Living Spinefully

Hello friends,

Reflecting on last week’s post about trust, I wanted to mention briefly how incredible grateful I am for the people who I have in my support corner. Allowing myself to feel my feelings around other people isn’t always easy for me, but I am so appreciative to have friends and family who are willing to listen and help me sort it out.

This week’s mindfulness attitude is non-striving. In defining non-striving, I am reminded of my art therapist friend’s mantra: “process over product.” When we strive for something, we aim for a goal or an outcome, which takes away from our ability to accept and enjoy the process as it unfolds. The best example of this that comes to mind is when, as a teenager, I had a really strict piano teacher. From my chord and scale drills to the classical pieces she had me play, it felt like nothing I did was ever good enough. So much so that practicing piano became a chore for me that I began to dread – there was just too much pressure on my performance. When I finally quit piano lessons at 17 years old, I quickly rediscovered how much I loved playing piano just for me – playing the music I enjoyed, singing along if I wanted to, not caring about the mistakes I made. I finally got to play just for the enjoyment of playing.

When it comes to health and wellness right now, at least in the United States, an outcome-focused attitude saturates our culture. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s good that people feel empowered to set goals for their health and don’t believe that they caught a cold because they displeased the gods. But at times this focus on outcomes translates into us believing that our health is 100% within our control, and therefore an attitude of blaming people who are not healthy. There are probably hundreds of millions of ideas advertised to us all the time depicting ways that we can get healthier through going gluten free, or keto, or intermittent fasting, or eating organic, or avoiding GMOs, or doing pilates, or doing just cardio, or doing just strength training, or focusing on macros, etc. If there is a symptom, there are thousands of internet rabbit holes describing how that problem could be solved as well as subtle (or not so subtle) messaging that it is somehow you’re own fault that you’re sick in the first place. But what about the parts of health that are outside of our control? How does this “striving” mindset apply to them?

I am very much a product of this health obsessed generation and am a PRO at going down rabbit holes of symptom google searches. At times, I am so outcome focused that I won’t even go on a walk if I’m not wearing my fitbit to count my steps. So naturally, as I have been doing my physical therapy exercises more or less as prescribed for the last 6 months, I have striven to get stronger and to be in less pain. But that hasn’t been the case. My pain has been gradually getting worse, and more and more activities require modifications. Now with a new concerning neurological symptom and worsening pain, I’m at another cross roads in terms of my scoliosis care. It’s hard not to look back and comb through my exercise routine and look for flaws or examples of ways that this could have been prevented. Because that’s what society has me programmed to do (I’ll save the rant against capitalism for later.) It’s hard to accept that sometimes things just happen. Not because my form was imperfect. Not because I didn’t do my PT exercises often enough. Not because I ate carbs. But because things just happen.

So my practice this week is to move my body when I can, not with the goal of changing my situation or reducing my pain, but simply because movement feels good to me. Allowing myself to enjoy the process, regardless of the outcome.

As always, thank you for reading,

Laura