Ankles Away!

Ten days ago I hurt myself again. Fortunately, it wasn't horrible.

As I was exiting the ring in the dark, I was a bit more to my left than I usually am and I trotted right onto a spike. My ankle rolled and my body reacted to keep me upright. I could immediately feel that my ankle had suffered a bit of injury, but I didn't know how much. It wasn't until later that I felt the painful effect the bodily reaction had on my rear hips and lower back. I had tweaked my back again.

There was thankfully very little swelling in my ankle that accompanied the pain and I hadn't lost a whole lot of range of motion. The back was a different story.

When this injury has happened before (it happened earlier this year) I was frustrated and confused: Aren't my back muscles strong? Aren't I flexible enough? Aren't I in good shape? Whatever the reason, whatever the circumstances (maybe my back muscles are too strong and when they fire protectively, they really fire), my back was tweaked as were my dorsal hip muscles.

It sucked, but I found that this time, I didn't "need" ibuprofen or any analgesic. I didn't "need" Icy Hot. My previous back muscle over-reaction had taught me some coping mechanisms and how to focus my stretching and my yoga to loosening things up. I held off on my exercise regime so more bodily resources could be used for repair. It dawned on me a few days ago that this is a time when I am learning to be injured. I've been learning how not to pressure myself to push and have developed a sense of what to do to make sure I can perform through the day and end the day feeling better than the evening before. This time I even enlisted the help of my acrylic ball, which provided a nice, firm, rounded, rolling surface I could use to hit the deeper layers of muscle and break up the kinks.

Thankfully, it has worked and I feel fortunate that my injuries weren't worse. I'm thankful that elements of The Old Me were able to be silenced and set aside so I could properly take care of my healing process. So much has changed for me and within me this year and this is just one thing that has yielded results.

I still think I'll look into some chiropractic adjustments when I return to the United States because I'm sure my muscular seizures have pulled something out of whack, most likely my hips.