Getting off the injury trajectory
Step 1: Hear the message your body is telling you
Step 2: Act upon it.
So simple. This idea is so simple. Our body, mind, intuition is guiding us ALL THE TIME. All we need to do is to listen to it and act upon it. Yet it get’s so much more complicated than that….
What get’s in the way of listening to our body’s deeply rooted wisdom? All the other ‘shoulds’. For me it was a lot about pushing harder, being tough, doing more, not feeling or appearing weak, wanting more from myself. There were times when I knew, so clearly that I was hearing a message and doing the opposite, but I didn’t trust the message. I didn’t believe it fully enough to act upon it, I debated with it and figured “eventually it will be obvious”. That need for messages from my body to be more clear and obvious got me into trouble. Think being in the wilderness and knowing that a cut is infected but wanting to be sure. Sounds really dumb now but…. I know that I was doing my best.
Why is it so hard to hear the message and trust it? Why don’t we listen to our bodies and act upon the message? Here are a few thoughts:
Awareness of what the message is: my examples revolve around pushing past injury and then facing the consequences. My body was saying ‘ENOUGH’ to the physical stress. When we get the response to something like amount of food, length and depth of sleep or how loud the music is, there are all messages too. How often to we know we are full but the food is just too good to stop eating? Or we know we are tired and feeling fatigued but we say ‘yes’ to the invite to go out with a rowdy crew for drinks anyways. All these subtle messages are guidance for what we want to feel in the bigger picture. See next point.
Pursuit of the quick fix: We want pleasure now. We want to eat way too much of a dinner that is really tasty now more than we want to wake up in the morning feeling light and fresh, at least in the moment. We need to architect our lives in a way that makes these challenging decisions ahead of time. Make a meal plan, shopping list, and schedule for when and how you will eat if you want to be more connected to your food and stop eating when finished. Schedule days off if you work a physical job and do self massage to feel more connected to your body. As for help when you have an injury rather than letting pride in the moment make the decisions.
Lack of trust/failure to act: we heard the message, but it was not yet screaming at us so we waited for it to get louder. We decided to go the route of wake up calls rather than the attention to subtle shifts and feedback. This one got me several times. Out in the woods with something that I know is not right, but it isn’t that bad yet. So weighing the number of days left on the trip with the potential consequences of seeing if it really is that bad.
Social culture and pressure: We have choice of who are people are and how much we take into account their input. If we are not aware of what their input/message is or the role it plays on our decisions, we end up at the effect of the circumstance. I heard a message to be tougher, not be a baby, harden up. Whether this was the message that was actually given or my own insecurities about being good enough speaking, is debatable. Having a culture that respects our internal guidance and encourages us to listen, even helps us to hear it, is possible and is a great gift to ourselves.
Ayurvedic wisdom gives us three causes of disease:
Making Careless Choices
Disrespecting Your Senses
Accelerating aging by living out of rhythm with the cosmic clock
There is so much of this that we know, we know in our being about consequences. We know to expect a hangover if we drink too much the night before. But have we connected how much of this is going on in our lives, and that all of our injuries, illnesses, and disease are from our own actions (and that of our ancestors)?
Break it down: DIS- EASE. The lack of Ease in our lives, yet so much of this comes from pursuing the thing that feels the easiest, the quickest of quick fixes, the most pleasure in the moment. We will pay for it later if we do not listen to the messages our beings are gifting us.
