The Big Puzzle

Living with a chronic health condition

Before being officially diagnosed with MS, I had a dream. In my dream I had to go inside a house through a basement. I entered the basement, and a huge female walrus wobbled slowly towards me. She didn't want to scare me. She was kind of friendly, with long eyelashes. But I was impressed. She was so big, maybe 4 meters high a a few tons heavy!

Then she stopped in front of me, looked at me and gave me a riddle to solve. I knew that if I solved the riddle, she would move to the side and I could go on my journey. I woke up and I couldn’t remember the riddle.

But I knew that this dream was important. It took me a while to get it. But it became clearer once I was officially diagnosed with MS. The way I interpreted it is as follows. The walrus represented MS because if I had to choose an animal to represent MS, it would be a walrus: it's big. There's no clear shape. It moves slowly. It's not deadly but it's impressive and scary.

Having this Walrus in my life was an invitation to solve a riddle. I believe I had to look at my life to solve this riddle. How could improve the way I lived? Where was I going wrong? How could I bring balance so the Walrus would move away?

This dream was so positive. This is why I decided to call my website Taming the Walrus even though I know it is much more unlikely for someone searching for Yoga for MS to find me on Google at random than if I had chosen a more generic name. So I hope word of mouth and post sharing will make up for it… ;-)

What is ‘your’ life puzzle?

I believe that we all have our own walrus, something we need to figure out to move forward. It could be one huge walrus or little ones… Some say life would be boring without its challenges. I’m not sure about that, but I like to believe that these challenges are opportunities to grow and adapt.

This week, I posted a message on Facebook about seeing oneself as dis-abled or not. A friend wrote a very nice comment saying that ‘Darwin is often misquoted when it's said that only the fittest survive. The full quote says "the fittest and those most adaptable to change." This friend went on to say that I’m an example of being adaptable. I love this idea. I am not disabled, I am adapt-able.

And I should thank my walrus for this. She pushed me to adapt!

Competition time!

I’d love to hear about you and your life journey. And as my friends know, I love to name everything. I even name my MS symptoms. I might one day write about George, the MS hug and all the others ;-)

Anyway, whether you have MS or not, you have to face challenges of one sort or the other. How would you call your life journey or your challenges?

You can share here or send me an email to tamingthewalrus@gmail.com. As a thank you, I’d love to invite you to one of my live classes, and if you’re already attending my classes, we’ll figure out a little thank you ;-)

Finally I hope this applies to your puzzle too:

"The solution often turns out more beautiful than the puzzle." - Richard Dawkins.

Have a beautiful week.

See you on the mat