At the end of last year I attended a virtual workshop with Brad Bizjack. Towards the end he asked us to do a visualisation — to look forward to where we wanted to be in one, three and five years’ time and then look back to see what steps we needed to take to get there.
When I did my visualisation, what I saw was this: to get where I wanted to be in five years’ time, I needed to be stronger. I saw the way I would get there was by joining the Pole Shed and going back to aerial arts.
I first did aerial arts when I turned 40. I had two children, one was two and one was five, I was just starting to get a little independence back I wanted to do something of note to celebrate turning 40 and I thought every girl should swing round a pole at least once in her life and if I was honest 40yrs old felt like I was running out of time to do something so outrageous. Little did I know then what an amazingly diverse and inclusive community I was entering. I nervously turned up at the boxing gym and found my way to the back room where the lovely and very flexible Emily hosted her class. She warmed up balanced on heels I was daunted but hooked. I continued for about four years until divorce meant I no longer had the same childcare. Those four years helped me build the physical strength I also needed to achieve my black belt, as well as giving me some lifelong friends.
I hadn’t been back since. But the Pole Shed had come onto my radar as a local aerial community near to my new home. I didn’t think I was strong enough to return to pole and I wasn’t sure I could afford the financial commitment. But the visualisation was clear and if wanted to practice what I preached I needed to take the actions I’d seen.
So over Christmas I signed up for the two week trial. I tried pole, hoop, hammock, rope and aerial yoga. When I finally got over the pain in my body as it complained about the sudden change in activity I settled on hammock as my new love.
Foolishly, I assumed hammock might be the easier option. It is, in fact, a cross between gymnastics and crochet. My brain has struggled with it ever since.
As I started to get a little better, I heard about the annual October showcase and decided to use it as a goal. I knew that having a deadline would keep me accountable. My fear of performing and being judged by others was being used by me as an incentive to keep working and turning up. I didn’t think I’d be able to do much — but I knew showing up consistently was the point. So I told my teachers and fellow students so it would be harder to back out.
Over the months that followed I got stronger. I found my music (aint no rest for the wicked) and I started putting together a choreography for the first time in my life.
Once I had got as far as I could on my own I booked a one to one with an instructor it was 2 weeks before to help me tidy up my sequence and teach me about performance skills. He reduced what I was trying to squeeze in, showed me how to present it with flow and sass and gave me confidence that what I had was enough.
But during that session in a moment of not concentrating, I didn’t align my leg properly and bent my knee sideways with a sickening crack.
The first decision
When I left the session I was aware of some soreness but was also aware that with ligament injuries, the level of pain doesn’t always reflect the level of damage. I came home and by the time I got back the pain was increasing.
I stopped, cleared my immediate plans, raised my leg and waited.
I did this deliberately. I trust that the body knows how to heal an injury and I didn’t want to interfere with that process. The conventional advice for decades has been to ice soft tissue injuries immediately — but the research has shifted significantly on this. Dr Gabe Mirkin, who created the RICE protocol in 1978, recanted his own position in 2015, stating that both ice and complete rest may delay healing rather than help it. The inflammatory response that ice suppresses is actually part of the healing process — the body sending resources to the injury site to begin repair. Interfering too early disrupts that.
I also didn’t want to mask anything. I wanted to know what was actually happening.
I could hear my thoughts in the background — the panic about the showcase, the voice saying push through and don’t make a fuss and another saying what if you’ve really damaged it. I allowed them to pass and zoned out with some mindless television and kept my leg straight and supported.
That night I made sure my knee was aligned with a pillow between my knees, not wanting any unnecessary pull on the medial ligament as it settled. I had an unsettled night, aware of increasing pain and swelling. I woke up knowing I had significantly injured my knee.
Establishing current reality
I got up and gingerly started to move around the house. My knee felt unstable — it seemed to want to rotate off its axis. I walked up and down the stairs deliberately, testing different movements, seeing if I could keep it aligned with conscious attention. I could. Good information.
I did a little quiet research. Not obsessive — just enough to confirm what I already suspected. Then I went to the Minor Injuries Unit at the Princess of Wales Hospital in Ely. If you haven’t used this resource, I can’t recommend it enough. Seen within an hour, assessed properly.
