Listen to Your Body
The challenge, I’ve discovered, is not in the listening. It’s in the response to what you hear.
There is a shared language amongst yoga teachers, refrains that become soothingly familiar. Wherever you go, take your breath with you. There is nowhere else to be, nothing else to do. This is your practice, not mine. Listen to your body.
I’ve spent years listening to my body. The challenge, I’ve discovered, is not in the listening. It’s in the response to what you hear.
The intention of this encouragement is to keep you safe, to gently keep the ego in check. Tune inward and honor the physical and spiritual desires of the moment, the sensations of now - in lieu of competitive force. The practice is not about the shape into which you push your body. It is about the feeling of moving into and through those shapes. Process not product. All bodies are different. Your leg may be longer than mine, my hips naturally more flexible. Our bodies are not meant to look identical or move in perfect unison. Listen to your body is an invitation to find the balance between feminine and masculine energies - that tender space between delicate and nourishing, forceful and demanding. Replenishment versus expenditure.
It is one thing to understand this on cerebral and even spiritual levels. It’s quite another to physically embody its meaning.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about wellness during the long, quiet days of my recovery. About the value and necessity of rest, the detrimental impact of stress on healing. Listen to your body, I whispered to myself. Each day I’ve done my best to honor that refrain.
At the top of week 2 post-op, my pain had significantly diminished. I was tired but also eager for normalcy. I ventured from the house to find that in less than an hour, I was wiped, and returned home to spend the rest of the day in bed. Rejuvenated a day or so later, I tried again. Fatigue and pain washed through me. Again I snuggled into PJs with books and my dog. When the malaise set in at the top of week 3, I chalked it up to the normal ebb and flow of healing’s inflammatory process. To some extent, this ill feeling felt normal. My body has battled chronic inflammation for years, long before I knew how to recognize the signs.
It wasn’t until my fever spiked past 102 that I realized I was not in a normal post-surgery slump. I was sick. Infection, while not uncommon, is serious. Over the next few days I dragged myself through doctor appointments, tests at the hospital, and to and from the pharmacy. Thankfully my infection was not the result of some of the more serious post-op complications, and I was sent to bed with a round of powerful antibiotics that wrecked their own sort of havoc. Slowly, the bone-deep malaise eased.
In the months before surgery, feeling anxious and fearful, I immersed myself in research. I wanted to understand as much as possible about endometriosis and adenomyosis, about hysterectomies and excision surgery. In part this was a tool to manage my anxiety. It was also to build an arsenal of knowledge with which to advocate for myself. I read 4 books and poured over medical sites, articles, and papers. I joined Nancy’s Nook and a private support group for andeno. I texted friends, called family, and messaged acquaintances - everyone I knew who had personal experience with these diseases and procedures. And while I came across a few scary stories about dehiscence and organ prolapse, I mostly focused on the positives, anecdotes of “I was up in a week!” and “I had barely any pain!” I clung to “You’ll be fine!” and “It’s no big deal!” I loved my community for their support and encouragement.
I thought I could weave a tapestry of expectation around my recovery to keep me safe, to guide me from benchmark to benchmark. Everything I learned was helpful, and yet it still wasn’t enough. There are so many questions I did not know to ask. For all my preparation, I was still unprepared for how the experience would feel in my own, unique body - and truthfully, there was no way to know in advance.
I am entering my 4th week of recovery. Hysterectomies take a minimum of 6-8 weeks, for some closer to 12, for full healing. That’s the length of time necessary for the sutured tissue inside the body to fuse and grow strong enough to hold the weight of internal organs. My body is hard at work with other processes, too - regrowing excised peritoneum, quieting inflammation, easing distended organs into states of calm. The instructed rest and gentle movement, weight restrictions, and other precautions are meant to allow the body to prioritize these processes. Minimizing stress and relaxing the brain aids by not stealing resources. (This includes desk jobs.) My two weeks of medical leave were crucial, and not only because I fell ill in that second week. I have needed all my strength, all my focus, to be centered around healing. To be turned inward, listening to my body.
I realize now that I internalized what I’d learned. I crafted an idea of what my recovery would look like, and set an expectation for my body. Without realizing it, I attempted to push myself into a specific shape, to demand a particular product. I come by this honestly, as do most of us. All my life I’ve been encouraged, even required, to push myself. Do more. Achieve more. Create more. Rest only when all is done, only all is never done. This is the world we live in, never satisfied and always expectant. It’s no wonder we are exhausted and burnt out. Our lives are often designed to deplete us.
Prioritizing rest is vital, and if rest is a difficult word for you, as it is for me, ponder: replenish, rejuvenate, restore. How do you refill so that there is enough of you to give, achieve, react? A good place to begin is a full night’s sleep. Maybe it’s a solitary walk through the woods, or quality time spent with family and friends. Preparing a delicious meal to be savored by candlelight. Losing oneself in a book, film, or podcast. Sifting soil through your fingers in the garden, working your muscles and heart at the gym, or on a yoga mat, at home or in the studio amongst community. Wherever you find the intersection of mind and body where your thoughts can play, where you can dream while awake, this is a place where restoration can occur.
These days, when my mind thinks we are doing nothing, my body reminds us she is hard at work. I am improving my listening skills, learning to believe that giving in is not giving up.
When you truly listen to your body, it will tell you what it needs, moment to moment and day to day. All goals and responsibilities are served by honoring these needs. And perhaps most importantly, no one can know your body as you do. As a dear friend so eloquently stated, your body is the house you live in. Your journey, healing and otherwise, is yours and yours alone, unique as a fingerprint.
A Meditation for Rest
Place one hand over your heart, the other over your belly.
Close your eyes and arrive.
Inhale slowly through the nose.
Feel the belly fill, the ribs lift, the chest inflate.
Exhale slowly through parted lips, feel the body soften.
Invite a feeling of gratitude.
Breathe in, I appreciate my body.
Breathe out, I deserve rest.
Breathe in, I honor my body’s needs.
Breathe out, I deserve calm.
Take one final deep breath to seal in this knowledge.
Exhale and open your eyes.
Listen to Your Body
Thank you for sharing this. I often have a hard time with the word rest myself, so I find it super powerful to use rejuvenate, replenish, and restore too! It does something to my mind that just reminds me it is okay to slow down, be still, be in the now, and just be with self.
So lovely 💖