When the Body Breaks, The Soul Speaks

How injury and recovery reveal deeper spiritual truths

Photo by Sidharth Sabu on Unsplash

“Your rotator cuff is not only torn, the tendon is completely detached from the bone,” my orthopedist, Dr. Robert Baylis, calmly said to me as we reviewed the images from the MRI he had ordered.

Dr. Baylis has treated my partner and me for years, always with successful outcomes. His resume is quite impressive. But what most attracted me to him is that early in his career, he served as the assistant team physician for the New York Mets, my all-time favorite baseball team. This might not be the most scientific way of choosing a doctor, but it has worked for me.

“I guess my pitching career is over,” I said, trying to make light of the situation.

He smiled as I looked around the walls of the examination room, covered in autographed photos of my past and present Boys of Summer heroes. I was 10 years old when I fell in love with the Mets. It was 1969, the year the Cinderella team won its first World Series. I have aged quite well in the 60-plus years since then, due mostly to my passion for health and fitness.

Thankfully, surgery was an option to repair my right shoulder. I say thankfully because two weeks earlier, before the MRI gave him a better look at what was causing the stabbing pain, Dr. Baylis had told me repair surgery was most likely not an option. But a shoulder replacement could be the answer. My overactive mind pictured my severed arm resting on a table in the operating room while the surgical team put my Humpty Dumpty shoulder back together again. Compared to that mental image, the prospect of arthroscopic repair surgery was a relief.

Exercise as medicine

My first question after the diagnosis: How long will I have to stay away from the gym?

“At least six weeks, and then you’ll begin rehab,” he said, repeating what I’m sure he’s told hundreds of people throughout his career. “You’re looking at about eight months before your shoulder is completely healed.”

He might as well have told me I would have to hold my breath for that long.

Exercise is my medicine. A dislocated knee had ended my long-distance running career years ago. I had taken up cycling, but that was now out of the question because leaning on the handlebars would put too much stress on my rotator cuff. Swimming was also off the table because it involved a lot of overhead motion that would cause further damage. And moving my arm above my head felt like a thousand flaming knives stabbing me from the neck down to my elbow.

Eight months without my regular exercise routine sounded like an eternity. What in the world am I going to do to stay fit for the next eight months? That’s when I remembered the advice I have given others throughout my life, advice it was now time for me to follow.

Rest is not your enemy. When you can’t do something, pivot and search for what you can do.

Sloth-inspired wisdom, a path to healing

According to World Wide Fund for Nature, “sloths are incredibly slow-moving mammals, often hanging motionless on branches between feeding and sleeping, which can be up to 15 to 20 hours each day.

But there’s a perfectly valid reason why — it’s a survival strategy that works. Their slow-paced lifestyle helps them to survive in the wild. “The fact that sloths have been around for 65.5 million years — just before dinosaurs disappeared — shows that a slow-paced lifestyle can be a good survival strategy in the wild.”

I’ve been around for almost 67 years. My biggest fear after finding out my injury would require rest was that time off would erase the fitness I have worked so hard all my life to achieve. I found comfort in the example of the sloth. It reminded me that a lifetime of fitness doesn’t disappear when I take time off from my routine. A lifetime of fitness can be erased when I don’t listen to my body or deny it the time it needs to heal from injury.

After 60-plus trips around the sun, my body doesn’t heal as it used to. Or does it? Have I been conditioned to believe my body no longer reacts the way it used to because it’s the truth? Or is my “truth” affected by what others have told me?

“You’re an anomaly,” another orthopedist once said to me when explaining that my broken wrist had miraculously healed itself and the bone had set perfectly without any treatment.

I had fallen off my bicycle weeks earlier and had been too busy to go to the doctor. My body became my doctor. Left alone, it healed perfectly.

Perhaps because I’ve been practicing fitness all my life, my body heals faster than most if I get out of its way and give it the time it needs to recover.

Or perhaps the lesson goes deeper than that.

Quantum physics is the bridge between science and religion

While I trust Dr. Baylis and his diagnosis of my shoulder injury, I also know that combining his knowledge of modern medicine and trusting my body’s wisdom will facilitate healing. After all, I’ve been living in this body for a long time. It knows what’s best for me.

That is quantum physics in a nutshell. It’s the belief that what we focus on, how we think, and what we hope for can affect real outcomes in our lives — especially in healing. Belief is a powerful medicine. It’s a byproduct of wisdom.

But wisdom can’t be forced. Youth is the currency we use to pay for wisdom. Wisdom demands our youth in exchange — there’s no cheaper path to truth.

Injuries are a gift, a path to wisdom

Physical injuries go beyond the physical. They are the body’s manifestation of emotional pain.

Although Dr. Baylis says my right rotator cuff injury has been there a long time, the pain began to manifest itself right about the time my mother began a sudden downfall that eventually led to her passing. The symbolism couldn’t be more obvious.

An article in Spirituality and Health bottom lines my right shoulder pain like this:

We may be able to inquire into the spiritual meaning of right shoulder pain. Here are some questions to journal with or meditate on:

Is there something you’ve been trying that just isn’t working?

Have you been pushing yourself despite signals from your body that you need rest?

Have you been trying to figure out something that doesn’t have a solution?

Have you been trying to control something that can’t be controlled (like a person or a relationship?)

My answer: Yes, to all the above.

Injuries are our body’s way of reminding us that fitness is more than just a strong body. Perhaps the level of fitness I need to achieve is a spiritual one. Taking a break from physical exercise could be the key to nurturing my spiritual health.

Surgery is scheduled for the day before my 67th birthday. I’ll spend the next eight weeks doing pre-surgery stretches and strengthening exercises, eating well, staying hydrated, getting plenty of rest, listening to my body, meditating, practicing mindfulness, and writing about my experience.

Will listening to my soul heal my injured body? I’m about to pay a little of what’s left of my youth to find out.