A High Tolerance for Pain

When I was 7 years old I stepped on a nail during a Girl Scouts outing. As one of the mothers tended to my wound I was very proud of myself for not crying. In fact, I remember her say that I must have "a very high pain threshold." Though I barely knew what those words meant, I knew she was happy that I was enduring the injury without a lot of tears and I quoted her later when I told people the story of my stoicism. I considered it a badge of honor that I had a nail in my foot and didn't shed a tear. And, as you may know, badges are a huge thing to Girl Scouts.

This weekend I decided to finally let go of that badge. My right shoulder and wrist have been in pain for quite a while now. In fact, I've been having discomfort in my shoulder for about a year and I've been, well, shouldering the pain with a smile on my face as it gradually got worse. On Saturday morning I helped my friends Helen and Erika move and, despite feeling a little stronger from my recent yoga practice, I felt some pain in my shoulder and, as usual, pretended it was fine. Erika even offered me help a couple of times lifting some heavy boxes and I told her "I've got it, no worries." Then, as I went from their house to my training, it hit me - I was in pain.

My instructor Elise began class by asking if anyone had any new injuries she should know about. Usually I assume my injuries aren't worth the instructors attention but something told me it was time to come out about my pain. I raised my hand and confessed. "I've been having some shoulder and wrist pain," I said, "and I helped my friends move this morning and now its really hurting." She paused and said to me, in a tone that was like a sword cutting through my high tolerance for pain "Why did you do that?" I said I didn't know but as I sat with her question, I totally knew the real answer - I don't like to admit when I'm in pain.

Today in class it came up again as we launched into a series of poses that required holding downward dog for a long time. My shoulder just didn't feel right and I knew I shouldn't be pushing it so, fighting against every ounce of pride I have, I sat on my mat and looked around for help...

At first, no one came to my rescue and I thought to myself, "See, your pain isn't real and its not worth their time. You're fine and stop whining." I got back up started to do what the rest of the class was doing. I started to push through the pain like I always do. And then I stopped again. I put my foot, or rather my butt, down and waved to one of our assistants.

Ellie, (who is the type of beautiful, graceful yogini I assume thinks I am awkward and don't belong in yoga teacher training) came over and asked me very kindly what was going on. I told her about my shoulder and began to feel more vulnerable than I've been in a while. I felt like I was confessing a deep, dark and dirty secret but her response wasn't in line with what I thought was coming out of my mouth. She didn't reprimand me or tell me I was wrong for complaining. Instead, she told me to back off of my shoulder, to give myself a break and she did it all with a warm smile that made me realize how hard I had been on myself.

I picked the practice with the rest of the folks and her warm smile stayed with me. I also cried a little bit, which was scary but felt good. Rather than freak out and try to stop my tears, I let them flow as my body flowed through the poses. With these tears came a new-found sense of ease and awareness. I was able to be gentle with myself and I found that, listening to my own body, I had new experiences in almost every pose that followed. Soon I began comparing myself to other people and coming up short but then I realized that a) they might be dealing with her own pain that they hadn't yet expressed and b) me wanting to look like them is not going to make my shoulder any better. Listening to my own body will.

During our break, Ellie came over to me again and gave me some more pointers on how I could better hold my body to take some pressure off of my shoulder. She also said that a friend of hers had recently commented after a class they took together that she wasn't as "perfect" at yoga as he'd expected. He'd noticed her resting a couple of times during class and was surprised that she didn't come all the way into some of the poses. He'd assumed being a yoga instructor meant you did everything really well. In fact, she said, it just means you know your strengths AND your limitations very well.

I still want to be the girl with a high tolerance for pain. I still think I should be able to do certain things because I'm young or because I'm becoming a yoga instructor. I think I will always struggle with wanting to do things perfectly and get that badge of honor. But this weekend I realized that just because I stepped on a nail once and didn't cry doesn't mean I can't cry now. Ignoring my pain won't make it go away and pushing myself has only proven to make it worse. I'm going to go easy on my shoulder for as long as it takes it to feel better and I'm even going to be a little more tolerant now...of myself.

Week 3: Heart Opening

A common instruction in many yoga classes is to "open through your heart" or "lift through your heart." It means, literally, to push the chest forward starting at the back of or inside of the body, rather than just puffing it out like a rooster. But just reading this phrase or even seeing it be done by someone else doesn't quite convey the feeling it creates in the body. Heart openers, as some people call poses that call for this movement, are powerful asanas or postures that have recently been leaving me pretty sore.

This soreness, or heart ache, if you will has come as a big surprise to me. "But I'm someone who says "I love you pretty freely," I thought. Wouldn't this make my heart open already? Why am I suddenly feeling like an emotional teenager again, with every little feeling, good or bad, surging through my body so strongly? Then again, I can think of a lot of times when my heart has needed a little mending. Times when I've had to put construction tape up around it and curl my shoulders forward to protect it. Sound familiar?

I'm sure it started, as most emo things do, when I actually was a teenager. My poor heart, constantly in a state of unrequited love, needed somewhere to retreat when it was in danger of being hurt again so I dug it a little trench where it could sink down and sulk without the fear of being seen. Then there was, though I didn't admit it at the time, a huge pain in my heart when I moved away to college. And then the ups and downs of college ensued. Lost love, lost innocence, found out life isn't as simple as I'd like it to be, lost my favorite t-shirt, found friends, friends were lost to first jobs in far away places. Lots of mini-heartbreaks that certainly added up. Of course, I began to insulate it during those four years.

And, over the last couple of years as "an adult" its only intensified as I've put my heart out on a limb for jobs, for lovers, and as the distance between me and many friends and my family have pulled my heartstrings thinly across the country. Out of what often seemed like necessity, I've had to protect my heart, make it less vulnerable to all the ways it can be injured. I've built upon the teenaged trench, over the years, a ramshackle casing of brick and mortar, cynicism, fear and standoffish-ness. I've built it a little home that fills up space in my chest and is well decorated with only the happy things that I want to project out the the world. It has given my heart more weight so that it is heavy, serious and not so delicate. You have to knock before entering, too. Add to that the scaffolding I've built up - it is under constant construction - which keeps me so busy around the exterior that even I don't have to feel what's inside.

I'm a busy girl when it comes to protecting my heart and its only recently, when I started doing more "heart openers" that I realized how little of my heart I'd been showing for quite some time. I really believed all this work necessary, to prevent it from falling, cracking, being knocked loose or, heaven forbid, stolen. Yet doing these poses, pushing my heart out from its casing, I am breaking all of the molding loose and I am realizing that most of the strain is, in fact, from all this crap that is surrounding it. Each time I reach through my heart and chip away at its casing, the more I feel that it is much stronger than I remembered. Despite the heart ache these stretches have caused me, and perhaps because of it, I'm feeling much more love emanating from the center of my chest than I have in years.

It really hit home Friday night as a fellow student was being picked up from class by her partner of 17 years. He was waiting patiently for her as we filed out of the studio and when she put her mat down for a second, without saying a word, he grabbed it and slung it under his arm. They both turned to walk out of the building together and he had a huge smile on his face. I knew, just from a simple observation, that this was love. My heart lifted as I watched them for those few seconds. I haven't felt my heart lift for something so simple in a long time. As I told her about it the next day, she lit up and I knew I hadn't been mistaken. My heart had been open enough to feel, if only for a second, their love.

I'm looking forward to, 5 and a half months from now, sharing this experience of heart opening with my students. This ability, to take a phrase that doesn't mean much when you read it and turn it into a powerful action that enables someone to experience life differently, is something my heart is very eager to learn.