Tag Archives: recovery

Understanding my limits

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I’m dealing with a form of sciatica down my leg that is triggered from standing up. I spent the majority of my adult life avoiding sitting, and now it’s sitting that gives me relief. I’m also dealing with golfer’s elbow, which is easy to aggravate in the gym, but doesn’t usually bother me in my day-to-day activities.

I know the golfer’s elbow has lingered because I use it a bit too much in my workouts and I don’t always stop when it bugs me… in other words, I don’t really know my limits for what I can do with my elbow, until I do too much.

My leg is keeping me humble. I’m really being careful and that’s because I’m tired of this pain lingering. I’ve stopped walking on the treadmill and I ride a low seated stationary bike for my cardio, I am avoiding leg exercises for now, and I’m choosing to sit every chance I get. And of course I’m actually doing the physio exercises I’ve been given… every day!

Still, I’ve now gone to a doctor and I have painkillers to help me reduce the leg pain. My challenge now is to still understand my limits and not try to do too much just because the pain isn’t as bad. It’s hard to do this, despite the fact that I need to be smart and patient. I’m just stubborn, and always feel like limits need to be pushed all the time. I need to remember that there is only a small gap between stubborn and stupid.

Somatic Recovery

Yesterday I tweaked my back. It was not a full crash, but the pain was intense and my mid left back was giving me both pain and warning signals that told me I was in for a world of discomfort in the coming days. However, I have house guests, and Servaas Mes is a somatics expert.

What is somatics?

Somatics is studying the body from a first person perspective. Medicine is from the third person. It is about mobilizing awareness: both movement and emotions.

It is about moving from movement without awareness (somatic amnesia) to movement you are aware of. Somatic movements are based on innate movement patterns evolved when we were young.

Injuries, surgeries, stress, trauma, or habituated movements, are examples of things that create somatic amnesia in our bodies. So the process of mobilizing awareness is to recalibrate our authentic movement patterns. This is foundational for healthy aging.

But for me at this moment is was about injury recovery. Servaas put me through several gentle exercises to get me both moving fluidly and thinking about my movements as I did them. I’m used to deep muscle manipulation and focusing on individual muscles, but these movements were about using muscles in combination, and stopping myself from using my muscles in isolation.

I had a session yesterday and went from pain and limited mobility to discomfort and greater range. After a session today I was pain free. I won’t pretend I didn’t feel my back a few times during the day. I won’t tell you that I’m ‘fixed’, but I’m on a path to recovery that would usually take 1-2 weeks and it’s the day after I triggered my back crash.

Now it’s up to me to continue with the exercises. The hard part for me is twofold. First I need to connect physically, even emotionally, to the exercises, recognizing how my body wants to cheat and avoid full range of motion. I need to stay aware of how my body wants to move versus how it should move, and I tend to struggle with this kind of awareness.

Secondly I need to wrap my head around the gentleness of the movements. I feel like I’m not doing enough, or that these subtle movements aren’t worth doing because the effort is more intellectual than strenuous. Yet, I can distinctly see how one side of my body moves so much easier than the other during these stretches.

I am aware that I’m on a journey to move better; to improve not just my flexibility, but my ability to use my body more freely, more childlike, and less like an old man who can trigger a back spasm by taking a large breath. This is a somatic journey, and one I’ve only just started.

Holiday from the holiday

Ever find that the day after a holiday is a day of recovery? It’s like needing a holiday to rest up from your holiday. I did a few necessary errands, but it’s taken me the whole day to get to my workout and now to writing, and I still haven’t meditated. It’s almost 5pm and I’m making frozen waffles for lunch.

That said, it’s date night at the theatre tonight and so it’s still going to be a great day overall. Yet I can’t help but feel like today was a recovery day. Just wondering if it’s only me or do others struggle with the after-holiday ‘blahs’ even though it feels good to be home?

Turtle mode

I’m just turtling right now. I’ve had a bad cough for over a week, and I’m worn out. Last night I felt like things were getting worse, but this afternoon I feel like I’ve turned a positive corner. I had covid in November and now an ugly cough to start the new year… this hasn’t really been enjoyable.

Two years of wearing masks kept me healthy for a long time and being hit this hard twice in just a couple months had been challenging and exhausting. So, I’m curled up with a blanket, I’m drinking a lot of liquids, and I’m medicating myself with cold, cough, and sinus pills every few hours.

No plans, no agenda. Netflix, my audio book, and sleep. I’m turtling all weekend long.