Adding Grace to Injury

Opportunities to learn and grow come in all forms. This past month, mine came in the painful form of physical injury due to an abnormal lump in my left knee which became inflamed and even had me in a wheelchair for a couple days! Thankfully there is no damage to my tendons or ligaments and, for my own peace of mind, though it was aggravated in a yoga class, it is not a "yoga injury". I simply knelt on it. Crazy, right?

There are many lenses through which to view injury, many things to ponder. I'll share with you some of the things that have been running through my mind as I deal with mine. This is going to be a long one, but well worth the introspection.

First, I'd like to emphasize the importance of learning from all situations, even and perhaps especially from the unfortunate ones. When you encounter an undesirable event, you can let it take you down or you can let it inform you. Oftentimes people are more inclined to be grateful for the positive things in their lives, thankful for the blessings that the Universe bestows, but end up overlooking the gifts that are available in the midst of the hard situations. They turn to prayer to overcome struggle, sometimes even taking on the approach of "rising above" hardship without reflection or gratitude for what the struggle is offering them. Of course, prayer and a positive attitude are important, I would say vital, to healing and moving past problems. I seek to integrate that with gratitude for the struggle itself. 

GRATITUDE FOR THE EXPERIENCE OF INJURY

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I recognize and am grateful for my strength and balance. When you're injured, it's easy to focus on how limited you are, especially when it renders you immobile. For me, having to operate mostly on one leg, I was so, so grateful for the strength and balance I had in that one leg that allowed me to compensate temporarily. I have my yoga practice to thank for that.

I am grateful for the experience of being incapable. Have you ever been physically incapable? I not only had to come to terms with this for a short time, but I also had to accept assistance from others. For someone like me, very independent, this took some adjustment. For two days, I was also in a wheelchair, which gave me immense appreciation for the struggles of the disabled who navigate the world from a completely different vantage point.

To be grateful for my strength and balance as well as the experience of being incapable, I must also express gratitude for my overall health. I've been very fortunate throughout my life in not having dealt with many personal illnesses (knock on wood). I have always been thankful and aware of this, but I recognize the value more as I deal with acute pain.

This experience allows me to relate to knee pain and limitations. As a yoga instructor, many of my students have knee pain or use yoga to rehabilitate after knee surgery. I would not have wished for my injury, but while I'm going through it, I can start to understand first-hand what it can be like for my students so that I can better relate to their pain. I have also been able to get a tiny glimpse into the pain of two of the most important people in my life, my fiancé and my grandmother, who have both undergone multiple knee surgeries. This deepens my compassion for them.

This is a great exercise in adjusting expectations. We had a guest coming to visit from Bosnia who I met for the first time the day after I injured myself. In preparing for her 3-week visit, I planned a variety of activities for us—doing yoga, going hiking, exploring San Francisco. The whole landscape of her visit changed in an instant. I could barely walk for nearly two weeks and much of my time was spent in pain and icing/elevating my leg. The injury became somewhat of a focus for the majority of her time here. I couldn't even be the hostess to her that I'd intended to be. She was so easy-going about having to alter her own expectations, extremely gracious and very caring towards my situation. Ultimately, we had a great time just hanging out and getting to know each other.

I recognize that I am in a different state of mind than that of past injuries. I've only had three occurrences that I would consider injuries. When I broke my wrist snowboarding, a back injury, and now a knee injury.

When I broke my wrist, it was very tangible thing. My focus was on healing the broken bone. I was doing a lot of yoga and practiced almost daily with my cast on. I increased my calcium and Vitamin C intake. I was optimistic and extremely determined to heal as quickly and efficiently as possible. The bone healed a week earlier than the doctor predicted.

The back injury was much murkier. I don't have a clear incident to explain it; it could have been too much home practice, experimenting with deep backbends without warming up properly and pushing the limits of my knowledge and flexibility, it could have been a photo shoot where I did several backbends only on one side, it could have been my Vinyasa teacher training when I came out of a handstand one leg at a time, felt a shooting pain and could hardly get out of bed the next morning. My guess is it was all of the above. At the time I was also reverberating emotionally from a painful breakup. I was not focused on healing so much as "putting the pain behind me". Was it any coincidence I created a back injury for myself? The limitations from this injury lasted several years. I identified with it. It became an exemption from depth, physically and emotionally.

