allowing grace in through the pain.
Exactly one year ago, I was walking at a very fast clip downhill through what was then the neighboring preserve to our beautiful 19th century carriage house an hour north of New York City. I had walked and run this trail hundreds of times, knew the ins and outs of the forest, knew that it was often strewn with trash that I picked up along the way and also that it was filled with roots and uneven ground. I had lightly rolled my ankle a few times already in recent weeks but had always walked it off and been mostly fine the next day. Nevertheless as I barreled down the hill, I ignored these bits of important history and threw any caution to the wind.
Crawbuckie Preserve, Ossining NY 2023
I was about two thirds down the biggest hill in the preserve when I misstepped over a root and flew to the ground, my ankle not just rolling but popping loudly underneath my momentum and trajectory. I knew before I even hit the ground that something very serious had just happened in my foot. I remember repeating, “No, no, no, noooo” to myself out loud, as if I could speak the truth and pain away.
My husband was in Switzerland that week for work (a lovely bit of foreshadowing). There were other people I could have called to help me back to my house, but I very often did not ask for help when I needed it, so I slowly (and not very smartly) hobbled my way about a half-mile back home.
At one point I even had the thought that “walking on it could be useful to keep loading it as it heals”. I can smile gently at this now; I can hold this aspect of Anya in a deep embrace. This is the part of the story where I tell you that up until the moment I hit that tree root I did not know how or when to stop. Ever.
And then my ankle, my body, the entire universe said, “Stop. Enough. Just Stop Moving. Stop Doing. Stop Trying. STOP.”
And so I had no choice but to stop. Stop everything. Teaching, client work, most aspects of mothering as I knew it (walking her to the bus, picking her up from school, getting up the stairs to her room any other way than crawling, and on and on), cooking, cleaning (not that I ever jumped at the chance to clean!), getting around the house, driving, doing almost anything and everything on my own.
I still have a few text messages I sent out from that day. The first was to ask a friend for help. It seems that perhaps it was the first time in years I had asked anyone but my husband for a real favor. My friend stepped right up, stepped up and beyond. And so many others followed to help out when I asked. And I had to ask, I had no choice. I was forced to fall back into the support of others, a truly uncomfortable, humbling, and revolutionary experience. The first of many, many, many to come.
When the injury did not just “walk off”, I continued to come face to face with what it means to stop and be still as the injury let me know that it was not ready to be loaded at all (anytime I tried to hobble around on it, I woke up the next day with much more pain). I tried to teach too soon and I felt it set me back a week in my recovery. I did too much too quickly in my rehabilitation work and I felt that I was not making any progress because it simply was not ready for what I was offering the area. Stop. Enough. Just stop moving.
After three weeks, when it was not progressing “fast enough”, I decided to go for an MRI - I felt defeated and scared. The MRI showed multiple ligament tears, bone contusions (deep bone bruising) to my inner maleolus (inner “ankle bone”) and third and fourth metatarsals (the long rays of the foot that connect the toes to the midfoot tarsals), two fractures to outer ankle and 4th metatarsal, swelling in my posterior tibialis (where most of the pain was) and peroneals. My experience with the medical system, which I generally prefer to avoid, was mostly horrendous. It took an entire month after the MRI to see an orthopedic doctor, and when I walked into her office and explained to her how I’d been self-rehabilitating the injury, she spoke to me like I was an idiot and brushed off my questions as a waste of her time. I cannot imagine what I would have done if I didn’t have the knowledge and the resources I do have at my fingertips. So with imaging and a renewed disdain for much of the western medical system, I carried on with my own rehabilitation program as I had been doing.
I could write more than a few essays on what that ankle sprain taught me and how it completely changed the trajectory of my life. Ultimately the injury sped up some major transitions that were likely already about to happen: selling our house, letting go of my business, moving…. back to Europe (we first thought Madrid but it shifted to Switzerland in the end based on the decisions of my husband’s company and here we are!). It created the conditions for me to wholly reshape my way of working with myself and others, and ultimately reshaped many aspects of how I relate to the world.
