Blog
Pain is not the enemy
Pain is never fun. Most of us do whatever we can to avoid it. But what could we learn from it if we took away the idea that pain is bad and simply saw it as an indicator that something is amiss?
Recently I was having all sorts of pain in my left hip. Nothing debilitating, but it was getting worse. I saw my message therapist, my rolfer and the chiropractor and yet the pain persisted.
And then, while I was creating new content for my new and improved web site, I was looking for a a video of myself presenting a speech that I could include. I watched lots of footage taken of me in my Toastmasters club. Much to my surprise, my body language finally revealed the key to why my hip was so sore. In EVERY speech I gave, I noticed that all my weight was on my left leg, which meant my hip was jutting out to the side. Not a very aligned posture! Then I started to notice that I actually stand like that all the time; when I'm doing the dishes, when I'm cooking, when I'm on the phone......... Odds are that if I'm standing still, my hip is off to the side.
In the weeks since that observation, I have made a conscious effort to stand with my weight evenly distributed and guess what.......my hip doesn't hurt any more! That's what got me to wondering about how often we are the source of the pains in our life simply due to our living out of alignment. Sometimes it's our physical body that's off and sometimes it's the fact that we're living and making choices that are out of alignment with our values and what we truly want.
The next time a pain shows up in your life, whether it's physical or emotional, instead of trying to cover it up right away, see it for what it is, an indication that something is off. Take some time and notice how you're moving and/or behaving. If you can track down the source of the misalignment, #1. you can choose to change it and #2. you can begin to acknowledge pain for the ally it is.