As I sit here with a boot on my foot (again!) I feel called to speak about a particular time in my life when all aspects of my practice showed themselves to be so valuable; when my body, mind & heart suffered what seemed at the time to be irreparable damage.
It was a grey Monday morning December 9th 2019.
I’d been feeling low energy for a while but was trying to keep up with the things I loved doing. I set off for the local climbing wall, feeling particularly attached to making myself feel better. I was determined to get the last hold of a sequenced climb I’d been practising; I sat in a squat position at the top of the wall, my left foot and right hand in a hold, I was using my right foot to kick off of the wall to launch myself up high enough to reach the last hold.
On my 3rd or 4th attempt my left foot slipped from the hold.
I rapidly descended the 12ft directly onto my foot and subsequently slammed straight down onto my face. Shock instantaneously set in, and although the lads at the climbing wall tried to assure me that it was probably just a nasty sprain – I knew it was far worse! I know my body very well and I knew something was very wrong.
Upon impact my fibula had snapped but more worryingly…
My tibia (the main supporting bone) had fractured like a mosaic and I was to receive surgery, but not before the X-ray had gone to the surgeon’s board.
There was talk of me being moved to London or Cambridge as I would possibly need a cage support and the worry was that they may have to fuse my ankle into dorsiflexion, so basically my ankle would remain a 90 degree angle, which then posed the question “would it be better to take the foot off?” so that I could at least have a moveable joint. Whilst all this was flying around, my blood pressure dropped dramatically & I kept blacking out. I barely remember what was going on but I do remember who came to visit me.
After 10 days the swelling finally went down and a local surgeon was elected by the board to do my surgery. I asked if there was any way I could fix it without metal work and the dr basically laughed at me and said “Faye, this is something you cannot fix with herbs” .
“The body is inherently a system of seamless networks of tissues rather than a collection of separate parts. These connective tissues surround, support & penetrate all of the muscles, bones, nerves & organs. This is the stuff that shapes us and gives us both mobility & growth”
~ Rich Ennis
“Do not expect a full recovery…”
After surgery the surgeon explained that although the tibia had smashed into many pieces my connective tissue was very strong and had held everything together so he was able to go in with the metal support and with work I could expect a good result, but not to expect a full recovery.
The pain I endured the first 6 weeks is something I wouldn’t wish on anyone!
Like barbed wire wrapped around my foot and pulled tighter and tighter. Like someone putting my foot in a clamp and tightening and tightening, like a blade between my big and second toe, trying to cut off my toe.
“The power of community to create health is far greater than any physician clinic or hospital”
~ Mark Hyman
The things that got me through that time were friends turning up around 6pm to distract me as the pain ramped up,
“My tears are not a sign of weakness but my strength to allow my suffocating heart to finally breathe”
~ Roger Lee
and an allowance to cry it all out. Every night I would pop on my headphones and listen to She Remembers by Max Ritcher
“The key is a technique called mental reversal, where you imagine a desired outcome in such a way that you make your inner thoughts more real than your outer environment.”
~ Joe Dispenza
I learned from Joe Dispenza the importance of feeling into your future fully-healed self. I’d listen to the track Cycle 2 by Matt Dunkley and visualise myself and my two dachshunds running the 5k we used to run together around Dedham. I would witness it from a drone perspective as well as out of my own eyes, I would feel the uneven ground beneath my feet, the long grass brushing my ankles, ducking under bushes feeling brambles over my shoulders, the sun on my face, the wind on my hair, sometimes the rain, the birds flying above me, feeling fit, strong, happy & healthy.
“Mantras are like seeds, whatever you plant in the subconscious mind & nourish with repetition & emotion will become your reality”
~ Faye Shekhar
I was gifted a mantra from a wonderful lady called Athena on fb and from then on every evening I also listened to and chanted The Maha Mrityunjaya Mantra by The Sacred Sound Choir 108 times before I went to sleep.
“What makes us feel drawn to music is that our whole being is music: our mind and body, the nature in which we live, the nature which has made us all that is beneath & around us. It is all music.”
~ Hazrat Inayat Khan
Finally after 11 weeks I felt I could leave my parents and go home.
It was just as we went into the first covid lock down, and although it was hard being on my own it meant I could be in the studio every day working on my rehab.
Throughout that time I was under the care and guidance of Edward Jones @thepointclinic. I am eternally grateful to the constant support & update of how and what to train. I know that my recovery was ten fold thanks to him & my diligent practice.
Within 8 months I was running 5k in 36 minutes!
This was something I had been visualising daily, and one year later my metal work was removed! The continued work meant that I regained full mobility – something my surgeon had not expected! Although he decided to take the full credit, yoga taught me the humility of allowing him to believe that, even though deep down he knows that much of it would have be down to the diligent practice of all aspects of yoga.
“Yoga is a light which once lit will never dim, the better your practice, the brighter the flame.”
~ B K S Iyengar
