Taking a breath

As you know if you've been reading, it has been a week, y'all.

I had a good amount of work I could've dove headfirst into in the morning but I just wasn't feeling it.  I put the TV on mute and just sat listening to the rain and the sound of the cars driving by in it.  It was relaxing and nice not the have the static of life swirling in my head.  I think we should all do that more, just take 15 minutes to listen to nothing, not have our face buried in a screen and just reconnect with ourselves.  Taking time to take a breath without the weight of our worlds sitting on our shoulders.  I heard a few bird chirps and knew I wouldn't have heard them otherwise if I had Hallmark's Home and Family blaring in the background as I hunched over my laptop.  It was nice to just focus on having my feet up on the couch in recovery mode, getting my water in and not thinking about anything other than how thankful I am to choose to heal my body rather than being forced into fighting for my life had things turned out different Tuesday.

A week ago today is when I was sitting in bed with 90 minutes sleep praying for meds to allow me to walk from the most horrific pain I'd felt in my life.  Truly, I've never been that scared before...until several days later with the mammogram call back.  You sandwich a not so great reunion with someone from my past in there and it was a lot for my brain and body to process.  When I woke up yesterday morning, I was just so grateful.  My legs were sore from the two miles we walked around the lake and I used my microcirculation pad on the top of my quad which was particularly sore and it felt better in about 10 minutes.  We've been good about stretching every day the past few days with my sessions going anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour depending on if it was after a walk or a whole workout.  The muscles are still very tender from the trauma they endured as well as the efforts to stretch things out since they're not used to that.

I've made sure that pigeon pose stretches are a go to as it really seems to target the area that was most affected.  Hip flexor stretches are also very important since that's where the pain also stemmed from.  Basically, every leg muscle you can think of needs attention.  My quads where it connects by the groin were greatly affected and sore so I make sure I do a bending hip flexor stretch on my balance pad and then straighten the forward bent knee to get a good hamstring stretch which got bunged up by default from everything else being so out of whack.  The soleus and gastrocnemius muscles in the calves are also tied in and very sore from the contraction and being pulled upward as well.  The only positive to come out of that is it has taken the focus off of my ankle but my ankle always feels better when I don't put weight on it.   It has been the hardest thing to basically be told "no exercise for you!" for a whole week and I need to listen to what my body is telling me which is those muscles are not ready for prime time yet even if I'm technically cleared today.  I need to respect the healing process since I've neglected it for so long in the past in an attempt to get my body to work on my timeline. I fear my body is still going through a very dicey game of push and pull right now that left me feeling back to square one last night.

I thought it was timely that as I was taking this "me time" that this article from FitnessBlender.com about How to Stay Fit While Injured or Sick showed up in my feed.  It all made sense and just reinforced how important taking a breath is to heal not just your body but your mindset.  I am trying to find the good in this forced hiatus.

Do you stop to take a breath when your body/mind need it or go full speed until you hit the proverbial wall?

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