Equanimity. Today this word circles my mind. I lie in my bed and continuously repeat the word. Equanimity. Equanimity. Equanimity. The more I say it, the more I feel it. During meditation I get so into the fact that the pains in my legs are impermanent and that I don’t get angry, frustrated or even feel the need to move them at all. After a while I am just about to change my position but just before I do I ask myself ‘Why? Why do I feel like I need to move them? Do I feel pain?’ But I don’t really feel pain. Not anymore. ‘Is it that I feel uncomfortable?’ But again I realise that it’s not the case. It’s quite comfortable now actually. Then why is it that I wish to move? And so I end up staying put.

Just before lunch time, the monsoon rain pours down and I get a strange excitement and urge to watch this peacefully aggressive rain fall down onto the surrounding areas. Listen to it. Feel it. Smell it. With nothing else on my mind that this, I arise from my meditation cushion completely ignorant to my ‘painful and numb’ legs, as I genuinely observed, acknowledged and then mentally moved on. I lift myself onto my right foot and then naturally shift all my weight onto my left which seems to instantly melt into the ground causing me to collapse back onto my right foot which saved me from stumbling and causing an even bigger scene in front of all the other silent, deep in meditation students. It was such a classically Luana moment. I tried my hardest at this point to ‘merge it out’ and so I continued limping like this to the door until I was able to stop to un-numb my leg outside whilst observing the rain. Lovely.

I manage to spent the whole day sitting with my legs quite nicely without much bother and was very happy and impressed with myself for being able to do so. I felt so much pride and achievement in not being able to feel the pain as much and being able to simply acknowledge it rather than constantly mentally moaning about it. I have also learnt to try not have any feelings or preferences towards each sensation i.e. like or dislike. I must not allow myself to dislike any pain, itching or other uncomfortable sensations and feel the need to react to them by fighting or trying to abort them,. Likewise I mustn’t allow myself to feel a liking towards any pleasant sensations like a cool breeze on my warm sweating body or a tingling feeling. This made it easier to associate them solely as sensations rather than anything which is emotionally connected to me.

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