Trip 5 w/ mimosa tea and rue. My only real 'goal' was to relax, avoid fear, and let everything else go -- maybe actually enjoy it this time!
I drank the rue tea as usual, about 30 minutes before the mimosa. Little to no effect. I tried to lower the body load by having some oatmeal before the trip. Prior to the oats I had nothing for ~14 hours. Around an hour into the trip, I knew either the rue was too low a dose (most likely) or the mimosa boil was much weaker than I wanted. I found myself in deep meditative state, though the body load was intense. I wasn't nauseated but very heavy and my back/neck/arms/hands really were aching.
All that pain is my normal life. I have had very high constant pain for two decades or more. High stress, bad back, nerve damage, no idea. I've tried all the doctor route crap and gave up years ago. All I know is that pain is something I don't escape, I can only try to ignore it to the best of my ability. I wasn't doing a very good job during this trip. It stacked on the body load and I felt horrible.
I thought to my wife's recent trip and she was purging over and over through most of it. Body load was something she is lucky enough to have very little of in life. My thought was that the purging for her was due to how new/non-normal the heavy load feeling of the tea was to her. For me stacking a little nausea on top of every day pain was only a little more.
In that train of thought I went deep into myself and had a thought that flipped.
"My body has failed me for most of my life"
.... no sooner than I had that thought it flipped inside out and I knew all these years I've had it backwards.
"I failed my body for most of my life"
That was the the entire purpose of this trip -- that little gem of truth. I live a life of stagnation, little to no exercise, sit at a computer far too many hours a day and pain is my only constant companion.
After that realization I started stretching and told myself to get up off the floor. I stretched a few minutes on the floor, stood up and started gently twisting at my waist, letting my arms flop back and fourth. My dizzy head, the pain, and body load all stacked and boom here was the purge -- two hours into the trip. I felt like a new man after it.
I did a little more stretching and had my wife drive me to the park to walk. We walked for a few miles very slowly around the park. I stopped to stretch more along the way and really felt like I soaked in being outside. For small periods during that walk I remembered what it was to not be in pain.
Time to retake my life back from stagnation and pain. As much as it has been easy to say the stagnation is a result of the pain -- who wants to work out and be active when in pain? No.... the pain results the stagnation of mind turned to stagnation of body. My mind has failed my body. All life's stress, stacked on my own ego issues made a black ball of cognitive dissonance. That black ball I suddenly have no doubt is the true cause of my pain. Now the hard part.... time to sort out all that dissonance in my head. Time to learn to live happily now instead of upstream in what used to be or downstream in what will come later.