Namasté my dear friends!
Happy new year! It’s been a while!, Well, I have some great lessons I have integrated in the last 4 weeks and I’d humbly like to share them with you my little approach to this experience. I had a knee injury –for the 4th time-. while doing my morning practice before Christmas -some yoga teachers may say “welcome to the club darling”-. This was at 7 am in the morning, my dog was with me but my husband was out of town. Since then, I have been taking my time to heal and recover from it.
“Here is where the real yoga begins”, I though.
I kind of recognize the “melodrama” my ego tries to set up when I injure: shame, impatience, judgment, anger and fear. Thanks to the sequence’s breathing that day, my mind got immediately focused enough to just be in the present moment and put the ego in “OFF mode” –sadly this happened after the injury and not before.
My only mission was to trust the Universe and to “continue practicing yoga off the mat” –out there in the real world with a meditative attitude- in order to start my recovery process on that pretty moment. “So, now is the moment in which I have to stop everything in life AGAIN”, I said to myself. Remember I have gone through this before. So, I reached the ER and went back home at 4pm. I was able to walk with a knee pad on my left leg and 2 canes.
I prefer things to be simple and realistic when I injure myself
I knew there was an important lesson to be learnt, but I put that on the side for a little while and kept a strong communication with my body so we could reach together an optimal state to heal properly, with no fear in between.
I believe that going through a moment of injury is a very personal thing. I always try to keep it to myself and explain what happened in the simplest way until I see the results of my rehabilitation process. I prefer to do an introversive work –not isolating- like writing about my experience, rest, read, sleep, meditate and be completely disconnected for a few days at least until the inflammation goes down. If my ego comes up with negative ideas, I tell him with a serious voice: “All what you are saying is NOT true; in this pretty moment I am here and now and nothing of what you are saying is happening”. This is a very useful tool.
Re-structuring how my mind can perceive reality.
Luckily, it was Christmas -I looove Christmas!- and all my friends and family where calling and writing which made me feel I was not alone, but when asked how I was doing my answer was: “I am feeling great!” Not trying to hide anything, but just imagine how conscious I was about all that was happening to me in that pretty moment; I don’t find a greater moment in life than a moment of full consciousness.
In order to make my ego perceive reality in a different way I decided to spend my holidays enjoying life by giving all the love possible to everyone -and not painful complaints-: having conscious interactions with family members, allowing myself to enjoy the view through the window –my in-laws have a house in front of the beach here in France-, making Christmas cookies for our guests, trying to eat healthy -I did not eat all the cookies!-, resting, reading and meditating.
Indeed, I decided not to “TALK” to everyone about my knee. You have to be very careful on how you communicate others about your injury. Conscious communication helps to heal as you talk about yourself. I find this very important because not everybody understands that an injury could be a blessing lesson when you are on the mat. I have been working on this for a long time, and my experience is that when you talk elevated about your injury you are actually healing it. I confess, this time I have enjoyed so much being injured. Hey!, this was not my state of mind that morning before getting injured, I automatically adopted this attitude 1 second after I found myself with my knee blocked on the floor.
Discipline off the mat is a fun fact for a wise recovery
For the first time in my life I gave myself permission to use anti-inflammatory drugs but I detoxified a few days later with a green fast. At the same time I supported my treatment with ice, essential oils for massage and drain, Bach Flower therapy for emotions and homeopathy for pain and inflammation as well.
This week a month had passed and I have been very disciplined with my recovery: drinking green smoothies, water and herbal infusions for liver and kidneys, raw food 90% of the time, meditation in bed –since I was not allowed to do crossed leg on the floor-, practicing some healing techniques, focusing always in the here and now, not thinking whether I was going to continue practicing or teaching soon-, practicing isometrics as the therapist has suggested, etc. After 2 weeks or so, my inner lesson started to become clear: 1 month before my workshop on “Stillness in movement”, I had to humbly learn something else by being completely immobilized: the importance of elevating your soul to move with grace in order to develop self-love.
Twenty days after, my therapist told me stop using the canes and the kneepad to start walking again. I said: “WHAAAT???”, I was afraid to have pain, of tearing the meniscus again, but for him I was progressing very fast and he believed I could do it. So, I threw myself to the streets of Toulouse and started walking 4 steps every breath I would take, I mean, SO SLOWLY. Learning to walk again. This was a crazy experience because I could perceive my mind complaining and wanting to rush. To reach the cabinet where I work with my patients I would take 50 minutes compared to 15!. I believe this was a real meditative exercise, and I was happy my soul was brightly present and calming.
All was so slow in my life. And I couldn’t stop smiling. Life was full of grace as I walked. What a great lesson, I just have to be humble and learn to “kneel” in front of the infinite, why rush and push forward my body and my life?.
Not looking forward to the future: just making big decisions here and know
In between all the other wonderful lessons I have to share from my writings, I still have no answers on what is going to happen. I am in a re-adaptation phase and only yesterday I was able to sit down on the floor on a mat, I can’t still bend my knee to 60 degrees in easy-pose but I am gaining force and stability in different muscle groups to support the knee. I can pedal the static bicycle, balance my body on the left knee, bend it with no weight directly over it, and perhaps downward dog and uttanasana, hahaha!.
What I am sure is happening now is that, I am completely changing my personal practice. I love this idea of giving my body what it needs to be strong and healthy, and not what it needs to perform an asana, or to demonstrate that I can do crazy things to make it “fit”. This is not yoga. I always knew it. Yoga is about self-love, grace and gratitude. I believe that this is one of the most important keys for stillness while in movement on the mat. BUT I tend to forget this. I am human, I have the right to learn from my mistakes. Hopefully.
If my story and these principles tell you something, if you feel you need to integrate these concepts on the mat, maybe it is the time to consciously slow down or stop completely, as I needed to do to re-confirm these facts and principles on that day.
Wishing you all my friends a wonderful year full of health, self-love and above all consciousness and wisdom on your mat.
With all my heart,
Mona