Frome Valley Osteopaths

On our website we mention that health for some people is running marathons and health for others is being able to potter in the garden pain free, these are both entirely valid experiences of health. These definitions for ourselves may be influenced by age, fitness, how we see ourselves, previous experiences, family influence, illness etc 

Our expectation and experience of health can be a very individual thing. 

I notice sometimes that when our definition of health is narrow, our experience of pain or illness can be more upsetting or more mentally challenging, than if our definition of health is wider. We may quickly assume that an experience of pain means something about us or our future that may not be true. 

Health is something we all have, while we are living we have health, how much is expressed, how much we feel it, and our relationship to it, however, can be very changeable depending on our current state of body and mind. 

For example, I see patients in the 70s/80s who seem to present with a similar level of health, however their internal experience of their health may be very different. Their acceptance of the aging process, their acceptance of the co morbidities of aging and the health and beliefs of the support networks around them, can have a huge impact on how someone experiences their health, which in turn has an impact on their health again. 

There are younger people who live with endometriosis, psoariatic arthritis, pernicious anaemia, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, C-PTSD, chronic fatigue and chronic pain, some of who face challenges to their health every day. Others may assume these people don’t feel ‘healthy’. But the reality is that in the lives of the people with these conditions there is health, there is love and joy and fitness and family and connection. There may be more days of despair, more days of grief, more days of discomfort and pain, but there is still health. On some days the health might be a really long run or digging a pond in the garden, or a gentle stretch. On some days health might look like sitting in the garden and listening to the birds or chilling on the sofa with a heat pack and having a good cry. 

In acute pain or illness it’s easy to lose sight of health, to feel engulfed by pain, sometimes life has to change for a bit, we take some time off or modify our activities. In these times there is health in the ease of the bits of the body that don’t hurt, in the people that are around to care for us, in the heat pack and the gentle movement. We don’t suddenly loose all of ourselves because we are hurting. Although it’s absolutely OK and natural for it to feel like that sometimes, it’s just not good to get stuck there long term. Siân said to me this week, while she is in pain, that the quote ‘this too shall pass’ is helping her. To accept how things feel right now and to know they won’t be this way forever. 

Sometimes the health is in the reaching out, the getting support, the action towards reducing pain or symptoms, sometimes the health is in the surrender to the symptoms, and most often, the health is in both together. The full surrender and acceptance of where you and your body and mind are today, without judgement or future projection and making steps towards making sure there is enough support, that you are doing the simple things that can help. 

The acceptance can be a difficult bit, this is not ‘just keep going, look on the Brightside, other people have it worse’ acceptance is being real about the level of pain you are in, about what that does mean to you, it can often mean saying out loud the fears you do have, grieving, it’s the messy bit before we can then find the comfort in the discomfort. 

Health Is available to all of us, curating a relationship with it when we feel well can really help us when we don’t. 

As always if you’d like support noticing or building your relationship to your health or support improving your health, let us know. We are always happy to help. 

Lauren Manning BSc Hons Ost