Sit on It

I was going to call this post Pain in the A$$ but given the untimely passing of Tom "Mr. C" Bosely, I thought I would pay hommage and reference Happy Days. Apologies to anyone too young to remember.

I've been having hip pain the past few days. My entire lower hemisphere is out of whack from a car accident back in 1983, and I'm certain some of this pain is a result of that and various other physiological factors -- increase in exercise, a change to the awesome but takes-some-getting-used-to Sketchers Shape-Ups, a change in my gait after my knee replacement, being short and working at an unergonomic work station etc.

But I've also noticed that the increase in this pain is tied to tension. Tension in my posterior to be exact. I'm serious. You would be surprised the amount of tension that we store in our gluteus maximus. Get a deep tissue massage and you'll find out! The knots are deep. They restrict the bloodflow and cause pain and inflammation.

So yes, I literally have a pain in my ass. As a sincere believer in the mind-body connection, I did some mental work on the pain this morning. I let my mind settle on it and asked it what it was telling me. Yeah, I can be a little daft at times, because when the answer came it was so obvious I had to laugh:

I'm sitting on my feelings.

It's simple, it's true and it's powerful. I've gotten so good at repressing and supressing my feelings, stifling my voice and sitting on things that want to be expressed that my body has no choice but to put the energy of those feelings somewhere. Our bodies are so wise and we abuse them so that sometimes they have to resort to drastic measures to get our attention. Those of us who operate from the neck up by default (guilty as charged) often miss the subtle signals of misalignment or try to mask the real issues with numbing behaviors like drugs, drinking, mindless media consumption, over-eating (guilty again on all counts.)

I love my body's sense of humor. It speaks in my true voice. How often does my mind think, "this is a pain in the ass" or "I'd better sit on that and not say anything." And so my body says okay and translates those thoughts literally into it's own expression of intolerance. Because it knows that mentally sitting on it isn't the answer.

Bodies are meant for action. They aren't meant to be vehicles to simply schelp our minds around in service of the mental noise that we generate constantly. Our bodies know that if we feel something, it's real. And our bodies want to DO something about it (fight or flight.) Our minds try to talk us out of what we feel,we  rationalize it, compartmentalize it, justify it, find someone to blame for it or - in my case - sit on it. Instead of taking the energy of the feeling when it arises and acknowledging it, allowing it to be in my body and perhaps taking a walk or doing some deep breathing to process it or release it, I sit on it.

And now there's a pain in my ass. 

All of this reminds me of one of my favorite images, an image that my coach, mentor and dear friend MaryJane Bullen shows during her work with teams. We're like iceburgs. There's so much under the surface, so much that we hold down. MaryJane uses this image in the context of not making assumptions about people based on what you see, but to me the image also reminds me to bring more of what is under the surface into the light, honor it and be with it.

If the feelings that are under the surface of my tender hips can be released, my freedom of movement and my freedom of expression will expand and my pain will deminish.