Ok so my right arm has been asleep for a long time due to my injury as a boy, when I dislocated my elbow and fractured the bone. So I had always unconsciously and naturally compensated for the work my biceps and triceps should have done with my shoulder. It was firstly to allow it to heal, but then compensation became default.
My right knee’s ligaments were compressed together since I was a born and in time they became slowly fused and did not allow full mobility anymore, and I unconsciously and naturally compensated by tip-toeing - when I walked, when I ran and when I went up the stairs. Which made it fuse further through atrophy.
And that’s one of the reasons I could never really do the Asian squat and make that sucking lip-smacking sound with my lips while squatting down by the sidewalk and watching cars and girls go by. That explains it. Dammit, it does.
When we hurt, our body compensates. We walk a certain way, we do things a certain way, we avoid further possible hurt, and it’s because doing so helps us heal. But sometimes by the time we are healed, the compensation has already become a habit. This is how we move, and this is how we will be moving from now on. We become our scars.
But compensation should not extend beyond the time it is needed for us to heal, and we should revert to our natural state thereafter. But heck, we won’t until we realise it now, would we?
We carry that baggage with us of our past injuries, we withdraw to heal, and being withdrawn then becomes a habit, becomes our default. And not just physically.
We hurt. We compensate. We heal. We get back to where we were before. Sounds like a simple, solid plan.
The only thing that stops us would be the fear of hurting again. But it’s a human condition, and it’s how we learn and we grow. We had to scrape our knees multiple times as a toddler before we learned how to walk, and we never stayed down or went for therapy or asked why me?? How can I ever walk again?? Why should I even try?? We just got back up again until walking became natural, and the new default.
But sometimes that changes as we get older. We fear more, and we hope less. We become cynical of the world because we became cynical of ourselves, of our own ability to get up again. To reach again for something new, and I don’t think this is a necessarily a good thing.
But oh well. Let’s get that elbow and knee back in the shape it’s meant to be again, shall we?