Walking & mindfulness

I’ve just been for a walk. While that may not sound like much, for me - it’s huge right now. This walk involved actual forward motion, no patella brace and no walking stick. Very minimal jerky movement. And no crying with frustration. Last August, I wrote the blog ‘Bad knees and integrity’, talking about the difficulty I was having with walking and how I was contemplating the physical and metaphysical aspects of what that meant for me. It’s been nearly a year and walking has become increasingly difficult, to the point where a walk further than the front door usually brings me to tears.

It has thrown me, not being able to really go for a walk. And while I can actually walk, after about five steps I falter. It’s like my left leg has forgotten how to take steps. So after living with this for a year, with it getting increasingly worse, I decided I needed help.

As a wholistic practitioner, heading down a more conventional path of healthcare can make me feel hypocritical. If I can’t walk my talk, how can I keep talking my talk? So putting my judgements aside (of myself and other modalities) I took a step in the direction of my wellness. I knew I needed exercises to strengthen my vastus medialis, so my patella would track properly. The exercises proved very successful - my knee cap is tracking like nobody’s business! And with that, my walking has actually deteriorated. This has sent me down a whole different spiraling path of despair. If my knee cap dislocating wasn’t to blame, then what was? I was so focused on my mobile patella that I didn’t see there was a deeper issue involved. Something which was going to take a lot more work than just strengthening one muscle. I needed to retrain my brain and muscles to not only keep my kneecap in place, but to not hyperextend.

Over the past year I have been contemplating the multi-dimensional issues around my knee. What is it that keeps me from moving forward with love, grace and ease? In yoga this week, the intention was Mindfulness. The teacher talked about being mindful of our journey. Which got me thinking about my knee. If the esoteric belief is that the left side represents the Feminine and the knee represents forward movement, what was I not being mindful of moving forward in the Feminine? A friend recently gave me her take on my knee. “Maybe it’s about being present.” Being present. Being mindful. Being present to every step on my journey. Being mindful that it’s about the journey (feminine), much more so than the destination (masculine). So maybe it’s not so much about completing a walk, but about taking each step as it comes. And for me, especially lately, it has been hard to be present. I am often looking into the past or wondering about the future. Whereas really, all we have is right now. And right now I need to take one step at a time. Not worry about how my knee used to be, or how I am going to get through a whole walk, but just focus and be mindful of the step that I am in.

I wish you presence and mindfulness in your journey. With gratitude.