The core for what ails you

Truth: it is possible to avoid your abdominals for your whole life. For fifty years, even.

I should know. 

I've mastered the art of ab-stinence.

For years I've gotten by, in running, dancing, hiking and yoga on the strength of my limbs alone, along with what a physical therapist recently identified as a hyper-mobile low back. 

But unfortunately, like all good things, avoidance must end.

I returned to yoga a few weeks ago after a long absence following back surgery #2 for a herniated disc. An injury I'd already sustained, in exactly the same disc (L5), and had surgery for, over ten years ago.

The first time I hurt myself, it was because I was showing off, picking up and carrying something way too heavy for me. I ignored the resulting twinge, for months, continuing to run, until one day, coming down a trail, that little sucker popped in my back, followed by months of incapacitation eased only by massive quantities of drugs, then surgery. The second time I hurt myself, it's because I was a little out of yoga-shape but still insisting on doing everything. I felt a twinge one day coming up into a backbend, and well, you know how the rest goes, right?

Sometimes I need a big clanging bell right in my face before I hear the alarm.

The physical therapy following this second back surgery was all abs. I'd gotten by, I was told, thanks to that aforementioned hyper-mobile low back, but in order to be safe going forward I had to develop a strong structure of abdominal muscles to protect my spine. If I injured my poor long-suffering L5 again, then straight to fusion I'd go.

Oh, maybe I better do my core work. 

I did my ab exercises religiously while I was going to physical therapy. I followed the instructions in the goofy little pamphlet they handed out in class, doing my repetitions as instructed.

For a while.

Once I was well enough to start hiking again, I forgot all about it. 

Now I'm back to yoga and lo and behold, while my mat was out of the room for months and months, abs took center stage. So now I have no choice. I'm committed to getting and staying stronger, so FINALLY after fifty years I'm doing the core work.

Something my teacher said a week or so ago, which clearly stuck with me, is how common it is that we have all this potential support and strength within us, which just like our abs, lies dormant. Why not develop it? Why leave any bit of our wonderfulness, our strength, unexplored or unexpressed?

So I'm doing my one-minute forearm planks at home every day now, as many of them as I can stand.

I still hate the core work, not going to lie about that. All these years I've avoided it because I SUCK AT IT and that hasn't changed. But what has changed is that I've dropped this necessity of being good at stuff. Or liking it.

Who cares if you like it? Just do what you're supposed to do, dummy.

Liking it, being good at it: totally inconsequential.

And just like that, the core work turns out to be so much more than just those despised abdominal exercises. Instead it's a key, right? It is, instead, the core for what ails me. ;>

XX