My Story: From Hardly Standing to Standing on My Head
“Holding Your Ground… Even On the Hard Days”
Anyone who does yoga can tell you the amount of patience it takes to hold a yoga pose… a little longer… a little longer… and yet, a little longer. You think you can’t possibly do it, and then by the end of the class you realize, you actually did it! Somehow those yoga teachers were able to guide you into holding some crazy position for much longer than you ever dreamed. You’re amazed at the fact you just did something that minutes ago you felt like you couldn’t ever do. You chose to “hold your ground” regardless of how hard it seemed. The truth is, humanity is capable of more than we realize, and many of us have only begun to awaken to what it means to expand upon our potential and test our perceived limits.
We try hard. We push through each day, doing what we think we’re supposed to be doing. Doing what up until now, is all we’ve been taught to do. However, it usually isn’t until we are met with a seemingly impossible challenge that we are pushed to think differently, try new things and walk through new doors we perhaps never would have.
Prior to 2019, I NEVER would have considered doing yoga. For starters I was pretty sure, it went against my beliefs, as far as I had been taught. And besides, I had my own workout routine and it was working well for me. I had my own everything routine and it was working well for me. I had just finally got “back to normal” after recovering from a car accident a couple years prior and I was ready to keep moving forward with life as I knew it. Then, out of nowhere, I made the most klutzy move of my entire life and ended up in the ER with a concussion.
Laying dopily in the Emergency Room bed, I remember the doctor ordering brain scans as I was getting hooked up to an IV. I was laying in trust. Believing all the decisions made would work in my best interest. For some reason this particular doctor thought it necessary to order a cocktail of drugs to ease my concussion symptoms. Typically, in a sharper state of mind, I would have asked more questions and probably refused this recommendation. But I wasn’t in a sharp state of mind. I felt wobbly and off balance. So, I just went along. A decision I have come to greatly regret. It just so happened I was in a small percentage of people in whom this medication causes neuro-shock. And let me tell you, if there is a hell on earth, the second this drug entered my system, I was in it! By the time this horrific episode ended and I was discharged from the hospital, I walked out much worse than when I walked in. And over the next few weeks my body struggled to regulate itself.
For weeks, I struggled to regain balance and eventually got to the point where most days I could not get out of bed. After months of tests and various doctors appointments, we discovered that I was in an even smaller percentage of people who develop Parkinsonism as result of taking this drug. Interestingly, the drug effects the same part of the brain as Parkinson’s disease resulting in a temporary form of the disease. So for 18 months I lived with all the common symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. Shaking, tremors, muscle stiffness, balance issues, depression, anxiety, trouble sleeping, eating and digesting food. I lost 12 pounds, my hair thinned and finger nails would hardly grow. The only thing conventional doctors offered me, was more medications.
I felt stuck. At the start of this debilitating journey, there was no telling how long it was going to take for me to “get back to normal”. My whole world was off balance. I felt shaky. The ground felt shaky and I had no idea what to do.
Once I understood what I was dealing with, and had concluded that the medical doctors could do no more to help me, I decided to go back to what I already know works and seek help from both my nutrition practitioner and chiropractor. Thank God for practitioners who are willing to forge the battle with you. Anyone helping me was walking uncharted territory with me. This was a very uncommon health issue to tackle. Therefore there was not much research to lean upon. And yet by utilizing the skills and tools we had, we actually had everything we needed to gradually make incremental improvements until I healed. And I found myself trying things that drastically improved my quality of life that I otherwise never would have. One of those being yoga.
When I got to a point where body movement became a vital part of healing, my typical workout methods weren’t working for me. Yoga ended up becoming an integral part of my healing. But I first had to deal with my bias and face things I had been taught that weren’t necessarily true. The first form of healing for me was quite unexpected. It was not so much in the form of healing from the disease as it was a deep inner work of truth seeking. Once I was able to free myself of some false information and misconceptions about yoga, I was able to walk through a new door of possibility and help! Every morning I would wake up excited to do my online yoga class and experience the relief I would get from my Parkinsonism symptoms.
One day as I was doing my class, the teacher read a quote while we were holding some more challenging balancing poses. Much like I said in the beginning, it was one of those classes where you are guided toward doing much more than you think possible. The quote she read was by Kathleen Norris saying, “If holding your ground is what you are called to most days, it helps to know your ground.” Yikes! This took me back to that moment in the ER. When I just let the doctor take charge and inject me with something I already knew did not really line up with my values. I knew my ground and yet chose not hold it. And the consequences were grave. However, the lesson came full circle. The only reason I was even standing on a yoga mat in the moment was because I took the time to evaluate my values and beliefs, humble myself and learn something new. Healing really does begin with examining our thoughts and actions. Knowing our ground, holding our ground, but also being willing to expand our ground and make changes as we deepen our knowledge and understanding. I didn’t hold my ground in the ER, but I could learn and grow and hold my ground for as much as I knew it today.
Within 18 months I started feeling more like my “normal self”. However my new perspectives didn’t fully match my old sense of my “normal self”. I had learned too much to just settle for the ground or life I had known. I had expanded my ground. I had grown more than I realized. This prompted me to make some big life changes that only fuel better health and quality of life. Healing is not stagnant. It’s not just about “getting back to normal”. It’s about getting to better than normal. We are here to constantly learn, grow and improve upon this season from the last season we were in. Healing truly is a way of being. Of yes, holding your ground, but also re-examining it and making changes when it gets shaky. It’s ever moving forward no matter where you are in life. Of being able to say to yourself, “Yes, keep going … a little longer… a little longer… and yet a little longer,” until you see yourself doing things you never thought possible.
As far as yoga is concerned I continued to challenge myself to keep learning and eventually found myself doing inverted poses on my head. NEVER would I have imagined myself doing yoga and certainly NEVER standing on my head in my 40’s! But I did it! I went from hardly being able to stand to standing on my head. Talk about learning to hold your ground.
Wherever you are today, hold the ground you know while staying teachable and willing to grow. Eventually you just might find yourself doing things you once thought impossible.
