Day 147-A Pain in the *ss. Literally!

I hurt myself yesterday. 

I was doing a walk in the dark, and even though I was covered in lights enough to see, I was looking up at the stars as I walked. This is a sweet, but stupid idea. When you are looking up trying to see Orion's bow, you cannot see the large dip in the asphalt that your neighbor's 13-ton truck has made over the last few years. If you are looking up at the stars, you then fall into that dip, and in an effort to correct yourself so you don't faceplant, you torque on your piriformis. 

Translation: I strained a butt muscle. 

Nice. 

You may know that I lived with pain for about 13 years. Pain was a companion that made me always want to move to another room to get away from him. If I was sleeping, I wanted to wake; if I was awake, I longed for sleep. Sitting made me want to stand and standing made me want to sit. He became an accepted, but not liked, part of my life. 

A couple of years ago, I began to learn how to remove the pain from my body. Admittedly, I am a body nerd. I'm way too into my body and its functions, but for good reasons. Those reasons? 

If I didn't have a functioning body, then where would I be?

Is that a question to answer a question? I guess so...but:

I don't believe you should accept your pain. But that doesn't mean you ignore it. It means that you acknowledge it, then figure out what/where/when and how the pain came to be a part of your body. Then you work to get rid of it. You learn to relax, you learn more about how your body really works, you improve your daily habits of movement and nutrition, you ask for help, you spend still and quiet time alone with your body, tracing the trail of pain lightly with your mental fingertips in order to find the root of it. 

There is a great book, called 'Teach Us to Sit Still' by Tim Parks. He details his journey as a complete skeptic in serious, debilitating pain to someone who learned to be in touch with his body and got out of his pain. A beautiful, funny and sad read, all in one. Maybe you'll read it some day. 

So, back to me butt muscles! 

I will not let the pain live here, so I have spend the last 24 hours letting go, tracing, finding, mentally stopping the spasms and re-aligning. It's not all gone yet, but it's way better than it was. 10 years ago, this would've gone for weeks. I estimate that this pain will be out of the picture by this evening. 

PAIN: Fine, I'm going, this place sucks!
ME: Don't let the door hit your ass on your way out!

G'day, 
Dani