One of the most important principles that infused itself into my being since the injury is the element of stepping back and allowing for grace and patience. I have nearly always been someone who pushed and kept pushing for what she wanted, attempting to prepare diligently for any upcoming scenarios. I fervently worked to set myself up to land perfectly in the future with no sign of ever having struggled. This kind of outer perfection and inherent drive made it nearly impossible for me to relax or settle at any point in my path, which over time became exhausting and often far too much to maintain.
Interestingly (but not surprisingly) this was also something I struggled with in my personal practice as well as in teaching and coaching others. I found it difficult to step back and allow people to have their own experience without trying to “fix” or coach them into what I thought was more optimal. I was often challenged in my own practice to simply feel where I was and allow my felt experience to be the ground of my work. Frequently, I found that I was pushing myself somewhere before I even knew the point from which I was starting. By doing this, I could certainly achieve a pose or a physical goal but I was frequently uninspired by my process because I was not really learning anything along the way except primarily how to push harder and with more skill. There was generally not enough space for listening or understanding.
In the aftermath of the biggest and most intense transitions that were catalyzed by my ankle injury (moving overseas, selling a beloved home and letting go of my beloved studio recenterspace), I found myself basking in stillness and quiet when we arrived in Switzerland. For many months I did not feel like teaching, sharing information or thinking about my career or work. I felt like an empty vessel, both open and also completely spent of resources and energy. I had such an invaluable gift from my husband in that he offered me the time I needed to figure out what was next for me without question and without pressure. I spent most days walking in the nearby mountains, cooking, re-acquainting myself with the beautiful food options in Switzerland, giving my family my time and attention, and practicing in my body quietly without a need to push myself anywhere. It was a healing and “re-centering” time, a nod to the namesake of the business I had just released into the ether.
This injury is still not fully healed. I work on it almost daily and I improve little by little and sometimes in big jumps forward. Right now I am starting to build in the details of the proper mechanics so that I might run without issue again one day soon. I have a tremendous mentor who has shared valuable and helpful information and also given me lots of space to fumble in my unraveling of the injury. That fumbling has also allowed me to bump up against my own experiences rather than relying solely on his expertise to shine the light into my process. It has been very frustrating at times, but also incredibly empowering. I have discovered, through all of the stumbling and searching and listening and feeling, the inherent wisdom of my own body. Not through a book or the words of a great teacher, but through my own allowance of grace and patience in the spaces inside and around my quest.
The first thing I had to do a year ago was to ask someone for help. And then ask again. I became far more passive, patient and forbearing by necessity. That first step led to many more places inside myself where I had to step back and allow; grace, space, help, time, healing. Not a day goes by now when I do not reflect on the fact that searing and enduring pain (not just physical) brought me to this deep realization within myself.
These days I feel a sense of peace and contentment that I do not remember having felt for years, maybe decades. I recognize that the pain I endured and endure is a direct border and neighbor to my peace. Pain is the path that led me here and what gives me the container to know where equanimity can live inside of me. For me, this is an intensely profound example of yoga; the meeting, balance, unity and transcendence of opposites and the subsequent evolution that can manifest through that transcendence.
This work inside our “self” never ends, and yet there is an opposing grace that lets us know that while we are always evolving we are also already balanced, complete and whole as we are. As we learn more about ourselves, we gently dial the knobs so our balance changes more toward one polarity or another based on what we want and need at the time, and what serves the greater good.
I finish with a quote from Rumi - these lines came into my head today as I wrote this essay. From “There’s Nothing Ahead” translated by Coleman Barks.
“Stretch your arms
and take hold of the cloth of your clothes
with both hands. The cure for pain is in the pain.
Good and bad are mixed. If you don’t have both,
you don’t belong with us. ”