healing – Move Well with Amy Rizzotto

March 26, 2016

One Year On.

With my hands planted at the top of my yoga mat, a genuine 90-degree angle at my wrist and elbow, I marveled at how normal I felt this morning balancing in Crow Pose. This normalcy evoked a deep sense of gratitude that I could not only make this shape but that I could hold it without grit or strain. I hovered there thinking, wow, the body is an amazing machine and one that can heal in the most remarkable ways.

One year ago today, I was struck by a car while riding my bike. What followed—the surgery, physical therapy, baby steps back into my active lifestyle, and eventually greater challenges to my rebuild strength (like a very humbling Rocket Yoga teacher training)—was tough stuff but helped me learn tools I now use on a regular basis to heal other areas of my life beyond just the physical.

Looped up on narcotics in the days leading up to surgery. I can never thank my dear friend Caroline and her family enough for coming to my rescue that night and weekend. Love you!

Life has this funny way of throwing a whole lot of challenge your way all at once, doesn’t it? We’ve all been there. What’s so wonderful about these low points is that when we crumble we’re left with all these pieces of different size, weight and shape and we have to consciously figure out how we want to put them back together. We get this rare chance to build ourselves up better than before.

As Nikki Giovanni recently said on one of my favorite NPR podcasts, On Being with Krista Tippett, “ sometimes you must take the ingredients you’re given and make the best thing you can make.”

It wasn’t all roses. So many times over the last year I’ve felt angry, scared and frustrated at physical limitations and emotional land mines stemming from the accident and personal trials during the initial recovery period. When I learned to accept those emotions as part of the basket of ingredients I was given, the whole process got a whole lot easier. Let go, or be taken. Feeling broken and broken down brought me to this place where for the first time in my life it felt okay to lose control. Like I was allowed to be a bit of a hot mess for a while. To cry when I felt pain or hurt. To let others help me even when I wanted to do it all myself. To let little chores and tasks slide that would’ve normally irked me until they were complete. It was freeing.

It made things so simple. I knew that all I could do was tend to the ingredients I was given. I could not control the outcome of surgery. I could not make myself heal. I could not will my way to any ideal recovery. I could, however, take care of myself during the process, body and mind, and make for the best.

My attempt to embrace the ingredients I was given. Work with what you’ve got!

This is tough for a goal-oriented person, as so many of us are. When we can relax our attachment to results, we open to the process and it becomes far less scary. Fear is a powerful thing so sometimes it helps to be forced to face your fears. For me that meant, getting back on my bike the day I was cleared; allowing myself to have a full-on, ugly cry break-down on a dirt road in upstate New York when skidding on a downhill pass brought me right back to that moment of impact; and acknowledging that my physical strength was not the only strength I possessed. What I lost in physical strength, I gained in inner fortitude.

Today, I will take my bike, Bruiser, on a joy ride to celebrate our journey together this past year. There has been so much change, so much challenge but all my sassy little bike and I can do is keep rolling and tending to the ingredients we’re given to make our world a safer, kinder, more compassionate place for ourselves and for others to live and love.

June 29, 2015

Be Still to Be Strong: Awakening the Body from Within

As I lay there on my back, sweat drying on the back of my neck, gently cradled by the give of my mat, five simple words washed over me, triggering a moment of ineffable release…

“Awaken yourself from within first.”

I’m no stranger to a few tears in savasana. Moving muscles, honing mental focus, and getting lost in the rise and fall of breath have an uncanny ability to remove blockages, both physical and emotional. From time to time this release opens the flood gates, others it simply lets drips seep out one by one. Today was more of the latter for me, but my goodness did it feel good to crack.

No one ever told me I had to be strong while healing from my accident, but I resolved to stay positive, look at the glass half full, and find the proverbial silver lining. I’m not saying it was wrong to push myself in this way, but it was at times exhausting. I knew at some visceral level that if I let myself crumble emotionally while my body was broken against its will, I might slip down a darker path than if I steeled myself in certain ways. Fear of falling kept me from facing the true trauma of my experience. Part of me knew I would have to face the more emotional impact of the accident once my body started to mend, but it still surprised me when it began to surface.

