The Joy of Plantar Fasciitis

I have plantar fasciitis. Yuck! In fact, I have it in both of my feet. Double yuck!

I can no longer take my daily walks in the woods, which were so nourishing, and it limits my ability to work in my garden. You combine that with my cancer – very challenging.

And yet…

Just maybe… I am not a victim to my health challenges for, what’s in the way is the way!

As I said in my book of the same name, “Life is set up, to bring up, what has been bound up, so it can open up, to be freed up, so we can show up for life.”

So what has been bound up inside of me that is asking to be set free? When I look over my life’s journey, it makes sense that I took on as much of humanity’s pain as I could and still survive. And through pure grace, life showed me how to meet pain, on all levels, with curiosity and compassion so it can be set free.

Each one of us had experiences when we were growing up that were just too much so we stuffed a lot of ‘stuff’ deep inside. How I described my childhood was like being locked in a watertight phone booth with water constantly rising, coming up to my chest, my neck, my chin, my mouth, and then receding. There was so much invasion, abandonment, and terror in my family. And all I could do was hold my breath, and tighten my body, trying to get as far away from the darkness as I could.

I ran away from this pain for many years, only to get even more lost in the pain. And I endlessly tried to fix myself, hoping that would bring me the peace I longed for. But then I learned that what truly heals is accepting attention.

Giving this kind of attention to what we have formerly resisted is a little bit like peeling layers of an onion. Every time another layer of the onion showed up, I initially reacted, wanting to get as far away from that level of pain as I could. But slowly I saw that resisting what I was experiencing only amplified the pain. So I learned to give the light of my accepting attention to even the most uncomfortable parts of being human. As more and more layers were released, the joy of falling in love with myself exactly as I am and the delight in the magical and mysterious unfolding called life became more predominant than the pain.

But there was a feeling at the core of the onion that I hadn’t yet discovered how to be with and that was the feeling of being trapped. Time is different for a child. You tell a four-year-old he has to wait for five minutes to go get an ice cream cone and that feels like forever to him. So I lived hundreds of years trapped in a world of terror, disconnect, and despair.

Being limited because of my feet brings up that feeling of being trapped and even with all the evidence over the years that turning toward what I’m experiencing is where the healing is, when that pain is close to the surface my initial reaction is like touching a hot stove – I run away as fast as I can. But my reaction time doesn’t last very long. As my mind is scrambling to get away from this very uncomfortable and very scary feeling, I remember this is just conditioning asking to be set free.

Since the ancient resistance to pain itself is so deep, I then bring my attention to my breath in order to calm down my reactive mind. Breath is a sanctuary where I can pull my attention out of my mind and rest it right here. Lately, I have been using a mantra from Thich Nhat Hanh, “Breathing in, I know I’m breathing in. Breathing out I smile.” It invites me to pull my attention out of the stories in my mind and actually experience life as breath. And when I smile, I reconnect with the alive spaciousness that all my struggles are floating in.

As the resistance calms down, my attention moves from being caught in reaction and resistance to being curious about this experience. I describe to myself what is going on in my body and as I am giving it the attention it so longs for, my heart says pssst. “This feeling or sensation is asking to be seen in the light of loving compassion.”

Then, as my heart enfolds this very ancient and very young part of myself with the healing balm of understanding and compassion, the tension in my body lets go, the struggles in my mind let go and I’m no longer struggling with my struggles. I am simply present for life.

Of course, it comes back again. As Pema Chodron says, “You have to come back a million, million times.” But every time you spend even a few seconds giving the light of your loving attention to what has been conditioned to hold on inside of you, that creates a little bit more space until slowly, whatever you are experiencing, can move right on through you just as clouds move across the sky.

If this interests you, I invite you not to do this with big pains right away. Just be willing to sit for five minutes every day and bring your attention back to the sounds around you or to your breath. And every time you wander off, simply bring your attention back. This strengthens the muscle of your attention and the stronger it gets, the more you can relate to your struggles rather than from them and rediscover the joy of being alive.