Challenging Ourselves and Personal Growth

Part of recovering from chronic pain and other symptoms is learning, challenging ourselves, helping to create new neural pathways. It doesn’t stop when the symptoms stop. Finding new and interesting challenges and creating new habits can help us to continue to grow, enjoy life and remain symptom free.

As Practitioners we need to walk the talk and Georgie Oldfield and I did just that over the August bank holiday weekend.  We went to a festival in Sussex and found plenty to challenge us.  Some things were more challenging than others and some things beyond what we were ready for.  Everything was new and we didn’t know what to expect.  It would have been very easy to stick with what we were familiar with, but then what would we learn?

For example, Georgie has experience of being in choirs so is comfortable with singing.  I, on the other hand, had little confidence doing this but Georgie encouraged me to try it having already attended a session with the same teacher on the first day. We had the most amazing time during what, at times, was quite an emotive experience with well over 100 people singing beautiful rounds in harmony.  Possibly the highlight of the festival.

I wanted to do the creative drawing workshop and this was more my comfort zone than Georgie’s, but we both joined in and ended up having a lot of fun.  It was great to have each other to nudge each other along.  We were both up for the African drumming workshop though.  There was a lot of laughter and who knew we were so talented at drumming!?

We also met challenges in some of the workshops that we felt suited our bias. We were often encouraged to share a little bit of ourselves, sometimes a little of our vulnerability.  It felt a little scary, but as we discovered, by sharing that vulnerability it brought connection to those around us.  For many of us there is a fear of being judged or criticised if we show our vulnerability or authenticity, or we dare to show who we really are. We can often spend a lot of time worrying about what other people think. As we discussed this very thing, someone shared this brilliant quote;

“If people don’t like me when I’m pretending to be who I think I should be, I may as well be disliked for who I really want to be”.

I found the edge of my comfort zone in one of the workshops I went to on my own, where we had to crawl around on the floor making animal noises.  I don’t mind being a bit daft, but this wasn’t for me.  It’s ok to say I am not ready to grow in that direction!  I left, along with quite a few others who felt the same!

Other sessions that we felt far more comfortable in were early morning somatic meditations, as well as a Breathwork workshop where the leader took us through an inner child journey, which many of us found very insightful.

There was a very friendly, relaxed vibe at the whole event, and we met lots of wonderful people.  We enjoyed the family atmosphere and along with the workshops, food and music, we also had some quiet time to reflect or read back at our vans. In fact on a couple of evenings Georgie and I ended up back in our vans chatting about the day while knitting/crocheting!

We left feeling emotionally nourished, with a new resilience and perhaps prepared to share a little more of ourselves than before.

Written by Tania Miller
McTimoney Chiropractor, SIRPA Practitioner and SIRPA Board Member