Learning to Slow Down, What Surgery Taught Me About Yoga

Special Episode

Four days after shoulder surgery, tired, uncomfortable and slightly spaced out, I recorded a podcast.

I probably shouldn't have.

It wasn't a polished update. It wasn't particularly “on brand.” And it definitely wasn't planned.

But perhaps that was exactly why it felt like the right moment to speak.

Because this is what it actually feels like when everything stops.

What happens when you can't teach, can't move properly, can't distract yourself in the usual ways, and you're left with your body, your thoughts and whatever surfaces in the quiet?

There was frustration. There was fear. But there was also a surprising amount of clarity.

The surgery itself was an experience. What surprised me more was how much I learned from the fear beforehand — and from suddenly finding myself unable to use an arm that, until then, I had barely thought about.

The Fear Before Surgery

I spent around four hours at the hospital waiting to be taken down for surgery.

It was a comfortable private room. I had Netflix, my computer and a nice view. Physically, there was nothing particularly unpleasant happening.

And yet my mind was incredibly busy.

I was frightened about the anaesthetic because of memories of a previous operation. I worried about the pain afterwards. I worried about whether my shoulder would recover properly. I worried about what would happen to the studio while I wasn't there.

Every now and then, though, another thought appeared:

You're worrying about a time that doesn't exist yet.

Right there, in that particular moment, I was okay.

I wasn't in pain. I was sitting comfortably. I was breathing. Nothing bad was actually happening.

Almost everything frightening existed somewhere in the future.

And yet I came remarkably close to getting dressed and walking out.

I didn't.

Eventually, a wonderfully friendly nurse arrived and told me it was time. I was taken down, prepared for the procedure and given the anaesthetic.

Instead of experiencing the terrifying moment I'd spent hours imagining, I simply went to sleep.

The next thing I knew, I was waking up.

The operation was over.

What Happens When Your Body Suddenly Can't Do Something?

Back home, the nerve block wore off and recovery began.

Painkillers. Rehabilitation exercises. Rest. More exercises. More rest. Sleeping propped upright.

And suddenly my right arm couldn't perform the most ridiculously ordinary tasks.

Putting toothpaste onto a toothbrush. Fastening a belt. Making a cup of tea. Pulling up my trousers. Brushing my hair.

These aren't things we normally celebrate.

We simply expect our bodies to do them.

But when one part of the body temporarily stops participating, you begin to notice the extraordinary complexity hidden inside apparently ordinary movement.

My left arm began learning new patterns because it had to compensate for my right. My right arm, meanwhile, simply hung there.

And that changed the way I looked at everybody else.

I'd see somebody reaching across the roof of a car. Somebody writing on a piece of paper. Somebody casually using both hands without giving either of them a second thought.

And I realised something:

We barely notice our bodies when they're working.

We're much quicker to notice what we don't like about them.

Perhaps We Criticise Our Bodies Too Much

We notice the wrinkle.

The stiffness.

The bit that isn't muscular enough.

The body that isn't as thin, young, strong or flexible as somebody else's.

Yet underneath all that criticism is an extraordinarily sophisticated biological system quietly keeping us alive and allowing us to interact with the world.

Even while I was recording the podcast, my left hand was gesticulating as I spoke.

I wasn't consciously instructing each finger. I wasn't calculating the angle of my wrist.

It simply happened.

Meanwhile, the shoulder I'd just had operated on was already beginning its own recovery process. I didn't have to consciously instruct my tissues how to repair themselves.

There is an intelligence within the body that operates largely without our conscious involvement.

Suddenly, instead of being frustrated with my temporarily useless arm, I found myself fascinated by the body adapting around it.

And perhaps that's part of what yoga can teach us: not simply to demand things from the body, but occasionally to stop and notice what the body is already doing.

Injury Forced Me to Become Mindful

Recovery also made rushing difficult.

Even washing my hands became something I had to do carefully.

Walk slowly. Undo the sling. Lower the arm. Get the soap. Turn on the water. Wash. Dry. Put everything back.

Normally I'd perform that sequence without thinking about it, while my mind was already somewhere else.

Now I had to be present because rushing carried consequences.

And that raised another question:

Why are we always trying to get everything done so quickly?

We're constantly talking about multitasking, although we're not really doing several things simultaneously. Mostly, we're rapidly moving our attention between different things.

Recovery forced me to do something different:

One thing, in one moment.

In an unexpected way, ordinary daily movements had become a mindfulness practice.

Why Are We So Uncomfortable With Doing Nothing?

During the podcast recording I deliberately stopped talking.

Almost immediately, my mind wanted to fill the silence.

Say something.

People will stop listening.

Don't leave dead air.

But perhaps that pause was one of the most important moments in the whole episode.

We rarely stop.

Even when we're supposedly resting, we're watching something, listening to something, scrolling something or thinking about what we're going to do next.

And yet yoga has always contained the counterweight to activity.

Yin and yang.

Movement and stillness.

Doing and being.

I've spent years teaching meditation, Yin Yoga and slower practices alongside more physical forms of yoga. But this experience was forcing me to encounter those ideas rather than simply talk about them.

There is quite a difference between teaching someone to slow down and discovering that you have no choice but to do it yourself.

The Future Is Where My Fear Lives

Perhaps the biggest lesson came from thinking about those hours immediately before surgery.

Before the operation, my shoulder wasn't hurting.

I could use my arm. I could brush my teeth. Put my clothes on. Move normally.

Those were the last few hours before temporarily losing those abilities.

And I spent them worrying.

After surgery, I found myself looking backwards and thinking:

Why didn't I enjoy those hours?

I had everything I subsequently wished I still had.

But I didn't appreciate it because my mind was already living in the future.

And that made me notice something.

My anxieties tend to live in the future.

Will my shoulder recover?

Will I regain my movement?

Will the business be okay?

My regrets tend to live in the past.

Did I do enough?

Was I there enough for the people I love?

But if I temporarily put down the anxiety about the future and the regret about the past, I'm left with something else.

This moment.

And in this moment, surprisingly often, things are okay.

What Can Injury Teach Us About Yoga?

I wouldn't recommend surgery as a mindfulness practice.

But being temporarily unable to use my right arm made me appreciate what the rest of my body quietly does for me every day.

It made me move more slowly.

It made me notice ordinary movements.

It made me confront my tendency to rush.

And it reminded me that sometimes the thing we're frightened of hasn't happened yet, while the thing we're regretting doesn't exist anymore.

Yoga doesn't necessarily remove either of those things.

Perhaps the practice simply gives us somewhere else to stand.

Right here.

In this breath.

In this body.

In this moment.

Namaste.