Injury is Not Only a Pain in the A**

My butt hurts. Right now, as I type this, it hurts.

I’ve had chronic issues with my right piriformis muscle for years, particularly when driving and sitting for long stretches. It’s the reason I sit cross-legged on planes and in passenger seats and prefer the floor to chairs. Two weeks ago (yes, yes, it was on a cold, windy pickleball court), I strained it more acutely and I’ve been grappling with it in a new way since.

As gluteal muscles go, the piriformis is not a big one, but given its proximity to the sciatic nerve, the pain ramifications can expand past its small size. I’ve been doing all the things – stretch, strength, heat, massage, PT soon – but the experience has gotten me thinking about injury in general and my relationship to it.

It didn’t take much reflection to see that my feelings about injury are deeply unconstructive. They are, in fact, distorted, unrealistic and unhelpful. Embarrassed as I am to say it, some part of me believes that

1. Fit folks and “good” movers don’t get hurt.

2. Injury is a failing: I’ve done something wrong if I get injured.

3. Corrective, therapeutic exercises are the boring requirement when we get hurt. Once I’m better, I shouldn’t need them.

Sobering realizations, these. I’m not proud of them. Clearly, a revamp of my thoughts and beliefs regarding injury is long overdue. For that, I bring in the big guns: one of my movement mentors and sheros, biomechanist and author Katy Bowman.

Episode 150 of her Move Your DNA podcast is a conversation between Bowman and her husband, Michael, a gifted, life-long athlete in his own right. In it, they talk about each of their recent experience with foot injuries.

Wait, what? I haven’t even listened to the podcast yet and my mind is blown: Katy Bowman and her husband got hurt?? If Katy Bowman gets hurt sometimes, I obviously need to rethink this whole injury thing.

The entire podcast is full of wisdom, helpful perspectives and approaches, as well as Bowman’s framework for navigating any injury. I highly recommend listening to it. For the purposes of my injury attitude upgrade, however, these are my three big take-aways:

1. Injury is a natural part of life.

Injury is a stage that everybody goes through. Even athletes and accomplished movers get hurt sometimes. Of course this is true. Injury is a part of everybody’s life. Everybody’s. It’s not a failing and I’ve not done something wrong when I get injured. Certainly, I might be able to learn from it – do I need to warm up differently? do I need to strengthen or stretch something? do I need to pay closer attention to when I’m tired? But I haven’t failed if I get hurt. It just happens sometimes.

2. The longer we live in our bodies, we need more movement, not less.

Bowman emphasizes that especially as we live longer, we need to do not just our activities of choice (for her, walking; for her husband, soccer; for me, nourishing movement, hiking and now pickleball) but also movement that supports those activities. By this she means corrective exercises and training that enhances our strength, mobility and stability for those favorite activities. We train not just for the peak experiences (the big walk, the big game, the classes, the travel, the pickling) but to prepare for our next injury.

I see corrective and supportive movement (for me that’s flexibility/mobility work and strength training) as an investment in both keeping me doing what I want to do but also helping me through times when stuff goes sideways. My strength helped me when I broke my foot: I could balance on one leg and had the strength to use crutches. As Bowman says, “we’re optimizing for surviving the valleys, not just the peaks.”

3. “Getting back” is a myth.

Change is inevitable – with or without an injury. Through our movement choices and the stuff that happens to to us, we’ll arrive at different versions of our bodies and our movement. It’s important to look through the lens of change as we go through physical experiences and to remember that you’re not failing if you can’t do the most extreme version. We can only be exactly where we are and that changes day to day, year to year, injury to injury.

It’s a PITA, as my Dad says.

Right now for me, injury is literally a pain in the a**. It’s a bummer but I’m taking care of it and allowing it to heal.

And that brings up another point from the podcast that I already knew but I need to hear over and over: what happens in my mind has a huge impact on my experience. Injuries range wildly in severity, of course, that’s important to acknowledge. Mine is minor and it is likely to resolve but that isn’t always the case. The grief and loss around injury and illness is both understandable and appropriate.

