This has not been an easy month.
Not the worst month ever, and nothing I need to share publicly, but my body went through some stuff that required a lot of deep rest and more gradual return to activity than I’d expected. In the month prior, I’d committed to returning to in-person services, and spent several days acquiring furniture for the office, setting it up, and trying to prepare the ground for myself to focus on rest and recovery and then easily transition to the office. I have a part that works so hard to give future me a break, and when future me ends up struggling anyway, this part of me takes it personally.
Other challenging things decided to occur that were not part of the plan. My recovery was not so swift or complete as I’d expected. The doctor I saw said I had “no physical limitations” and could go back to normal activity, but did not clarify what normal activity was, only to add, “obviously listen to your body and use common sense.” As someone who really, really craves clear explicit expectations, this threw me into confusion. What is common sense? Nurses, friends, and family members all had a range of opinions as to how I should be doing my recovery, how long I should wait before going back to the gym or martial arts.
Earlier in life, I was so afraid of hurting myself or making injuries worse that I tended to over-rest and avoid exercise and effort when I thought something was happening. Later, frustrated with all that lost time, I pushEd myself to keep exercising too quickly after injuries and illnesses. I learned that a certain amount of movement is helpful toward healing more quickly, while trying to do the same exercise you did at prime health was a quick route to creating more injuries and setbacks.
Whatever sense I could derive—I don’t know if it’s common—is boiled down in what the doctor said: listen to my body. The historical problem was that I was not fluent in my body’s language and needed a number of good and bad experiences to gain a more robust vocabulary. The most definitive thing I can say is that my body needs both movement and rest in varying proportions. Even immediately after I went through the stuff, I was advised to do a little walking around to help my body clear whatever gas they used to inflate my innards and make room for their little surgery machine. But walking for five minutes was pretty agonizing, and I was happy to rest shortly after.
What I found helped the most was to do a little bit, rest, and then try doing a little bit more. For the first week, I did little other than rest on the couch, catch up on all the fever dream horror movies I’d missed (laughing hurt too much), and do little laps around the living room. For the second week, I started doing half hour walks around the block, especially to and from the office.
By the third week, I felt like I could do more stuff but didn’t want to overdo it. My dojo had a special class memorializing the unexpected loss of one of our community, and that felt like something I could attend and just do what I could and sit out what I couldn’t. To my surprise, I could do a lot more than I expected, without pain. To my other surprise, there were things my body seemed to struggle with that were easy before. I’d get stuck in weird parts of the movement that were formerly smooth, and I couldn’t tell why I was stuck.
What worried me most was getting treated like a black belt and thrown around the way my dog shakes his toys. Usually that’s fun, but I wanted to ease into it more. My dojo is very open about modifying practices based on injuries and body needs but I couldn’t figure out a way to communicate what I needed other than, “I’m at 60%.”
It turned out, this was extremely effective. Most people heard this and slowed down for me until we found a speed and intensity that worked. I couldn’t tell you exactly what 60% looks like, and no one asked for specifics, but it was enough of a signal to say—let’s not be super intense, but I do want a workout. After a week, I feel I’ve upgraded to 66.6%, which is two-thirds, but somehow percentages feel more intuitive in these conversations.
60% is beautiful because it is effort, but the slowness and gentleness has allowed me to really inhabit and explore the movements. We are still offering enough energy to each other for practice, but I could take time feeling through those places where I got stuck and sense into how the technique wants to unfold. Then I could go and rest, and feel my body integrating the effort that pushed its edges, but not to injury. This feels like a practice I want to remember in future setbacks. Not to force myself back to even 80%, but to find the percentage that feels like effort and stay there, then rest, then see if I can do a little more.