Back on my Feet!

Today was the my first day back to standing poses without my restrictions. Very exciting! Generally, it felt so good to allow my body to gently extend further, although there were a few disappointments.

Surya Namaskar
To stay true to my 'don't bend not past 90 degrees at the hips' rule, I have been doing Sun Salutations with a block under each hand. I also released my right leg backward, and bent my left knee as I lowered my hands to the blocks. The nice not-restricted feeling of reaching my hands towards the floor, was tempered by creaky, stiff muscles. I don't know why I was so surprised! I am moving like a stiff-as-a-board beginner. Very humbling. 

In Surya Namaskara B, I have been doing a looong squat, while my partner moves through Warrior I on the the right side. My quads still need strengthening. I was happy to leave the squat behind (who likes squats??), and it was a treat to step forward into Virabhadrasana I on the right side for the first time in months. My hip is still sharply painful with downward pressure on the right foot. 

Ardha Chandrasana
When I did Half Moon pose on my operated leg, I dropped into a familiar, joyous sensation of flying. I actually felt more stable, and more fluid in my right leg, than on my left.  The more ease I feel on the right side, the more I notice the beginnings of same downward spiral on the left, starting with the same tight, sore feeling in the adductor. Standing on the left, my hip feels tight and held, the SI joint close to seizing. Damn.

Virabhadrasana 1 and 2
Both Warriors feel tighter and stiffer on my left hip. A bit discouraging. Still, I will keep working with a vision of fluidity, encouraging the freedom in the right hip inform the left. I'm sure it will help that with the left hip, I know what I'm dealing with. I have many more tools at my disposal. I hope I can keep it healthy for a long time. 

Shades of Past Practice
In gently stretching my muscles into the poses, two things were apparent. 

1. As my right hip becomes more fluid, my left hip is probably going to tighten up. I will do what I can, with diet, exercise, and visualization, but... It's kinda sad I don't get to enjoy two healthy hips at once until after I get my left hip replaced. But. It is what it is.

2. I remember doing standing practices, something like six months ago, feeling very distracted. After I'd corrected Zack the umpteenth time, he diplomatically asked if my mind was a bit busy. I centered myself, and burst into tears. "I can't be present - it hurts too much!", I said. I'm so lucky to have left that pain behind!

I love my practice for many things, but especially as a barometer of the changes in my body from one day to the next, from one year to the next. I am so blessed to have achieved a high level of fitness and facility before my hip seized up. To be able to move forward again is such a phenomenal gift. I am dancing in my head ALL the time these days, and can't wait to get into the studio. I'm looking at teaching some classes in the fall.

I have so much more appreciation of my body and its abilities. This is such a journey of staying present with what is.

Today's Quote: 'Don't it always seem to go, you don't know what you've got til it's gone." Joni Mitchell

Asking for Help

First, thanks to everyone who wrote in with advice to 'take it easy!' after the last post. Your reminders help when I feel like a wimp for lying around all the time. Still, when I tune into my body, it's clear. Lots of rest = lots of energy + less pain. Being on my feet a lot and getting a lot done = more pain + needing to rest. As with most things it's not easy to find the perfect balance. 

My life changed drastically in 2006, when I split up with husband of 12 years, sold my dance and yoga studio and moved to Montreal. As part of re-inventing myself, I took on a gratitude practice. I tried to let go of my pride in giving, and embrace the value of receiving. I reciprocated thanks with 'you're welcome' instead of 'no problem' or 'sure'. I allowed friends to offer me help, whether a listening ear or a temporary home. I found my new practice humbling.

But Rome wasn't built in a day. In Montreal, I furnished my apartment with other people's castoffs, found on the street, at yard sales, and Craigslist. I bought an 8 foot wardrobe, made of large heavy pieces of pressed board held together by tiny pegs inserted in holes. I bought it unassembled, no instructions included. 

Earlier in the same week, I had mentally chided my roommate for moving in without asking me for assistance. Somehow I didn't see the irony of assembling the Ikea Beast solo, when she was just down the hall. I assumed she was busy doing something important, like watching TV.

I tried to put everything together in the right order, but really, it was a job for two people. Though I used all my limbs, lifted and counterbalanced, pushed and pulled, I couldn't quite piece the thing together. Then just when I thought I had it figured out, it all crashed down on top of me like an oversized house of cards. I peeked out from underneath a heap of boards to see my roommate in the doorway, one eyebrow raised eloquently. 

Fast forward to my present state, post-surgery, limping behind my walker. Some things I can manage just fine. I've perfected 'The Golfer's Reach', sliding my operated leg out behind me as I bend my left knee to pick something up off the floor. But keeping from going past 90 degrees of flexion at the hip is a challenge. I can't reach forward to pick up my tea from the coffee table. I can't take off my right sock, or put on my pants. Walking with a glass full of juice is a messy proposition.

But it seems that all the letting go I've been doing in the past years makes it easier to ask for help. Of course I am lucky that my partner is generous and accommodating. My stepkids are more willing than usual to lend a hand, especially for things I obviously can't do myself. My friends are sweet with gifts of food, flowers and time. I don't feel anyone looking down their nose at me, mentally suggesting that I could be doing things myself.

