I’m feeling a bit better today. I did really good work during my morning practices today. Luckily for me, today’s tapping was for gratitude for movement. This hit home because my body pain and discomfort were the catalyst for me beginning this journey. That pain and discomfort made moving my body very uncomfortable. Every time I planted my right foot while walking, I felt hip pain. There was ankle stiffness and random knee pain. Light stretching was painful, and trying to even exercise at the time felt like a tall task in my mind. My body felt like it was stiffening.
So, this morning, to be able to express gratitude for movement made me realize how deep my appreciation for doing so really is. I’ve talked about how the pain in my body has decreased, but I hadn’t taken time to really think about how blessed I am to be able to move. I imagined people who are paralyzed or physically disabled in some other way. I thought about people with chronic back problems that suffer every time they move. I thought about people with different forms of arthritis that find it painful to do simple tasks. It made me consider that millions of people in the world live with different forms of chronic pain that make movement hard and painful. It also made me consider that there are people that literally cannot move at all.
Today I was reminded to have gratitude for movement because I am no longer in the physical pain I was in just a few months ago. I am grateful that I can practice Qigong movements, sit Indian style, or stretch and touch the ground. I can exercise without pain running down my legs, turn my neck left to right without pain, and do so many other small movements that I never thought about before.
But I actually became grateful that movement was once painful and uncomfortable for me so that I could learn to appreciate something I once took for granted—movement.