You Have to Want It Badly Enough: You're Never Too Old to Heal Yourself

Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society

Photo by Jasper Garratt on Unsplash

It’s all about choices. When do we choose life?

Dear Reader: This piece was written with the help of Donna Bush, prize- winning writer and photographer, who also just happens to teach yoga. And improve lives.

Donna and I were talking just outside the Mint Julep van which was going to whisk us away to yet another adventure. It was early, and we were enjoying the all-too-brief respite from the Chattanooga summer heat.

We were attending the annual conference of the Outdoor Writers Association of America, and I was lucky enough to have met her along with other talented writers, bloggers and photographers.

Among many other things, she’s a photographer, writer, birder and more, but also a yoga teacher. We’re both of an age, so we were chuckling about aging and achy bodies.

Achy bodies which respond well to yoga, that is.

Donna had become a yoga instructor after caring for her mother, who was dying from kidney cancer. Yoga’s disciplined benefits were a real help, and she wanted to offer those benefits to others.

Word got around about Donna’s yoga, and reached the ears of a woman we’ll call Charlotte. Charlotte was experiencing terrible foot pain, the result of an automobile accident.

Multiple surgeries resulted in constant pain, making it difficult for her to enjoy life, much less even walk normally. Many like Charlotte develop foot neuropathy not solely from diabetes but from other injuries to the foot, such as surgery.

Charlotte reached out to Donna for private classes, but without much expectation of progress. Her default was pain pills, lots of them, but without much relief.

People like to say that they’re too stiff for yoga, when it’s the yoga that helps them limber up. The trick is to start. Charlotte almost decided not even to try, but she did.

She likely thought at some level that she probably couldn’t do yoga.

She was taking multiple pain pills a day and feared that would continue for the remainder of her life. Pain was her constant companion.

Still, she was willing to work with Donna, after receiving clearance from her doctor- who may have had more faith in Charlotte than Charlotte had in herself at that point.

Yoga invites us to get much more deeply in tune with our bodies, to listen to them and be far more aware of our presence in them as we go through various poses and movements.

Sometimes that very awareness is what opens the door to something else, a something that allows us to experience our physical bodies differently.

That’s what Donna was hoping for.

Donna reported that initially, Charlotte was apprehensive about doing barefoot work. Donna worked cautiously with Charlotte, starting with foot work while seated in a chair, wearing shoes. Eventually, however, Charlotte removed her shoes.

We get zero percent of all the things we aren’t willing to try.

After a few sessions in the chair with and without shoes, Charlotte took the leap of faith to try standing, as well as some initial movements while barefoot.

Donna instructed her to walk mindfully, heel-to-toe and toe-to-heel, both backwards and forwards. Charlotte was holding on to a bar in the yoga studio for balance as she practiced.

After a few sessions, Donna was satisfied that Charlotte could do the movement without supervision. Then came homework: continue barefoot walking the same way while holding onto the back of a sofa or kitchen counter every day.

Charlotte was inspired by the progress she’d made. She could feel the muscles, the ligaments, the tendons, and the proprioceptors of her feet coming back to life.

Yoga and patience were putting her back in touch with her body.

She felt hope for the first time in a long time.

All too often, patients and students agree to do “homework” but within a few days or weeks, the practice dies off. When that happens, so does the progress.

In this case, Charlotte was so motivated by the difference in her feet and the lessening of her foot pain that she kept up the discipline.

The next time she saw Donna for a yoga session, she was beside herself. For the first time in a long time, moving was fun again.

Breathlessly she told Donna, “I stopped taking all my pain medication. I dance in my kitchen barefoot each evening as I cook dinner!”

Even better, “I told my doctor. He was ecstatic!”

While Charlotte’s experience is unique to her situation, body work can be transformational. Sometimes we give up too easily, depend too much on pills to mask pain that is our body’s way of saying that something is wrong.

In this case, what was wrong was righted by careful, thoughtful exercises and time.

Stories like Charlotte’s are one reason why Donna continues her yoga practice when she’s not out photographing Nature.

If you’re experiencing pain, please consult a medical professional.

That said, I’m a strong proponent of body work such as yoga, particularly if the medical answer is more pills.

The body likes to be well. Sometimes learning how to get back in touch with your body through a practice like yoga can help it get there. It’s worth considering, if your doctor clears you.

You might find yourself dancing in the kitchen again and pill-free.

Let’s play.

Photo by Age Cymru on Unsplash

Kind thanks to Donna Bush for co-writing this story and for her permission to tell it. We’re not done ‘til we’re done- stories like this are a great reminder.

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