I'm revisiting humility, and finding it rather exhilarating. There's something profound in searching for the balance between caring for yourself, and allowing others to care for you. It's a new version of opening up to receiving, of giving others the gift of giving to me. I hope that when I am once again able to do everything myself I will continue the practice of balancing giving and receiving. 

Today's Quote:  “We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness.” 
― Thich Nhat Hanh

Looking for the Ease

This blog is only one day old, and already I'm in touch with others like me. Worn out, painful hips, technically 'too young' for hip replacement. Is this a new phenomenon? Did people's hips seize up like this a hundred years ago? I wonder now if my Grandpa with arthritis who walked with two canes, after a fall from an apple tree suffered as I do. Still, by the time he had the fall, he was 80.

According to the nice physiotherapist at the Joint Replacement Clinic, arthritis is hereditary. That means that I can't blame teaching 20+ aerobics classes per week in the 80's, or doing thousands of grands battements (that's dance language for high kicks) in my favourite butoh/contemporary fusion dance class. It can't be penance for binge dieting in my 20's, or living concurrent fitness fanatic and party girl lifestyles. The pain that keeps me from dancing has been in my genes, waiting to pounce, no matter what choices I made. Good thing I dove full-on into life while I could!

Not that I don't continue to be as active as I can manage. My partner, Zack and I practice yoga together every morning. Almost every morning... We do a variation on the Vijnana series, taught by Orit Sen-Gupta. Standing Poses on Tuesday, Backbends Wednesday, Seated Poses and Twists on Thursday. On Fridays we do a flow that suits what we need. Saturday and Monday we do Restorative practice (ahhhh...) and Sundays we sleep in.

I do my best in my practice to focus on the good stuff. To accept the pain, work in alignment, and look for places of ease. It's hard not to hear in my head and body the echoes of what I could do before. It's a big switch, after a lifetime of stretching, to exercise with diminishing returns. Certain stretches, Pigeon pose, for example, feel more like an exercise in patience than a stretch. I can exhale, breath energy, imagine softening till the (sacred) cows come home, and nothing happens.

Still, this morning, towards the end of our practice, I found some ease. I found the joy in the seated twists, with my legs propped and still. I felt my pelvis sending roots into the earth, my spine singing into the twist like the robins heralding the coming Spring. I remembered the joy of lifting my heart in the dance, for just a moment.

Which brings me to gratitude. Because it always comes back to gratitude. Though I'll have to live with this for up to a year, eventually there is a solution. I've talked to plenty of hip replacement 'survivors' and they all report this: 'NO MORE PAIN'. I'm not stuck with daily pain forever, like plenty of other folks. For that I give thanks every day.

And I do my research, so when the time comes, I can make informed choices. Here's a column that appeared recently in the the Globe and Mail. A not-so-happy ending.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health/the-nightmare-of-margaret-wentes-miracle-artificial-hips/article9235946/?page=2

Cheers!

Journey into Pain

Well. Let's start in the middle. Why begin at the beginning? Too normal for me. Too usual. Let's begin in the middle. With pain.

I've always had what's known as a 'high pain threshold'. This means that when I was 10, standing at the sink waiting for my Mum to take a sliver out of my finger with a needle, I passed out from the pain before I felt it. This means that as a young dancer I danced on bleeding toes, and thrashed around on stage with wild abandon, despite a fever of 103. I spent the first 30-some years of my life pushing through pain, either ignoring it, or sitting out of dance class because I couldn't trust myself to care for my body. 

Dance for me was about flying, jumping, whirling. In later years it was about weightlessness, about losing track of which way was up. All my life, my body has been strong and capable, flexible and facile. As everyone, I had small limitations, and big insecurities. Still, the photo of me hanging upside down from  rope swing at about age 11? That's how I've lived my life until recently. With a big grin and a 'sure, let's try it!' attitude. 

I'll tell you the longer story later, but my right hip has been funny for years. I tore my right hamstring too many times as an aerobic champion in the early nineties, and sometime 2005-ish it started giving me more trouble, despite my regular yoga practice.

In June of 2011, I was diagnosed with severe arthritis, and told I was a candidate for a hip replacement. Of course I cried. Somehow before that, I thought it was something temporary. I'd tried chiro, physio, osteopathy, yoga, Feldenkrais, massage, Gestalt, Rolfing...I thought I was just short of finding the right thing. I wasn't ready to entertain the idea of an operation and foreign objects replacing my bone. But I had to.

Cut to almost two years later, and the pain is my constant companion. I pop Tylenol Arthritis three at a time, but they don't seem to do much. Once able to sit on the floor with my legs wide and drop my chest to the floor, now my legs separate a scant couple of  feet.

It's tough telling my step-daughter I can't go skiing or mountain biking. Until recently, I did, but the fear of falling is getting too real. The wearing in my hip, along with the pain, make it impossible for me to bend my knees or back much. So getting down to the ground and back up again is already difficult - and pretty impossible on skis. 

I feel like an old woman, and I"m only 50. I practice yoga every day, but I"m not even maintaining. I'm losing flexibility, but doing my best to keep a positive attitude, to accept where I'm at. To live with the challenges life has handed me. It's not easy.

I have a hip replacement booked for October 30th, but I'm hoping to get in before then. Stay tuned...