The story behind why it might look easy for me (and I strive to make it easier for you)
"It's ok for you, this stuff is easy for you..."
This has been said to me few times, and just now, it has lit the fire in me to share a few things that might make anyone reading second guess this statement before firing it at me.
No, it is not easy. Through my own dealings with chronic disease and life changing surgery, I have birthed a massive amount of empathy that knows not to assume anything about anyone, despite appearances, social media feeds and outwardly projected vibes.
Here's a bit of what has got me to the point of making things look easier, and more importantly, helped others to find ease and resilience.
- - -
I was always injured.
Always.
Every training session, or in reality, any time I wanted to do something physical, I endured a 30 minute prep of taping and Tiger Balm.
Just like hippies smell like a trademark combo of body odour and incense, I wore the nasal searing scent of tiger balm, deep heat and other variants, like a signature cologne.
And it was embarrassing.
And scary.
Because I didn't know, if the session that I was trying to push my beat up body into, was going to be the one that saw me take a backseat to ev-e-ry-thing, for yet another 6 week forced and frustrated rest. And it made me feel weak.
While I faked a forced laugh with everyone about my lengthy routine in the locker room, and answered questions about being injured again, to say I was frustrated was an understatement.
I was also angry.
All I wanted to do was keep fit, and have fun doing sport and other active stuff. It's not like I was snorting lines and paying for hookers. I was living clean, training hard and wanted to live this lifestyle, and it was a battle to stay a part of it. Sitting on the couch doing nothing never crossed my mind, but it was suggested to me many times that it would be the safer and less heart-wrenching option. I was jealous and resentful of those those that seemed to be able to compete in sports injury free, though I have since learned, everyone has their stuff to deal with.
Like everyone, my body tells the story of what it has been through. Even as a kid I was tight and experienced pain. In fact, I couldn't sit cross legged at school and was allowed, much to the annoyance of the other kids, to either sit on a chair during floor based events, or sit on my haunches. This made me feel like I was King of the jungle, and paved the way for a life of being a smartarse.
As a young athletic adult, yoga seemed like the logicial path for me.
And for some time it was..
Almost immediately, I noticed my flexibility improving, and could finally touch my toes! I became so immersed in the experience I even broke through the awkward pretending-to-mouth-chants and ohmms in the corner of the room, to embracing the whole practice, woo-woo and all, and eventually became a yoga teacher.
However, even though I could get into yoga poses better, my injury rate and pain seemed to be unchanged.
Not getting the answers I needed from my mentors and teachers about anatomy, biomechanics, and how to make yoga actually work in real life, and failing to be able deliver what I felt my students really needed in the confines of a yoga practice, I went back to Uni to become an Exercise Physiologist.
Unfortunately, everything took a fairly shitty turn when I was staring down the line of a battle with chronic disease. Despite my denial, being one of the fittest people I knew, my kidneys were failing, and in order to desperately kick my goals in sport, I listened to all of the broscience, let bad coaches shout me into stupid training methods, while enduring the confusion with how yoga fit into the whole scenario.
Until a kidney transplant put a stop to everything.
At one point on this path of trying to achieve what I never would, I even overtrained into rhabdomyosis, a condition that occurs when your muscles break down and waste product builds up in your body because you have trained so hard. While idiot trainers and athletes wear it as a badge of honour, it was life threatening at the time. So when you hear me talk about my hate for the go hard or go home mentality that acts as a stand in for dumbed down trainers to program meaningful exercise for their clients, know that I have been there..and nearly didn't make it home.
From then on, listening to opinions, yoga dogma, and broscience was not an option. With a massive loss of muscle mass, immunosuppressants and other drugs that mean injuries hang around for a long time, my self care, training and body maintenance had to be spot on.
Coming out of surgery saw me turning back to my yoga, unable to move for some days, but laying in a hospital bed, syncing my breath with movements in my toes, and eventually my feet. I was determined to get back to some sort of activity or sport asap, but became aware it would require adapting to new activities. All this meant aspirations are no longer around being world champion, but I still had to strive to stop fitness and sport being something that had become a battle to be part of.
I laser beam focused in on biomechanics, training and nerded out on everything movement, so that I could give myself the best chance of being as active as possible.
It is an ongoing journey.
But in this time, I have also developed some epic outside the box ways of bettering my patients and athletes. Always finding a way to make people move better, I started to incorporate my yoga background in with my outside the box Exercise Physiology to create homework for my patients and athletes to do between sessions.
Some would do amazing with it. Some would pray for the rehab fairy to visit, and do nothing. It wasn't until I created groups of what I now call "5 minute fixes", that everyone, including the ones that thought paying me equalled being instantly fixed without doing the work, saw results across the board.
These are the same things I do for myself to allow me to compete in the sports that I want, to the highest level I am capable of, without having to worry about the next injury, or deal with nagging tightness, niggles and pain. While my biggest aspirations are more along the lines of being in a condition to just do the things I want, I no longer pulled into the confusion of an already confused industry, or confined by the dogma of yoga.
And I no longer constantly smell like tiger balm.