For the past few weeks I’ve been tiptoeing back into my yoga practice: I’ve used more props than ever before (see below); I’ve gotten creative with hand placement and foot positions to allow for better balance; I’ve come to child’s pose when others have come into handstand; and I’ve even worked up the courage to leave my splint at home despite the fear that others won’t know I’m still healing and think I’m just being lazy (hello, ego!).

Every week that goes by I am physically stronger, but at times more mentally and emotionally frustrated. An agitation shakes and stirs inside me fueled by impatience and expectation. Why am I not yet back to where I was before? When will this pose or that pose be within reach? Where did my stamina go? While all the answers to these questions are clear to my most rational self, in the moment these questions gnaw and nag at my inner fabric.

Here’s the thing—that inner struggle is the exact reason why I love yoga so much, so much that I became a teacher. Yoga illuminates the limits, boundaries, and blockages we all wrestle with. It sheds light on them and allows you the time and space to truly see, acknowledge, and slowly and steadily ease through them. It’s not an fast process, and you cannot rush it. The more you force yourself towards resolution or change, the harder it becomes to achieve.

When that single tear found its way through the crack in the walls I’d thrown up, rolled its way down into the well of my ear, and drew a smile across my face I knew my struggle with this trauma had begun in earnest. My gratitude for this beginning is unbounded. I know that as I start to reconnect with my inner self, awakening from within first, I will have the unique and rare opportunity to reignite my spark with yoga. I get to rediscover the magic of connecting breath to movement. I get to realize anew that stillness creates inner and outer strength. And I get to watch as my body invites me back in, little by little as it becomes ready.

As I lay there on my back, in tranquility and stillness, only then could I notice that when you are still there are no boundaries and no limits to what is possible, only potential.

July 5, 2013

MOAR’s Daily Dozen: DAY 4 – Wide-Legged Forward Bend

Step-by-Step:

1. Come to standing, facing the long edge of your mat.

2. Separate the feet at least 3 ½ to 4 feet apart, feet parallel or slightly pigeon toed. Ground firmly into the outside edges of your feet and engage the quads.

3. Bring hands to waist, inhale deeply and puff up your chest. Exhale as you fold forward, hinging from the hips.

4. Keeping a flat back bring your hands to the mat (or a block), fingertips in line with toes. Make sure your weight is centered in the middle or your foot.

5. Hold for 10 deeps breaths (count to 4 on the inhale and 4 on the exhale), letting the hamstrings slowly release.

6. Bring your hands back to your waist and rise up, keeping a flat back. Return to standing.

Note: you can also do this posture with a shoulder rinse by interlacing the hands behind your back and bringing them up and overhead as you fold forward.

How it will heal you:

Hamstring Pulls – The vast majority of the time, hamstring pulls are a direct result of inflexible hamstrings. This big muscle group requires patience and daily attention to open up and can be really frustrating in their resistance to change. You are not going to go from barely touching your toes to Jordan Wieber overnight. Commit to working on this posture every day and slowly but surely you’ll get the results you want and your body needs.

Lower Back Pain – How many of you have experienced lower back pain? I’d venture to say that anyone who sits in a chair all day has suffered through their fair share. This is also a big one for athletes. Why is that? Most often, lower back pain in athletes stems from tight hamstrings. For my fellow anatomy nerds out there, the hamstrings originate on the sitz bone–aka those little nobs deep in the flesh of your booty that us yogis balance on when doing boat core work (my favorite!). , If your hamstrings are tight they will pull down on the pelvis from the insertion point (the sitz bone) tilting it out of proper alignment and forcing your body to compensate using your lower back to remain upright. Another common reason for low back pain is underdeveloped abdominal muscles. I’m not talking just the six-pack abs (rectus abdominis) but also the deeper corset abs (transverse abdominis) that are critical for balance and stability. The simply solution to preventing and treating lower back pain is to stretch out your hammies and workout your core every day.