Free your body through the bigger picture
Do you ever find yourself worried or frustrated that you’re experiencing pain when you’ve barely been doing anything? Like that pain shouldn’t be happening because all you did was lift a small box, or go to a meeting, or walk downstairs?
That’s probably not all you’ve been doing.
A few months ago while I was visiting New York and simply walking with a friend, my back began to hurt—quite a bit in fact. My worry and concern shot straight up, along with some harsh internal judgments: I’ve only been walking for half an hour and my back is already hurting! What kind of movement and body teacher am I? What sort of guide can I be to others to help them change the way they move, to help them change their pain when I can’t even walk for half an hour without being in pain?
As I voiced these harsh and concerning thoughts to my friend I had an unexpected flash of insight and started laughing. She looked at me quizzically as I explained that yes, from the point of view of “I’ve only been walking for half an hour,” my back pain would be alarming. But I was discounting everything that happened before I started walking, treating my pain as if I had magically come into existence only half an hour before and started walking and that’s what hurt me, which was not even close to being accurate. I was laughing at my own ridiculous narrow sight. Let’s look at the bigger picture. While it’s true that I’d been walking for only half an hour, earlier that morning I had also volunteered for several hours at my old training program, and I had gotten up quite early that morning after sleeping on my friend’s hardwood floor, and the previous two days I had taken two 10-hour workshops that had taxed me physically and emotionally, in both positive and negative ways, and the night before thatI’d also slept on the floor, and the day before that I’d taught the whole day, and slept on my friend’s couch that didn’t fit my body, and I was in NYC—which is much, much louder and more draining than where I live now—and the day before that I’d been traveling through various airports.
Is it really any wonder that my back was hurting? No.
It wasn’t a sign that something was wrong with me. It was a sign that I was exhausted! I needed a break. So we sat on a bench, purposefully breathing. After about 15 minutes or so I felt fine and we continued our walk.
When I saw all that I’d been doing, it no longer surprised me that my back was hurting. And when I started laughing about it, my back actually hurt less. Mental concern is a body tightener. When you get concerned you tighten up. And if there’s pain going on, you tighten around that pain, which makes it worse. When I stopped worrying about it and stopped having so much concern, I only felt the discomfort from my exhaustion, without the compounding tightening pain of my worry.
I just needed a break. When I looked at the bigger picture it wasn’t a surprise that my back hurt. When I looked beyond my immediate and narrow view and instead saw the multitude of events that contributed to my painthen a solution appeared. When I got stuck in the narrow view of all I had been doing was walking for half an hour, the result was increased pain, worry and harsh criticisms.
Look at the big picture of what’s going on in you! When discomfort or pain appear and you find yourself thinking all I’ve been doing is…or all I did was… that all is probably too narrow. I don’t know why I’m freaking out andI don’t know why I’m in pain are similar: look at the bigger picture. The answer might be fairly large; it could encompass years.
I was working together with a client and she said, “I don’t know why I’m upset right now.” Since there wasn’t an obvious reason, that was a clue to look at the bigger picture. I asked her how long she’d been dealing with her back pain. About 10 years. It makes total sense why it’s upsetting to talk about her back and to work with it: it’s been something she’s been dealing with and intensely experiencing for over 10 years. Ten years of physical pain will affect a person emotionally. It may look like we’re doing something small and insignificant, only making subtle movements and adjustments. It would be easy to think that’s all we were doing. “All you’re doing is touching my back,” she thought. No, that’s not all I’m doing. What I’m doing is touching your back that you’ve been experiencing pain in for 10 years. That could be very emotional.
When you get lost in that small picture and all you think you’ve been doing, the result can be worry, concern, tightening and a lack of compassion for yourself. When you open up to the bigger picture, to what’s really been going on in you, you open up to more compassion for what you’re experiencing. Through that compassion it’s easier to recognize and subsequently let go of the physically tightening aspects of your own worry. That doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily be free of pain but it does mean you’ll more clearly see the pain for what it is and then you’re more likely to discover what you need in the moment. And maybe, like me, you’ll have a good laugh at your own powerful, oh-so-convincing, yet still narrowly focused thinking.