For me right now, though, if I focus on the beliefs that I started with – that I’ve messed up and failing if I get hurt – that’s going to cause as much suffering as the injury itself. Instead, I’m trying to stay out of catastrophic, self-condemning thinking. I’m feeling less mental noise around being hurt. I’m seeing how normal and human an injury really is.

I am confident that I will come through this injury and on the other side I’ll find a new version of me as a mover and a person. When I look at it that way, my painful piriformis is a portal to whatever is next.

Gentle Rewilding: Eyes

---

This is Part 6* of the 7-Part Gentle Rewilding series!

We’ve been tamed, y’all. Modern life molds and changes our bodies, minds and spirits. Much of our modern domestication is just fine: I’m glad we use forks and don’t spit inside and don’t drink milk straight out of the carton (oh wait, I do that). But some of our taming is worth questioning and unwinding. This series is an exploration of ways of reconnecting to our human design with gentle rewilding.

* Find Part 1 – Gentle Rewilding & Feet here.

* Find Part 2 – Gentle Rewilding: Hands here.

* Find Part 3 – Gentle Rewilding: Spine here.

* Find Part 4 – Gentle Rewilding: Shoulders here.

* Find Part 5 – Gentle Rewilding: Hips here.

---

Close your eyes for a moment and then open them. Without moving your head, look up down and to the sides. Then look at your hand close to your face and look out the window to the furthest thing you can see.

Pretty cool, that your little eyeball can move around in the socket AND adjust to seeing things near you and far away. No matter how not so good (or excellent) your vision is, it really is a wonder.

When we think of muscles, we tend to think of big visible ones like biceps and quads and glutes but the eyes have muscles, too. There is a collection of small muscles that move your eyeball, your eye lid and its lens to allow you to do everything from watch clouds moving in an autumn sky, look askance at your partner and read this post.

All parts of us thrive with a variety of movement – including our eyes. There are seven muscles that move your eyeball in different directions and move your eyelid up and down. The extrinsic or extraocular muscles control the movement of the eyes themselves. The intrinsic eye muscles focus the eye, and control the iris to allow light to enter it. The extrinsic muscles are around the eye and are voluntary (yes, you can control your eye rolling!). The intrinsic muscles are inside the eye and are involuntary.

One of the intrinsic eye muscles is the ciliary muscle and it’s one that you cannot choose to relax. As biomechanist Katy Bowman says, “[The ciliary muscles] tighten or relax based on what you’re looking at. The only way to relax the muscles [is to change] the shape of your lens [and the only way to do that is to change] what you’re looking at.”

The ciliary muscle focuses the lens inside your eye – a process called “accommodation” – and the muscle is most relaxed when looking at something in the distance. To see something closer, means that the ciliary muscles must work harder to focus. As physicist Paul Davidovits explains, “there is, however, a limit to the focusing power of the crystalline lens. With the maximum contraction of the ciliary muscle, a normal eye of a young adult can focus on objects about 15 cm from the eye. Closer objects [than that] appear blurred.”

You can try this out for yourself by holding your hand close to your face and slowly moving it away until it comes into focus. The closest place you can see clearly will depend on your particular eyes, of course, but wherever it is for you, your ciliary muscles are working hard to let you see it.

In recent years, there has been a startling rise in myopia or nearsightedness, especially in children. Jane Brody wrote in the New York Times in 2021:

Susceptibility to myopia is determined by genetics and environment. Children with one or both nearsighted parents are more likely to become myopic. However, while genes take many centuries to change, the prevalence of myopia in the United States increased from 25 percent in the early 1970s to nearly 42 percent just three decades later. And the rise in myopia is not limited to highly developed countries. The World Health Organization estimates that half the world’s population may be myopic by 2050.

The incidence of myopia in Chinese children is even more dramatic. The National Institute of Health reported in 2018 that “20% to 50% of the students in primary school, 35% to 60% of the students in middle school, and 50% to 75% of the students in college are myopic in China.” And that was before the pandemic when so many were inside and on screens almost all day.

Millions and millions of overworked ciliary muscles!

