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Learning to Sit on a Chair, or The Vipassana Kid Rides Again.
A retreat from the usual routine
Most days in my job I make a lot of stop-start movements because I’m fetching and preparing things for sale all within the same small department.
The free exercise app on the phone registers these movements as steps even though I wouldn’t qualify it as walking. There’s also a lot of going up and down stairs, but it all counts on the app.
A few weeks ago however I aggravated a long-standing niggle in the right Achilles tendon. After each annual ten-day Vipassana meditation retreat, It’s sore for some time, but it always returns to normal within a couple of weeks.
However, the change from sitting at a desk office work to standing all day retail, with the constant type of movements described above, prolongs the recovery period.
To compensate for this I’ve been doing my morning meditation sessions sat in the chair in my home office here, which is little more than a cupboard with pretensions to be a room.
Learn to listen to your limits
I’d never meditated for a whole hour before sitting in a chair, it was an odd experience the first few times, especially with my legs feeling colder than when I sat on my meditation stool.
But I adjusted, and it was for the long-term good. Rather this than not being able to sit on the stool again. I’m loath to have to give that up, there’s no other posture I can maintain for long periods consistently. And yes. I am attached to it.
I’ve made numerous adjustments, small, medium, large and otherwise, to posture while on retreat and off, always trying to balance the load between my right and left ankle but nothing has worked. Always it’s the right leg that bears the brunt of it.
Until the change in jobs, it never really occupied that much mind time. Having said that, this is the first time it’s been what I‘d call an issue.
But there have been aggravating circumstances. A couple of weeks prior to this, to help cover for being short-staffed, I did 8 days…
