Listen to Your Body

Hello Everyone!
Sorry I have been MIA
I hope you had an enjoyable week/weekend. Yesterday was the start of a new pole term at Aerial Dance! I know that I am excited to attend classes again this week. As many of you know, there are classes that run in between terms. I had every intention of attending several classes, but my knee had other plans. I have been struggling with pain in my left knee for the past three/four weeks. I am not sure what I did to agitate my knee, but it was not happy.
I have been icing it, taking ibuprofen for pain and swelling, and trying to work through the pain. I was attending my weekly exercise classes and suffering through the pain. That was up until last week, when the pain was so bad it brought tears to my eyes. I knew that I needed to take break from exercising if I wanted the pain to subside and my knee to heal. I took last week off and my pain has subsided. Yesterday I was finally able to go for a three mile walk with my dog and not have a burning pain in my knee.
Many people injure themselves and do not allow their body the proper healing time before putting that injury back to work. I know that I am definitely guilty of it. We forget the healing process takes time. Time always seems to be an issue. As it would seem there is never enough of it. We are always rushing around trying to hurry up to keep up with time. We do not take a step back and look at ourselves. Our body whispers to us little aches and pains. If we listen to those whispers they do not become screams. I did not listen to the whispers of my knee and now am paying the price. It sure knows how to scream to let me know it is not healthy.  I feel the image below is a wonderful explanation of the whispering I referred to. I have been trying to follow these 6 steps to help keep physically and mentally aware of the what my body is trying to tell me.

Step #1 is huge for me! I don’t ever take the time to just close my eyes take a few deeps breaths and reset. I have found that by doing this simple step it reduces some of the other stresses in my life.
Step #2 I complete while laying in bed in the morning before I get up. I am trying to assess what my body may being trying to tell me even before I start my day.
Step #3 Last week, if I woke up and I had pain in my knee before climbing out of bed, I knew it was going to be long day of pain and rest. As I began to listen to my body the pain became less, because I understood that I needed to take the following steps to allow my body to heal. This required a lot of ice and elevation of my leg. I did go a little stir crazy as I am a very active person.
Step #4 By becoming aware of the pain, I was able to understand what would cause more pain to my knee and what wouldn’t. This is helping me to prevent any further injury.
step #5 I am still working on awareness of  my whole body/mind. Self awareness skills are new to me and I am practicing them the best that I can. Several times I have consider taking yoga to help enhance this awareness, but find I run into a time issue. 🙁
Step #6 I have been following the pain sensations in my knee and I am working on making them disappear all together. Sunday and today have been the best two days for my knee in the past two weeks. I am nearly pain free, but know I am not out of the dark yet. I do have my pole class tonight, I plan to take it easy. I am slowly going to ease back into my exercise routine as to not re-injure my knee or agitate it worse. I am hoping that, it will continue to heal on its own as I follow those 6 steps.
 
Please remember, you only get one body in this life. It is your job to take care of it. We may be young now, but the choices you make may come back to haunt you with age.