One recent morning, I woke up to find that my left ankle was swollen and in pain. I was getting ready to go to work, hiking and camping for the weekend, and I was not happy that my ankle was hurting. Truthfully, I was scared. My mind went to a million places at once. What happened? What's wrong? Should I go to work? Should I stay home? How can I take care of myself and still get to work and do my job?

I applied a homeopathic cream to reduce the swelling. I took an over-the-counter anti-inflammatory pain reliever. I wrapped my ankle and went to work.

How many of us have done that before? We carry on and push forward and go about our day even when our body is giving us clear signs that something is up. I modified my work load for the weekend, skipped one of the hikes and took it easy as best I could. I was okay. And, I wasn't really listening to my body.

Even when I returned home, I kept going. I assumed my ankle would get better and did not pay it much attention. I rested, sort of. I convinced myself it was getting better, the swelling was going down and my range of motion was increasing. This was true, but clearly my ankle still hurt and was still swollen, days later. I could not walk normally or put my full weight on my foot.

Listening to Our Bodies

Perhaps you are not like me and you would have gone to the doctor that first day. Sometimes I do that, too. This time it took me a full week.

As a Somatic Therapist, here's where it gets interesting. I went to the doctor because I finally slowed down enough to listen to my body. Literally. I asked my ankle if it wanted to go to the doctor and I heard, "yes." Clearly. From my ankle itself, not from my head.

Intellectually, I had a sense that it would be helpful for me to have someone else examine my ankle. However, it was not until I really heard my ankle's response that I went to the doctor.

The doctor's visit itself was partially helpful because it ruled out certain possibilities, nothing broken, nothing strained. Okay, that's what I suspected all along. Now I could turn my attention to what I know how to do, which is to get to know the experience in my ankle and listen to what it wants to tell me.

Alligator in the Ankle

Throughout the week, I had been sensing into my ankle on and off, but only half paying attention. Twice I asked if there was an image in my ankle and twice I saw an alligator clamping down on the joint. In those moments, I did not want to know anything more about that, so I moved on to whatever else I was doing.

I started to realize I wanted someone to be with me as I got to know more about this alligator. That's why I was avoiding it, I didn't want to explore it by myself. It felt like too much.

So I got help. With the skillful and caring presence of Jessamyn Tallyn, who is a practitioner of Jin Shin Jyutsu and Manual Osteopathy, I was able to hear more clearly what was going on in my ankle. I saw the bigger picture and had a better sense of what was preventing me from grounding and standing fully in my left side. She helped me release something and bring in love and gentleness, which encouraged the flow of energy. Something started to shift.

My sense is that all of the ways we have of caring for and listening to our bodies are part of the healing process. In my case, I needed to go to the doctor for diagnosis, or at least to rule out certain possibilities. In some way, that was the beginning of me taking my ankle seriously and listening to what it had to say. That was the beginning of my healing process. Our bodies have so much to tell us when we are ready to listen.

On one level, my ankle continues to heal and feel better. On another level, I gained something else, too. The best way I can describe it is to say that I retrieved some part of me. Through listening to my body and understanding the ways I was constricting and holding myself back, I was able to let some of that go and regain a sense of fullness and power.

Do you ever have a grumpy day? A day when you feel bleh and you don't want to do anything? Maybe you got some bad news or woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Maybe it's one of those days when nothing seems to go right and the whole world looks grey.

What do you do on a day like that? Do you stay in bed and pull the covers over your head? Do you push through, waiting for the day to end, hoping for something better tomorrow?

Though it may not feel like it, we have options when we are having a hard time. There are things we can do to care for ourselves and treat ourselves with kindness. As Stuart Alpert, Co-Founder of the Hartford Family Institute's Center for Psychotherapy and Healing Arts says, in any given moment, we are either supporting our experience or not supporting it. There is no neutral.

Supporting our experience is something we can practice. If you want, try it right now. Pause and take a breath. Notice what you are feeling. How connected or disconnected do you feel? What do you notice in your body, in your thoughts and feelings? Are you distracted, agitated, calm, judging, open or something else? Take another breath and see if you can let whatever you are experiencing be here without trying to change it. Can you imagine greeting whatever is present for you with compassion, as if your experience is an old friend coming to see you? For example, you might say inwardly, "Hello, Grumpy. Thank you for coming today. I trust you are here for a good reason. I am here."

If you tried this experiment, what did you notice? Perhaps there was a softening or an opening as you sat with what was present. Perhaps your feelings intensified or felt uncomfortable. Perhaps you did not try this experiment because it seemed silly or you did not want to. Whatever you did or did not do, whatever your experience was, what would it be like to not give yourself a hard time about it? This is how we cultivate self-compassion and acceptance.

The above is an example of one option we have when we are having a hard time, simply greeting our experience with kindness. As I wrote, I could feel something shift in me and now my heart feels softer. What was your experience?

Sometimes kindness may not feel accessible to us. We may feel stuck. We may need help. When we are in the midst of some inner turmoil, it may not occur to us that we could pause and be with our experience. Being with our experience may be the last thing we want to do.

I was having a day like that on Friday. I was all worked up and not sure what to do. I called a friend, which helped me know I was not alone and get some clarity, at least for a little while. I went about my day as best I could, but my thoughts were still going around and around in my head, chasing each other, trying to find a way out of the "badness" I was feeling.

Later, I went for a walk in the woods. The movement and the fresh air helped, but I still had an underlying feeling of agitation. If I am honest, all I really wanted to do was to get rid of the agitation. I was not meeting the agitation like an old friend. In those moments, I was treating my agitation as an enemy, something to fix, and something I did not want.

Naming my experience helps me bring more kindness to myself. I can appreciate how much I did not want to feel what I was feeling. This brings me to another option we can try. Journaling or drawing about our experience. When we put our feelings down on paper, we can see them more clearly and, at the same time, get some space from them. They are one part of our experience and not the whole of who we are.

The last thing I did on my grumpy day was to get out of my experience for a while so I could feel something different. One of my favorite local artists, Canyon, was playing at a nearby church. I went. I brought my grumpy self and sat down in the back and let the music pour over me. With little to no effort on my part, my spirits were lifted. The lyrics and the melodies moved me. When I left at the end of the night, I was struck by how different I felt. I savored those moments of feeling joy, feeling touched and alive.

There is no one magic thing that will make us feel better when we are having a bad day. We all want to feel good and we all want to avoid discomfort. We are all doing our best at living our lives the way we know how. What I notice is the more I practice being with the nuances of my experience when I am feeling okay, the easier it is for me to be with my experience when it is intense, distressful or "icky" in some way. It is also important to me to know I have options. I can call a friend, go for a walk, journal, dance or listen to music. I can curl up in a blanket and treat myself with kindness. How do you take care of yourself when you are in a hard place? Can you imagine taking in a drop of love to the center of your experience?

Real Life

Listening to Our Bodies

Alligator in the Ankle