One observation worth noting: the nurse practitioner watched me walk and, because I wasn’t limping, made an immediate assessment that I was moving well. I wasn’t limping because I was making very deliberate, purposeful movements despite the pain. Not a criticism — just an interesting reminder that what we observe and what is actually happening are not always the same thing.
He diagnosed a medial ligament sprain with kneecap involvement. He gave me a printout of exercises and a six to eight week recovery prognosis.
I heard it. I noted it. And then I chose not to take it on as my reality.
There is a difference between accepting an assessment of current damage and accepting a projection of how long recovery will take. The first is useful clinical information. The second is a generalisation based on population averages, not on this body, this injury, this approach to healing.
The most useful thing he told me was about proprioception. When a joint has been stretched beyond its normal range of movement, the nervous system can become confused about where it is in space. The instability I was feeling — that unsettling sense of my knee rotating out of alignment — might not be structural damage at all. It might be my body’s internal GPS misfiring after the shock of the injury.
Proprioception responds to conscious reprogramming. From that moment I started moving my knee deliberately and with intention, correcting the rotation, resetting the nervous system’s map of where my leg belongs. Within hours it was already improving.
The layers of healing
I already had a lymphatic drainage massage booked that day with Helena as part of my regular self-care routine. The timing was fortunate and we agreed that gentle lymphatic work was exactly right. This would keep the important drainage systems of the body working efficiently. Especially important now I was more sedentary, supporting the body to process what had happened and addressing the shock still held in my system.
I fell asleep on the table.
When I came home I was disproportionately tired and very thirsty. I drank warm fluids and kept warm. Then I started to feel cold and shivery and new aches appeared — my left hip and lower back were now sore, probably strained during the session the day before and now finally making themselves known.
I recognised this as the system calming down after holding itself together. I stayed under a blanket, kept the warm drinks coming and within a couple of hours it had shifted.
I wasn’t completely still. Throughout the afternoon I paced movement and rest — pottering around doing household jobs. Not letting the knee seize up. Starting to learn about the pain — how it moved, what it was telling me.
That evening I applied my first topical treatment. I had waited until I was confident the swelling had reached its peak before introducing anything that might interfere with the inflammatory process. The preparation I used was a traditional Chinese medicine formula I’ve used for years in my martial arts training — a liquid herbal remedy that in Chinese medicine moves stagnated blood and qi, clearing what’s stuck and starting to restore flow to the injured area.
The next morning the knee was clicking on first movement — the joint resetting after rest. Rather than alarm me, this felt like good information. The swelling was starting to reduce. Once I got moving the clicking settled.
The pain had shifted. Less in the medial ligament, more concentrated over the kneecap. This mattered clinically. Pain is not always where the injury is. Moving pain is often a sign of healing rather than worsening — the body reorganising.
Moving through it
One of my principles with injury is this: don’t reduce what the body already does comfortably.
I didn’t start treating myself like someone who couldn’t move. I sat cross-legged. I knelt. I did jobs in the garden — partly because they needed doing, partly because bending, moving and being outside in natural light are all part of recovery, not obstacles to it.
I watched for compensation. My right lower back started to grumble — a classic sign that something elsewhere is being protected. I noticed it, adjusted my movement consciously and didn’t make it mean more than it was.
I cancelled my hammock session without drama. One day at a time. What does the next 24 hours need?
That evening I pulled up the video of my showcase piece and watched it several times.
There is good research showing that the brain doesn’t fully distinguish between vividly imagining a movement and actually performing it. Neural pathways are activated either way. Athletes also use this deliberately in their training. So while my knee recovered, I kept the performance alive in my nervous system.
The needles come out
The next day was the right time for me to start treating myself.
The order in which I chose to apply my knowledge was based on what seemed right for my body and my injury. There is not a perfect prescription there is a conversation. I considered supplements but chose to continue with my current preexisting protocol that was working for my body and stay focused on keeping my diet clean and varied. Full of fresh fruits and vegetables, good quality proteins and plenty of water.
