I realise that's a weird thing to say.
But I think it's actually quite true.
what is rest when recovering from an injury?
For instance, if I were to ask a hundred people what they thought rest was you might get fifty different answers or even more.
In injury or recovery of any kind, we often talk about pain and how to actively manage it.
"If you have a muscle strain or even a ligament strain, you work through a process of progressively asking it to do slightly more in a pain free manner each day or every 2/3 days or every week, if it's really bad."
The challenge of rest.
"We don't ask you to put your feet up and go back to bed - because often times that tissue heals under gentle and appropriate load."
We teach a recovery plan that uses active pacing & rest...
For that pacing to truly be effective we start at the very beginning with whatever level of movement is actually truly achievable and then build from there.
Say you have a hamstring tear and maybe it's not the whole way through.
The best advice I can give you is to gently ask your body to weight bear at first only fractionally and then as you can weight bear without pain partially then as the weeks progress maybe we ask you to walk gently in a pain free manner for larger and larger distances.
"This is the essence of pacing: gradually asking your body to do slightly, compassionately more in a pain free manner"
then we progress each step to the next achievable layer of movement...
Once your gait is back to normal maybe we get you back in the gym once a week and then perhaps twice a week...
...gently asking your body to do more within a pain free range but only once you've achieved each ask.
where do soft tissue therapies help in the healing process?
Soft tissue therapies can help reduce your pain state in the tissues and give you a leg up to facilitate more movement at every active stage of the plan.
I often find that progress almost doubles with a dual pronged plan of movement therapies + soft tissue work.
In this sense we can see how practical the advice is. I can help assist you in guiding the tissues into an optimum healing environment, but you can also do a lot yourself to manage and regain activity at home with the right strategy and advice.
how does the plan & pacing change when something is & has been chronic for a very long time?
"When the situation is due to chronic inflammation, the nervous system, or chronic stress the advice becomes more and more subtle."
You might hear someone say listen to your body and do what feels right.
The only problem with that advice is listening is a really hard skill to learn...
Ideally you've already discovered how to listen prior to the injury or issue.
meditation is a skill that helps you connect with your body & truly listen...
Mediation is a structured way of regaining awareness:
First of your body and your embodiment of it
how it feels day to day and the sensation you can pick out - your heart, breath, blood flow, fascial restriction, digestion... etc)
Then your mind
Then the world
But even the practice of listening to the body, itself takes time - like a lot of time and patience.
The irony of meditation is the fact that you have to listen without an agenda and take the time to allow the information to reach you and then slowly coalesce into understanding.
Trust me it's something I have been doing now since 2019 and I still consider myself very much a beginner in a world full of wonderful teachers speaking wonderful insights about the world in which we live.
but listening to your body is a process that takes time & patience and isn't easy
So when we ask you in a state of chronic stress or systemic inflammation to "take it easy" to "listen to your body" and "to go with what it wants and can achieve"...
I appreciate more than ever - that is a much longer process and a literal mind field to navigate. Trust me - I live that process semi-continuously after a head injury.
So where are the touchstones that you can hold on to - the rules -for want of any better words. Well it's different for everybody but I would say this:
The first step is listening
The second step is gaining an awareness of when your body has had enough
The third is gaining a deep respect for your body's wisdom and narrowing the gap between what you'd like to do as a personality and what you can actually manage.
The fourth is allowing yourself the time to understand what it's been yelling at you for such a long time.
And now some might find this blog the most hippy of them all - (that might be a record), but truly, I think once you narrow the gap between what your mind and body wants and work as a team with patience, understanding and self-compassion - that's where the true healing lies.
It's a journey and we are all here walking along it - maybe at different points in time.
If you'd like support to walk alongside you please don't hesitate to get in touch. The work I do, can do so much to ease pain and ease this exploration that you're on, both physically but also mentally to help you make sense of all the kaleidoscope of impressions that a body gives out when in pain.
The warmest of wishes to you.
Stay kind to yourself.
Carmen
Comments