The following day, a Saturday, was very fine weather and I had a lot of things on my agenda.  All my autumnal preparations had been delayed by the wedding and the office move and the resulting exhaustion; I felt grateful that Nature had granted this warm, snowless day in late November so that I could catch up a bit.  I did three loads of laundry and hung them on the line.  I cleaned the chicken coop and wheeled the full wheelbarrow down the hill to the compost heap next to the garden.  I straightened up the house and cooked beans and then headed to my friend Adrienne’s to help raise the tipi for the winter community fires.   I was aware of my left SI joint and tried to be careful throughout and, especially at the tipi raising, did less than I ordinarily would have.

Over this same weekend, I was having a fairly intense conflict with my beloved triggered by stress over money.  So I came home from the tipi raising, potluck and fire and had an intense, very productive processing session.   The next morning I woke up and could barely get out of bed.

I was compelled to cancel all my patients on Monday—it was clear that I could not be upright long enough to get through my day, and leaning forward over a table was utterly impossible.  Tuesday wasn’t any, better, so I cancelled my day again.  Wednesday I was supposed to go to Maine with my beloved, to his family’s big annual gathering.  Thanksgiving is my favorite of our conventional cultural holidays, and I love my in-laws.  But on Wednesday morning, the prospect of a four-hour car ride, followed by lots of energetic, bubbly social time seemed totally overwhelming.  I decided, with a fair measure of anguish, to stay home alone and give myself the holiday time to work with and take care of myself.

Emotionally I was a bit of a wreck by then.  I’ve had back pain since I was fifteen—like many other chiropractors, I entered this profession because my back problems sent me to chiropractors and I found help—and fascination—there.  I live with a certain amount of low-level pain in my back most of the time, and I’m diligent with my yoga and Feldenkrais self-care because if I’m not, the pain gets worse.   With attention, though, I am able to do just about everything I want to do most of the time, and I hadn’t had an attack of acute, disabling back pain since I was 20.  I’ve never had an injury that lasted this long.  

Most kinds of back pain are what we call “self-limiting,” meaning that even if we do nothing, they gradually heal. (They may not heal in a way that is great for our overall functioning in the long—term, but that’s another question.)  To have pain that was fairly unrelenting for four days was a pretty novel—and unsettling—experience for me.  And I do mean unrelenting: one of the distinguishing characteristics of sacroiliac pain (as opposed to lumbar facet or disc pain) is that there is no position which is completely pain-free, and if one stays in any situation—lying, sitting, standing, walking—for any length of time, the pain tends to escalate.   Sleeping is difficult because all positions tend to entail some pain and changing positions is really challenging.  There’s a certain kind of agitation that tends to arise from the inability to rest or relax fully…and then there’s the stress of being self-employed (no work, no income) in a job that depends completely on my ability to move around—and to move around with grace and ease so that I can convey that to my patients.

Before long, the demon voices began to arise.  “Maybe you have cancer,” they whispered in the quiet space opened up by being alone with the injury.  “Maybe you’re not getting better because you have a big ‘ol uterine tumor and it’s pulling on the uterosacral ligaments.”  (Sometimes knowing a lot about the body is a liability—these paranoid fantasies can take on much more detail and apparent credibility!)  “Maybe your L5 spondylolisthesis has finally totally destabilized so that your vertebra is floating free in your abdomen, and if you move the wrong way, your legs will be paralyzed!”  “You’re not going to get better.  You’re losing income every day.  Soon you won’t be able to pay your bills.  You’ll have to close your practice, and then you won’t be able to pay the mortgage you just took out to build this new building.  You’ll have to sell, only in this lousy market you won’t be able to…your life will be ruined!”  Etc., etc., ad nauseam.  Literally.

Friends and clients offered well-meaning advice.  “Take a hot bath with Epsom salts!” (Being in the bathtub is incapacitating—between the heat and the position my pelvis has to adopt, I can barely get out, and then I can barely walk.)  “Are you taking Traumeel?”  “You should get some x-rays!”  “Maybe you should go to the ER and get painkillers, just to give yourself some relief.”  Meanwhile, I was trying to listen for the still small voice inside who knows what is best for me—while also bearing in mind the limitations of my perception/intuition.  Between my inner doubts and demons and my well-wishers, it has been extremely difficult to find a workable balance.

