Twice in my life I arrived at places from which I thought there was no return.
When I was twenty Hepatitis C entered my life (and it hasn’t left). At the time I had a headache that lasted well over a year and I truly thought it would never leave. And then it did.
At thirty-five I entered my knee surgery phase that saw me through three arthroscopic repairs. At the time I genuinely thought that I would never make my way back to the yoga mat, let alone walk around without pain. And then I did.
Fifteen years later my liver enzymes are good and I have no knee pain. What a beautiful life. But if you had been around me during either of those two periods, you would have seen someone lost in a swirling despair that saw no light at the end of either tunnel.
This might explain why I do what I do for work. Teaching people to walk is fun and fulfilling but the interesting part for me is the work guiding people to help themselves get past long, sometimes very long, bouts of chronic pain and injury.
So much of what I do is try to instill some little bit of belief that change and relief are both possible, if not within everyone’s grasp.
Is changing the way you walk and stand the panacea for everyone’s physical situation? Not in the least. But where everyone would be well served to change the way they stand and move, some people can and often will, find relief from many lingering issues.
But this post isn’t about healing but the emotional state that it is so easy to go to when you believe that you are stuck in your current situation and there is no way out. Faith in the possibility of hope and change and relief can be hard to come by when you are in pain that won’t ever seem to resolve.
This issue is compounded by the fact that people in acute stages of misery are not often placated by platitudes from healthy people about patience and possibility.
Yet somehow, if you find yourself in a seemingly hopeless situation, the search for the equanimity to see you through, might be the most important piece of your healing puzzle.
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