I want to write a bit about my knee injury I got back in February and about what I needed to learn for it to really start healing. But first I wanted to talk about the link between our thoughts and our bodies. It seems that there are a growing number of people who recognize that our state of mind and emotions will affect our bodies physically, yet even amongst this group of people in certain situations there is disbelief that thoughts or emotions could be the root or block to healing. For example, at this point it is pretty well known that high levels of stress is highly likely to increase your risk of heart disease. So what does that mean exactly? How does something become stressful to where it leads to plaque buildup in your heart? Well, since I’m not a doctor or medical researcher I’m not going to try and explain what happens when the body is under stress and how that leads to heart disease, but I do want to talk about how something becomes stressful. What is stress? How does an event become stressful? There are some situations that are life and death and your body will automatically react with the fight or flight response. This type of stress is automatic and our bodies are built to release chemicals to help us survive and once the immediate threat is gone, our levels return to normal and we go on or way.
However, most stress we talk of today for most people is not due to an immediate threat on our life. It’s the feeling of being overwhelmed with whatever is at hand. So how does an event or a situation go from just being to being stressful? Your thoughts create the stress. What you tell yourself about the event or situation is what leads to feeling overwhelmed and stressed. Often times it’s not just a single thought that leads to stress but the track that seems to be on repeat. As you play that track, you’re body starts to get anxiety, your muscles tense, you may even get a shortness of breath. There are all sorts of chemicals being released and these thoughts and now emotions are going in cycles and creating lots of physiological effects throughout your body. So HOW you think about something will determine whether you get stressed, stay stressed, or let go of stress.
So if how you think about something leads to stress and stress can lead to heart disease then your thoughts play a big part in what happens to your body physiologically, right? Now I’m not saying there aren’t other factors to heart disease, there obviously are, but one of the number one things you can read on any heart disease study is to reduce your stress level. Which means, learn how to manage your thoughts and then actions around events that trigger you to feel stressed.
I wanted to open this post with the little anecdote about thoughts, stress, and heart disease, because it is a widely accepted fact and most people agree and believe their connections. Our bodies are amazing and in many other cultures and medicinal practices, there is the understanding that what goes on in our minds can have a great affect on our health. There are actually many unseen reasons for pain, illness, and disease in our bodies.
So on to my knee injury. Please keep the thoughts/heart disease in mind as you read about what in the end is helping me heal. I had a hard impact fall to the inside of my left knee which left the tisses and nerves bruised, inflamed, and a slight tear (grade 1) in my MCL ligament. I got an MRI done on the 3rd day after the incident and this was the diagnosis. My treatment called for immobilization for about 10 days, elevation, and lots of ice. I was told initially it should heal in 1-3 weeks, this later changed to 6-8 weeks. With all challenges I always ask myself, what’s the lesson here. What do I need to learn? Why is this happening? I decided that patience was definitely one of the lessons I was going to need to learn to get through this. I could finally walk on it with some pressure after about 3 weeks on crutches. I had started doing minor exercises but it was really painful and felt so swollen and stiff. I went to see a different doctor and he didn’t like how swollen it still was and gave me some steroids to take. He told me not to exercise it because with the swelling I could risk tearing the ligament worse. So I wore my knee brace faithfully and crossed my fingers. The steroids seemed to do nothing. I’m about 6 weeks into this injury and I’m baffled at why it won’t heal. The thoughts I would have around my knee would vary. I spent quite a bit of time visualizing it moving fluidly and I would picture myself running again. Then there were other times that I had thoughts about being really frustrated that it wasn’t healing. I kept thinking, what else is wrong with it? I went back to the doc at about 9 weeks and he gave me cortisone shot directly into the knee because it was still inflamed and wasn’t moving very well. It was stuck with very little flexibility. That shot did very little and made it worse for a good 7 days after, then it started to loosen just a bit.
At this point I really was praying and asking to know more about what it was about. What am I not learning…why won’t this heal? I started getting concerned that they missed something in the MRI, but in my heart I knew I just wasn’t understanding what I needed to learn. My second doc said it could be a longer injury to heal due to the impact, but it was almost 3 months and I was trying to be patient with it, but was getting a bit scared to be honest.
