I recently turned into a slug. I simply did not have the energy to go to the gym and exercise, because, well, as far as I was concerned, the world had turned into liquid cement, and I was having one heck of a time just crawling through it. The very thought of moving faster than a snail’s pace was exhausting.

Besides, I reasoned, exercise sucked so much time out of my day, that I just didn’t have the hours to spare. Counting how long it would take to get to the gym and back left me in a cold sweat: My day would be practically over by the time I’d return!

I considered going for short bike rides, but the very idea of maneuvering my bike out of the house made me want to crawl back under the covers. Truth be told, I had to fight inertia just to walk down the damn stairs, open the front door, and step outside in my jammies.

Even the thought of dancing for 20 minutes in my living room made me groan. Oh yeah, and slouch in the position that a physical therapist once informed me is the root of all evil. And here I am dispensing advice on (gulp!) dancing with pain.

Essentially, I’ve been living the vicious cycle that Paula Kamen refers to as “driving through life with the parking brake on”:

The pain sucks my energy, making everything take 90 billion times as long as it should, leaving me working from the time I wake up until 2:00 a.m. — at which point I collapse on the couch and watch reruns of Heidi Klum castigating earnest Project Runway contestants. (Given her penchant for psychological abuse, how disturbing is it that she’s German?)

That in turn causes me to crawl into bed at some ungodly hour that is just wrong, wrong, wrong for my body, effectively bringing on insomnia — following which I half-sleep until close to noon. I then wake up exhausted, panicking about how I am utterly, hopelessly behind already, and hating myself for having already failed.

All this before having slipped my little pinky toe out of the toasty down comforter (Did I mention it’s hypoallergenic? How is it that goose feathers are hypoallergenic?) and onto the cold tiled floor.

Yesterday was a high point of my distress. Convinced that my health must have taken a nose dive and that I would hobble around like an 80-year-old for the rest of my life, I called (who else?) Mom. “I just have no energy,” I cried.

As always, she advised that I drink coffee. Usually I’m delighted by the reminder that, hurrah!, there is a cure for my lethargy. An imaginary whiff of the espresso machine in action is enough to propel me out of bed and into my kitchen.

This time, however, I glumly informed my mom that, alas, the caffeine magic had worn off. Even gulping two cups in the morning couldn’t get me going anymore.

“You’ve been through this before,” she said. I vehemently denied it. “Yes you have,” she insisted. “Remember when you had chronic fatigue? When you’d exercise, the fatigue would go away.”

Here’s the thing about chronic pain: When I’m in it, the rest of the world ceases to exist. My entire reality becomes the here & now. Not the hipster, urban Buddhist here & now, replete with designer meditation pillows, mind you, but the my-life-sucks-please-pass-the-gun, I-am-consumed-by-suffering here & now.

Fortunately, I have my mom to drag me through chronic pain boot camp whenever I call to inform her that my life is over.

• Have you had coffee? No.
• Have you eaten? No.
• Have you taken a hot shower? No.
• Have you exercised? No.

“Hang up the phone, get the hell out of bed, and don’t call me back until you’re done!” she chirps.

So I finally went to the gym today. I tried to make all kinds of excuses to myself to sneak out of it, mind you, but my mom had said something that stuck in my head and propelled me forward: I have to “take” exercise the way she takes her diabetes meds. Non-negotiable.

Gold star for me: I hauled my sorry ass to the gym (extra points because it was pouring rain) and worked on the elliptical trainer, the rowing machine, the treadmill, weight machines, and free weights — for a total of two hours.

I was careful to stay within my safety zone while pushing past my comfort zone, drowning out my grumbling-body soundtrack with reminders that the more I exercise, the better I feel.

Lo and behold, I had energy today. I felt awake, spunky, and vibrantly alive. Oh what a difference a day makes.

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As the rhythms pounded beneath my feet, the dancers in red quickened their pace — stomping, twirling, leaping with grace and fervor. My spirit morphed into a scorching fire, burning in agony at the edges of my now-disabled flesh, pulsing with memory of what it felt like to be Alive. I could taste it.

Chest heaving with grief, I wrapped the Ethiopian shawl tighter around me and turned my face from the ecstatic crowd. A wave crashed against nearly 10 years of pain, streaming from my eyes, as the dancers finished their performance and invited the audience to join them in the circle, barefoot on the white sand.

