I’ve never handled pain well. I tend to be a giant wuss about it. Especially as a child, I would be brought to hysterics by the site of my own blood – by a spot of my own blood in fact. The interesting thing, considering my aversion to pain, is that as a dancer, most of my pain is self inflicted. I remember when I went en pointe my parents warned me that it would hurt, and I believed them. And still I decided to do so. And believe you me, it hurt. It still hurts, on the rare occasion that I pull out the old shoes and prance around in them. And it still hurts when I am reminded that my ankles are not as they once were, due largely to poor pointe training. Honestly, I don’t know how I dealt with the pain, class after class, performance after performance. Probably in a similar way I have dealt with the pain of my ankle injury for the past 6 months – by ignoring it entirely.
Ignoring pain is rather effective if you have something else to focus energy towards. Ever since my bone bruise started getting worse, I’ve had dance classes to distract me. I was doing what I love, so the pain didn’t really matter. This is a vicious cycle for dancers or any other athlete. As long as we are doing the thing we love, it doesn’t really matter how much it hurts. Who cares if we won’t walk when we are 50, we will have lived out our youth active and in shape! Yeah!
At least that is how I used to view dance. And how I used to view pain. A lot has changed in just a few short weeks.
I don’t think pain will ever stop me from dancing. After all, pain is part of being physically active and to be perfectly honest there is nothing more satisfying or comforting than severely aching muscles. It means I have tried my hardest and pushed my boundaries. HOWEVER, I plan on dancing when I’m 90 as freely and inspired as I do now. No, I take that back, I plan on dancing MORE freely and MORE inspired when I am 90 than I do now. I want to dance through everything in my life. I want to do it for a living, I want to do it at my wedding, I want to dance around the world, I want to dance through pregnancy, and I want to dance at my 90th birthday party.
Because of this, my view of pain had to change…
The pain that I am going to discuss now is different from muscle soreness. It is ongoing pain that ebbs and flows and doesn’t respond very quickly to anything I do. This pain makes me angry. It makes me angry because it means I am no longer in control. It means the pain is calling the shots. The pain is demanding that I stop!
You see, if a bone bruise is not allowed to get better, it can go avascular and the bone can begin to die. You don’t have to be a doctor to know that things inside your body dying, is bad. I don’t have to be a doctor to know that dancing would be indefinitely put on hold. It would mean surgery, it might mean a prosthetic.
This is where my initial angry tantrum response to pain begins to change. It has not been an easy or a quick change, but the process is fully in swing by now. If the pain is the thing telling me to stop, warning me that if I keep going my dance career will be forever jeopardized, than the pain is actually on my side. It is looking out for the interest of my body. Who knew, the thing that makes me so angry is actually the thing that is protecting myself from me. So, in all this is turns out that I am the problem. It is me and my stubborn resistance to listening or being told what to do which could essentially destroy my ankle.
The body is an amazing thing. God truly did a fearful and wonderful work and I am newly amazed. We are structured to heal naturally simply by the forces that are present within us everyday. Our life source wants desperately to continue on, and not just continue on, but to continue on in the best, most healthful state possible. The body can survive incredible conditions and given the proper nutrition and rest (even bed rest if necessary), the body will thrive in a way that is simply impressive. In light of this, my body does know what is best for it. The ankle pain has told me to stop and rest until it gives me the go ahead. And considering God made it with defense mechanisms (sometimes against my stubbornness) efficiently in place, I think I had better listen. It is a fine art, learning to listen and effectively respond to pain.
I am not yet to the point of thanking the pain for protecting my ankle from me, but I’m getting there.
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