So I lay down on my treatment couch in my clinic, for the first time since I built it. I noticed the sounds of the house, the music I’d chosen and the quality of the light. I noticed how comfortable the couch was. I felt, unexpectedly, quite proud of what I’ve created here.
When I needled the knee, it told me something interesting. The medial area — where there was now less visible bruising and less pain — still had significant inflammation present. I could see this from the immediate red flare response when I needled that area. Pain is not always where the injury is and the injury is not always where the pain has moved to.
I did constitutional work to move blood and qi through the area, then local work for pain and inflammation, I also used the TDP lamp warming the whole joint — it’s the best feeling, clients often comment on it.
The treatment lasted about half an hour, I got up and got on with my day. Later I noticed I was moving in time to music while washing up in the kitchen.
I had forgotten about my knee.
That is one of the signs I look for in my clients — the moment the vigilance drops. It usually means something has genuinely shifted.
The bruising the following morning was barely visible. The background soreness had quietened. And then, walking to the kitchen, no pain at all.
It was exciting. It was also slightly disconcerting.
Because then, out of nowhere, a movement produced the sharpest pain I’d had all week. This is the reality of healing I see with clients regularly. It isn’t linear. A good morning doesn’t mean a good afternoon. The sharp moments are information, not disaster. I didn’t panic. I continued moving. It eased.
The wise decision
I went back to archery but I gave myself permission before I left to ask someone to collect my arrows if I needed to and permission to shoot a shorter session if I needed to. After a week largely at home, being back with my people mattered and my knee held up well. Sometimes healing isn’t just physical.
Archery had gone well — hammock was a different story.
Over the following days I returned to the hammock. I found my flexibility reduced, my strength diminished and my confidence missing. I watched the others moving with ease and felt the gap between where I was and where I had been only a week ago. Even basic moves I would normally do without thinking seemed impossible.
So I stopped. Closed my eyes and recalled a feeling.
Not the technique — the feeling. The sensation of being capable and of moving with ease. I have only recently achieved a level of being able to match the other more experienced students. I brought back the memory of matching people I once couldn’t keep up with. I pictured myself in that place again.
And then I tried again.
Some of the moves came back. Not all of them. But enough.
This is the same principle I wrote about earlier — the brain doesn’t fully distinguish between vividly imagining movement and performing it. I used it when I was injured and couldn’t train and then I used it again to trick my body back into the muscle memory I knew was still there.
I rediscovered my ability to feel strong and capable in there — while also being limited by what my knee could currently offer. I tested the moves in my routine. To make the showcase work safely, there would have needed to be substantial changes. I was going to be able to perform something. But not what I had originally planned.
That alone wasn’t enough to stop me. But it was where I was at.
I did 3 daily sessions, each day I improved but after sessions I came out feeling a little shaky. The question kept surfacing — when am I looking after my body and when am I pushing it too far?
I then went to see my osteopath Rebecca for a proper assessment, now that the swelling had reduced enough to examine the knee fully. She did a thorough treatment — addressing alignment throughout my whole body, not just the knee. She noted shock still present in my system, swelling still in the tissues that had increased with use. And then she asked me a question.
Why would you take the risk?
It was the right question. With that framing — that I was taking an unnecessary risk for a performance that would be good enough but not what I’d planned — withdrawing became the clear choice and with that decision came a sense of relief.
What I learned
I’ve spent my life studying and practising a philosophy of healing that trusts the body, works with its intelligence rather than against it and looks for root causes rather than suppressing symptoms. But also sees that healing is sometimes the uncomfortable push and walking this tightrope is an art form that sometimes needs someone to mirror back what you may not see from the inside.
This injury gave me the opportunity to apply that philosophy to myself, in real time, under pressure.
What I found was that it works. Not perfectly, not linearly, but genuinely.
The difference between courage and unnecessary risk is worth knowing.
I’ve spent weeks in a community of people creating something. I’ve watched, absorbed and been genuinely inspired by what they can do. I’ve raised my own bar — seen what’s possible and decided that’s what I want to work toward.
On the night of the showcase I went and cheered from the sidelines. Having lived through what it takes to get to that point, I wanted to be the person who cheers at exactly the right moment — because I know what went into creating those moments.
And next year, I’ll be on the stage.