Pang

After it happened, I was moving slowly anyway. So, I deliberately hung out in the locker room knowing she would eventually come in to rinse off and grab her stuff.  I was determined to confide in her and see what she had to say. A major muscle in my back was seizing. Unfortunately, I knew this drill; I sought from her an explanation of its root cause and cleaved to the idea of a cure.

Being an instructor and an avid yogi herself, not only was she knowledgeable about the tantrum my muscle was throwing, she periodically found herself in the very same clutches, and shared the physical therapy no muscle relaxant-prescribing doctor would ever suggest. But more than anything she reassured me I had not injured myself, and that in her experience an angry muscle was a sign she was on the verge of a breakthrough, able to express a posture at a new level once the pain subsided. While I left the studio in physical misery, hope sprouted in my heart.

“Growing pains” is actually a thing for some children who complain of aching legs just prior to a growth spurt. I put some thought to this idea in the context of yoga and decided quickly it makes a bunch of sense. The concept is ubiquitous, but we’re so afraid of hurting, we often fail to acknowledge or accept the role pain plays in activating growth.

 

Every time I transition into a new role at work, I can count on an awkward block of agony where I question my capabilities and struggle to retrieve the confidence so accessible when I was at my peak doing the job I just vacated in the name of career growth. Even in the artistic world, so many creatives will tell you their first work was crap. Amazing art or writing belongs to those who put in the work every day to hone their skills, the ones who instead of giving up keep practicing and turning out the mediocre until one day there is a body of work that when presented together communicates a marked and almost miraculous evolution. I need only to look at my collection of handmade holiday cards dating back to the turn of the millennium for proof.

But, oh, the pain!  When your back, or your heart, or your mind, or your pride, or your grief aches so profusely and incessantly, how are you ever expected to keep going? For those of us lucky enough (or unlucky, depending on how you look at it) to have been here before, we know that this too shall pass.  For everything else, it’s probably a little bit of faith and trust.

I will say that nursing my screaming back was much easier to manage now that I was armed with the good counsel of my trusted yoga teacher. I carried out her prescription of backward bends religiously, and true to her word the non-negotiable recovery time of two weeks I had experienced in the past was reduced to a mere two days.  I was back in yoga class by the end of the week, kicking out my leg and sustaining the hold in standing head to knee pose for the first time in five years of practice.

It’s a routine playing out repeatedly in life. As I heard myself confidently presenting a recent success story to a group of colleagues today, and letting the dissenting opinion wash off my back, I realized I am over the hump once again of crippling self-doubt and jumbled nerves threatening to hold me at bay just before I make the leap to the new level of leadership I need to embrace.

As we come out of the backward bend that is camel pose, the instructor will often say if you feel a little sick or uncomfortable, you’re doing it right. We probably don’t spend enough time telling ourselves or each other those feelings are normal. Imagine life if we did.