Nonfiction
Familiar Surrounds Are No Safer Than Braving the Great Unknown.
Indeed, they’re far more dangerous.
Find Part 1 of this story here.
I want to back up a minute to offer more context on my “injuries.” After years of running and doing “advanced” yoga daily, my body simply stopped working.
Over the course of three months, my runs became slow walks; my yoga practice became seated meditation. Every move brought a new strain. Even walking took immense care.
Before falling apart on my kitchen floor and leaving for Mongolia, the few doctors I saw through my barebones health insurance barely tried. When I started getting new injuries at every step, they suggested pain pills.
Also they said, “This just happens with age. Bodies hurt.”
I was under 30, vegetarian, and had A+ bloodwork. I had no history of disease other than anorexia (a key piece they skirted entirely), and had been running each day plus doing handstands a couple months prior.
The doctors came to their conclusion upon spending ten minutes with me after I’d waited an hour. (Plus, spoiler alert, by my forties, I was pain free and the fittest and healthiest I’d been my entire adult life. Aging was not the issue.)
This was before holistic medicine was more mainstream. I had no idea where to get help even if I’d had the resources, which I didn’t.
One of my yoga teachers was a gifted massage therapist, and his treatments helped. He also gave me healing mantras to work with — the Gayatri mantra, in particular, brought solace.
Unable to attend yoga class or run, I’d take long wooded walks chanting it aloud again and again. Hoping hard against fear. Hoping for healing.
So, there we were. My body and me. Deep pain pulling at my abdomen. New strains with sudden movement or, sometimes, without movement at all. An arm. A leg. A foot.
Nothing was safe. Out of necessity, every move was mindful.
Looking back, this was where advanced yoga practice began (not with backbends or handstands).
I landed in Mongolia this way. A body that had always been strong suddenly and inexplicably broken. I didn’t expect the journey to heal me physically — and it did not. It was my spirit that sought saving.
Falling apart on my kitchen floor, I saw no light anymore. Exercise addiction thwarted, life and work were things I did not love and barely liked.
My soul could not accept that this was really “it.” My soul needed to do something — anything — to change course. Otherwise, there was no reason to continue.
Beckoned by soul, I chose life.
I chose to see, sitting in that basement in metropolitan DC, that my body would be just as wounded here as there as anywhere.
Collapsing into darkness amidst familiar surrounds is no safer than braving the spacious unknown. Indeed, it is far more dangerous.
With this, I leapt. Guided by soul and perhaps ancestors and helping spirits, I changed the trajectory. I chose to exercise the agency that we all have as humans, to alter the entire course of our lives in an instant.
I used a power belonging to each of us, though many seem to forget. Buoyed by the Universe, I gave my spirit a great gift.
Note: I’m in the process of rewriting material as part of a larger work on Inheritance, Medicine, Madness, and Prophecy.
The above excerpt is part of a chapter pulling surrender into sharp relief…exploring acceptance of brokenness, leaping into the abyss, and finding solace in Nature and ancestral connection.
Find the first part of this chapter, here:
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Thank you for reading. I’m a doctor of Chinese Medicine and write about sobriety and soulful living. Find all my links here:
