Our Bodies

“Stress is not what happens to us. It's our response TO what happens. And RESPONSE is something we can choose”. 
— Maureen Killoran

So many times has our body been declared our temple.  We should take care of it too!  I believe the way we treat it reflects how much we value ourselves as a whole.  Our bodies are beyond us in so many ways though; they betray us and remind us how vulnerable we really are.  They surface all our wounds, store our hidden emotions and become distorted into who we really are!  That injury you have been protecting and denying alters your whole form, that emotion you have been avoiding surfaces as a bodily ailment and alters who you are physically as well as mentally.  Our bodies go through a lot.  And yet so many of us are so determined to abuse it and neglect it!  Even the people who do the right thing by trying to remain fit test its limits!  Do we deliberately try to test our body’s limitations?

I used to be a distance runner.  I loved it!  Running was something I did everyday!  I would wake up a few hours early and run 5-10km.  This was fine; I got to exercise and clear my mind of stress.  Then I got into the running…  I became addicted! My 10 kilometres became 15… and then 20… and then 30+… and I wasn’t satisfied with doing this merely 1-2 times per week… I started to increase the days to every second day… and then everyday.  I could feel certain muscles tightening as I did this but pushed through anyway!  I loved the feeling, the rhythm, and time out…  I loved the sensation… I think this finally brought me to my state of flow; painters and sports people crave this sensation!  Flow is the state you reach when you become so immersed in the task at hand that you forget all physical limitations; fatigue and pain become almost blocked sensations because the task is so charged with emotion and purpose (“Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience” – Csikszentmihaly). One day, even though my hamstring was already showing signs of tightness, I decided to go for a particularly difficult 30+km run I have encountered before.  It was a difficult run because it was full of hills, the track was rough and had uninteresting scenery aside from a highway and many impatient cars and somehow the wind always worked against me!  This run wrecked me once in the past physically and emotionally so naturally, as a fitness junkie (and professed stubborn person!), I was determined to conquer it.  I started it out on a particularly warm day… yet there was still that wind working against me!  My run involved a there and back from Grovedale to the beach at Torquay.  The run there was tough.  Once you get past the highway there is still a great deal of distance from the ‘you have arrived at Torquay sign’ to the beach, which is very misleading if you compare the associated distance when driving in your car.  The sign is a false sense of security!  I thought I had arrived only to run at least another 6km more!  The worst part of the journey was the run back.  It wasn’t the distance!  I had run the kilometres before!  It was the uninspiring highway surroundings, the wind and the heat all at once… the fatigue… then suddenly there was pain in my hamstring!  My run became a shuffle… then a walk… then a stagger.  I was so angry with myself for being defeated by this run!  Yet… my body had warned me…

This injury was an issue for three years!  It still restricts my flexibility now!  I wouldn’t say I really rested it… I didn’t really feel it when teaching my Group Fitness classes… so I worked around it!  Being an instructor who is obsessed with good form and technique I became mortified when some of my exercise technique became compromised due to postural imbalances and restricted range in certain muscles.  It affected my dancing too!  I couldn’t jump or kick or split to the best of my ability and these were always things that had come quite natural to me in the past!

I have witnessed many instances of people pushing beyond what the body should do; runners racing marathons on injured legs, swimmers jumping straight back in the pool after shoulder dislocations and injuries, dancers performing on stress fractures and dislocated joints…  Many of us become angry with our bodies for betraying us… yet we betray them in so many ways!  We deny them sleep because of a fun late night activity or because work, hobbies or families take precedence, we distort our muscles and alter our postures because our sports demands it and we prioritise mastering this rather than balancing and strengthening other muscles, or our lifestyles become more convenient being hunched over a computer desk for hours at a time dedicating our time to a study or work deadlines rather than balancing these stints with a little time out. Often we choose to ‘suck it up’ rather than to acknowledge that we feel any bodily discomfort or pain because we believe that the activity we are immersed in takes precedence over our own perceived comfort levels. We are our body’s worst enemy!

There is the other extreme, those who shy away from any training when they experience any aches or pains.  A slight twinge in the lower back and they go and have a lie down rather than think of doing some gentle core exercises to get these muscles strong again, or they have a lower body injury such as a knee or ankle and choose to do nothing rather than work other muscles such as the upper body that are still functioning well and can be trained safely.  Despite us all needing to know our limitations we should all acknowledge that the body was designed to move so if we elect to do nothing we put ourselves at risk of other ailments.  We definitely need to recognize our weaknesses but this does not mean we should let go of our strengths.

Developing acute body awareness seems to be the key to a fit and healthy body.  All of us develop certain habits due to our lifestyles but if we develop an awareness of holding our posture in a certain position or if we draw attention to the fact that we sit for longer periods of time than we can find ways to break these habits.  Scheduling breaks from sitting at the desk to stand and stretch out should be rostered in regularly and take mere seconds to perform, being aware of an under active muscle during training and choosing specific exercises that isolate and activate the muscle may make us more conscious of the muscles switching on during our other training and regularly analysing and reviewing our posture sitting and standing can assist us to break bad habits and focus in on our weaknesses.  Think of other things you have perfected in your life; they improved with training, education, practice and reflection.  Why should it be different for our postures and the way our body physically functions?

Just like many other things in our lives, when something doesn’t immediately affect us, it can be forgotten.  If we are running and we don’t feel physical pain by a postural defect such as an inactive glute which can throw our pelvis out and alter our whole running stride, often we will continue to run and not think about our technique because we are so immersed in the activity itself.  Unfortunately what happens if we ignore these things for too long, they become our habits and then eventually because we have allowed and developed these imbalances, the pain does come and the activity becomes affected.  Suddenly we can’t run at all due to injury and because we have ignored these postural defects for so long, they become difficult to rehabilitate because we have repeated certain actions so often incorrectly.  They say it takes approximately 300 repetitions to perfect an action...  Imagine how many reps it will take to correct something that has been performed imperfectly thousands of times!  I am not saying we should forgo the sport we love or give up our prosperous office job;  we should merely recognise that we need to also make time to bring balance into our lives.  Weaknesses should be acknowledged, movements should seek equilibrium and time should be taken to perfect all that makes us imperfect so that we effectively heal our wounds.  That way the training that we eventually come to love will become unrestricted and a part of our lives for far longer.