The knee injury occurs at a time when I am wide open to learning and gleaning all that I can from my own situations in order to share my experience. I can accept this. I can experience this. I can learn from this. And I can heal from this.

INTENTIONS FOR RECOVERING FROM INJURY

I choose to avoid becoming identified with this injury. As cited above, I have first-hand experience in strongly identifying with being injured. The back injury became a kind of persona or some badge of experience. It was "my back injury". I took ownership of it (which is different than taking responsibility for it). While I'm currently tending to "my" knee injury, I will be happy to shed ownership once my body has healed.

“Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”

— Marcus Aurelius

This is an important thing to consider for yourself and can pertain to many areas of life. How many "injuries" do we carry around needlessly? For physical injuries, oftentimes when the body heals, there is still some echo of it that remains. We favor a certain side or attach ourselves to our former limitations. What would happen if we could recognize the imbalance, consciously release the "old injury", and correct our course? How might we compensate for imbalances or "injuries" in other areas of life, and how can we move towards correcting them?

I'm looking forward to renewing a more focused attention to my yoga practice and different areas of my body. I've been practicing yoga for more than 15 years, and I'll admit, I've gone through phases where my routine practice has become, well, routine. Part of why I liked participating in yoga competitions was the renewed sense of focus and attention that returned to my practice when I had a "goal". Recovering from an injury offers the same opportunity. My presence and attunement to my body's needs will be heightened.

I am determined to recover well. In repairing my knee, my intention is to address my entire body holistically. Everything in the body is connected, so every area will need to be considered as I aim to return full mobility to my knee. This involves hip-opening, stretching my groin and hamstrings, targeting tightness in my IT bands, continuing to keep my spine strong and flexible, improving my core strength, keeping my shoulders flexible, etc. This also includes making sure my diet is aligned with healing my body from the inside out, tending to my gut health, including things in my diet that are beneficial for joint health, etc.

These are some of things I've been contemplating while nurturing myself through this. Right now, I'm filtering my understanding through the lens of physical injury, but perhaps you can translate some of this to other areas of your life.

Please feel free to email me insights from your own experience or with questions! ♡

It's All About LOVE

“In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be...
This is the inter-related structure of reality.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

So much has happened over the past month—in our country, as well as in my own life. Perhaps you've experienced the same? Rounding the corner into the New Year (or two if you count the Lunar New Year) tends to be a time of transition, and this being a year where our country has undergone a "transfer of power", it can be a time of uncertainty, discomfort, hope, or perhaps a gazing out towards the unknown possibilities for helping one another to shape a common future.

Our futures can only be common—we are all bound to each other. We must coexist. We are coexistential. The fact that we exist together takes precedence over our individual egoic self-interest. Somehow we must take care of each other.

It was tempting to make this month's topic about romantic love, as we have Valentine's Day coming up, and while I typically reserve talking in political terms on this platform, I cannot ignore the fact that vast numbers of people all around the world are feeling unsettled by our new administration. The Women's March this past month was an important indicator of that, and a show of solidarity for championing the values that both women and men hold dear, namely basic human rights, the rights that are inherent to simply being human.

I'm not trying to sound naïve or utopian here, but the sense that I get is that it's ALL about LOVE. The basis for every argument, on the right and the left and in between. Deep down, it's love that compels people to act as protectionists, even when fear is the driving emotion. Women rise up by the millions in the spirit of love to preserve each others' dignity and the rights to their own bodies. On the flip side, others oppose the right to choose because they love and value life in all forms. Mind you these debates span every aspect of daily life and there is oftentimes staggering hypocrisy and contradiction on both sides. This is nothing new. There has been division amongst people since the beginning of time. And the differing of viewpoints is a beautiful thing... right up until it causes us to hurt one another.

The unifying quality that all human beings share is LOVE. To me, this is the source of our essence, which goes beyond the mere fact that we exist, and we can use this commonality to identify with each other's struggles. The more we feed into an "us against them" mentality, the further we drift from that innate essence of love and the more we allow hate to seep in. This does not mean sit back and do nothing. By all means voice your viewpoint as a conversation. Love encompasses reason and I appreciate those that have been standing for something rather than against something. If we can do less opposition and more observation and harness our own instincts for compassion, we can press on together in a meaningful way. ♡