The crowd leapt forward, ululating in delight. I walked along the outskirts of celebration, head tilted sideways, peering hesitantly — eyeing the stark face of my limitations — as the darkness beyond beckoned me back to safety.

I would flee into the night.

Turning away, I found the path out blocked by a wall of despair. I stopped, paused, then slowly faced the circle again. Walking over, I sat down at the edge — both its and mine – and watched.

The crowd dissipated, and I walked forward into the music, closing my eyes, tears gently rolling down my cheeks. What doesn’t hurt? I asked as the beat poured through me. My arms, I answered. So dance with your arms.

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Days after the Passover retreat, crumpled in bed from pain, I spoke on the phone with my friend Jessica, who was about to go rollerblading with her boyfriend. “Fuck it,” I declared out loud, hanging up the phone. “I’m going to go rollerblading too. Maybe not today, but I will get there. I will.”

Fuming under the covers, frustrated by what my life had become, and still fresh with the possibility that an alternative was out there, I kicked off the blankets and bolted out of bed with a vengeance. Dusting off my iPod, I strapped on a knee and ankle brace to help stave off the pain that inevitably would come with motion, and headed off to the sea.

Something happened along the way: I danced.

It was a flashback to life before the car crash, before the slew of physical injuries and emotional traumas I’d accumulated over the years. Maybe it was the music. Maybe it was the fresh recognition of possibility beyond reality. Maybe it was both.

Once at the beach, I dodged the smokers, pulled out my journal, and began furiously writing about my experience in the desert. When I couldn’t write any more, I closed the book, walked to the water’s edge, and let out a deep, long yell from my gut – releasing anger, pain, and suffering, and expressing the joy of new possibility.

Somehow, the yell morphed into me running down the beach – running! Once upon a time I’d jogged 12 miles a day down those same shores, but it had been almost fifteen years since then. Certainly over the previous two years, I hadn’t jogged at all; I’d barely been able to walk three blocks without excruciating pain forcing me to stop.

So there I was running from one side of the beach segment to the other — full of surprise and gratitude, crying and praying my heart out – when the run transformed into a dance. Not just any old dance, but the furious leaping-twirling-stomping dance of days gone by, when my body reflected the manifestation of my spirit.

Where’d it all come from?

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It had been an especially hideous week: Just days earlier, my left contact lens had ripped while I was pulling it out – leaving a third of it inside, lost somewhere, and burning my eye; and the weekend before, I’d vomited uncontrollably after taking a sleeping pill for insomnia.

Like it wasn’t enough that I was suffering from chronic pain — with degenerated discs pressing nerves up and down my spine all day. So when my friend Rivi invited me to a two-night body work retreat in the middle of the Judean desert, three hours south of my Tel Aviv home, I politely advised her that I was going no farther than five miles from the nearest hospital, thank you very much.

“But getting out of the city is exactly what you need, and you’ll be in a healing environment,” she protested, offering to lend me her car should the need arise for an escape vehicle. “No,” I insisted.

When all you want to do is brood under the covers and drown in Ben & Jerry’s after a breakup, Rivi is the kind of friend who will yank you out of bed, throw open the curtains, and make you jog around the block three times.

So there she was banging on my door at 7:00 am on Thursday, hot cup of coffee in hand. “We’re going,” she announced.

Hours later, her little Fiat was bursting at the seams with my…

• two camping mats and two yoga mats
• regular pillow and buckwheat pillow
• green plastic “S” self-massage contraption
• book on self-acupressure
• ankle brace and knee brace
• yoga strap
• set of 2lb dumbbells
• five bottles of vitamins and supplements for natural pain relief
• one pack of extra-strength pain medication in case the natural routine wasn’t enough
• codeine in case the drug routine wasn’t enough
• sleeping pills in case nothing was enough (to sleep)

and a host of respiratory aids and medications addressing issues above and beyond those orthopedic.

Only then did I pack jeans, underwear, and two t-shirts, along with a tent, sleeping bag, sunblock, flashlight, and hat. Rivi’s necessities, meanwhile, sat quietly in a little bag in the far corner of her trunk.

