Pain, Vices & Healing

I have had pain throughout most of my life. Pain in my feet in particular. It felt like it all started after I dislocated my hip when I was 7 year old playing soccer. I did the splits trying to go for the ball and it popped my hip out, a very traumatic experience to say the least which led to a 7 week full body cast. And ever since then I have had feet pain. Knowing what I know now, that pain is mainly just stagnation and lack of blood flow. And to this day I have feet pain at the end of most of my days.

What I’ve generally done to combat this is take a vice like kratom, alcohol, snuss, etc to get away from the pain, but those things only make it worse and make me worse as a human being. After much experimentation with those external vices, I have slowly but surely come to realize that all of the answers to all of the my “problems” / questions will not be found in the external world, they will all be found within. 

So diving within, I have discovered that one of the reasons my feet hurt in the afternoons is because I am not giving them enough attention. When they hurt, that’s basically a sign that they are just calling out for help and desiring to be massaged or stretched. And thus this is what I’m going to do from this point forth. Instead of just going to bed with pain, the truly loving thing to do is spending the 10-15 minutes stretching & massaging my feet, calves, knees & hips at the end of every day. This loosens them up, increases the blood flow, and thus reduces the inflammation / pain.

Our bodies are masterpieces. They are highly intelligent, beyond what you could possibly imagine. Any ache, pain, illness, etc is just a sign to something deeper, a sign for something deeper. That’s just the symptom, it’s no the actual cause.

Trust me, after years of neglecting my body, after years of abandoning my lower body post the body cast, I’m well aware that strategy doesn’t work. We must bring love and attention to every area of one’s body in order for us to heal.