Yoga to the Rescue! by Gabe Hopp
I have been sharing some of my experience post-surgery via social media, but I wanted to pull it all together into a single blog post. The intensity of a major surgery and how it brought me deeper into my yoga practice feels like a necessary share for a yoga community. The power of yoga unites us all, students and teachers together, and we can learn from one another in this life and yoga journey.
The first part of the post-surgery adventure, as it relates to yoga, is that I wanted to do anything but be present. So much of yoga practice is paying attention and remaining with what is as it arises. But that was just not my practical reality as a person in a lot of pain. I actually employed as many avoidance techniques as I could think of. Distraction was the name of the game. And, frankly I was okay with that. It was way easier to cope with discomfort if I scrolled on social media or lost myself in 90s movies with my kids. After a few days, I remembered the most important part of yoga (this is debatable, but I think I’m probably right on this) THE BREATH. Oh yeah! Breath is the absolute key to hanging out in discomfort without losing your shiz. Slow steady breath got me through the challenge of early PT and helped me calm down for sleep each night.
After about a week and a half, I had an internal shift as well as a physical shift that led me back into practice. I weaned off the pain meds, made the journey upstairs to my own bed and started to feel like I could sit still without pain for long enough to meditate. My usual meditation practice is twenty minutes, so I started with 10 for a couple days and slowly worked my way back up. It felt amazing to do something “normal” that was such a basic part of my daily life and practice.
Right around the same time, I decided to just see what I was able to do physically on my yoga mat. I was absolutely thrilled to discover that I could do quite a lot even without being able to bend my knee. Years and years of studying and teaching yoga with props and modifications meant that I could work around my injury and also work with it. Right off the bat, I could do down dog, the whole supta padangusthasana series, wide-legged forward fold and parsvottanasana into anjenayasana. I almost died with happiness. In fact, I texted Alison immediately after gushing about how good it felt to do yoga. From there, I just kept adding on. Within a few days, I could do an hours-long practice which felt strengthening, empowering and grounding.
It had been years since I had felt compelled to do a long daily practice. Life gets in the way, and my daily yoga practice had become largely meditative. To make that bodily connection again and use all my training and tools to heal myself is extremely inspirational. It has been absolutely integral to my healing process. I don’t think I would be nearly as far along as I am without my yoga practice. This week for the first time, I went back to the gym and found that I had maintained all of my upper body strength and was able to modify my PT exercises with weights to get in a full work out. In yoga, I was able to grab my heel in a thigh stretch, put my back knee down for a low lunge with arms up and kneel for a camel pose. Things are looking up and yoga is the light that guides me.