We jumped into the car; Rivi kicked the engine into gear; and I rolled down the passenger window – sticking my head out and ululating Middle Eastern-style. It might prove to be a disastrous outing, but at least it would be an adventure.

Upon arrival, I spent the first couple of hours obsessing about the possibility of random specks of contact lens still floating around my left eyeball. I did, however, manage to take in the beauty of the desert and the specialness of the occasion:

It was Passover, and I was just a few hours away from where the Exodus action had taken place thousands of years earlier. I mean, how cool was that!

Despite the many layers with which I padded my tent floor that evening, however, I just couldn’t recreate the feel of my $1,000 King Coil orthopedic bed. Waking up in excruciating pain, hating life, I stumbled through the scorching hot sand toward the breakfast tent — snarling at all the happy people I passed and kicking myself for agreeing to come to a hot-shower-free zone. (For most people, it’s a matter of cleanliness. For me, it’s a matter of survival.)

The grand plan was to eat a plate of scrambled eggs, then retreat to my tent — where I could avoid the crowds and silently drown in misery for the remainder of the day. On my way back, however, I felt pulled to a shaded area where a small group was practicing gentle yoga.

I walked over tentatively, then joined at the edge of the circle — where I did pose adaptations for pain management. My body loosened up; my critical thoughts subsided; and I began to feel calm. But it was only during the closing meditation that something new happened:

“Feel the ground beneath you,” the teacher guided. “Feel the weight of your body pressing down; feel the sensation of the mat on your skin.” He paused for a moment. “You are not the ground. You are not the mat. You are not the weight pressing down. You are more than this.”

As he led the group through numerous other sensations – each time reminding us that we were more than any of them — I was so in the moment that it took a while to notice my pain had disappeared.

Over the previous decade, I’d tried physical therapy, yoga, acupuncture, Feldenkrais, swimming, weights, qi gong, chiropractic, tai chi, and other modalities as pain management techniques. I knew how much effort it took to reduce pain through natural means. So how could someone just talk me out of it?

Recognizing a crack in the cement of my incessant suffering, I felt enraptured. Something magical existed in a realm beyond what I’d experienced up until then, I knew, and I could access it myself if only I could find the gateway.

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For the past decade, I have lived with chronic pain. This condition, no matter what the cause, creates a chain reaction of chaos in one’s life: limited mobility, chronic fatigue, weight gain, economic instability, dependency on others, a shrinking social life, perpetual fear, and depression, to name just a few results.

In my case, the pain was caused by a series of physical injuries, many at the hands of doctors and bodyworkers. As an upshot, I have faced not only the fallout of chronic pain itself, but also the emotional trauma of turning to a healthcare system that often has proven to be more violent than caring.

What’s more, I have found myself coping with an onslaught of accusations: Most people have assumed that if I was having so many struggles, especially with the healthcare system (which we all know is there to help people, right?), the problem must lie in me — bad luck, bad karma, or a just a plain old bad attitude.

And so the past ten years have felt like an incessant avalanche crashing down on me. So many times when I scratched, clawed, and crawled my way out of the rubble, another outburst threw me back under it. The more trauma I went through, the more I found myself isolated — making the struggle that much harder:

Most people, I discovered, simply did not have the capacity to offer compassion and support for what I was enduring or accolades and encouragement for what I was overcoming. But a few people did — exceptional friends, family, and healthcare professionals. Their love, insight, and support helped me keep on keeping on.

As I trudged forward, I experienced bursts and spurts where I was able to heal myself. Each incident seemed too “out there” to be real, so I repeatedly chalked it up to coincidence. As the evidence in my personal life mounted, however, I came to trust that yes, I was in fact able to heal my own damn self — without any kind of medical degree or bodywork certificate, thank you very much.

Through this blog, I now share with the universe the story of my personal journey and the discoveries I have made along the way. I trust that the process will simultaneously offer you some tools for your own healing, while bringing me deeper into mine.

I pray that it also will create a virtual community for those of us honestly and courageously dancing with our pain, embracing the spectrum of emotions from rage and terror to determination and ecstasy.

I hope you enjoy my blog, and I welcome any comments and suggestions.

With love, light, and the spirit of dance,
Loolwa Khazzoom
January 13, 2008

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