I used to think I could think my way through anything. My body disagreed. This is the story of when thinking stopped helping, pain started speaking, and breathwork taught me to listen.

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100 Liminal Days is an experimental project of embracing my current transitional season after exiting my business by sharing an honest, real-time account of my self-initiation experience in daily posts. I’m using The Artist’s Way as a guiding tool, and sending shorter weekly recaps only via my newsletter. Visit Day 1/100 to learn more and sign up to get the weekly recaps delivered to your inbox.

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In My Head

I have always been a big thinker and learner. I like challenging my mind. I was that kid that would program your digital watch in the 90s, and I enjoyed learning how computers work even more than I enjoyed playing video games. As an adult, I have taught myself how to build websites and set up software automations and workflows. I enjoy putting together IKEA furniture like it’s a hobby. Strategic thinking and problem solving lights me up.

And because I love solving problems strategically, I tend to notice problems everywhere. Instead of focusing on what is working, I like tweaking systems for constant improvement. Perhaps people with strategic strengths also tend to be perfectionists. I think it’s just par for the course.

But as I’ve explored my inner world more, I can see now that this mentality that I have always viewed as a major personal strength is actually one of those extreme behaviors I’ve needed to tamp down a bit. My tendency to this extreme simultaneously fueled my success as a leader and business owner while also burning me out and shutting down my creativity. Exiting my business was the key decision I needed to make to begin my burnout recovery journey, but beyond removing the source of my stress, I had no idea what else I’d need to do to start feeling better. I trusted the process though.

As I’ve navigated my liminal space, the biggest lesson so far has been about learning to find the balance between extremes, but my mind is always going! I have, for many years, nurtured this thinking part of myself, but have neglected my body’s innate wisdom for just as long. I drew this hard line between mental/emotional strengths and skills and physical strength and skills. I knew that my body needs my mind to cooperate in order to draw skillfully, shoot a basketball, or stay mentally strong while I run a marathon, for example. But I never really gave much thought to the reality that my mind also depends on my body in order to grasp complex ideas and process and release my emotions.

My Pain As the Voice of Truth

My body had been trying to get a word in for years. When I didn’t listen, it stopped whispering and started speaking in pain.

In 2022, I began to experience severe pain and tension in my neck and shoulders. At times, it was so bad that I experienced numbness down my right arm. I always thought it was because I did a workout with the wrong form or pushed my body too hard too soon. I thought it was because my posture was bad and I developed spinal alignment issues that were the source of my pain. I would do all I could do to adjust what I was doing with my body, go to the chiropractor, get an ergonomic chair and standing desk, etc. etc. etc. Nothing brought full relief.

In 2023, I came across a book called The Mind Body Prescription (thanks for the recommendation, Whitney!) Reading this book two years ago was probably the beginning of the current life changing shift I am in right now because it gave me the new idea that perhaps my body’s pain and tension was actually a stress response to my past unresolved emotional trauma. This was the beginning of my education on how the body and mind are one – I had to erase that dividing line between the two in order to heal my physical pain.

As I continued to follow that thread and experiment with practices that got me out of my head and into my body, the answer was glaring at me with undeniable truth. My body had been “screaming” to let me know that something had to change. My pain was the voice of truth I had been belittling and ignoring as long as I could, until I couldn’t any longer.

Trying Breathwork for Frozen Shoulder

But it took me another year to really understand why my body was responding with this pain. In fact, my pain got worse. My right shoulder got so tight that I was unable to move my arm above my head! And this problem persisted and increased in intensity for a full year. MRIs showed nothing was torn. That frustrated me because I just wanted to know why I was hurting so badly. I visited a physical therapist that looked at me with a tilted head in surprise as he told me that this wasn’t an injury, it was simply a superficial issue of my entire body contracting into this one shoulder joint.

That’s when he prescribed breathing. Breathing. That was what he told me to do. Yes, a little stretching was involved too, but the real work was in the breath! When he said this, I suddenly remembered how three years earlier I had gone to a woo woo breathwork class with a friend. I wondered if that would do me some good. I texted her to ask if she still goes to the class and as synchronicity would have it, she was walking into the class in that very moment. I visited the class the next week and began to go once per week for a few months.

At first, I couldn’t even lay flat on the ground for the practice. My shoulder blade protruded out, locked in that position. It hurt to try to flatten my back out, but I continued to stretch, breathe, and address my emotional trauma. Breathwork specifically gave me an outlet to release this trauma – the stuff that I was working on through Internal Family Systems Therapy – was coming out during my breathwork sessions through tears and breath.

And my shoulder began to unlock, one small level at a time. The first level of unlocking excited me so much – this was working! I still could not make any sudden movements or reach into the back carseat, but I could bring my arm above my head again. Gradually, new “unlocking” moments happened. The protruding shoulder blade stayed even when most of the pain subsided, so I began to add in some rotation stretches and one day, I could finally lay flat!

Anyway, it was a big deal for me – particularly to realize that my body was telling me to slow down, to breathe, and to learn to relax. By facing my traumas and releasing them through my physical body using breathwork, I was healing my entire being. It wasn’t just something for my thinking and emotional mind. It wasn’t just something for my pain. It was a holistic experience that has changed the way I approach healing in general.

As I continue to explore how I will serve others and make money in the future, this storyline continues to come up. Attuning to the body’s wisdom is a key piece of my burnout recovery, but it’s also a way of life for me now. What I once tried to out-think, I now let myself feel. Pain wasn’t a malfunction. It was a messenger. And breath gave me a way to answer back, gently and often.

I’m still a thinker. I’m also finally a listener.

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