Obstacles or barriers are gifts.
It happens again and again this way in life. An illness or injury becomes a new understanding, a loss becomes a new opening, a devastation becomes new life.
One of the biggest barriers to start with can be the disconnect we feel with our body, made greater due to fatigue and pain. Connecting mind with body, even in the presence of fatigue and pain, can be made simple starting with breathwork. Befriend your body as it is, in its present state, and breathe. You may have to lean into the pain, releasing the fear around it. The fear adds a level of tension that may be exacerbating that pain. Use that breath to keep letting go of the fear.
Once you connect using your breath, find fluidity in your everyday, probably limited, physical activity. How does your body move? What does it feel like? Sometimes we have to let go of expectations and sit in the moment, not get too ahead of ourselves. Shift away from thinking that physical activity is just an end goal, like wanting to get back to the activities you once did or thinking you have to ‘work out’ to get better.
Activity can be a physiological means to healing. Shift your understanding of your body from the single dimensional, structural concept of physical activity to the multi-dimensional, subtler concept of movement. I love that word! It feels do-able even in the most debilitating states. The body has layers of interconnected systems that create and affect movement throughout the body:
· The muscular/skeletal system is the well-known conventional model, focusing on the bones and muscles and how they move. This is how most people think about how the body works and can be difficult when pain and fatigue are present. We are taught to ‘push’ our bodies, work through the pain. This is different than ‘leaning into’ the pain.
· The fascial system is a much less known skeletal support system that interconnects the bones, muscles, tendons, organs, is woven throughout the gut and brain, and works in stride with the lymphatic, nervous, circulatory, and energy systems. There are amazing breakthroughs and research happening in understanding this integral system and its role in healing.
· The energetic system is literally made of high frequency energy, or light, which the cells use to communicate throughout the body and beyond. This layer is less known when it comes to self-healing through movement.
Where are you in your understanding of these layers of movement?
What new skills can you learn to help heal?
Explore intuitively how your body wants to move. Get curious. Draw from the positive movement experiences that you have had in the past and add in what you learn about working on all the 3 levels. Those with chronic illness that are limited at the muscular/skeletal level can work from a fascial and energetic level. Those who are severely limited can work just from the energetic level, starting with bringing awareness and attention to the body and using the imagination or the mind’s eye to create a sense of movement, which can actually move the light. (The science research is starting to prove this!) To take further steps, there are many different modalities and exercises to enhance the fascial and energetic systems such as yoga, tai chi, qi gong, fascial movement, energy codes, reiki, to name a few. Try something you gravitate towards.
One of the hidden gifts of chronic illness is the growth and learning achieved in order to heal.