Hamstrung

You learn so much from an injuryEileen Muir, Yoga teacher

For the last year, I have been struggling with a hamstring injury. A pulled tendon, right where the hamstring attaches to the sitz's bones, has prevented me from moving with ease in my left hip and leg. At times the pain has spread down the leg, through the buttocks, in the deep crevices of the hip joint. The uninjured hip seems to have suffered as well from my lack of ability to bend forward completely.

I have, in turns, been angry, sad, humiliated, prideful, impatient, and loving with my pulled tendon. I have felt better and then pushed too hard only to reopen the injury. I have backed off, backed into, backed around the pain. I have wrapped the leg in bandages and straps, massaged the muscles with arnica oil, pressed hot then cold into the leg. At many points throughout this year I was sure I would never heal. I worried the pain might forebode of some greater danger like arthritis or a hip replacement.

Through it all, I wanted to get better, for the pain to go away, to bend deeply forward again.

Then, seemingly "all of a sudden" something shifted. There was less pain when I walked, when I bent forward, when I twisted my hips.

"You learn so much from an injury," Eileen whispered to me in class last night. And she is right. I learned how hard it is to have compassion for my "injured" parts, how impatient I can be with my slowness and pain. I learned how much I yearn for wholeness, for a body that works well, for health. I learned how to move more in the belly of the muscles and not pull at the tendons to get into poses, to feel the embodied energy and heat in pain, to use the groins. I learned the humility and grace of imperfection and how pain can help us to love ourselves and each other better.