Navigating Injury and other Challenges
During the past few years, I have prioritized strength training in an effort to mitigate age-related decline (e.g. loss of lean muscle and bone density). While I don’t think of myself as a powerlifter, I have shifted away from using the machines for the bulk of my training sessions. [Pun intended] Squatting, deadlifting, carrying, pushing, pulling, and moving in complex ways challenges my body, forces me to work through muscle imbalances, and is kind of empowering.
Meanwhile, back on the mat, my yoga practice continues to evolve, albeit not as I would have thought it would. Three years ago, at the peak of the pandemic, I was happily making my way through Sthira Bhaga (aka third series). Then life started happening. A fractured foot, sprained ankle, shoulder injury, fractured finger, contused hamstring attachment after a clumbsy fall walking in my garage. None of these occurring “from” my strength training or my yoga practice but certainly impacting them. And my ability to bounce back has not been as quick as it was in my twenties and thirties.
As a result, I have had to find ways to support my practice while allowing my body to heal. While it has been quite humbling, I have learned a lot about myself and the practice in the process. Learning where to back off, or “let go,” while finding other areas where I can extract more from the poses. This self-study is a rather cool component of the practice.
I invite you to notice for yourself if/when you have a set back. Are you able to find ways to support your growth even when you are healing, or do you need help figuring out a path forward? If the latter is the case, I’m here for you. See the schedule page for my availablity.
The Joy of Acknowledgement
Have you ever noticed how easy it is to see someone else’s progress but how hard it is to recognize your own? As a yoga teacher, I always try to point out the progress I see my students making. It may be something as subtle as a deeper but more relaxed breath — which translates to huge strides down the road. Possibly, it is something more obvious, like being able to balance on their hands in one of the many arm balancing poses.
Believe it or not, the students don’t always seem to acknowledge the progress no matter how obvious it may be. Sometimes, I take a photo to show them the progress I am observing. I did this for one our mysore students this week, pointing out the lovely lines in her trikonasana and utthita parsvokonasana. If they do finally achieve a goal – such as finally getting their foot behind their head in eka pada sirsasana – they are disappointed that they have to hold it in place or it flies off like it’s spring-loaded.
Quite honestly, I am guilty of this myself. Over the last year, my practice has suffered from a number of compounding ailments including finger fractures and shoulder instablity. My focus has been on the struggle to improve but without a lot of notice taken on the steps forward, only the backward shifts that naturally occur in the effort.
Like this new leaf on my monstera plant, new growth is beautiful. Sometimes, these new leaves go unnoticed for a bit as they hide behind the others. But, oh how I love to welcome the newbies into my practice space. They really make me smile.
Back to the topic of yoga: Although somewhat unconsciously, my efforts in not becoming attached to any success have translated to blindfolding me to any progress made in this regard. I think I feared (or maybe expected) that I would lose it again in the next days, weeks, or months. There’s been a lot of that.
In the beginning, this may have been thought to be non-attachment but I now think that the failure to celebrate the successes has lead to less joy in my yoga practice. And I really need JOY right now. I mean, in addition to the joy of seeing new leaves on my plants.
For this reason, I plan to resurect the habit of daily entries in my yoga journal in the month of May with a focus on listing out some wins each day. In the past, regular journalling about my yoga practice has served as a nice way to highlight emerging injuries and track them back seemingly subtle to modifications or added poses. This month, I hope to be able to pay a bit more attention to little steps of progress as well as the coming and going of poses as I continue to work on healing from the injuries of the past year. Currently, I am calling this exercise the Joy of Acknowledgement.
I invite you to do the same and/or share your thoughts in the comments section of this post.
Okay Enough
As the date got closer to my longtime plans to return to practice with Manju Jois and Greg Tebb at the No Stress Shala (aka Manju’s garage), I became apprehensive about going. Although we are taught not to judge our practice as good or bad, I find myself disappointed in the limitations of my body more often than not. In truth, Manju doesn’t care what my practice looks like. He is there to provide a supportive environment for therapeutic yoga. If anything, I really should have been thinking of going to see Manju as a MUST. I have just been a bit stuck.
All of the ailments of 2023, (the right shoulder, elbow & finger, left hip, and SI joint) had been improving. I had dedicated a lot of time and resources to the recovery and stablization efforts. As a result, I was having to modify a lot less often than before. Still, I was apprehensive. Of course, there was no need to be worried.
After our first night at the Comfort Inn (previously the Quality Inn), Eva deemed the accomodations as “okay enough”. We each had a bed, the rooms each had a locking door, and we might not have even known that the sheriff was paying a visit to the room a few doors down from us if we hadn’t left while they were there. The term “okay enough” would be brought up many times during the week — keeping us light hearted and amused. And I would walk into the “no stress shala” with the notion that my asana practice was indeed “okay enough”.
The thing is, once I shifted to being “okay enough”, all my judgement melted away. If I messed up, I laughed at myself. I allowed others to encourage and compliment me without second-guessing. I had fun and let the Manju magic do it’s thing.
The week went by way too fast. Our days at the shala were filled with asana practice, followed by pranyama, chanting, and yummy home-cooked vegetarian meals. We learned new ways to assist others’ in many different asanas.