This surprising rise in myopia is due at least in part to children spending more time on screens and indoors than previous generations. Being outside allows your eyes to focus on a wide range of distances giving them both work and rest. More specifically, research is showing that around 13-14 hours of outdoor time a week is correlated to a decrease in myopia. (Source: Katy Bowman and The American Academy of Opthalmology.)

Clearly, our eyes could use some rewilding! In addition to spending more time outside, here are 4 exercises to expand the range of motion for your eyes and to give them some much-needed rest.

---

Gently Rewilding Your Eyes: 4 Exercises and Rests

Palming and Cupping

Palming is calming to the eyes. Cupping is similar but make space under your hands so your eyes can open and soak in the warmth and dark.

Many of us move through the day with perpetually tired eyes. Every hour or so, gently place your palms over your closed eyelids and let them rest. Breathe deeply and feel the warmth and darkness as your eyes stop working. Without pressing too hard, just breath and palm your eyes until they feel relaxed (perhaps a minute or so, more if you like). Remove your hands slowly and let your eyes adjust to light again.

A variation on this is cupping your eyes: cup your hands over your eyes with your fingers close together to make two dark “eye caves” that keep out all the light (this is easiest to do in a dimly lit space). Open your eyes and let them take in the warmth and darkness for a minute or so. When they feel relaxed, close your eyes and remove your hands, then slowly open your eyes again.

Look Far Away Every Day

As mentioned, outdoor time is ideal for eye health, in part because it allows your eyes to look at all different distances. Even if you’re inside, a couple times a day, find a window and look out as far as you can see. Look for the farthest thing in your field of vision and see what details you can see: the texture of the clouds, the movement in the leaves of a distant tree, the traffic moving on a far away highway.

Move Eyes (Not Head)

For many of us, when we want to look at something, we turn our head, but that neglects the extrinsic muscles that move your eyeballs. Gently move your eyes without moving your head. (See Kit Cat Klock above!) Without straining, let your eyes move around an imaginary clock from 12 to 3 to 6 to 9 to 12 and then counterclockwise. Again, gently and without forcing, look up and down, side to side, and along diagonals.

Transition Light Gradually & Look in the Dark

Artificial light is ubiquitous, and it can be easy – especially in winter – to go from full darkness to full light in the morning and vice versa at night. Instead, play with transitioning gradually from full light to less light as you move toward sleep. In the morning, start with gentle or indirect light and move toward full light. As part of the transition, experiment with looking in the dark: go outside and look up at stars (now that’s looking far away!) or when you wake up, open your eyes before turning on any light and let them bask in the low light.

---

When I was little, my Grampa used to joke that he wasn’t napping, he was “resting his eyes.” Even though he was goofing with us, he was onto something. We use our eyes so much that we can often take them for granted. With gratitude for how hard they work, give them some gentle rewilding and plenty of rest.

Gentle Rewilding: Feet

---

This is Part 1 of the 7-Part Gentle Rewilding series!

We’ve been tamed, y’all. Modern life molds and changes our bodies, minds and spirits. Much of our modern domestication is just fine: I’m glad we use forks and don’t spit inside and don’t drink milk straight out of the carton (oh wait, I do that). But some of our taming is worth questioning and unwinding. This series is an exploration of ways of reconnecting to our human design with gentle rewilding.

---

Gentle Rewilding

“Rewilding” is an approach to ecological restoration focused on increasing biodiversity and restoring natural processes. An offshoot of this ecological movement is “human rewilding,” which aims to restore more diversity and adaptability of human life. This type of rewilding can include nature-centered fitness, survival and foraging skills, and connection with ancestral practices.

My introduction to human rewilding was through the work of Tony Riddle who calls himself a Natural Life-Stylist. I learned exercises from him that I’d never seen before (and I’ll share my versions of some below) but as a 59-year-old movement teacher, his physical feats are pretty extreme. Running marathons barefoot, climbing frozen mountains and diving into glacial pools aren’t anything I’m interested in. But waking up my body in ways that align with its design and potential? Supporting my body so it’s more adaptable and resilient? I’m all in for that. I call my version Gentle Rewilding.

