Aging, Injuries, and Healing with Mindfulness

Getting older is a fine balance between the wisdom that can only come from experience and the frustration of not remembering what I was about to say or do a moment ago.

Going slowly and being fully in my body, moment by moment, have been among the greatest gifts of aging. I am still working on both of these practices, and I get distracted by busy-ness more than I would like. But the more I stop, and breathe, and feel, the easier it gets - mostly because it feels good.

Somatic Experiencing (SE) - which I mentioned a couple posts ago - has become an invaluable tool for settling in and noticing subtle energies and staying with them, just noticing and nothing more, as they transform just through the process of attending and watching.

Sadness becomes relief, then anger, then power, then excitement, then joy.

Fatigue becomes grounding, then settling, then calm, then alertness, then presence.

This may sound like meditation, but it's more than I've ever learned in meditation classes. There is no effort to stop thinking. Thoughts happen. There is no concentration on a meditative object. Sensation is the meditative object. And maybe that just works really well for me because I am at the super far end of the kinesthetic spectrum.

One of the main reasons I decided to learn SE was to see if it would help reduce physical pain, which I've long suspected my body holds as "emotional trauma in suspended form." In several of my SE experiences, I've noticed the feeling of my shoulders and back melting - as if old armor is gently falling away. It's a delicious feeling, and one that I hope will eventually become a new normal for me. What I didn't expect, is that SE would follow me out of the classroom, and out of my therapy office into my daily life. Specifically, it has shown up in my footsteps.

In March, I twisted my left knee, and it's felt twinge-y and wonky ever since - not painful, but not quite right. I don't think it's a coincidence that I also have bunion on my left big toe, and that my left foot has been growing progressively weaker over the last few years. So I did what we all seem to do these days; I scoured Google for everything ever written about knee injuries and bunions and muscle imbalances. Several articles recommended walking barefoot.

Then, in June, I ran into a friend who was wearing Vibram FiveFingers on her feet. I had a pair once. I got them right after reading Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. But I was much younger then (only 44). And I had only just begun learning about slow and gentle living. I didn't know that in my mid-forties, my body would begin to rebel against being pushed to hard. I didn't know the wear and tear that my earlier traumas, and the resulting tendency to dismiss and deny my body's pain and fatigue signals, was catching up to me. So I put on my new barefoot "shoes," and went for a run, giving myself a muscle spasm (in my left calf, of course) that lasted a month. I blamed the shoes, cursed the book, and went back to supportive, orthotically correct footwear. And I watched my bunion grow. And I felt my foot continue to weaken.

Fast forward to June. Now at the wise and sage age of 49 1/2, I listen to my friend describe the slow, gentle process of moving from shod feet to bare feet. She wore her FiveFingers an hour a day at first, only at home after work. Then on little trips, grocery shopping. Then, adding more time as her body grew accustomed, she eventually started wearing them all day, just walking, sitting, driving. Now, she says, she is "addicted to them."

There is no definitive information about whether barefoot living will fix my knee or my foot. Anecdotal evidence points both ways - it really helps or it really hurts. Though in scouring blogs and message boards, there is one theme that recurs over and over. If you transition to barefoot, go very, very slowly.

Yesterday my new (and surprisingly cute compared to the last pair) FiveFingers arrived. I wore them for two hours, mostly sitting. Today I wore them for three hours, sitting, sweeping the floor and taking a short trip to the store. When I took them off, the angle of my bunion-y toe was less pronounced. My knee is still wonky, but it also feels like the muscles of my foot, calf and thigh are more activated and more stabilizing.

What's really wonderful though is the mindfulness of each step. As I walk, I am keenly aware of the sensations in my feet and legs and knees and hips and back. I am feeling my gait from inside. I have no idea what this will lead to, if anything. And the blessing of SE and of getting older is that it's soooo okay with me not to know. I am happy watching, waiting, trusting my body's signals and discovering what the next step feels like, and then the next one, and the next.

And I am relishing the loving feelings that come with all of this self-care. The armor continues melting, and as it does, the love and joy that is my birthright (and yours too) grows full and bright, a little sun rising in my chest.

Emotional Pollution

I was in Briones Regional Park on my birthday, walking, feeling peaceful after listening to an audiobook by Eckhart Tolle. Three doggie visits into the walk, the bliss kept deepening, their puppy smiles and sweetness filling me up. My phone chimed with Facebook alerts, all happy birthday wishes. Life is good, I thought.

My mom called to say Happy Birthday. Then she got all instructional about how to take care of myself (because at 47, I apparently still don’t know how) and judgmental about my sisters (because that’s how she is). Since I can’t talk her out of her negativity, I kindly excused myself from the conversation – yay me! Still, a little emotional pollution got in. I refocused on the now, the woods, finding and photographing trees that look like they have faces.

I could hear a jogger coming, her footfalls, rhythmic and stomping as she loudly fought with her boyfriend on the phone. I heard her complaining about how he treats her, his negative judgment about her weight. She passed me. She was skinny and fit. And she was flooded with anger which leaked into the forest, into the trees, into me. I felt slimed. Once again, I redirected myself to the present moment, the music of the birds, the excitement of the squirrels in a bounty of acorns. I felt almost better.

As I came to the end of the trail, the jogger was there, stretching, still fighting, even louder. She didn’t know it was my birthday. Didn’t know she was in my "church." Didn’t know her hostility was polluting me (or even that it was polluting her). I wanted to tell her to hang up, to stop running, to slow down and see how beautiful the world is, and she is. I wanted to hug her till she calmed down. Instead, I hugged myself till I calmed down. It was all I could do.

Driving home, I was still upset, and all the upsetting things my mind could find started joining in the chorus. Eckhart Tolle was on the CD player, talking about being in the now. You can’t have problems if you are truly in the now, he said with his German accent. Clearly, I was not in the now. Or maybe I was. Maybe the sensation in my body, feeling slimed, was the now I was not accepting. Eckhart Tolle said to take action if I could or to accept reality if there is no action to take.

The action I could take in that moment was to keep hugging myself, to breathe in pain and breathe out love as the Buddhists instruct. It worked. But I had to work it, training my mind, like a puppy, to be in the now, to be in loving presence with myself. Like the jogger, like my mother, I had to get myself off the phone with the part of me who thinks life should be different, that I shouldn’t have to deal with slime in my church, on my birthday. Shoulds, clearly indicating that I am not accepting reality.

I leaned into the present moment. There was a tightness in my chest, my sympathetic nervous system still processing out the chemicals that arose in reaction to my mother and the jogger. I helped it along, reaching inward with an invisible hand, massaging the tightness. I’m so sorry this doesn’t feel good. I told myself. I will stay with you until it feels better.

At home, I went back in my mind to the start of the walk, the smell of the bay laurel, the coolness within the shade of the trees, the baby plants sprouting after the first fall rains. I remembered the dogs, all tail wags and love. My chest eased.

Then I remembered on my way out of the park, a man carried some trash to a can in the parking lot. I don’t know if it was his trash. It could be that he found some trash in the park and decided to throw it away, even though it wasn’t his. And in that moment, I put my emotional trash in there too.