For the constant observation of progress is soo reassuring! It is such a pleasure to know and feel how the left side of my body re-aligns such that, eventually, the hip won’t hurt and the knee will be functioning rather than crackle, topple and flop!

The most intriguing aspect is that the alignment reaches even the fingers and thumbs! And that the gradualness even means a certain ‘going back’ in particular postures.

For pain signals set the limits. There’s no point pushing into pain. To the contrary, the more the challenges can be enjoyed, the better. Just like the Joy of Burn Out, maybe, this book by Dina Glouberman whom I met in the 70s thanks to one of the conferences I organised in Geneva.

Pain signals in Bikram postures are different from the annoyance of pain in bed and due to ‘wrong’ beds. There is the ‘joy of pain’ as a signal of feeling in alive and there is the ‘pain of pain’ – as a reminder to ‘keep going’, to remain on track: on the track of self-knowledge.

Related articles

• Pain is a Signal – Egoscue Answers The Why! Part Two (painfreeposturemnandpilatesintegration.wordpress.com)
• Alignment of the Body (newlifeat40.com)
• Help! I think twisted my back out of alignment again after a chiropractic adjustment and they’re closed for the weekend! (ask.metafilter.com)
• Would going to a chiropractor to align my back make my headaches go away? (zocdoc.com)

Hardly did I know that this wish should become true! But, the world can’t see yet that and how I can make pain visible by re-visualizing digital images. My prototype software would have to be tuned for particular images from particular imaging technologies to be used for that purpose. But that is one of the possible applications indeed!

Yet a CERN doctor had said “I would NOT suffer in old age”; that’s what saved CERN’s insurance company from having to pay a disability pension. Nobody should be allowed to say anything about ageing unless they are older than 65 themselves!

I was 35. Naive, trusting, hopeful, especially after I had discovered that I was not a “psychological case”… For I had studied psychology: humanistic, transpersonal and evolutionary. Cutting edge import from California. After Vienna, Argentina became the country of analysis. But Fritz Perls and others went to California.

Kahlil Gibran writes “Much of your pain is self-chosen.” But that is emotional and mental pain that comes from sad thoughts and anguished thinking. For thoughts create feelings indeed.

But once a hip was dislocated and the joint was torn by strong men to put it back into place, lots of muscles, tendons and ligaments were torn. Walking on crutches made life somewhat easy for a while. But sitting was impossible for years. Only on hard surfaces. In cinemas and theatres I sat on stairs.

No more skiing, tennis, acrobatics on horses (voltige), Judo…

Just swimming and Yoga and eventually cycling and sailing. But no weight on the hip. And no standing for more than ten seconds.

My back was dreadful. I went to chiropractors and physiotherapists. I went to a sports hospital where 25% less muscle in the left thigh were measured.

But the CERN lawyer writes: no incapacity was found to have resulted from the accident.

The NHS doctors in London admitted to it. I was paid ‘incapacity benefits’. But the CERN lawyer knows better. He gets paid for NOT getting anybody to pay out.

There is acute pain and there is the memory and the expectation of pain. There are limits to painfulness and there are the delights of noticing when it stops to hurt.

There is ‘ancient pain’ and there are new aches and pains, especially as I gradually realign my hip and everything it is embedded in. Especially the knee.

But the CERN lawyer writes: no incapacity was found to have resulted from the accident.

What can I do? What must I do because I owe it to myself to do justice to myself?

My physical pains are causing tears. Is that “psychological” rather than “medical”? What’s the point of calling it different names? It hurts. It’s not pleasant. It hurts again and again and again. In different places. In different shades, colours and intensities. But I don’t moan. A great psychologist said once “there are two types of people who’ve had an accident: those who suffer more than necessary and those who suffer less.” I knew immediately that I belonged to the second group. I never ‘showed off’ with my pain. I did NOT wear my crutch with pride.

But adding feelings of injustice and helplessness doesn’t help. Whether to quantify the degree of incapacity for the NHS or the PRINCIPLE of unfair “statutory procedures” by CERN, my employer who sent me to California where I had the accident – as passenger… The driver was a CERN physicist, a friend who felt too guilty to do the right thing…

Just as all those victims of financial exploitation and legal oppression I’m publishing about: I feel alone, helpless, powerless.

What can I do NOT to be a victim of the CERN lawyer?

Is my hip hurting now to tell me NOT to give in and up?

Do I need to wait until CERN will want to make use of my software?

Dear Universe, please give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and the wisdom to know the difference.

But the left hip and knee are STILL not like the right one!!!

It’s as if first the bones got adjusted, then the muscles and now the ligaments and tendons. Each with different kinds of pains in different places and ‘bothersomeness’…

And at the same time, the mind gets changed. For you cannot but change your thinking when you keep having to decide whether to push or not to push beyond your ability to endure stress and strain in ‘strange’ ways and places…

You got to go through it yourself to appreciate it. But it does take persistence, perseverance and a deep commitment to enjoying challenges. Go for it! It’s worth it!!!

Today I came out with my hip aching as if the accident was a few months ago. The miracles of re-aligning and “re-twisting” that joint into place, tendons, ligaments, muscles and all, will not cease to amaze me. It may not happen 100% by the time I die, but I sure will keep trying!!!

For neither doctors nor lawyers will EVER know how I feel and have been feeling. Nor will they “volunteer” to pay for damages or compensation. Their mindsets won’t allow it: male, mean, non-caring, non-healing, analytical rather than conceptual, restrictive rather than constructive, competitive rather than cooperative, and so it goes along the male / female divide.

