It’s our privilege to share this reflection from Annie Carpenter with the Glo community. Through her writing, Annie reminds us that injury can be both a challenge and a teacher, offering gifts of self-awareness and new pathways into practice.
If we agree that the reason we practice yoga is to consider the ongoing question, “who am I?” then perhaps we can begin to harvest the many gifts of having and recovering from an injury.
Coming back from injury can be daunting and take much more time than we might hope. There are clear pathways for recovery that do apply for most of us, and timelines that can help us be patient and thorough. Though we may not see this at first, an injury—and its recovery – can be a gift in disguise.
The first step is acknowledging the truth of having an injury. No one wants an injury and many of us ignore the pain and discomfort, sometimes for months and years living with or pushing through it. The patience required to fully recover from many injuries is challenging on all levels. We must sense fully that we are indeed injured if we want to truly heal. Often, our egos don’t like to admit the truth, or to slow down, or stop and rest. And, as we allow ourselves to feel pain, we drop into an oft hidden layer of ourselves where our history of pain, trauma and fear can arise and cloud the current situation.
All the limbs of Yoga ask us to consider one question: Who am I? While meditative states may provide clear pathways into this inquiry, Asana can be an easy and effective portal too. Most of us start with the physical practice. And while it is good for so many things like flexibility and strength, balance and stability – it also can open the doorways into Self-Inquiry and Self-Discovery.
While early steps in knowing who we are may be as simple as “my left hip is tighter than my right hip,” we can learn to be in relationship with our body, its movement and sensations, and even its pain when it arises. As we practice, we can discern when we are “checking out” or not attending to our bodies’ messages, and when we are pushing through difficult poses and transitions. We can observe when we feel competitive, disappointed or bored; and when we feel centered and present.
The more intimate, honest and accepting we can be with ourselves in the moment, the more we will prevent injury from happening. When we’re feeling down or anxious, ungrounded or distracted we can choose to practice more gently and slowly. When our energy is overly-excited or we already have some pain or concern in the body, we can choose to modify and/or skip some parts of a practice. We learn to embrace rest as much as activation, deep stillness as much as movement.
Over the years as we practice, we learn the lesson of the constancy of change. While some poses get better over the years as we build strength and understanding of a pose’s purpose; other poses become inaccessible as our bodies lose the beloved flexibility and physical exuberance we had in younger years. We learn to accept it all: we learn to let go of what was and embrace what is, now.
The Asana practice has given me such perspective. The desire for a more advanced pose and joy of achieving it are truly wondrous memories. But now the wonder comes in smaller, simpler packages. Finding the simplest expression of a movement that I can stay in and explore in subtle ways has truly eclipsed the feeling of vigor I felt when I was practicing the 3rd series of Astanga Yoga. Feeling my Prana or energy release and flow freely deep inside has replaced some of the complicated shapes of my former practices. But above all, I know me. I know when I can go hard and strong and when I need soft and sweet. Most of the time, I can sustain strength and mobility without strain and exhaustion. I know how and when to prop and modify the asanas, how to create breathing practices that bring focus and balance, and how to sit in grateful stillness.
One of the great gifts of Yoga is how to live fully as time passes and things evolve. We learn to pay attention to it all, learning the karmic lessons – gifts that can be simple and easy or blindingly difficult – and grow to make skillful choices in our Asana and in our daily lives. Just as we embody conscious inhaling and exhaling, we can practice the delicate balance of when to embrace fully and when to let go.
Injury Recovery Step by Step and the Gifts Learned Along the Way:
- Acknowledge that you have an injury. Gift: Seeing self, honestly. For example: Did my ego push me too far, too fast? Was I feeling competitive and not honor my own limits? Is this a time in my life when this pose, or way of practicing is no longer helpful or appropriate.
- Get support: a diagnosis, and a plan. Gift: Acceptance that I need help, an expert who can truly diagnosis what is happening and help me understand and create a plan, including rest, rehab and rebuilding into my practice.
- Rest fully for as long as needed. Gift: Just as Savasana is an essential part of my daily practice, resting fully before starting active rehab is part of the process. This is the lesson of karma! To sense on all levels that rest is as necessary and uplifting as everything else we do is truly a lifelong gift.
- Build back slowly and steadily with a smart combination of release work, stretching, stabilizing and strengthening. Gift: For everything that we do, physical or otherwise, we must honor the balancing arc of Rest > Release > Strengthen and Stabilize > Release > Rest.
- Assess progress and build into your practice. Gift: learn to conceptualize the simplest expression of each pose, and its modifications and propping possibilities as you return to whatever beloved poses you’ve needed to pause due to injury.
~ Annie Carpenter
Here are some practices from Annie to help you integrate these lessons on the mat:
