By Karena Thek, Founder of Scolio-Pilates
Hello, from my little scolio-corner of the world. I sat at my desk… semi-daydreaming, surrounded by squirrels and birds fighting just outside the window for rights to the feeder. I muse about what I would most like to share with you. Do I want to share the history of how Scolio-Pilates began? Here are a few tidbits to get you started on the right path. Or the value of finding the right person to help you on your journey. I think, for today, we’ll skip all the obvious ways to begin our conversation together and get to know each other a little deeper with a more philosophical question of why? Why is this work worth it to you, to me, to anyone?
There are obvious answers to this question: less pain, more mobility, etc. But what does that really give you? What is it that we are really looking for? What I’ve seen over and over again is that the simple answer to that question is “Inclusion.” We want to be included. We don’t want life to pass us by while we sit on the curb wondering when it’s going to be our turn to be excited, laughing, and at the center of it all.
When we are hurting, when we are sidelined due to pain and immobility, it can be so easy to feel like the world has forgotten us. Sure, people call and check in when the pain episode begins, but the longer it goes on, the more the world moves on. And there we are, waiting to be called to rejoin the world. The most important thing I could possibly help you understand is that the world is in your hands. You are sitting, at this moment, on the cusp of opening that world back up to you and all that you can do.
This isn’t Pollyanna thinking. This is knowing that life can change and that you can adapt. When the pain decreases, the world naturally opens to you again as you step outside. When we accept that perhaps our body has placed some limitations upon us, then we can also expand within that limitation by opening a different door that has never been opened to us before. For example, if cycling was a passion before and no longer or temporarily not a possibility, what can that time and space be filled with? What can you explore? Painting? Fabric arts? A slower exercise like Qi Gong?
One of my favorite phrases to live by is there is freedom in limitation. I don’t enjoy celebrating my own limitations, but I can, in retrospect, see how it narrows the vast, vast number of possibilities in life. I see how slowing down in the past has opened my world to writing more than one book, painting dozens of paintings, and creating a garden that these squirrels and birds live their lives in. And do I get to do the movement that I love? That sustained me as a professional dancer in the past. Sure, I get to move. It looks different than it did 30 years ago; I think that’s only natural. I would always like to move more – at my core, I am a mover. That’s what my husband always says about me, too – she’s a mover. I’ve learned to celebrate all of my pain-free days, which 98% of my days are pain-free now. And I celebrate all my spine can do and work within that limit to strengthen, lengthen and breathe. You can create your own paradigm as well. Find your freedoms. Explore the vast possibilities.
Are you ready to begin today? Whether you are someone living with scoliosis or a professional helping those with scoliosis, join our Scolio-Pilates On Demand here. You will have two weeks of free scoliosis-specific exercises with a live class every Thursday at 3 pm ET (New York, USA) and access to over 100 classes. Then, it’s time to take control. Be a Scolio-Mover!”
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