Feet are the Foundation

Feet are the foundation. Photo: Rebecca George Photography

Feet are the foundation of most human movement and of my work as a mindful movement leader and guide.* The longer I guide movement experiences for myself and others, the more I understand that strong, mobile, flexible feet are at the root of comfort, balance and adaptability in movement and in life.

Almost all of us have had our feet bound in shoes (often shoes with a heel and often too small) since before we could walk. Most modern shoes act as a “cast” holding our feet still and stiff. This “casting” combined with walking almost exclusively on hard, flat surfaces, has compromised the dexterity and responsiveness our feet are designed to have.

The human foot is a miracle of 26 bones, 33 joints and hundreds of muscles, but if it’s held in shoes that don’t allow much movement, the foot’s abilities atrophy. Imagine, for example, a foot that is accustomed to being encased in shoes and walking on hard flat surfaces. It may do fine navigating movement in those circumstances but what happens when it steps on a hard hickory nut, lands oddly on a root or gets caught on a curb? That foot won’t have many options for movement, recovery or adaptation and is therefore more at risk for injury.

“Barefoot” Shoes

Ready to hike in a dress and barefoot shoes!

Biomechanist and author, Katy Bowman is a strong advocate for giving your body nutritious movement … and nutritious footwear. Since reading her book, Whole Body Barefoot years ago, I go barefoot or wear “barefoot” or zero drop shoes almost all the time.

Shoes with no heel and soft soles take some getting used to and it’s best to move into them slowly. It’s worth investing in the transition, though since re-acclimating our feet to move with the surfaces underneath them rewards us with more responsiveness, resilience and balance. (Even or perhaps especially if you have a foot condition which makes barefoot shoes untenable, investing in other foot care is worth doing! See more below!)

After two significant foot injuries and nearly six decades in this body, I find that my feet thrive best when I offer consistent care and attention. Although I lead barefoot classes and wear barefoot shoes, my feet need daily tending.

Tony Riddle, extreme badass that he is, teaches what he calls “Toe-Ga” to increase foot dexterity. I’ve adapted some moves from him and from my own practice to create Gentle Rewilding Toe-Ga.

---

Gentle Rewilding with Toe-Ga

1. Hold Hands with Feet. Wave & Flex/Scrunch.

One of the repercussions of wearing restrictive shoes is that the toes, which are designed to move independently just like fingers, get smushed together. Spreading the toes with your fingers is a great way to open up the joints, reduce friction between the toes and expand mobility. Start by sliding just the tips of your fingers between the toes and move up to the base of the fingers. Then move your hand in a gentle wave motion then flex and scrunch.

2. Trigger Arch Massage.

Hook your index and middle fingers around the top of your big toe and pull down gently like a trigger. Use your thumb to massage the arch from heel to ball. While you’re at it, any foot massage anywhere that feels good is always a bonus!

3. Cherry Picking.

With your feet in the air, imagine they are picking cherries off the tree: spread and reach with all your toes then scrunch them to grab the cherries. You can also do this move with more weight in your feet from either sitting or standing, “grabbing” the floor or a towel.

4. Big Toe Up, 4 Toes Under.

Using your hand, gently pull up on your big toe and pull your 4 toes under. I like to roll slightly toward my little toe here to give the outside top of my foot a stretch. Go easy here to give the skin and joints time to adjust to this (likely) unfamiliar position. When you feel comfortable using your hands to manipulate your toes, you can do this on the floor to add more weight onto your toes. Either sitting in a chair or standing, stretch your big toe up and tuck your 4 toes under. Go slowly and gently as you do micro movements.

5. Big Toe Under, 4 Toes Up.

Now do the opposite: tuck your big toe under and stretch your 4 toes back with your hands. Apply gentle pressure to give your toes new sensations and stretch without forcing or pulling. Again, as you get comfortable with using your hands, you can add more weight by doing this in sitting or standing.

---

Decades of stiff shoes and hard walking surfaces have left many of our feet weak and deconditioned. It’s never too late to introduce more mobility and strength into your feet with Toe-ga and if it’s appropriate for your body, spending more time barefoot or in barefoot shoes.

Let your feet gently rewild.

---

* I’ve written about feet many times, including here and here, if you’d like to read more on our fabulous feet.