So I asked a dear friend who is really intuitive what her opinion was on why my knee wasn’t healing. I wasn’t sure what she was going to say but I was prepared to hear it and do what I needed to do. After a long discussion the overall gist was that I needed to accept where I was in the present moment, with everything. During the discussion I started crying. It was the kind of emotion that came from deep inside and needed to be released. For me, it’s a signal that she touched on truth. I was happy and grateful for her insight and at the same time I felt somewhat helpless and frustrated. Acceptance? Being Present? Being in the Now? Well, heck, that’s my life long work. I’ve been working on those things FOREVER and know it’s a journey, a long-haul. How can I speed that up so that I can run again? Do a squat? Sleep on my side properly? Sigh…I knew that even the thoughts around speeding things up where the opposite of accepting where I was in the moment. I had never fully accepted that I was injured and that it was bad. And just like most people, I easily allow my thoughts of the past of the future take me out of the present. So I had a new strategy…when my thoughts would drift and I would recognize it, I would bring myself back to the present and acknowledge what was going on for me in that moment. I noticed some small shifts in my knee and I was still trying to be patient.
I continued asking and praying for help and insight about what more I needed to know to help me heal. At this point I’m doing exercises and trying to get my atrophied muscles stronger, but my knee still felt so stuck, inflexible, and where the impact occurred; numb. I decided to got get some acupuncture done to see if it could help. I also usually have really good meditations during acupuncture so I was hoping that I would that day. Once I was all needled up, I closed my eyes and asked my guides for guidance. Pleading really. I said what do I need to know about being Present or acknowledging where I am? What else am I missing?
The information started flooding in. It’s hard for me to describe exactly what that looks like, but it was like I was hearing my own voice speaking to me from outside of myself. I would also see flashes of words really big in my mind’s eye. A word would flash big to tell me it was the topic at hand and then the information would follow. I would then ask this voice questions for clarification and get answers back. The main words were STUCK, INFLEXIBLE, & NUMB. They all were related to various things in my life in the recent past that my mind would think about and replay. Ideas that I wasn’t letting go of, situations that I wasn’t being open to being different, and not acknowledging All my feelings around these various things.
My knee had become a physical manifestation of my thoughts relating to being stuck, inflexible, and numbing out to things in the past which were affecting my present and future. I wasn’t fulling accepting where I was now and what my thoughts were about the past. My thoughts left me and my knee stuck, seriously stuck. Not a lot of forward movement, literally and figuratively. I left that acupuncture session feeling very humbled and grateful. I thanked the unseen for the guidance I was given and for the treatment. I knew it completed the picture for me to really start to heal. I left that office with this weight lifted. Just the awareness of what I had been doing was enough to shift it for me and give me the momentum to let stuff go.
I awoke the next morning and had the most movement out of my knee in 3 months and the tightness that I had grown so accustomed to was gone. The true healing had already begun. I smiled, said another prayer of thanks, and knew as I would let go of the thoughts surrounding my past I was making room for the miracles of the present and that my knee would become unstuck, flexible, and feeling. This lesson wasn’t just to help my knee heal but to help me heal. It’s been a life changing injury that may turn out to be one of the greatest blessings in my life.
One week after fully understanding what I needed to learn, my knee is doing great and getting stronger every day. I’m also lighter in spirit as I stay more present and let go of what was or wasn’t from my past. Awakening to understanding what wasn’t healthy for me in mind, is allowing me to heal physically and spiritually.
I hope the skeptic part of you that may be reading my story stays open to it’s truth. Our bodies are not separate systems and you can’t dissect and only treat one part. If you do there is usually only temporary healing and it’s likely you will have to treat yourself again.
So what needs healing in your body? The words we use are often indicators to help get to the root of what could be happening for us. If you’re unsure, sit quietly and ask for guidance to help show you what you need to know to help heal. Your thoughts really do affect your physiology on so many levels, so pay attention and try and get at the root of what is going on.