Three years ago, I walked into my first yoga class looking for help and relief. I have had back pain since I was a teenager, probably too many years of carrying too many books in a bag fashionably slung over one shoulder. Or maybe just too many years of stoically insisting on carrying loads that were too heavy for me.Over the years, I had seen doctors, taken prescription medications, been to physical therapy and even a posture class. Yet with pregnancy and children, the pain only got worse, until it became nearly unbearable when I unexpectedly became pregnant before my daughter was one. My back was one big perpetual knot of spasming muscle. One day, as I was lying on the floor weeping because I was in too much pain to get up, I knew I needed something more. I called a chiropractor that day, and it did indeed help, but my back would deteriorate into pain again between each visit. The treatments were soothing the pain, but not healing the cause. So, I signed up for a yoga class. I expected yoga to help my back, but I was not prepared for how much it would, and I certainly wasn't prepared for how much it would heal me spiritually as well as physically.
When I was a child, I used to go jogging with my father. He instilled in me two lessons that I was to take into every aspect of my life: push through the pain and sprint the end to show you've got something left. Those lessons got me to a place the world would view as success: an education at a prestigious university, jobs that have paid well, a home in an upper-middle class neighborhood and a comfortable lifestyle. But learning to push my body, and myself, beyond my natural limits, came at a price as well.
In yoga, one of the constant refrains has been "listen to your body," something I have spent a lifetime learning not to do. Back in June, we were working on stretches that targeted our shoulders. My shoulders are very tight, and I couldn't believe I had to accommodate them as much as I did. Those shoulders should be able to do more. Damn it! What they were capable of was pathetic. I'd just try to stretch them a little more. Ok, that hurt a little, but those shoulders weren't working hard enough. They deserved a little pain! If I pushed them a little more than what they wanted to do, those shoulders would loosen up and stretch the way I wanted them to from now on right? Wrong. What I got was a shoulder joint that was sore and had to be treated gently for months.
I didn't teach my shoulders anything. They are teaching me. I am learning to listen to my body, to understand and accept my limits. I am learning that to challenge myself, I don't need to hurt myself. And I'm learning that insisting on carrying heavy loads by yourself will leave you aching, in back or in spirit, for years.
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