I started my journey as a swimmer at 6 years old. My dream was to make it to the Olympics. From a young age, I trained hard. I started swimming twice a day by the time I was 10 years old. I swam between 2 and 4 hours a day, did dryland exercises, lifted weights, and ran every day but Sunday. Sometimes I would lift weights or run on Sundays just to get me closer to my goal. 

Training at that level brought its share of aches and pains. My coaches would always say, “no pain, no gain.” I heard that phrase so often that I began to believe it. If I wasn’t pushing myself to my max constantly, and ignoring pain,  then I wasn’t working hard enough. 

The lesson I ended up taking away from this, was that I couldn’t listen to my body. I had to ignore the signs it was giving me that I was doing too much and going too hard. I didn’t even realize this was what I was teaching myself over my 11 + year swimming career. It wasn’t until I started practicing yoga, 10 years after I stopped swimming, that this began to come to light.   

I remember the first time I heard people use words like, your body’s intuition and body wisdom. I remember thinking to myself, that is some hokey, new age bullshit.  I didn’t even know how to get in touch with parts of my body because I had spent so much time making sure they didn’t try to stop me from getting where I wanted to go.

When I first started practicing yoga, I brought the same, no pain, no gain,  attitude to my practice. Ashtanga yoga is known for being physically challenging. I took that challenge and ran with it. I was determined to be able to do all the postures, even though my body was giving me signs that it wasn’t happy with some of them. I ended up pushing so hard that I had injury after injury.

It wasn’t until after a series of injuries and illnesses that I finally started paying attention to the signs my body was giving me. It forced me to slow down and listen. Every time I stopped listening, my body throw me a curve ball which would give me no choice but to listen again. Over time, I learned to listen because I realized it was a battle I wasn’t going to win.

As I found a way to honor my body and its intuition I have found a much more sustainable way to approach my life. I now know how to work hard without sacrificing my body in the process. Through listening to the cues it gives me, I have been able to open my body (and mind) in ways I never thought possible. 

The moral of the story here is, you can work hard in whatever you do but in a way that honors your intuition and body wisdom. (Yes, I used those same words that I once labeled as hokey, new age bullshit. :) ). When you can create that space for yourself, you open up a world where kindness and compassion meet dedication and determination; that’s where you find sustainability and longevity instead of injury and illness.