Honoring Your Body with Mindfulness
We tend to honor our parents more, care for the elderly and worry about health care as we age. Sure, there are many in the younger generation that care about these issues, but let’s be honest, it is more the exception than the rule.
Does respect for your body come with age? Perhaps. This could be why yoga is very popular for the 30 and up crowd. Injuries tend to become more apparent with age, as pain is the body’s way of getting our attention.
If you have a pre-existing injury – back, knee, shoulder, hip, ankle; or areas of the body that are sore, shouldn’t your training or workout take this into account?
You, as a person who is coming to a yoga class, workout with your trainer, walk on the treadmill or fall chores in the yard have to be mindful and careful about how you perform a movement if you have a body part that is healing or feeling sore. If you work that body part in a way that re-injures it or causes pain, how can that help it to heal?
Mindlessness does not help the healing process and could make matters worse.
Some might give up and make soreness or injury a great reason to not be active. That’s your choice, but I suspect you are reading this column because you are already active, or want to be.
Preventing injury is certainly honoring one’s body, but once you are injured, haven’t you gone past the point of honoring your body? Not necessarily. Perhaps it is an opportunity to approach your health differently.
Personal trainers and the fitness industry call injuries “pre-existing medical conditions,” and can alter workouts accordingly. In Yoga we think of injuries and adjusting workouts as “honoring” the body where it is today – not asking the body to do what it did in the past or fret about what we think it should do tomorrow.
Yoga is a great way to practice being mindful, and to learn how to honor your body where it is today. I will vouch that it can help your body feel better, especially if you are active with some other kind of high impact activity like running, weight training or dance.
Once you develop a chronic condition, yoga can help you deal emotionally and physically with the injury.
In yoga, we don’t approach an injury as something that will keep you from practicing yoga or moving. It’s just being aware of the body part that is healing and moving through the workout in a way that is comfortable for your self -- at a pace that gives you the opportunity to bring “mindfulness” to whatever movement you are performing.
Again, as someone who has had chronic foot problems (plantar fascitis) and back pain (sciatica), I can honestly say that I have not had a debilitating episode of either ailment since I started practicing yoga twice a week.
Injuries and the pain associated with them are our body’s way of getting our attention – and making us “mindful.” I call this “unintentional mindfulness.”
Mindfulness (intentional or unintentional) and honoring your body go hand-in-hand. If you want to learn to be more mindful of your body before the pain of mindlessness catches up with you, it might be time to give yoga a try.
[Editor’s note: Tracy Cox is a NETA-certified group fitness instructor, Yogafit and NETA certified yoga instructor; AFPA/ISMA certified Pilates, Kid & Teen Fitness instructor, SCW Moms-in-Motion fitness instructor and coordinator of Freedom Area Recreation Council’s nonprofit adult fitness program, Freedom Fitness, by the Kmart in Carrolltown Center, Eldersburg. Cox teaches step, hi/lo and dance aerobics, yoga, Pilates and numerous other group fitness classes. She is also Chair of the Prevention and Wellness Committee for the Partnership for a Healthier Carroll County and on the Executive Board of Freedom Area Recreation Council. She can be reached via email, cox@freedomfitness.info or 410-795-9101.]