Theodore Roethke's poem "The Waking" contains a lot of power for me. This morning, I repeated the above line from his famous villanelle over and over while running around Memorial Park. I started jogging VERY slowlyin October 2008 because the Chinese Medicine doctor who was healing me, Dr. Wang, told me that in addition to doing 300 jumps a day and eating bitter, sour and spicy foods I needed to exercise more. I told him I had been walking two miles everyday. He smiled, chuckled and shook his head. "That's not enough," he said, "you need to shake your body. If you're already walking two miles, why don't you jog them?"
Because jogging is hard! I thought.
But it turns out, if I do it really, really slowly, with the only intention being to shake my body, jogging is not hard. In fact, I'm amazed at how easy jogging is. Granted, most of the other joggers on the trails whiz past me. I'm just a few paces faster than the fast-walkers; however, if I'm only doing it to shake my body, speed matters not a jot.
And it makes me feel good. And the pain that was hurting me -- completely wracked back -- has alleviated. I shook it out of me.
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