Sit Funny: One Movement That Changes Everything

My high school history teacher, Mr. Gross called me Lady Godiva. Which, looking back, probably wasn’t 100% appropriate. To be clear, the nickname was in reference to me sitting “side saddle” in my chair, not my lack of clothing.

In school, I was the kid who “sat funny.” I was always getting called out for arranging myself at those uncomfortable all-in-one school desks in unconventional ways. I’d sit cross legged or with one foot on the chair seat or some other arrangement of limbs that was not normal and somehow was deemed distracting.

While it annoyed the bejeezus out of my parents and teachers, sitting funny was a little bit genius. My body was onto something. Human bodies aren’t designed to sit still in the same position for hours and hours.

Our bodies are designed to move. And sit on the floor.

For more than two decades, I’ve led hundreds of bodies in movement. The sore low backs, tight hips, and tender knees I see all the time often lead back to our chair-sitting lives. Even for folks with a regular movement practice—but who also sit in their cars, at their desks, at the dinner table and on the couch— experience the impact of chair sitting. Especially as we enter our 5th, 6th, 7th decade and beyond, it’s worth questioning how much we sit in chairs.

If someone were to ask me what to do about this accumulation of body discomfort and dysfunction, I’d say there is one movement that makes the difference: sit on the floor.

Adults often think that sitting or moving on the floor is kids’ stuff. Kiddos can squat and crawl and sit and play on the floor with complete ease. It’s almost a sign of being grown up when we stop doing that. And therein lie the cranky backs, slumped shoulders and sticky hips.

Set up a floor-based work station!

If you were going to do one thing for your body, I recommend spending some time on the floor. You can set up your home work station with a low table or the seat of a chair. You can watch TV or scroll your phone sitting on the floor. You can play with your pet or kid on the floor.

It doesn’t have to be fancy or one more thing to do and it doesn’t have to take a lot of time. Just give your body some different positions to be in on the floor. Unlike sitting in a chair, your body will signal you to change positions more often when you’re on the floor than when you’re on a comfy squishy chair!

Importantly, there are lots of ways to do this. If your spine tends to round forward when you sit on the floor (usually due to tight muscles in the front and weak ones in the back), sit on a cushion or two. If it feels more relaxing, lean against a couch or a wall.

If your spine rounds forward when you sit on the floor…

Sit on a cushion to lift your hips and lengthen your spine!

Everybody knows criss-cross-applesauce — the classic cross legged seat — but here we’re going to explore beyond that. Play around with your Today Body and see what it tells you both while you’re on the floor and when you get on your feet again.

Beyond criss-cross-applesauce:

Creative Floor Sitting Positions

One Knee Kneeling

My heel is close to my body but if that doesn’t feel good, shift it forward!

This position is particularly good for improving ankle mobility. You can see here that when my foot is under my knee, I need a deep ankle flexion. If that doesn’t work for you, move your foot out further in front and gradually move it in. The foot that’s under you can either be long with toenails down (shown here) or tucked under. Both positions are good for feet and ankles.

Mermaid

Let the knees fall to one side to give the hip joint a different orientation than chair sitting that invites more mobility.

Mermaid with Tail Unfurled

And when knees want to shift out of mermaid, you can unfurl one leg…

V-Sit

...or two!

---

It is not an overstatement to say that one of the keys to living independently is our ability to get up and down off the floor. Sitting on the floor is one way to practice that essential movement on the regular.

I call my classes Nourishing Movement for a reason. Dance and exercise are great but dynamic living is more about incorporating movement into everything we already do.

Let’s start a revolution of people who Sit Funny.

P.S. If you’re interested in more about how to incorporate more everyday movement, you can check out these resources which all inspire me:

Juliet and Kelly Starrett just published their latest book, Built to Move (can’t wait to read it) and here they are interviewed on Ten Percent Happier.

Katy Bowman is my go-to when it comes to organic, throughout-the-day movement. She’s got books and a podcast and all the things here.

Recently, I discovered the “rewilding” work of Tony Riddle and he has introduced me to a number of movements that I’d never experienced before.

