Mental health in arranging the petals from the beautiful dead flower

 Beautiful flower with these dark red and white petals. Morning after the vase was put down, there is the pile of the red and white petals at the base of the vase. Nice soft, colours still bright. Like if the flower had exploded overnight and then left everything there to form a carpet for the vase.

"Why you not brushing away the petals...?" the owner asks and I say as I spread them a bit more .. "I can't throw them away.. they still nice"

I move them around and realise that I should have left them as they were. It is nice to feel the softness - I have not touched plants and flowers in a long time except to cook them.

This beauty in the dead flower is on my mind as I try to go through the yoga routine, breathing and so. 

A year after Covid has started, and I am grateful for privileges which mean I can dodge Covid but I could not dodge diabetes, depression and the pain which seems to move from one part of the body to another.

No more sugar for mental wellness.. no more indulging in jam and so as the sugar spikes will wreck the body organs. So now is looking at food as poison and eating a little bit and measuring or saying to to hell with it and not measuring.  

Some yoga poses supposed to be good for diabetes. No science really but heck nothing wrong with doing a few more. The yoga does not remove the body pain though it helps with some. The lastest pain in the left shoulder neck which I think is about pillows in the night but might be other things.

So trying not to think of the pain and thinking of how to write about the beautiful petals of the dead flower. Moving the shoulders and so and pain still there but mind is on the movement. And Breathing.

Bend forward to try to the uttasana and not being able to complete the bend but at some point I realise that the pain has gone from my shoulder. It is not an asana for shoulder pain but that is how pain is sometimes.. that the pain in a place is related to some other thing in another place . Or in your mind.

Pain which could be worse after a bad nights sleep which might come from body reactions to food absorption during the night and other things so which could only be cured by a good sleep.

Grateful that the pain is gone for now. Remembering how the pain goes sometimes when talking to some people, and how it comes back after talking to others or reading about them.

 And that there is no control over how the body feels the pain. And letting go of control because part of the problem at 50 is that the body and mind have been suppressing and controlling and so on for so much that the pain is now a manifestation. 

So instead of dreaming and planning  big things now, all now is how to deal with the pain without painkillers and how to manage mental health without medicating and how to eat food which will not poison the body more without taking other chemicals to make the body able to process the food which might destroy the organs while nourishing them.

And so to breathe and bend the body and to focus on getting through the poses without dealing with the outcomes. Thinking of the poses which I am doing for impotence which are not helping with the impotence but which might be helping with other things. And trying not to think of impotence and the irony of the lover who is generous to not make a deal out of the impotence and of the times when there was no lover and there was no impotence. 

Thinking.. 'there is nothing wrong with me'.. as I remembered telling the young man taking 11 meds for mental wellness .. 'there is nothing wrong with you.. if sanity is voting for Donald Trump and for other people who have misled you, if sanity is destroying mangroves for development.. then nothing is wrong with you that you need 11 tablets to stay sane'

And so to work on releasing the tensions from the mind and body. To not create new tensions at age 50 but to embrace new ways of letting go of the things which cause the tensions.

Like thinking of how the flower was  so beautiful when it was held together, and then still beautiful as it exploded, and scattered the petals in the soft mat.