On Resiliency
Everyone with whom I work needs a measure of progress. There are so many measures and they’re all individual to each person, except for one. Resiliency.
I first truly understood the concept of resiliency when I witnessed, over time, the changes in my emotional patterns. I used to experience depressive bouts that would occur several times a year and last for a couple of weeks to a couple of months. There were many factors that contributed to the change I began to notice in this pattern — but the change, slowly over time, became significant. There was no before and after line in the sand. It was a progression that kept progressing until one day I realized that things were different. The bouts of feeling low were fewer and further in between, and when they came, they were much shorter in duration. That, I understood, was resiliency. The ability to bounce back.
If you’ve ever dabbled in even just a little bit of meditation, you’ve likely learned that the goal isn’t to eliminate your thoughts. The thoughts will always come, but how quickly they grab you and how much time you spend with them is what you’re aiming to change. The more often and more quickly you can return to center, the more time you spend in presence during your meditation. That’s resiliency.
I’ve had three very powerful conversations recently around the concept of resiliency with three separate clients. I’m sharing them with you here because they each illustrate what resiliency means in the context of pain and injury but in slightly different ways. My clients’ names have been changed for privacy.
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Meghan experienced a traumatic car crash several years ago where she suffered injuries to her cervical spine, leaving her with severe migraines and neck tension. Almost anything she did with her upper body resulted in migraines. To give you an idea, our very first session together a little over a year ago, I had her stand facing a wall and place her palms flat on the wall at shoulder height. She immediately felt immense shoulder and neck tension and had to place her hands downs. Today, she’s doing ring rows, planks, deadlifts, and overhead presses. Her progress with how she can use her body without ensuing detrimental migraines has been truly remarkable. But her progress is actually two fold. A month ago, she experienced a fender bender in an Uber. She immediately felt sensations of whiplash and she texted me with fear of reliving the pain of her original accident. However, while she did experience some neck tension and some migraines, the symptoms dissipated in a timely manner. Within 10 days she was doing ring rows again at my studio. We celebrated her resiliency, another side of the coin of progress, founded in the confidence she built over the past year and the understanding that her past experience no longer has to define her current body.
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When I first started working with Lawson two years ago, his lower back pain was creating mobility issues for him. At 75 years old, he was still working intensely more than 50 hours a week and running around after 3 year old twin grandkids. A few weeks ago, after finishing his third set deadlifting 115 pounds, he asked me “How do I know when I should and shouldn’t pick something up in my daily life?” His strength and mobility were giving him the confidence to do more functional tasks, like picking up heavy bags of firewood and moving a new mattress into the house. But how can he know his limits to avoid making a mistake? I love how deliberate and introspective his question was, and we had a long discussion about the many variables in the equation that signifies mindful movement. But I reminded him that what we’re doing may not prevent an episode of back pain. It most certainly has mitigated it, but things will always happen, as we are human and will undoubtedly make errors in judgement or experience accidents beyond our control. The question is, how quickly can we bounce back? The goal is that the episodes of back pain will at the very least, become less and less frequent. And when they do occur, are we in bed for two weeks with limited physical activity for 2 more? Or can we rest for a couple of days, throw a heating pad on it, and then feel ready to resume our lives?
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Avery is the poster child for resiliency. Every time she experiences an injury, whether it’s a broken toe, a badly bruised rib, or persistent elbow pain, she continues to show up and just do what she can do, barely skipping a beat, and maintaining a positive attitude throughout. She has narratives about each of her injuries but isn’t fixated on any of them. A few months ago, Avery tripped and fell in such a way that she badly hurt her eye. As we were texting back and forth about it, she wrote, “At all costs, I shall not, I will not carry a tote bag on my shoulder when on a day of walking no matter how light the bag. I would like to stay in control and confident and meet my grandkids one day!” She was drawing a line in the sand for herself which didn’t seem in character. But knowing her general attitude about injury in the past, I understood that this was a jarring experience for her. The immediate and most logical solution when things like his happen is just to avoid that thing that caused the accident. It makes total sense, and it’s definitely a legitimate option, BUT it’s an option that exists by taking something away from us. Another option would be to add something to mitigate the event. Add strength, mobility, fall prevention drills, agility, peripheral vision, multitasking balance work, etc. One option disempowers us, and one empowers us. There’s a cost benefit analysis to be had in any such situation. In Avery’s case, carrying a tote while walking is such a common everyday occurrence that taking it out of her life would cost her a great inconvenience, not to mention a constant reminder of her seeming inadequacy to do a simple task. The benefit would be that she might not fall again. The benefit of adding specific skill work to her movement practice would be immense, reaching far beyond just walking with a tote and giving her the actual control and confidence she’s looking for. She admitted, her reaction was quick and not in line with her general MO, but it’s a totally legitimate reaction when we’re scared and when we’re in pain.
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The beauty of resiliency is that it allows space for pain, accidents, regressions, and other set backs. It acknowledges that the upward trajectory to feeling better is not linear, that things do and will happen, and that our bodies will change over time requiring us to adapt our training accordingly. Resiliency in the context of pain and injury is as much a psychological skill as it is a physical one. They cannot be separated, and therefore can influence each other in a positive cycle that applies to other areas of life. I see it as one of the most consequential skills we can adapt to.
keep moving.