Tips for Navigating Injury, Pain or Illness

How do you navigate injury, illness, and life changes that throw you off your routine and feeling good in your body? Sometimes you’re just going along enjoying life. You’re eating well, exercising, feeling good in your body and something happens. Maybe it’s an accident, you fall or step off a curb wrong, and you have an injury, or you get sick and it wipes you out, or another big life stressor happens all of a sudden and your energy needs towards that and you’re pulled out of your regular routine.

These are not particularly unique experiences, I think we will all go through this throughout life. But they can still be very challenging and frustrating. This winter and spring I’ve had several clients navigate injuries (sprains, breaks, falls) as well as personally navigated more sickness this spring than I normally do and I’ve been reflecting on what this experience is like as well as ways that we can support ourselves when injury and illness happen.

Here are some things that I have personally found helpful and ways I’ve been supporting clients recently:

• It’s ok to be bummed out! It makes sense to be frustrated or upset that this happened and I think it is important to allow your body to feel into the sensation. We experience so much through our body's sensations and we often override this experience, especially if it is unpleasant or we think we ‘shouldn’t’ feel this way. So tune into your body, feel into the sensation, acknowledge any feelings or emotions that come up, see if there’s any movement that your body wants to do with the sensation or the emotion.

• Understand that pain changes our brain (especially chronic pain, which is pain that has continued for over three months). The brain can become hyper focused on pain, the body moves in a way that guards and protects against the pain. This guarding can contribute to tightness and more discomfort and pain as well as different movement patterns that can potentially create more issues! While you might not be able to change this completely, I think knowing it is happening is helpful. You can also try gentle things to remind your body that you’re ok! One way to do this is to notice an area of the body where you feel better. This could be an area that feels good, or it might be an area that feels less bad. This reminds your body and your brain that you can feel good, or better, and that even while you have pain, the pain ebbs and flows throughout the day.

• Find support! We are so lucky to have fantastic practitioners in our town and there are so many options for support. In additional to doctors, we also have bodyworkers, physical therapy, acupuncture and more which can all be helpful when dealing with an injury. *Of course listen to what your doctor recommends regarding this.

• Keep moving as much as you can. Movement is so crucial to our wellbeing and so even if you need to modify, reduce how and what you are doing, continuing to get some movement will help you feel better in your body as you are also healing. In the Pilates studio we can do shorter sessions, focus on or avoid specific movements or body parts, and these modified sessions are still very helpful!

Take it one day at a time, take some deep breaths and remind yourself of how resilient and capable of healing you are. You’ve got this! Reach out if you’d like support while navigating injury or illness.