Are you frustrated with the pain that you are dealing with?
Do you wish that you felt better already?
I know exactly how you feel. All too often we buy into the idea that relief should be immediate and lasting. Well, I hate to be bearer of bad news but that is unfortunately not how healing works. We think that our journey of well-being is linear, that there should be a consistent upward trend to recovery. I too have felt that. I am usually on the other side of where you are, as the provider, the practitioner, trying to explain to the patient that the healing process may take patience and time. However, I will share with you the journey that I have been on recently that allowed me to see this frustration first hand.
I had cultivated a fairly consistent exercise regimen last year. I was feeling stronger than I ever had and in my humble opinion, looked the best that I had in all of my adult life. Yet, in late November, as I was working out one morning, I felt my self strain a muscle in my neck. It hurt pretty bad but it wasn’t the first time that I had pushed myself a little too hard and over did it. So I went about it as I usually do performing some acupuncture on myself, massaging the area with arnica cream (there is a Dr. Bronner’s version with peppermint that is fantastic) and a combination of stretch and rest.
However, it wasn’t getting better. Actually what concerned me was when I noticed that I was losing strength in my right arm and grip. This indicates an issue with the nerve; it could be pinched because of the vertebra, the bones in the neck, the discs in between, or the surrounding muscles. I sought out a chiropractor to examine what this might be. As I had suspected he confirmed that it was in fact an affect on the nerves but not because of the spine but the muscles. He gave me a simple adjustment, some stretches and sent me on my way. The pain still persisted, the weakness in my arm did not improve and I was getting frustrated. At this point the pain had been going on for a couple of months now.
I finally reached out to my teacher to get some acupuncture. She took the time to work with me and assess what was going on. In addition to my current complaint she looked at what other things might be contributing to my health imbalance.
After my first session I felt amazingly good. She gave me some homework to do and noticed that some of the points she suggested I work on were helpful. BUT, I still hadn't fully recovered, so I saw her a second time. I felt better but didn’t have the same results as the initial visit. I continued treatments and saw her a third time and felt the improvements, my range of motion in my neck had increased and the pain decreased, the referral pain and the tingling I felt in my arm had subsided significantly.
Today I am feeling much better and I don’t grimace in pain each time I lift my head. However, where I am today is not where I was before I strained the muscle. Even with the acupuncture treatments and the improvements there are times where the pain returns (I was at the office just the other day and I shifted in my chair and I felt the pain come back) There are still days where I am frustrated by the progress or lack of progress but just as I am writing this to remind all of you, it is a reminder to myself that healing takes time, but more importantly to let go of our expectations, of non-attachment, in yoga called vairagya. This is something that I teach my students often in yoga, the idea that we can have control over our actions but not the results. Whenever we expect, whenever we think that something “should” be the case, we set ourselves up for disappointment. Like most things in life, healing is not a linear progression, there will be days where we make leaps and bounds, other days it feels like nothing makes it better.
Another reminder to myself is that I would be mistaken to think that I would feel the same as I did before. There is no going back in time, there is no perfection in terms of our health, only balance. As a yoga teacher I have the privilege of having a fairly good understanding of my body and so have been able to incorporate some therapeutic movements from my yoga practice into my daily routine, I continue to work on the acupuncture points my teacher suggested and I am reminded of the importance of eating, sleeping, and breathing well. I am striving to cultivate and maintain a balance of health and wellbeing.
The healing process is not immediate, for some it might take one or two treatments, for others it may take ten to fifteen. Whatever it might be, I encourage you (as a I remind myself) to be patient on this journey, to remember that there often isn’t just one magical cure, but that there are many approaches and aspects to our recovery, and to keep showing up for ourselves and our own health and wellbeing, as we work towards maintaining our balance.