Men need to connect their heads with their hearts, as they grow older, but who succeeds?

Women need to connect their hearts with their head, but how many men can stand smart women??? Either intelligent or pretty, but not both. That’s what I discovered at the time of advising physicists who became nobel prize winners later.

But I know what I know, and I trust that the Universe knows, too. Everything will come right, in its time and its logic:

• the Universe did NOT let me find CERN as an employer, only to forget about it, once I had made my fundamental discoveries and deep insights
• it does NOT want me to suffer for the sake of suffering; I am gaining insights and my self-knowledge is growing
• and I am gaining strength and flexibility, as well as purposefulness and pointedness as I practise the Standing Bow…

Watch this space… i.e. where I share my passion for Bikram Yoga as the best physiotherapy there is. I wish all orthopaedic doctors did it once a week!

More recently, I seem to think about things that come to the surface from the ‘bottom of my mind’ thanks to the stressful ‘asanas’, i.e. body postures.

Today my grievances with CERN bubbled up. For I have to face that lawyer who claims that “it is now not possible to claim damages from either CERN or AUSTRIA”, the then health insurance company”.

Tough, eh: first the doctor(s), then the lawyer(s) who are giving me a hard time – as if they were responsible for the money that should have been paid to me…

My current doctor said it was a “swindle” when the then doctor said I would not suffer in old age from the accident. At the time, he was speculating. He could be neither right or wrong.

Now, I am PROVING that he was wrong. Americans have invented “Legal Abuse Syndrome” as a special kind of “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder“, which counts as a kind of disability!

But for now I can only think about some headlines:

• CERN refuses basic human rights to former employee…
• CERN doctors and lawyers make their own rules and laws…
• CERN where the web was born has to suffer from bad web publicity…

I have two grievances and have sent them to the European Committee for Petitions:

1. doctors claimed to know that I would NOT suffer from my injuries in ‘old age’
2. lawyers claimed I should have complained within 10 years of leaving CERN, my then employer who had sent me to Lawrence Radiation Lab in Berkeley on an exchange visit of two months.

On October 28th 2010, I therefore sent an email to the Legal Service at CERN, asking whether I deal with them or their health insurance company.

At my last Yoga session (I travel to Berlin every Wednesday for this) these thoughts pre-occupied me:

• I have no idea how long the readjustment of my left hip and knee will last – even after nearly 6 years of Yoga – while I continue to watch progress
• I have had to look after my back, neck, hip and knee ever since the accident in January 1973
• How would my life have unfolded, if doctors had been less arrogant and pro-me rather than pro-insurance?
• Would a man with a family have been treated in the same way as I as a then single woman?

Well, I would not have suffered less physically. But having an invalidity pension from CERN or their then insurance company AUSTRIA would have made a huge difference, compared with having to convince the National Health Service in London of the fact that I couldn’t stand without pain…

Still, we’re here to let our soul evolve. And thus it has learned to be tough and fight, as my body learns to be strong and flexible… But my flexibility is still rather poor… And my strength? Well, I must be grateful for all there is and everything I experience: from new sensitivities along the back of my waist and hips down the left leg, to a left knee that is clearly responding to my regular appeals to become like the other…

The hip is still realigning in the joint and the knee feels brittle and cracky. I also feel as if the outside layers of my hands, arms and shoulders are now being transformed.

And thus I keep trying! In London I even did a double session the other day – only because the first one wasn’t very hot, I guess. Still, another nice little challenge mastered.

I know that the day I won’t be able to do Bikram is the first day of giving up living and beginning to die instead…

For to get the timing right, is the real difficulty. Saba has been teaching most of the Wednesday classes that I attend in Berlin and it has been a pleasure of a special kind to have more time for watching my thoughts and associations during Bikram postures.

I wish all her classes were silent on Wednesdays at lunch time! I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, while sighing over the new kinds of pain that my kind of progress is produing: left foot, left knee, between the shoulder blades…

But much of your pain is self-chosen, wrote Kahlil Gibran ages ago…

The studio is very nice due to its parquet floor, and it is not as hot as the one in London North. So I don’t have to rest as often which is a good feeling.

Other little German differences are notable, but all in all, I’m sooo glad that the Bikram word has crossed the language barrier and that there are enough students for the class that fits my train timetable.

Onward and upward – in knee, hip and shoulders above all, these days.

Well, I did have that fantasy of getting my body back into the shape of the 29-year-old who used to ski, play tennis, do acrobatics on horses and climb the Saleve mountain near Geneva.

But what is my progress? Let me count:

1. I am stronger, fitter and distinctly more connected with the various limbs of my body
2. Pain is effectively gone. Back pain completely. Every back bend is a miracle! However, as the hip joint keeps re-setting itself, I do experience the odd moments of discomfort reminding me of the agonies I’ve experienced.
3. My shoulders are freeer than ever, while my legs are stronger than ever. Thus I walk so much better, and I can even run again! I’ve only tried up to the traffic lights, but still!
4. Going down stairs is an ongoing test for progress, but all in all, I feel terrific when I’m out of that studio.
5. Inside, I notice the shortcomings of knee and hip differently, depending on the posture. But progress keeps happening, which is why I continue: with love, zest, joy, commitment, perseverance and utter amazement and gratitude.