“Watershed Moment”

March 31, 2021

When I arrived at my physical therapy appointment on March 31st, I had completed a short practice session with my back support and ExoSyms every day for two weeks straight. Wearing my ExoSyms for any amount of time on fourteen consecutive days was definitely a record.

When my PT called me back and I walked toward him (with back support and poles), he remarked that I was walking much straighter, my stride longer. Happy that he could see it, I explained that I could feel a difference after getting the front of the hip stretched, and that I’d been trying to maintain the looseness and incorporate the bit of longer stride into my regular gait. I also told him that I went hiking. And that I can feel my hamstrings more. One night I was sitting in bed and they were aching and seriously buzzing. Like, “Oh, hello, hamstrings. Where have you been? How nice of you to show up after forty years.”

He did the regular stretches and had me get up and walk again, with poles. “Wow,” he said. “This is a watershed moment.” Then he reassigned an exercise I’d been given and abandoned last year and enthusiastically extended my care plan until June. (It was up in March. You have to show progress or something in order to “earn” more sessions. With cerebral palsy, that is ridiculous. That’s our healthcare system for you.)

I’ve been doing my Yoga for the Rest of Us, and I think I’m actually improving. This reads as though it’s a natural outcome. I’m doing something and getting better at it. But that hasn’t felt true for me before.

I always hear how much stronger and flexible people become once they get into a yoga practice. How much better they feel. That’s the whole point, right? Those are the things that yoga is supposed to do for you. Not me. Somewhere around 2007, I remember using this DVD on a regular basis, but I never felt that the poses were becoming better, or that I was getting much of anything out of it at all. I figured that’s just par for the CP course. 

But getting a good stretch at physical therapy, feeling that openness at the front of the hip, feeling that longer stride, and then doing yoga while I still feel it, it’s really helping it stay. Recently I was doing my modified sun salutations, with the seat of a chair acting as a raised floor, and I was in that lunge where you’re supposed to have your back straight and look up. Instead of, you know, being hunched over the chair trying to sorta do a lunge. And I changed one thing, I’m not even sure what, and felt this oh moment. “Oh. I think that’s what it’s supposed to feel like. I think I actually did it that time.” I DO feel stronger. My hips DO feel more flexible. The poses ARE getting better. So, when I say I’ve been doing yoga and I think I’m actually improving, it’s really more like, “I have been doing yoga and I’m actually IMPROVING!?@$#!” It’s really weird. And awesome.

When I do my PT at home, and I tighten my core (on back, knees bent), sometimes my glutes and hamstrings join in all by themselves. More on the right, but sometimes even the left side does it. It was almost startling the first time I felt it happen. Like, woah, what’s going on in there? When I’m walking with my back brace and poles, and I really succeed at engaging the core and getting my pelvis under me, I can feel my glutes and hamstrings working. I can feel my shoulders lift up and back. For a few steps at a time, it feels so different and so much better. To be both upright and moving forward at once. It’s so functional.