Spirituality my asana

Ok. By this time I was hoping to be able to speak with you about my great spiritual and physical progression through Asana.

I have to say that there is a bit of a disaster happening with my Assana here in New Zealand, that has halted my ability to think any thoughts deeper than my butt.

To be honest, so far my entire trip feels like it has been about my bum; I don't think it has ever been under this much scrutiny and pain in my life before. In fact most of my life has been spent trying NOT to think very much about my bum. Perhaps this is -in fact- some kind of deep inner bum karma that I am now working out. 

Before I left Canada, I wrote a very clear letter to Still Point Yoga, explaining that I am an epileptic, and am on a very strict diet for that. I said that it was essential for me to be able to eat meat, or I wouldn't be able to come, and I hoped that was all right. I got a reply saying that it was normally a veggie kitchen, but they would make an exception for me.

The day I arrived, I was told -without explanation- that it was in fact going to be a vegetarian kitchen. Now, it is important to explain that I have not eaten a whole apple or orange, or any other piece of fruit in it's entirety for OVER A YEAR. I have not eaten rice, or bread, or lentils, or beans, or really anything else that vegetarians live on. Needless to say, my digestion packed it in, and my bowls slowed to an LA traffic jam crawl within the first week. 

That coupled with LITERALLY HOURS spent thinking about my mulah bandha ( the bum-bandha in laymans terms), hours sitting on the floor, trying to squeeze and lift my anus, caused the kind of hemorrhoidal descent the likes of which I have not experienced since giving birth. And yes, i have spent many hours trying to view this whole experience as a kind of birth-giving to myself, but I have to tell you, after a week of a humiliating kind of agony, that it is literally impossible to have god-like thoughts when you feel like a pretty boy after his first week in jail.

Now, I really never thought that in my lifetime I would post a blog about my hemorrhoids, except that after a week of basically seeing every pharmacist in the Nelson NZ area, I feel I can no longer really be embarassed (ha) by anything.

You see, first of all they don't have anything that I recognize to treat this affliction in NZ. In Canada, I could just slip silently into any London drugs, grab a tube of Preparation H, hide it under a magazine, and slip out. Here, there are (of course) a bunch of brands i have never heard of, so after I had gone completely pink just trying to ask a saleswoman where " that kind" of medication was kept, I grabbed the first box i could find, and tried to slip off to the sales counter with a magazine. The woman rang in the magazine, I had my bag open and ready to snatch the offending medication to be hidden in the darkest part of my purse, when a small ALARM went off at the till. 

AN ALARM.

There was already a small line of people behind me, and the cashier said," oh, just a second I have to go and ask the pharmacist about this." waving it around like it was a small flag. 

"What?" I hissed, "why? I mean, it was over the counter?" The alarm was still sounding audibly in the background.

"Well, we are not allowed to sell this to you without talking to the pharmacist"

All the people in the line were now looking at me, and looking at my "SHE HAS HEMORRHOIDS" medication that the cashier was still holding up, as if I didn't know

 what it was.

By now, bright red, i head to the back counter, which also has a line of people, where the pharmacist comes out to ask me, in a loud voice like she is talking to someone semi retarded (the poor Canadian girl with hemorrhoids) if i was having trouble and straining, and what were the consistency of my bowel movements. Where they the inside or outside kind, and what did they feel like?

Apparently in New Zealand, hemorrhoids are a going concern. Pharmacists here seem to love to ask you questions all about your bowels, loudly, and especially if there are cute men nearby. I can now say unequivocally that most of NZ's hemorrhoid ointments don't work, and stay far far away from any natural products which just seems to make them bigger.

I have now spent the equivalent of one week's car-rental  on medication to put inside my bumb, which feels a little like it has a small pharmacy stuck in it backwards, to no avail. Today, I marched without shame into the nearest pharmacy, approached the young handsome pharmacist at the counter and said,

"Hi. I have really bloody awful hemorrhoids. My bowels haven't been moving well for the past week because of a diet change, but I think that if I up my greens, and water that I pretty much have that sorted. I need the strongest suppositories that you have to go with my lubricating cream, because they are mostly inside ones. I have two more weeks to go on this intense yoga retreat, and I swear I am going to go ballistic if I have to do one more down-dog with my ass feeling like this.What do have?"

At which the pharmacist went bright red, and took me straight to what I can only describe as relief in the form of a small zeplin-shaped suppository.

Hallelujah and Praise God.