The Lessons Behind Injuries
Whenever we encounter an injury either during our yoga practice or during our everyday activities, the tendency is to interpret the unexpected and unfortunate event as something detrimental; and certainly the first reaction is to label it as: “not good.”
However, many of the greatest lessons in life don’t arrive in the ‘friendliest of packages.’
When an injury suddenly strikes usually we resist and put ourselves in a position of being a warrior. Our immediate job becomes to fight the injury and overcome the pain in an attempt to come out victorious from it. Yet, from the practice we know that we must embrace all which comes our way as part of the yogi path of non-resistance. Thus, we must be willing to open up to learning the teachings behind the pain and to learn the lesson/s the injury is trying to deliver to us.
In order to fully embrace the opportunity to maximize on the potential for learning, first of all we have to stop whatever we are doing and pay close attention: gather information from our minds, from our bodies, from our surroundings and from our environment. Once we’ve done that initial exploration, we can reconsider what happened and start to practice acceptance in the case of an accident or claim responsibility if there was anything we could have done to prevent the injury from happening. Once we have forgiven ourselves and all other possible causing circumstances and people involved, we can move on to the path of healing.
Healing demands patience and time. Time is what allows us to unwrap the lessons to be learned. These lessons are usually ‘personally tailored’ and particularly delivered to our needs through the injury. As we are willing to tackle whatever gets on the way of our recovery and create the time and space for the healing to happen physically, emotionally and spiritually we manage to discover the very lessons hiding behind the more obvious injury and we begin to see the light on the on other side of recovery. Only then we may come out of the experience of injury feeling stronger at many levels, wiser and certainly more experienced than before.
Remember next time you are running, walking, playing your favorite sport or simply on your mat practicing and an injury unexpectedly strikes; don’t fight it but rather open your arms and heart widely to embrace it since it may surprise you with a great lesson that although it may leave a scar; it may also hand you a new gift to incorporate into your array of experiences lived and lessons learned which will leave you all the wiser.
Finally, don’t forget to be gentle and kind with yourself and to embrace even what is painful, because all happens for a reason. And if you embrace all injuries with faith, trust and love; you will reap the benefits of finding the light on the other side of recovery. You will have excelled at being ‘patient’ with the pain, with the emotions, with yourself and with all you had to face as a result of the injury itself. The great news is that you will come through all that a much more patient and self-confident you!
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