Where the truth lies... often not where you expect it...

The metaphor of a running injury.

This is the count down. On Saturday, July 17th 2010, at 7 am Eastern Australia time, four women will join over 1000 people to run in the 6th Kokoda Challenge.

I am one of those four women, and this is my forth Kokoda Challenge. While most people walk this challenge, taking anywhere from 24 to 39 hours, about a dozen teams race/run the event, aiming to complete the 96 kilometers (59.6 miles) in under 15 hours. It is a true endurance exercise. Almost all trail running, there are five major climbs, five major downhills, and multiple other hills, with very little flat running and seven or more creek crossings, this event is a challenge in every way, no matter how fast people are traveling.

Three weeks ago I tripped while running on one of the trails in training. I fell hard, feeling my pelvis twist, and my left hamstring insertion tear.

As has become my ingrained habit to using an integral approach to everything, illness and injury cannot be looked at in isolation. It is never just a simple fall. Where the truth lies is often far from the fall or initial trigger. There is no such thing as a ‘cold’ without some aspect of the ‘cold’ also being emotional, spiritual, relational, and physical. Every event that manifests in the exterior world is an opportunity to look at how we are showing up in life on the interior.

I know exactly where I was in my emotions when I tripped. I was frustrated and angry. Things were not going as ‘I’ wanted them to. I had been in this state for some time. I was not paying attention to the present, consumed in my own thinking and brewing. So the Universe kicked me up the bum, literally. Ouch! This was a first clue as to where the truth lies for this particular running injury.

Since that time the pain has continued, some days really good, some days not so good, never getting worse, and slowly moving to better. I do believe through my own direct experience that things can heal miraculously. To allow this, we need to go to our interiors and get back into alignment and integrity. The process is non linear, non rational. In other words, it often makes no sense and cannot be explained. This is where the truth lies...in these domains... I also do the physical things that will help, like chiropractic, massage, stretching, acupuncture, the more traditional approaches that are taken.

I was listening to my teacher, and a master at working with the mystical side of healing, Caroline Myss, this past weekend, and she made the comment that I have heard before, that we often have illness, or pain on an ongoing basis, because it is meeting a need at some level. The need for attention or the need for sympathy, for example. Some people do not want to lose their pain or the illness. It is a tool for manipulation. It gets them what they want..whether that is to control another person’s life (I need you to care for me....), manipulate the flow of the day (oh..I can’t, because of my illness), or to provide a socially acceptable excuse as to why we cannot reach our highest potential. Now we are getting closer to where the truth lies...

I therefore had to ask myself what value would I be getting from having this injury linger? (Many of you will say that a hamstring tear is a injury that lasts at least...’x’ weeks. Well first of all, I don’t know for sure it was a full tear, I just knew it hurt.) Hmm...these questions require a level of rigor in the answer. Do I really want to do this event? Do I really want to finish it? Do I want to be able to run pain free and not be at the centre of attention in the team? Or do I want a doorway out? Some exit plan? Where is my commitment? Is it deep and genuine?

I have had to search deeply into these questions, open and willing to look at where the truth lies. At the time of the injury, I am not sure I wanted to really run the event. An exit strategy might well have been playing at the depths of my mind. Today I have recommitted to running and finishing. I really want to be with my team, crossing the finish line, triumphant. At the same time, part of the loss of motivation has been the seriousness I have brought to our training in the last 2 months. Where did I leave fun? Fun was the original impulse to form this exact team of girls. To have fun training together. This was the original intent. I now need to breath new life into this intent, and place it at the centre of the experience. (It may be hard to imagine that you could have fun running 96k’s, but it is actually possible.) The truth is that all of the events I have done where fun has been the prime intention have been my best events. My PB marathon was run for fun. The Six Foot Track event earlier this year was for fun. When I let the event slip into serious competitiveness, my performance goes out the window. Is there a metaphor for life here? Hmm...is this a clue to where the truth lies?

Further to the integral approach, the bones of the legs and feet are part of the 1st Chakra, the root chakra. The first chakra is our tribal chakra. This can be our family tribe, our running tribe, our girlfriend tribe... One of my old dysfunctional patterns is the pattern of the outsider, never really belonging. Never really being part of the tribe. Am I part of my running tribe? Or do I feel like the outsider? (I may not be an outsider, but I may feel like I am...it is my felt experience and my interpretation of that that forms my dysfunction.) An old pattern I have in relationship is to retreat and disappear when I am feeling the outsider, or that the relationship has become too hard. Such a paradox, as I am not a quitter in my running, knowing full well the felt experience of endurance. Here I am feeling the outsider, retreating, and my injury provides the perfect foil. I can’t run today, so I won’t see you. Aware of this behaviour lies of course the choice to continue to perpetuate the behaviour, or to break through, not retreat, instead to reach out. Ever closer to where the truth lies..

For many years I have had the practice of asking my pain or illness what it needs of me. Once I developed an instant, out of the blue sharp knee pain with significant swelling. I did not fall, or step badly...this pain simply arrived, while running. All of my running mates took one look at my swollen knee, and the difficulty I had walking, and declared that I would be off running for at least three weeks. Not me....I went home, sat in silence and had a conversation with my knee. What did my knee want to tell me about where the truth lies? It wanted me to make a phone call. A call I had been avoiding for quite some time. OK...I’ll make the call. It was not easy, but it was a successful call. Within two days I was back on a perfectly healthy knee, running pain free, and have never had a similar type of pain since. Who would have thought that a phone call would ‘cure’ knee pain. I have no doubt that the resistance to making the call in the first place caused the knee pain, and the making the call cured it. Our bodies speak to us ALL the time. Don’t eat that...it will make you sick, or you don’t need it..or ...

My bottom and I needed to have a chat. Chat we did. “What can I do to support you?” I asked. “Dance. Very day. At least 5 minutes. And stretch.But Dance with joy and abandon.”

So there you have it. I need to dance. My life/body/spirit/being/running needs more joy and fun. (You may laugh...but this is really where the truth lies.)

My daughter has been telling me this for years. Years! The Universe is always guiding us...the trouble is, we are not listening. We don’t listen to the angels that come in various forms, from human to animal to the inanimate.

What are you being told...and why are you not doing it? Are you waiting for the Mack truck...the really BIG impossible to miss message from the Universe? Please don’t wait....sit down and start paying attention now! The message is loud and clear and clean. Deep breath...what is it saying.....

What has been your personal experience about the truth behind an injury or illness?

If you have overcome an illness or injury by exploring the deeper dimensions of truth, I would love to hear your story.

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