During the rest of the time in lovely Encinitas, CA. we:
- drank LOTS of coffee,
- laughed a whole lot,
- hiked,
- visited Eva’s handstand coach,
- saw the sea lions in San Diego,
- window-shopped & people-watched,
- basked in the sun,
- wadded through large puddles of rain,
- and ate and ate and ate (even dessert, thanks to Shelly’s encouragement).
All in all, the trip was just what I needed. It was “okay enough” and so much more, of course.
Lessons learned
…hopefully.
As the end of 2023 approaches, I wonder where the heck this year went. I am also wondering what happened to my asana practice. *sigh* I mean, in January, I was doing Third Series more regularly. I went to Encinitas to study with Manju Jois and emerged motivated and encouraged that I could work out the kinks in my practice. A month later, when David Swensen came to the studio my body was starting to communicate some not-so-positive feedback to me. Although nothing intense, parts of my body were feeling new aches and pains (left hip, shoulders, right elbow). On the last day of David’s visit, I emerged from Eka Pada Sirsasana with an intense pulling from my neck and under my left scapula. *sigh*
My practice waxed and waned through the next few months. Third Series came and went again and again. My left shoulder and right elbow took turns distracting me from moving forward like I had hoped. I was happy just to practice at all. Then, it happened.
We were in the process of building our garage gym — squat rack, barbell, plyometric box, dumbbells, kettlebells, bands, etc. It was pretty sweet but I wanted a padded floor. So, on July 1st, our padded flooring finally came. I moved all of the equipment over, rolled out the flooring, and began returning the equipment back to their new-padded spots. My youngest only had time to help me with the rack at THAT time. He was available after work, but I would have to wait. Well, if you know me, you know that I was pretty sure I could do the rest all on my own. And I did. However, not without a 35 pound dumbbell tumbling in the air and pinning my fingers between the flying dumbbell and a stack of DC Blocks. Suffice to say that I broke a finger in my dominant hand at the distal joint, and strained the neighboring fingers. *groan*
Well, I wore a splint for 3 full months while my finger healed. When my finger was freed, I jumped back into my practice a little too enthusiastically (read: agressively). Mid-September, I resumed Third Series (even though I wasn’t 100%) and tried to modify where I could. I knew it wasn’t optimal but I kept at it — trying to stay positive. I told myself that my come-back was just going to take time. In October, after taking a few days off with a cold, I decided to drop my efforts at doing Third Series. I know it will be there whenever (IF ever) I am ready to meet up with it again.
Which brings us to today. Read More
$h!t Happens!
We’d like to think that, after years of practicing this thing called yoga (and life), we would be able to avoid all injuries. However, the truth is, you can be ever so mindful and careful, but injuries still happen. You don’t even have to be doing anything intense. In fact, you might simply be rearranging things in your garage. *sigh*
It’s true. We are in the process of building a sweet home-based gym in our garage. My youngest has been making most of the purchases; I have mostly been contributing by providing him with the space to keep it. But, as the equipment has arrived, I have found it rather convenient to workout here at home. In doing so, I save a travel time and time at the gym waiting for the space, specific dumbbell or machine to free up. So, I began contributing by purchasing needed items myself.
It’s not as easy as one might think. My son said we needed some “DC blocks” so I purchased 2 of them to get us started. When they arrived, I realized the ones I’d bought were extra wide and not returnable. My second purchase was padded flooring. After many out of stock, backordered choices delaying this purchase, I finally landed on mat flooring that was in stock and soon delivered.
It was the day that we unrolled our gym flooring when my injury occurred. Being the independent (read: impatient) person that I am, I did most of the heavy lifting, shifting of equipment, unrolling, taping and replacing the equipment back on my own. I had most of it in place, with only the lighter dumb bells and DC blocks left to return to their newly-padded home. My son, who was finishing up a workout before heading off to work, would move the 90 lb adjustable dumb bells later that night. Although I can hold a 35 lb dumb bell in one hand, I used two hands to be extra careful. I’m not sure, but I think I hit the other dumb bell as I lifted the weight off the DC block. The weight in my hand tumbled and fell to the ground hitting the edge of the DC block on the way down. Unfortunately, the fingers of my right hand were not clear when the weight met the sharp, hard edge of the block and were smashed in the process. *sigh*
When Injuries Happen
Although the bruising and swelling did not develop right away, the discomfort pointed to something more than just soft tissue damage. X-rays and exam revealed an avulsion fracture of the distal interphalangeal (DIP) joint in the 4th finger of my dominant hand. I have a little extension splint to wear for the next 4-8 weeks (or so) and am now learning how to modify the way I do things in my practice and my day-to-day life (i.e. left-handed mousing, brushing teeth, etc.)
Fortunately, I have seen a lot of students (myself included) adapting their practice as their injuries heal during my many years of practicing yoga. I took chatarangas, bakasana, down dog, etc. on my forearms loosely gasped a cloth diaper instead of interlocking my fingers for binds, and skipped poses during the first week.When the sports medicine doctor gave me the go-ahead for doing more “using good form” and “lighter” loads, I explored using yoga jellies to lift my hand and take pressure off of my fingertips. Even my strength workouts are different. I got a weight vest so I can continue to promote bone density maintanence without having to hold weights. I’m doing a bit more cardio than strength. I’m even learning to taking it easy on myself when I take a few extra rest days just because.
This injury could have been so much worse than it was. I am blessed to be able to adapt while the healing takes place.