ramadhan, 1441

One thing I don't enjoy about online teaching, possibly the only thing I don't enjoy, is having to sit down to teach, sometimes for quite a length of time if lessons run into each other. Over the weekend, when I wasn't teaching, I experienced one of those searing moments of back pain when I was simply doing a bit of work at the table, and I'm sure it was connected with the discomfort I'd been feeling during lessons. Fortunately whatever was going on in my back wasn't completely debilitating. I was able to continue with my prayers without having to make adjustments - always a useful pointer to the degree of damage done. But a few days of aching in my lower back followed. And there remains a faint echo of the pain even today, although it feels as if recovery is almost complete.

Now the thing is, that at the same time as suffering from an aching back I was also dealing with the sort of vague headaches the first few days of fasting tends to generate in me and also trying to cope with the accompanying tiredness. I wasn't a happy soldier, to say the least - but I could also put it all into perspective, confident that this all would pass and I wasn't exactly 'suffering' to any real degree (despite my use of the term above.)

I was, in fact, repeating a lesson I've learned many times but still need to revise. The body has a mind of its own. (Distressingly comically clumsy statement - but let it stand.) Whatever thoughts I was thinking were coloured, to put it mildly, by physical discomfort. My world view was filtered through a narrow spectrum of consuming achiness. I sought to rise above all this, and managed to do so for sometimes minutes at a time, but soon enough the body took over and did my thinking for me.

One of fasting's most powerful lessons. You are your body, for better or worse. And when it's worse you must struggle to hold on to whatever remains of the better.