This video was filmed a year ago just after Leela broke her leg. Leela is fully recovered. She is back to impressive full speed smiling Saluki laps. I conclude that is a good sign that her body has adapted to the 4 screws and rod in her front left humerus. But it took her almost this full year to trust herself again doing what is her greatest joy – running at abandon.
As I reflect on Leela’s journey this past year, I see it parallels my own. This time last year, (despite my best fake in your videos), I did not trust my body. I saw myself as fragile and broken. It had been 2 years of joint pain and over a year with a quirky right hip taking me back into a considerable functional leg length discrepancy. This was a nagging imbalance I worked for years to correct. Having it reappear was frightening. Leela had to be restricted to a leash for 3 months. I had tethered myself to my own leash for 2 years.
Though my loving somatic practices gave me room to process the unexpected transition – and it was what I needed at the time – my body was unfamiliar. If my self talk was like Spotify Wrapped – the year end summary of what I heard most – the greatest hits in my head were “Where did you go body? Why have you abandoned me?” I missed my body, who I used to be and what I could do.
What did this year show me? To trust my body again, I need to challenge it more often. That and I started Hormone Replacement Therapy 4 months ago! Speaking from the space of pain science, my pain had gone on long enough that I had become more sensitive to stimulus. Through the lens of pain science:
With chronic pain, we lose the ability to accurately process the painful stimulation which leads to further amplification of a perceived threat; which can trigger the pain response – magnify, alter or make it persistent. When people are in pain, they have altered sensory perception; an inability to discriminate touch, proprioception, interoception, how visual/auditory senses impacts and changes with pain.
Menopause sucks. It surprised me and kicked me to the ground. There was most definitely also a psychosomatic factor – my knees not wanting to be my buffers for reality and my hip storing all the unprocessed emotions.
The HRT was like cortisone shots for my joints. It allowed me to fire up my practice with more weight bearing mobility, and less pain. I want to scream this to the moonlit hills because nowhere in my goddess education had I ever been told joint pain can be a side effect of loss of estrogen.
Whether sprinting a bit on my daily dog walks, or doing deep squats, it doesn’t always feel good, but I know I am safe. That is trusting my body again; knowing that a higher level of sensation does not mean I am causing tissue damage. In other words, sometimes it hurts a bit to heal.
And sometimes we don’t heal our pain. We just let ourselves off the leash from time to time to change our relationship to the pain.
Fortunately, decades of yoga philosophy is deeply embedded in my nervous system. I know that my respiration is the first protective mechanism to fall to inner fear. As long as I am saying nice things to myself (working on changing that Spotify Wrapped for 2026!), and my breath is fluid, I keep moving!
From the time I was a little girl, I followed the motto, “ why walk when you can run?” It maybe a bit shorter and slower these days, but Leela and I are running again!
Blessed 2026,
Megan