It has been difficult, too, to find a balance between simply resting and working with movement to offer myself relief and healing.   I often feel better in the morning after a night of sleep, but if I rest too long in the daytime, I get worse.  When I work with myself with very gentle yoga-ish movements or Feldenkrais explorations, I sometimes find things that bring relief and sometimes, despite all my finely honed discernment and sensitivity, unsure whether I am helping or doing harm or neither.   Often I can’t tell until the next day, and usually I’ve been pleased to find that what I’ve done seems to have helped.  This has encouraged me to keep trying, and I feel that there is progress—but it is VERY incremental, and characterized by lots of ups and downs, sometimes even during the same day. 

While this is certainly not a process I would have chosen, it has been fascinating.  I have been grateful for my Feldenkrais, yoga and meditation practices, which have allowed me watch the process unfolding through many layers of my self.  I’ve been particularly grateful for the way my Feldenkrais has taught me to go slowly, to try lots of different alternatives until I find one that is comfortable.  I’ve also been humbled to see how difficult it still is for me to give myself whatever time I need, to observe how impatient and self-deprecating I become when the first few things I try, things that have worked in the past or that my mind says “should” be good for me, do not produce good results.  

I have been forced to adopt a practice of one-pointedness with regard to movement that is highly unusual—I need to attend to what I am doing and how I am doing it at all times or the pain comes like a thin knife in the pelvis.  I see that despite years of practice, this kind of one-pointedness is incredibly difficult, and I see how some part of me rebels against it,  “I don’t WANT to do only one things at a time!  I want to be able to move around without paying attention to what I am doing!!”  I laugh to myself because I sound like so many of my clients.  How many times have I listened to you all say, “But WHY do I have to pay so much attention to my body?  I don’t WANT to pay so much attention to my body!  I want to just be able to do what I want to do!!!”  I smile, remembering how often I have asked the question, “Well, who is this I who is separate from the body?  Where does that one live? "  How often I have pointed out that our difficulty in being patient and compassionate with the stubborn pain, limitation and weakness of the body is the same as our difficulty in tolerating the limits imposed by nature in general, by life on Earth.  

It’s certainly reasonable to want to be able to move around and do things without attending to how we place our feet on the ground, how we’re breathing, whether the spine is lengthening, etc.  But reasonable or not, that’s not what’s happening for me right now.  How difficult it is to surrender to what is, even when it is as immediate and non-negotiable as pain in my own back!  How difficult it is for me to accept that I cannot simply “fix” this problem, that I have stumbled into a realm where all my knowledge and skill avail me only in regard to being with the process, not in being able to determine the outcome.

It’s been humbling and softening to see how attached I am to being self-sufficient and indeed to being able to take care of everything for everyone else.  It is so difficult for me to allow others to do things I think I “should” be able to do, from putting wood in the stove to cleaning the cat box, and especially to accept this help day after day with no clear sense of when I will be “back to normal.”  

This injury has brought me up against the incredible vulnerability of these bodies, and of my body in particular.  I find that I have had a fierce, stubborn conviction that through diligent practice, I could avoid or overcome the fragility of my lower back.  I find that because things had been going so well for so long, I had succumbed to a belief, hope or expectation that with continued diligent practice, things could continue to get better and better.   I have listened to the demon voices saying, “See?  We told you so!  You’ve gone as far as you can, baby, and now you’re aging and it’s going to be all down hill from here….”

This injury has also shown me, vividly, how attached I am to speed.   I see how I almost always go as quickly as I can—unless I’m meditating or doing Feldenkrais or yoga, where there is a specific injunction to be slow.  I am deeply attached to an idea of myself as efficient that is currently utterly unattainable.  Who am I if not that efficient, all-accomplishing one? 

I see, too, my deep habit of taking care of other people and things before caring for myself.  I have worked with this tendency for years in all kinds of ways, yet it persists.  Of all the habits challenged by this injury, this is perhaps the most painful. Even to say to myself, “No, don’t rush around feeding all the animals and cleaning up the kitchen BEFORE doing things that help your back—you can do those things afterward”—is difficult.To be unable to get the fire in the wood stove going in the morning and make the house toasty and cheerful for my beloved before he arises is awful for me—taking care of these little earthy details is one of the ways I express my love. I feel ready to try going back to work, but I know that I won’t be able to do the things that I usually do—I will have to help people by directing them, with my voice and light touch, how to help themselves.  I simply cannot take over the weight of anyone’s legs or head right now.  This brings up feelings of deep unworthiness and fear.  If I can’t offer what I usually do, will my clients accept what I can offer?   If I can’t be consistent with my schedule because this injury is very up and down, will they all go away?  If I can’t hold everything together, will it all fall apart?

