Dividing Delhi B · 19 January 2010

I have, like they say, eaten too many chapatis. Actually, it was the “special” thali at Green Leaf: ten little aluminum cylinders of dals and squshes and beets and sweets my body didn’t recognize, plus three kinds of bread, rice and (oddly) coconut ice cream. When in South India….

But still. Woah. Too unfamiliar too soon, for a digestive system accustomed to apples, almonds, kombucha and kale. I’ve sat alongside two beautiful lunches since that thali, spectating while the belly rumbles and squeaks. Can we get on with it already?

During the first sun salutations this morning, I broke out in the wrong kind of sweat. Cold sweat. Greeeeat. Vision went black jumping out to triko, felt it going again in UHP. What does that have to do with Delhi belly? Why am I letting the lingering thali diffuse so far?

I had two good vrittis there at the end of standing. Where is sick? And everything is infinitely divisible.

The first is from a story Howie Cohn told on both retreats I sat with him. Journeying far into the mountains to see some nondualist teacher (Ajahn Chah, if I remember, but maybe not), he arrived on the tail end of a debilitating illness. Greeting him, the teacher asked "Howie, How are you?” And Howie, his identity fused with illness, launched in to a description of how awful he had been feeling, emoting with the words, “I’m so sick.” To which the teacher demanded, “Where is sick?” Howie found he couldn’t answer. Sick was no longer the case; sick was not him.

The second is something Robert Thurman says, describing the emptiness at the heart of reality.

So, transitioning from standing to sitting, there right in front of the humungus painting of SKPJ hung in garlands, and there between two very stable practitioners linking breath to movement like nobody’s business, there in a giant room filled with 75 deeply focused people and zero physical or verbal bullshit, I went about dividing the Delhi belly.

First I cut the DB in half, restricting it to the bottom half of the body. No more blacking out and wanting to fall over. Then I zeroed in and in and in… recognizing that the trunk was in general very dynamic, and actually so was the abdomen, and in reality so was the stomach itself. Large intestine… check. Small intestine... gurgling. But only part of it, some pits way down in the center. God knows how long that coil of mine would extend, but I divided and divided the pain until it was tiny. By the marichyasanas, real-life pick-ups were happening, and by the exit from bhujapidasana, the squinch up in to bakasana didn’t bother at all.

Weird. An hour later, someone asked me “How are you?” And I said, “Delhi belly.” Pfffffft. The identity will take over, and lead me to believe I am somehow not fine, unless I actively pursue the sensation down to the pit and isolate it there. Lying here on my bed in the evening, listening to the orphanage kids squeal across the street and feeling my breath recover from the walk through town, all I can find at the root of the so-called sick is my solar plexus pulsing a little more strongly than usual.

Posted by (0v0)        
Categories: having a body

Comment

1. Oooh but there’s no denying it when it kicks in…. I remember my last bout in Goa. Practice was horrible & then I didn’t enjoy breakfast so much. I went & did errands. I was walking back along the beach paths, carrying groceries, when I felt that need to walk in a hunch and I said, “Oh no…” Ooof I HATE barfing!!!

   Posted by: boodiba · Jan 19, 03:25 AM · #

2. True. There are times of day that the DB cannot be conquered. Seems to kick in for an hour or two after I eat.

   Posted by: (0v0) · Jan 19, 03:42 AM · #

3. hi (0v0) i didn’t realize you were heading that way. i hope you enjoy it tremendously.
   cheers,
   Arturo

   Posted by: arturo · Jan 19, 04:58 AM · #

4. Don’t you hate it when you’re out & about & then the stomach starts churning??? One immediately assumes a pained & sweaty expression…

   Posted by: boodiba · Jan 19, 07:25 AM · #

5. It sounds to me like you’re eating for two (you and a parasite). I’d have it checked out if it lasts for more than 24 hours.

   Posted by: CK · Jan 19, 05:48 PM · #

6. Oh crap. The idea of seeing a doctor here is most annoying.

   I have a tendency to assume nothing’s the matter. (Though after a harsh two-year detox programme back in the US 8 years ago, I grew out of the tendency to eat street food and drink from the faucet.)

   Had some home-cooked dinner an hour ago and the coast is clear, but still…

   Posted by: (0v0) · Jan 20, 03:25 AM · #

7. If the doctor is not an option – and it is, you are a rich westerner with free time – then go to a pharmacist that’s trusted by others. They have magic pills that work.

   In India, “toughing it out” leads to dehydration and hospitalization. Just ask Bindi.

   Posted by: CK · Jan 20, 03:33 AM · #

8. Thanks for keeping me honest on this. Perhaps I’ll see a doctor at the end of the trip here no matter what, just to see what they see.

   In the previously-mentioned era, I had giardia, something generally labeled “aomebas,” and a real-live tapeworm.

   A lot of people go to the pharmacist and load up on amoxacillyn and cipro before they leave India. Strange.

   Posted by: (0v0) · Jan 20, 03:40 AM · #

9. I had my turn bowing to the porcelein idols with a crash course in vaman dhauti. The chills came in the midst of a massage with nausea…the masseuse was medititating post massage and I grabbed every cover or wrap I could sequester. To no avail, I politely excused myself and was granted three “boons”. The therapist was slightly surprised. The power of touch? Or the power of the food chain of which we so frequently forget that we are not at the top of (code: micro-organisms)? Or the power of the two-man kapotasana adjustment? As just 4 hours before I was in the grasp of R and M in what is could be called the Kapotasana cuddle as it is ever so intimate. A menage a trois cum backbending morass. M is cajoling the coccyx South even Sri G. Maximus remains calm. And then one is invited to let your fingers do the walking down the saber shins of one sweet German R to the promised land of thy own heals. All the while the sternum is encouraged to open like the first budding flower of Spring. Suffice it to say, upon release a tsunamic wave of nausea and nostalgia came over me to point of almost launching my empty stomach contents over the 3 story edge of rooftop shala patio and onto the red Goan earth below.

   Who’s to say one way or the other? Epistimological honesty (satya) must rule the day or dark times will get even darker.

   Posted by: e&sj · Jan 20, 05:16 AM · #

10. This jet-lagged tale of of an RM threesome and bowing to the porcelan gods is some very good blog. I too have been stretched on their ecstatic rack, albeit without any cajoling of the coccyx.

    Of those fabled saber shins, I just heard tell today at the pool formerly known as Southern Star. A man just returned here fro Goa was musing on R’s incredible, tightly-wound calves, wondering if he could get a pair artificially implanted.

    Huh. The things you have time to worry about at the Southern Star.

    Posted by: (0v0) · Jan 21, 04:39 AM · #

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