An Unbalanced Yogi struggles with time off for recovery.
About a week ago I was playing around at gym with a couple of the trainers, showing off my newly found arm strength and propping myself into arm balances that I had (totally) nailed. But as any good parent will tell you, it's all fun and games until someone gets hurt.
While gracefully extending my left leg back into Flying Squirrel... looking pretty badass if I do say so myself... I felt a twinge across the front of my hip and made a swift and less graceful exit back home to lick my wounds of self-pity.
Deciding to give myself a few days of genuine recovery, I stayed off my mat and out of my head, busying myself with work and binge watching Don't Trust The B**** In Apartment 23. Fast forward to my Saturday morning two hour intensive practice and I was becoming the least wonderful version of myself as my body spiraled into pain twitches and a puddle of sweat.
Eventually, and against strict cries of blue murder from my bank account, I booked to see my physio, who lovingly told me that I had sprained basically everything on the front of my left hip, which had all contracted around the joint, pulling it out of alignment. Oh and that further rest would be required, so... no yoga.
Uhhhhh.... what?
Cue shivers of confusion, totally misaligning my chakras. No... yoga? Nooo... yoga? No... Yoooogaaaa? Mmm, I just couldn't get a feel for the words in my mouth.
My physio went on to say that she didn't often see yoga related injuries but one common problem were damaged hip flexors because "if you're not careful yoga will eat your hips up."
It occurred to me then, that since beginning of my yoga practice - initially as a way to fill my time while I was out of running due to my latest injury - I had healed my body through systematic movement. Gone were the days of weak, pained knees, excruciating shin splints and constricted breathing that often bruised my diaphragm and tightened my hips.
Yet, for all that yoga had given me, one important concept had never crossed my mind... Yoga is more than open hips.
Being a runner, I entered yoga with tight everything. From hamstrings to hips, to spine and shoulders, everything moved with a restricted range of motion. My intention became to open my body and release my trapped flexibility, improve my alignment and quieten my erratic breathing. This focus quickly became fueled by my deep desire to pretzel into the beautiful poses I saw those around me doing. Full Splits with torso folded over? No problem for the blonde beauty to my right. Forward Fold with head against shins, easy peasy for the dude with abs of steel over there. Full Wheel with leg extension, sure why not unassuming woman in the corner.
So began my quest to banish my tight hips that prevented me from getting into some of the most "simple-looking" poses I could find on Pinterest, and slowly but surely flexibility began to creep in. What I apparently didn't prepare for, was the sudden ability to over-extend my hip flexor because while I had been willing it into length and folds, I hadn't been trying to strengthen it.
Now I sit, uncomfortably, with a sprained hip, a Netflix headache, and the inability to practice anything that takes my left leg over a 45 degree angle. Rest. UUGHH.
My new problem, okay, okay, my new injury but continuation of an age old problem - dealing with time off for recovery - is painfully sitting front and center of mind, tugging on my patience and turning me into the B**** in Apartment 5.
You would think that as someone plagued by injury, sheer lack of body awareness and clumsiness to boot, I'd have this recovery thing down. And you'd be right, if we were talking about running. But we aren't. And now my running recovery tool, has become my reason for injury.
My yoga teacher speaks of the mind as a funnel. Weird yes, but hear me out.
Our brains are designed to take in all the information around us, sift through it, process it and tuck it into it's place, perfectly organised and ticked off the list. However, when we experience trauma, stress or hardship, our funnel becomes narrower and information begins to overflow the rim. Now our initial thought may be that the information is lost to us and our brains will carry on as normal with the information that made it through and that would be partially correct. Our brains continue to do their jobs, processing, sorting and filing as a steady stream flows through our funnel. The only problem is that the information that didn't make it through the first time, still only has one job... To get itself heard and processed.
Okay, so what exactly am I talking about?
Have you ever experienced the same circumstance multiple times and every time you dealt with it in the same way, it would pop up again somewhere down the line? Yeah so that's me and my injuries. I attract bodily injury to myself. Just to clarify, I don't do this on purpose, it's a massive waste of emotional energy, finances and time. BUT. Some very important piece of information got lost the first time around and has yet to find its way in. This means that until I hear, process and file this very important piece of missing information, I'm going to continuously deal with injuries.
The most infuriating things people will tell me when I'm hurt include: "You need to learn to listen to your body", "You've been given the opportunity to learn patience", "Injury teaches us humility".
Clearly I'm missing these key points in my personality. Or at the very least, something very close to them.
At the beginning of this year, I pulled a massive boulder loose on the mountain which rolled over my foot, landing me in Trauma with a cast and crutches. Barely healed, I've received injury number two within a few months of each other. Something is clearly trying to talk to me.
I'm the first one to scream that recovery SUCKS. It's down time from something I love. It hurts. It turns me into an emotional shell of my former self and my poor partner approaches me with caution at all times. I'm totally unbalanced and seriously in need of an ice-cream hug.
However. Maybe it's time to start acknowledging what recovery can give me. I've hardly had any time at home to just sit and be. Now I have tons of time while I heal. I love to cook, I'm around to do it and practice another skill. I can read. I can sing along (poorly) to my music while no one is around. I can spend time with a neglected partner who has had too many solo evening couch sessions, eating warmed up freezer prepped meals.
I have time to ask friends how they're doing. I can answer them fully when they return the question. I can teach without feeling guilty about having not made time for my own practice.
Recovery has always felt like a punishment. A prison of my own making. With walls so close together that the only relief would be to lie in fetal position and cry. Perhaps this time around I can move my unbalanced self towards the light and use it as the opportunity of time that it is. As well as process my clear mental imbalances <rolls eyes>.
Be kind. Be curious. Be you.
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Tags: #yoga #injury #recovery #anunbalancedyogi #hips #flexibility #strength #physio #yogateacher #armbalanceaddict #yogafail #yogablog