My YouTube Channel also has a library of Movement Snacks – short tastes of movement you can weave into your day!

Exercise Less. Move More.

"The entire purpose of the human brain is to produce movement. Movement is the only way we have of interacting with the world." ~ Daniel M. Wolpert, Zoubin Ghahramani, J.Randall Flanagan, neuroscientists

For many of us, “exercise” can be a seriously loaded word.

At the mere mention, do you think of Jane Fonda or Olivia Newton John in shiny, thong leotards (what my boyfriend would call “anal floss”)? Or maybe you have flashes of middle school gym class with squat thrusts, sit ups with your feet wedged under the bleachers, or running (the horribly named) “suicides”? Or what about the nightmare of the excruciating Presidential Physical Fitness test and the humiliatingly short hang on the bar while the whole class watched?

Now that you’re older, what does exercise mean to you? Something that has to be super sweaty and hard in order for it to “count”? Something you are supposed to do even though you don’t love it? Something you do exclusively to change the way your body looks?

A few years ago, I stood in front of a room full of people and asked who had painful memories from gym class or sports. Every hand went up. It’s no wonder we have a complicated relationship with moving our bodies if it’s so tangled up in trauma.

For years now, it’s been my mission to free ourselves from our painful past with exercise and invite us into sensation-centered, pleasure-guided, mindful movement. We were literally born to move. It’s what our bodies are designed to do and it matters for our well-being. Functional neurologist, Jerome Lubbe writes:

"Simply put, movement is the single greatest resource in our human experience. Movement not only turns the brain on in pediatric development; it also informs, integrates, and sustains every aspect of what it means to be alive in our bodies. … Movement is paramount for our physical, mental, emotional and relational health."

Movement, at all stages of life, is essential for our thriving. The problem is when we think the only kinds of movement that matter are ones that are breathtakingly painful, are for a certain amount of time, or happen in a gym. Let’s shift that thinking around with three ideas and three questions.

Three Ideas to Shift Your Perception of Movement

Take body change off the tablE

Using movement to change the way your body looks is fraught. We are culturalized to believe that we are in complete control of how our bodies look when this is absolutely not the case. When we fall short of the culture’s beauty ideal, we tend to blame ourselves when age, health conditions, and genetics have much more to do with it.

Any amount of time counts

To paraphrase Horton Hears A Who!, movement is movement no matter how small. If you don’t have time for a 90-minute yoga class or a 3-mile walk, do some stretches on your office rug or walk to the mailbox and back. Drop something on the floor? Squat down to pick it up! Feeling foggy after hours on screens? Put on a song and move around to it for 3 minutes. IT ALL COUNTS.

Fun and pleasurable is the goal

Our culture is full of “No Pain, No Gain” and “Pain is Weakness Leaving the Body” messages. If you’ll forgive me, it’s bullsh*t. Pain is your body telling you to change what you’re doing. Instead, focus on what feels fun and pleasurable. This is not to say that challenge is off the table! Climbing a steep trail, feeling the squeeze of your muscles as you lift something heavy, working on a balance move through the uncomfortable wobbly parts can all be part of the playful fun of moving.

Three Questions To Ask Yourself

1. How can you re-frame what you do during the day – running errands, folding laundry, gardening – into nourishing movement for your body and brain?

2. What did you love to do with your body as a kid? How might you do some version of that now?

3. If the amount of time doesn’t matter and if changing your body isn’t the point, what would you do?

Your body is designed to move. No matter your age or ability or circumstances, your body is your instrument for life and movement is how you play that instrument. Especially if you have a complicated relationship with exercise and your body image, take some time to expand the way you approach movement.

Move in ways that feel good to you. Move to get more fun and pleasure in your days. Move to appreciate the incredible miracle of you.

Resources:

Midlife Feast, Episode #59 - Menopause, movement and body image with Dr. Maria Luque

Move your DNA with Katy Bowman #144, 11 Reasons to go on an 11 minute walk

Me! I just love to talk about this stuff! If you’d like help answering the three questions or to talk through anything around re-thinking your relationship to movement, please use the website contact form to set up a time to email or talk.