SGRV6.5: Switchgrass Review 2023 Volume 6 - Radical Body Love

Switchgrass Review • Vol. 6 33
Lindsay-Rose Dykema
Diastolic Hypertension
For me, one of the hardest parts of Roe v. Wade’s downfall was reading that
52% of female-bodied respondents to a poll indicated they were pleased with
the SCOTUS decision. Zenju Earthlyn Manuel’s book The Way of Tenderness
would later remind me that one of the most prominent symptoms of
systemic oppression is neglected intuition, but at the time I lacked capacity
for this brand of empathy. I remember thinking: What is WRONG with
you people? Brainwashed? Blind? Put on your white bonnets and bare your
barely-viable proud boy babies!
Not long after that, my primary care provider started me on anti-hypertensive
medication.
Two medication trials later, my systolic blood pressure responded beautifully,
but my diastolic remained somewhat stubbornly elevated. It is as if my arteries,
ignoring pharmacodynamics and acting solely on their own intuition,
never let their guard down. They keep gripping just a little, clamping my
blood like they hate letting go. (My partner told me that when I climax, my
vagina clamps down on him starts leaking and squeezing him clenching him
like it hates letting go. This body just knows.) So, in my meditation space, I
lean into learning to let go. While hypertension looms as the so-called “silent
killer,” meditation remains as my silent treatment.
One of my favorite texts on meditation is Lama Rod Owens, a queer Black
Buddhist monk and activist who describes a series of techniques he has
termed “the seven homecomings” in his book Love and Rage: A Path to
Liberation through Anger. I’m not sure whether this was his intent, but it is
in practicing Lama Rod’s meditations that I have crafted an inner representation
of what I call “God,” one I can draw upon at any time. The homecoming
practices offer layers of wisdom and warmth that progress as follows: guides
and teachers; meaningful texts; community; ancestors; nature and the earth;
silence; and, finally, the self. Meditation is how I seek out wisdom and follow
where it leads me, and (spoiler alert) it will always lead us home, to our own
selves.
In order for meditation to lead us “home,” we broaden our perspective as
widely as the Milky Way galaxy both now and a long time ago, and feel our