Every so often, a video pops up on FaceBook or YouTube with a woman much older than I am who has a great yoga body. She’s usually in some challenging pose, looking lean and toned and strong. That’s what I want. At least that’s what my conscious mind wants. Is my subconscious mind on board with this? Apparently not!
For two years, I’ve been battling a wonky hip. It’s been extremely frustrating for me for two reasons:
- I don’t like hobbling around
- I help people with issues like this all the time – why can’t I solve this issue for myself?
I’ve done lots of balances for this (a balance in PSYCH-K® is changing a belief), and I thought I had it under control, but I didn’t. I consulted with my trusted primary doctor (Doctor of Oriental Medicine), who didn’t detect any structural issues and used acupuncture to try to help. I enlisted the aid of an amazing massage therapist and then added a wonderful holistic chiropractor. I don’t usually require any outside help, so this has been unusual and unsettling for me. Then it finally dawned on me – secondary benefits!
Secondary benefits
What are those, you might ask? I explain secondary benefits to my clients all the time. It’s when there is some payback to you from the condition you are trying to change. You may not want the condition, but it’s giving you something you don’t want to give up. Maybe it’s letting you avoid something you don’t want to do. Maybe it’s letting you do something you wouldn’t otherwise feel right doing. But in some way, there’s a benefit even if the primary condition is not. This is usually something we try to identify upfront when people want to change a habit.
In my case, having that yoga body would require actually doing yoga on a regular basis every week. I enjoy yoga, especially yin yoga. It’s probably one of the few forms of movement that feels really good to my body. I used to go to a class for it every week, but the instructors kept changing and it morphed into something that wasn’t really yin. Then my hip started having little twinges and it was my excuse to not go for a while.
The real reason
In 2019, I went on an Alaskan cruise. One of the excursions was zip-lining. We had to walk up a fairly steep hillside to get to the first jump-off spot, and I had a terrible time doing that. It wasn’t my hip – it was being so out of shape that I couldn’t catch my breath. (To be fair, where I live in Florida is flat and I rarely encounter stairs. It would have been hard to prepare for the incline.) It was extremely embarrassing to me for everyone to be cheering when I finally got where I needed to be. My hip held up fine for the entire trip, and I did so much walking on that trip that I actually lost weight on a cruise! Soon after I got home, the hip issues started in earnest.
What’s in it for me?
It’s only now occurred to me that as much as I want to move easily and freely again, I haven’t wanted to take a chance on being that embarrassed again AND I haven’t wanted to do the necessary work to get into shape. My hip is my excuse to do neither. Or it has been. Now that I know, I can do something about this.
Do you need to know something?
Are you experiencing something similar in your life? A persistent issue that won’t go away? Maybe it’s physical, maybe it’s not – secondary benefits can be attached to anything. If you need help, here’s where you can book a session. This is something I routinely look for with my clients but failed to do with myself. (I should have gone to a PSYCH-K® facilitator myself!)
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