Getting Back in Touch With My Body

I’d suffered from the pain of AS for years when I began to notice how disconnected I was from my body. Everyone told me how important it was to exercise, but everything I tried hurt. At best the pain would plague me while I was moving, at worst I would injure myself and take months to recover.

I lost trust in my ability to move my body, and so for a long time I stopped moving at all. It wasn’t just exercise that no longer worked for me. Physical sensations I had once enjoyed were no longer a pleasure. The massages I had loved were off the table, I couldn’t dance and I found myself flinching if anyone tried to give me a hug.

I stopped living in my body and retreated into my mind

I wasn’t sure I liked my body anymore and wished I could swap it for a better one. But it didn’t feel good to be so removed as it made me focus more on the pain. As my awareness of the disconnection grew I decided to look for ways of reconnecting with my physical self.

The first success was doing some hydrotherapy. In the pool I was able to relax, the warm water supporting my body and allowing movement that felt, for once, ok.

Next I treated myself to some great-smelling body lotion and applied it everywhere I could reach. Such a simple thing I hadn’t done for so long. It was a far cry from the day spa but the human touch, even my own, felt good.

Stillness, nature, and meditation

I would drive to the beach, take the short walk over the sand and stand ankle deep in the salt water. The sensation of sand under my feet and the flow of water had a soothing rhythm which eased the tension. Other days I headed for the eucalyptus trees not far from my home where I would breath in the earthy smells and lean my forehead against cool bark. Those times alone in the quiet fed my senses and restored me.

I tried listening to guided meditations that progressively relax every part of the body. These took me a long time to adjust to as I found the stillness of meditation would leave me overwhelmed with emotion. This happened for years but eventually the tears stopped and I was able to really enjoy meditation.

Last year I began a yoga practice and out of everything, this has been the most valuable thing I’ve found for reconnecting my mind and body. It’s been like the missing piece of the puzzle for me, and I found a program specifically designed for people with AS (Yoga for AS, an online program based in the UK). It’s a safe way to move my body that reduces inflammation and leaves me feeling blissed out for hours after each session. I’m so thankful to have discovered it. (Editor's note: One of the creators of Yoga for AS writes for our sister site, AxialSpondyloarthritis.net. Read his articles here.)

Learning how to get out of my head and remember how to feel something other than pain has been a helpful process for me. Finding ways to safely move my body continues to bring benefits. Just some of the many lessons learned along the road to living with AS.