I am not generally a patient person. When I make a decision to do something I want to get stuck in as soon as possible and will be fidgety until the opportunity arises. So this last fortnight on crutches has been a hard lesson for me in learning my limitations and having the patience to deal with them! Being my usual stubborn self I am walking around on my injured foot when it feels better, ignoring the fact that a bone is still broken and it needs to rest. I then spend the next day regretting my actions and promising my foot that today it will rest.
Then an hour later I get bored and decide I really need to go and sort out some paperwork or hobble upstairs to get something really important and forget (or ignore) that I am not supposed to be weight bearing on it. Being on my own during the day whilst hubby is at work has forced me to take a moment before setting off on a mission to assess whether it’s really vital that I do it right now or whether it can possibly wait until I am in that area of the house. Being so used to just jumping up to get something or walking from room to room with armfuls of bits and pieces has caught me out a few times, as I get to grips with the logistics of something as simple as transporting a cup of tea from the kitchen to the sitting room on crutches!
Together with this I am looking at the gloominess outside, listening to the rain falling and wondering if my allotment is ever going to get planted this year. I’m inwardly thankful that it is still so chilly as that allows me to reason that it would be prudent to wait another few weeks until the ground warms up. I’m still in that mentality that I need a reason to make me feel better about it – I am trying to master the art of simply accepting the situation for what it is, but for someone so used to getting up and doing when the urge strikes it’s a tough one.
So my lesson from this injury is most definitely patience, with a good dollop of acceptance. I have another couple of weeks to get my head around this and put it into practice by which time I hope to be super chilled and relaxed and raring to get back into the clinic.
Yesterday I completed the third stage of my NO HANDS® massage training and once again I have to say WOW! Another totally fantastic and absorbing weekend learning new ways to work and feeling the benefits of it myself. Once again it was 40 hours over 4 days with the same group of students from the previous courses. Founder Gerry Pyves was as enthusiastic and dedicated as ever, as were his excellent team of trainers.
I have been totally blown away by the power of this way of working and the passion with which it is being taught. Every new step opens up yet more possibilities of how we can work with the body to bring relief from pain and help restore a natural balance. These methods are so gentle and lovely to receive yet work on such a deep level… a pleasure both to give and receive.
Whilst I was being worked on during the structural clinic session my practitioner, Yvonne, was able to release something in my back that I had ‘protected’ for many years. Normally I involuntarily tense up when being worked on in that particular area and have never quite been able to let it go but Yvonne was working so slowly and with so much nurturing that I wasn’t even aware of the depth she was working at and so I was able to totally relax and let go. When the release came I was aware only of a surge of emotion and then the tears. A good sob later I noticed when I was walking around that my back felt totally free of any tension, I felt taller and things were flowing as they should. It was an amazing moment for me as I’ve never had an emotional release during a treatment before. Since then I have felt lighter, more content and physcially more comfortable and balanced. Just amazing.
So next time you are having a treatment with me you may well experience something new – it may be the brilliantly named ‘contrapuntals’ to help release spinal tension or a deeply powerful colon treatment – an abdominal massage to help tone the internal muscles and get things moving as they should! (more on this in a separate post).
If you haven’t yet tried this massage I invite you to throw caution to the wind and give it a go – who knows you might just love it so much you’ll wonder how you managed without it all these years!
I am very excited to be undertaking the next part of my NO HANDS ® massagetraining this weekend and will be even more excited to start using these more advanced moves on my clients. This is proving to be a fantastic way of working and has allowed me to work through several minor injuries that would otherwise have put me out of action in the clinic.
This part of the course is more intensive than the first, being 4 days of early starts and late finishes, but on the plus side as well as giving a lot of massage I will be receiving a lot too – which is always a great thing!!!
I was given this advice during a tarot reading and it immediately struck a chord. I used to meditate regularly and give myself time to sit and ‘just be’ but in recent years I have found that progressively harder to do. I’m not sure why, and I find now that I am unbalanced and my energy goes in strange cycles of either totally up or very low. On the low energy days I have learnt to give myself a break and indulge in my desire to do little with the knowledge that on the high energy days I will get enough done to cover the low energy days. A downside of this is that on the high energy days I find it hard to settle and am constantly feeling a need to do things.
Whilst this does sort of work it’s not an ideal situation in the long term so I needed to find a way to redress the balance. When I had this reading the cards pointed to meditation and allowing myself to ‘be’ on a number of occasions so I took the hint and started to do something about it. When you take the time to just sit and be with yourself it’s amazing what happens!
Find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed and sit quietly. Try to clear your mind, but if thoughts occur don’t fight them away. Acknowledge them and move them aside to return to later. Keeping the internal chatter quiet is very hard to do and takes a lot of practice so start with just a few minutes and gradually build up to a duration you feel comfortable with.
Either keep your eyes open and just be aware of what’s around you (this works well sitting in the garden or out walking) or close your eyes and focus on your breathing. Enjoy being fully present in that moment there and then. Sometimes I set myself a question before doing this and use the quiet time to see if anything comes to mind – it’s a useful way of checking how you feel about something or finding ways to move forward when you feel blocked. The important thing is to just allow it to happen and don’t try to formulate thoughts and feelings, just acknowledge them when they arrive then let them go.
Learning to ’sit’ with things and trust your intuition (or gut feeling) is a very effective way of living to your values and only doing things you are totally comfortable with. You will quickly learn how you respond to certain situations and circumstances and become more intuitive in your decision making. More importantly allowing yourself to just ‘be’ for a few minutes or longer a day will help you to relax more and become more focused and present in your life. Enjoy!
I’d be interested to hear your experiences with this so have fun with it and feel free to post me a comment with your feedback!
I am not generally a patient person. When I make a decision to do something I want to get stuck in as soon as possible and will be fidgety until the opportunity arises. So this last fortnight on crutches has been a hard lesson for me in learning my limitations and having the patience to deal with them! Being my usual stubborn self I am walking around on my injured foot when it feels better, ignoring the fact that a bone is still broken and it needs to rest. I then spend the next day regretting my actions and promising my foot that today it will rest. 