I have learned a lot about deep movement habits, too, and these are not separate from the habits of mind or heart I’ve described above—they’re just harder to put into words.  There has been a lot of insight into how often I shorten my spine, make myself smaller, collapse around the solar plexus, stomach and chest while working hard at the back of my neck to keep my head upright.  I then expect that my legs and pelvis should get me up and down with minimal help from my shortened and rigid spine.  As I feel into this dynamic, I feel compassion for my pelvis-- I really can’t blame my pelvis for saying it’s had enough of this!  At the same time, I don’t know how much, or how fast, these deep habits will be willing to change.

It’s been truly interesting to be compelled to go slowly, to be more one pointed, to do much less than usual—especially after three seasons of going much more quickly, handling details in multiple areas, and generally doing much more than usual.  The fact that this injury may be my body’s, my being's, necessity is not lost on me.  Would I have slowed down this much for any other reason?  No way.

Nor is it hard to perceive the correspondence between my body and the body of greater nature.  Global warming notwithstanding, in this part of the world, nature does not grow and produce all year long.  At this time of year, in the deepening dark, things are quiet, apparently inert.   Much activity is invisible, and all activity is conserved.     There is always uncertainty about whether the resources that plants and animals have laid in during the spring, summer will be enough; each year, some plants and animals die in the winter.   I, like most of the rest of us, strongly resist falling into harmony with the movement--or lack thereof--of this part of the year.   There has been a certain deliciousness in doing so, although I would love to have done it voluntarily and without guilt.

This is not an inspirational tale.   There is no happy ending (at least not yet!), no “See, if you just handle injury and difficulty this way, everything will come out o.k.—I did it, and so can you.”  This is the dark time of year, and a dark time on the planet.  Outcomes are uncertain.   Perhaps the only “moral” I find in this story is a stark reminder that I AM NOT IN CHARGE.   No matter how diligently I try, how much virtue I cultivate, how carefully I tend my resources, life sometimes takes me to places where things do not go as I would prefer and, furthermore, I cannot figure out how to “right” them.   As Americans, we participate in a kind of aggressive “can do” karma that leaves us generally ill prepared for such situations.  Collectively, we tend to react to them by ramping up our attempts to control people and events—our response to 9/11 is a great example of this deeply rooted habit.  Individually, we often do the same thing, although our strategies of control may run the gambit from overtly aggressive to quite passive depending on our natures.   This injury is showing me how deeply I still embody these collective habits—and deepening my gratitude for the teachers and teachings that allow me to explore alternatives.  

I do the work that I do because I believe that we cannot hope to shift the external world without attending to the internal, because I know, with my deepest being, the truth of the old saying, "As above, so below."  The aggressive attitude I tend to take toward my own body in this situation is the same energy that my nation turned on Iraq and Afghanistan following 9/11.  If I rail against our nation’s leaders while manifesting the same behavior, I am not acting with integrity, and I am certainly not contributing to the transformation that my heart and soul ardently desire.

Seeing the unity between inner and outer, microcosm and macrocosm, can be an incredibly demanding way to live.  It leaves me no place to hide, no convenient excuse for denying or failing to engage with my inner work, and no way to rest with blaming the myriad ills of the world on others.  On the other hand, seeing this unity offers a kind of hope I find nowhere else in our current collective situation.  If I evaluate our external conditions—particularly the ecological conditions—with my rational mind, I see absolutely nothing but unparalleled, almost unimaginable suffering.  If instead I sit with the mysterious wholeness my deep being perceives, I am compelled to say that I do not know what might happen as more and more people awaken to, accept, and become responsive to, responsible for, the interconnectedness of this universe.   

As with my back injury, I do not think a miracle cure for our collective situation is likely—although I’m open to the possibility! —but when I hold to my embodied holistic sense of the world we inhabit, I can at least perceive a way to work with the present moment.  I am learning, again and again, that even in tight spaces of injury and illness, we are capable of looking for the openings, the gaps, where we can move with what is with gentleness and compassion as well as skill and determination.