In the blogs for October, I will explore the mutually enhancing dance between resilience and compassion, and how it affects and shapes successful outcomes in surgery, and also in life. The commonality in both qualities is having love for self that is enacting by treating yourself in a loving and compassionate way, which in turn enhances resilience. Development and ability to enact both qualities are necessary in any operative preparation and recovery. I made this discovery experientially through my personal experience of preparation for and recovery from ACL surgery after a knee injury.

Natarajasana (Dancer Pose or Lord of the Dance Pose) is a deep backbend that requires patience, focus, and persistence. The pose is named after the Hindu god Shiva Nataraja, King of the Dance, who finds bliss in the midst of destruction. Like its namesake, Lord of the Dance Pose embodies finding steadying calm within.
Like the dynamic tension of the strength, calm and focus required to successfully express the full, soaring version of Natarajasana, there is a delicate and dynamic dance between the expression of Compassion and Resilience within ourselves as we deal with the challenges of surgery and life.
PART ONE: COMPASSION
One of the first things necessary in dealing with an injury is having compassion for yourself. A healthy level of self-compassion allows one to accept our weaknesses as frailties rather than failures as we learn to accept the frailties and fallibility of others. It also allows us to properly self-care when we are ill, battered in body, mind or spirit or merely having a bad day. In a culture laser focused on “winning” (frequently at any cost), we learn as children to be inappropriately hard on ourselves when we don’t finish first in all we do. Subtle familial and even peer pressure can make these tendencies even worse. Having pride in performance and success is one thing. Being constantly driven to excel 100% of the time or feeling utterly defeated if you aren’t at 110% level is just not a healthy attitude or perspective, given the reality of our humanity.
LIFE - WORK BALANCE
Perhaps the worst enforcement of this perfection at all costs comes in American work
culture, with its grossly misnamed “work-life balance”. It’s in the ordering of the words that our inherent imbalance becomes clear. The first word, the word of priority is work rather than life. That ordering and priority then shapes every aspect that comes thereafter, with
work taking precedence over life and all aspects of it;

sickness, family, injury; all sacrificed on the altar of work. The prevalence of work from home arrangements has led to increasing expectation that one should be “on call” and available for work in greatly extending hours that no human can reasonably maintain forever. Self-compassion is eroded and destroyed in favor of “efficiency” and “responsiveness” but at what price? Working sick? Being available for work issues and calls literally minutes after having surgery? Giving the impression that one is always available for work issues? How does it really make you feel to be expected to perform the impossible all the time? It's hard to wedge compassion into any place of significance with this type of perspective. My lesson in self-compassion came after a ski injury, and weeks of impaired mobility before my surgery.
Cut Yourself Some Slack, Human!
Rather than have searing pain at the time of my injury, I felt mainly annoying aching. I was so unimpressed by the pain, that my surgeon had to press me to accept my prescription for pain medicines before the surgery, insisting that I would “need some help” with the pain. It wasn’t the pain that I had the problem with, but the restriction in my mobility, and inability to do things that I had taken for granted, like hopping up on a stool to get an item off the top shelf of the pantry, or not having a free hand to carry something because I had to maneuver with crutches. At odd times I found myself bursting into tears for no good reason, or so I thought. As I worked with my yoga teacher in maintaining both flexibility and strength in my uninjured leg, he also gently pointed out that rather than continue to drive myself to overcompensate for my injury, that maybe it was time to allow my body and mind to take a break and do some self-care rather than self-flagellation. The first time he said it, it was a shock (Yup, he had to say it more than once.). Eventually I came to realize that it was only by caring for and loving my injured knee and myself as I was that I could begin the process of healing and recovery. I began to allow my friends to help me with chores and errands around the house and outside of it. I saw offers of food preparation and taking my dog for walks and play dates with gratitude rather than frustration. I began to give myself a break, and cut myself some slack, and get off the superwoman-all-the-time train. I began to learn self-compassion.

GRATITUDE AND COMPASSION
I quickly found that as much as I needed to learn self-compassion after my injury and before surgery, I would need that new skill in full measure after surgery, and the entirely new set of challenges I faced. While I had worked on setting my intention for having a smooth surgical course, and a post-surgery recovery period with minimal pain, I was not prepared for the unpredictable spikes of pain and waves of nausea from pain and the medicine to treat it. My carefully managed emotional equilibrium was disrupted once again, but this time I knew to rely on breath work, gratitude journaling, and three positive things daily to shift my mood from despair to gratitude and compassion. I found that I could easily point out things to be proud of as I progressed through recovery and physical therapy even a bit ahead of schedule, having a rapidly diminishing need for pain medicine, and recovery of leg function within the activity parameters set by my surgeon and physical terrorist. I mean therapist. More importantly, I cut myself some slack when I had a difficult day in rehab, or a day with more pain than usual and needed more pain meds. I learned not to associate it with the end of the world, or some bizarre representation of a failing on my part. Instead, I realized it was only another day in any number of days good and bad, difficult and easy that were part of the full spectrum associated with recovering from the surgery, and indeed with life. A down or difficult day wasn’t some grandiose statement of failure; it was just a difficult or challenging day that always passed and sooner rather than later usually improved. When I could love myself enough to grant grace and compassion on those days, I found that even the more difficult days were less dark and full of despair, and that I dealt much better with them.
THE DANCE OF COMPASSION AND RESILIENCE
Through self-compassion, I discovered equanimity and resilience, because the dreary and cloudy days never lasted forever; the sun and happiness always came shining through. Self-compassion allowed me to have hope that things would indeed improve with a bit of time. Self-compassion and cutting myself slack also let me regain my equanimity faster. I also found that the sunshine of those happy days was just a little bright and sweeter with the realization that I had weathered the tough days, and pride at how far I had come in my recovery process. Compassion circled around to find resilience. I found that delicate sweet spot that was a perfect balance of compassion and resilience that made my post surgery life better and more rewarding.
More about RESILIENCE in Part 2.

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