vegetative trajectory

One by one they have been move to my personal "should not do list" - otherwise healthy, sustaining activities that would benefit anyone within the normal bounds range of person to person variation.  And the last item that has moved onto the list has put me on a decidedly depressive vegetative track.  Exercise in a way was my first pillar of self-maintenance.  It only went so far in terms of what my needs really were, but in my 20's it went just far enough to keep me from completely sinking.  And now, becuase of my recent hip fracture, I need to be relatively immoblile in order to heal.

The recent red-listing of exercise follows on the heels of meditation and yoga, my most profound and puzzling red-listing events.  It was almost 10 years ago that my intensive zen meditation regime tipped me over into the hell of chronic insomnia: my sincere and enthusiastic efforts to practice as a way of coping with our overstimulated culture and society and my particular sensitivities backfiring into a vitality-depleting black hole of sleep deprivation and death-warmed-over social isolation (I've had more than one alternative health care practitioner suggest that I stop meditating altogether, which I can't quite seem to do).  And the exacerbating effects of ashtanga yoga moved that activity onto the list as well.

So now not being able to exercise on top of it all has increased my feelings of embitteredness and futulity - probably only temporarily - the hip will heal, I'll be back on the trail, running, in the weightroom within 6-7 weeks or so, but it feels like the addition of a straw to the load that is teetering on being unbearably heavy.  I feel like shouting out to the world that conventional wisdom has it all wrong, that one should at all costs be wary of and avoid meditation and yoga, and instead seek solace in drugs and alcohol.  Indeed, my only solace these past few days is that my vicodin prescription has enabled 4 straight nights of 8 hours of sleep, allowing me to access a long-forgotten memory: the feelings of what its like to not be nearly incapacitated by sleep deprivation and not be at the end of one's wits.  But my body already habituates, and vicodin sleep is already becoming more difficult to attain.

I need activities that can function as inclusive practices that allow me to socialize with others.  Now that meditation and yoga, when I practice them, result in all sorts of strange involuntary physical sensations, movements, and vocalizations when I truly relax and settle mind and body in the the practices, it compels me to relegate my practices to the privacy of my own home, depriving me of the vehicles for social inteaction that I so desperately need.

What does one do when there is no apparent way out and the years on one's life clock tick inexorably onward towads eventual cessation?