From Injury to Resilience: Finding Your Sustainable Strength
I came out of the womb dancing.
My mother tells me it was an easy birth. I spun right out and into her arms. Long legs sticking out of the baby blanket — twirling in the air.
As a young classical dancer, I always felt pride in the relationship I was cultivating with my body. She and I came together everyday to practice form, flow and function, and I somehow knew that the precious art of wielding body and space brought with it certain truths. The kind that can't be articulated with words, only sensation.
As I grew, so did the movement challenges I was tasked with, and dance class became the place where I confronted my not-enoughness -- my hips weren't slim enough; my legs didn't kick high enough; my pirouettes weren't tight enough, and my turn out wasn't turned enough.
When, despite everything I tried, I couldn't do-it-better, this sweet relationship between me and my body turned sour. I pushed harder, worked longer, tightened, squeezed and pinched myself into positions I knew *they* wanted.
I got injured trying to prove I could pretzel myself into the shapes they wanted. But it was never enough.
In my 20s, I left ballet entirely and found alternative forms of dance that suited my body better -- the more I did, the more I could do with ease and pleasure. My body wasn't meant for high arabesques or triple pirouettes. It was meant for rolling on the floor, discovering places within I had not yet explored.
My body was meant for shape-shifting, not shape-holding.
Once I discovered the source of my movement motivation, I was able to show up in my body the way that felt the most safe and real and honest.
This brought with it a certain kind of truth -- one I've learned to articulate to my beloved clients with words as well as sensation.
Fast forward to the present: I’ve come to describe my current work with bodies and minds as sustainable strength coaching.
Sustainable strength prioritizes your own creative and intuitive experiences as a marker for how your body wants to move -- is born to move -- is needing to move -- for maximum vitality, endurance, power, wisdom and pleasure.
Imagine taking the time to learn your body's rhythms...and to follow them into movement that brings you to your pleasure, your rest, your peace, your power.
What would that look like? How do you begin to learn your body's rhythms?
Your inherent rhythms are underneath all those learned patterns you developed by doing it someone else's way, or from traumatic events that were never repaired, or from always sitting in a chair since the time you entered kindergarten.
Inherent rhythms can be revived; they never leave you — but they can be abandoned.
You won’t revive them by following someone else's program and simply hitting the repeat button. I know — listening to someone else is easier and it’s what we’re told will make us happier, thinner, stronger, more compassionate, more in control of our lives.
But to restore our inherent rhythms, we must first pay close attention to how our bodies respond to our movement. Then, adjust that movement to suit our unique sense of safety and nourishment.
We can't change if we don't feel safe to do so. And we can't evolve if we're not nourished enough to take the journey.
Sustainable strength is a process of unwinding conditioned patterns — those held in our physical as well as our psycho-emotional bodies — as a means for building resilience.
Sustainable, as in regenerative, nourishing.
Strength, as in the ability to harness the flow of energies through the body and into motion in a way that brings a felt sense of safety, ease, and rooted power.
Resilience, as in responding authentically instead of reacting with patterned responses.
Authentic, as in organic - coming from source. Coming from the core. Yours — not mine, not your mother's, not your culture's.
Rooted power, as in the power source coming from your own center, in collaboration with the earthly (gravity) & heavenly (anti-gravity) forces that keep you upright and on the ground.
Once your inherent rhythms are understood, the body is able to shed inhibitive patterns that, when ignored, often create injury over time.
Sustainable strength is not repetitive exercises that, once familiar, can be tuned out and done without thought or care.
Sustainable strength is the use of movement as a tool for experiencing your own embodiment.
Embodiment, as in, awareness of the moving body-whole, comes from our direct experience with each of its parts.
Embodiment is experienced when we acknowledge, challenge, and accept the body’s perception of itself.
We acknowledge by tuning in and staying present with what-is.
We accept by listening to the messages the body wants to share when we tune in and remain present.
We challenge it all when we stay grounded in what-is while inviting curiosity in to see what else is possible.
When fully embodied, we become fully present to the physical, energetic, and emotional aspects of any given movement, allowing us to respond thoughtfully and in accordance with our greatest truth.
It is the dance of sustainable strength and embodiment practices that HomeBody brings to its unique one on one services.
In providing an environment in which the body can heal itself, you then can engage more fully with the world; you can be present to the gifts of the moment.
Through your sustainable strength, you learn to celebrate your inherent rhythms and discover just how precious and powerful you really are.
Have you noticed how little I’ve discussed your injuries in this post?
That’s because when you focus on your inherent rhythm, your embodiment, and your sustainable strength, you move with the authority of your own body, your own voice, your own truths.
Repetitive injury and chronic pain can then transform. Instead of holding you hostage and micro-managing your movement choices, they become part of your body’s messaging system that leads you toward your active healing.
I've remained dedicated to the movement of my body throughout my adult life. What I learned along the way is how movement can be either a destructive force or a regenerative one.
I choose regeneration.
I still dance, but the dance is different than the one I used to do. This one demands more of who I am be present for every raise of an arm or swing of a leg.
This dance requires me to both accept and challenge who I think I am and how I orient to the world.
Photo by: Greg Rakozy @grakozy