When your body needs you most

Being in your body is difficult when it's uncomfortable or unwell.

But that's when your body needs you most.

It's amazing how much you can learn from sealing a deck—not about the deck but about yourself.

It started out simple like most house projects, but pretty darn quickly my rosy thoughts of quick and easy were squashed by a multi-weekend effort (read here). And then there was my knee. By the end of those multiple weekends, my knee was the size of a softball.

While I was happy to occupy my body while swirling sealant on the deck railing (read here), I run into trouble if I'm in any kind of discomfort. Being in my body is a relatively new thing, and it's hard enough when my body is well. When my body is letting me down, I still tend to abandon ship. It's easy to do, to dissociate (on a spectrum) and check out. Even when I've got a mild cold, I don't want to be in my body anymore. My body is failing me. This sounds like an exaggeration, but sometimes it feels like I'm dying.

Luckily with my knee, it didn't feel like dying. Small courtesy. Maybe it was practice for staying in my body when just uncomfortable, so eventually it will be easier to stay during the bigger body failings that are sure to come.

My deck-sealing-partner husband told me about RICE for my softball knee: Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation. There's debate about whether ice is a good idea, that it might block certain body responses that are designed to help heal an injury. I iced anyway. It was hot out and the ice felt good. I rested and elevated while icing but ignored compression. It didn't seem serious enough to endure a jacked-up compression sock. Anyway, I don't even have compression socks, let alone a knee compression thingy.

Tend to your body with rest, ice, compression, elevation.

Tend to your whole self with the same: rest, ice for overwhelm and heat for underwhelm, hold, lift.

Be in your body, even when unwell. That's when it needs you most. Working on it.

P.S. I do realize my body is not failing me when it's hurt or injured. In those times, it's actually a badass system protecting and healing itself. My brain knows this. The rest of me is working on that too.