finding wisdom in what aches

For many months now, inflammation in my right knee (and increasingly my left) has kept me from being able to move this body how I want to move. I can't run. I can't jump. I can't exert myself enough to really sweat.

Some days are better than others.

In the not-so-good moments, my mind spins with frustration. "What more do you want?" it asks my knee. "You have curcumin!" "You have acupuncture!" "We stopped eating dairy (mid-holiday season) for you!" Remember how we used to leap?!?! THAT is who we are. Get your shit together.

And then there are moments when the ache in my body brings me to a place of introspection. I feel the heat in my knee that is increasingly always with me. When I'm simply with it, without making it wrong, or bad, or "not me," it speaks.

It is not whiny, urgent or even angry. It states itself with measured calm. "I'm tired," my knee says. "I'm just tired."

My knee is tired. This simple truth lands in my chest like the thud of the old-school yellow pages on a hard desk. There's a heaviness here I've been dutifully avoiding. My knee is tired. It's tired of running, tired of pushing, tired of jumping, tired twisting and bending, tired of extending beyond itself to get just ... a little ... further.

And when I hear my knee, when I can really let these words in, I get it. Yeah knee, I'm fucking tired too.

My knee remembers how, even as a young child, I never wanted to be "caught" sleeping; how I was told that, "If I had enough time to sleep, I had enough time to make myself useful." If I did doze midday and happened to hear someone coming, I'd pop right up and busy myself.

It remembers how this pattern is so deeply ingrained it has shown up in every relationship.

It remembers hiding in a closest to avoid being prescribed more doing.

This body doesn't know rest because the family from which it comes does not rest. The family from which it comes fills every moment with activity. These activities are hierarchically ranked with "getting ahead" and "bettering one's self "at the top.

My knee says, if you don't break this pattern, this pattern will break you.

But I'm confused, I tell me knee. I thought I was doing a good job? I meditate? I do savasana? After a long day, I dutifully put my legs up the wall. This, the knee says, is not rest. "This is not doing to make room for more doing." "This is a pause with an agenda."

My knee is right. This aching knee, that won't jump and may never again run, is the teacher my body most needs.

Still, my mind can't fathom capital R "Rest." Yes, I am a proponent of The Nap Ministry. Yes, I am an evangelist of "slowing down." But to put it all down? To center a life of simply being? What would that even mean? For how long?

rest with a little r? That's where I'm beginning. This is a moment of reprieve. It is a rock in the stream that allows the water to eddy before being swept back into the flow. I'm consciously stepping into this pool and watching my mind poke and cajole and threaten. My only directive is to do absolutely nothing. To let the world come to me as it will.

I'm watching the winter rain.
I'm letting my pup curl in my lap.
I'm listening to the tick of the clock and the cars sloshing outside.
I'm noticing with bemusement how the house always finds its way to a certain kind of mess.
I'm watching our backyard hummingbird territorially claim his branch over and over again.

I know how the body learns. I know that with practice these moments will grow. And I'm letting go of the expectation that this "little r" rest will fix my knee -- that this not doing will be the antidote that allows me to reclaim the knees I once had.

Instead, there is a trust that my knee is the wise teacher guiding me to a new rhythm which my whole body will find sustaining.

Perhaps some of this also resonates for you, dear reader.

With much care,
Kelsey