Holding the Body that Holds Me

There’s something especially raw about being someone who teaches embodiment and then feeling disconnected from your own.

Like the ground under your authority shifted. Like the thing you built your life around is now the thing that feels uncertain. Like a fraud.

A recent visit to my primary care doctor delivered words that felt older than I am:

Arthritis.

Degenerative disc disease.

Bertolotti Syndrome.

There’s a particular cruelty in “doing everything right” and still getting a diagnosis.

Those words sound like they belong to someone decades ahead of me. Not the yogi. Not the horsewoman. Not the strong, capable, 30-something woman who has built a life around movement.

I have built so much of myself around movement and strength. Around resilience.

For years, when I felt overwhelmed, I moved.

When I felt anxious, I trained.

When I felt heavy, I pushed.

Movement wasn’t just exercise. It was medicine. It was a distraction. It was proof that I was okay.

It was my regulator. My exhale. My safety net.

When things felt messy internally, I could just do something.

Sweat it out. Ride it out. Flow it out. Build something stronger than whatever was trying to pull me under.

I forged capability so I wouldn’t feel fragile.

Now my body hands me paperwork that says fragility exists anyway.

For someone whose safety net has always been motion, stillness feels exposed. Stopping means there’s no choreography to hide in. No endorphin halo. No measurable progress. Just me and the sensations. The grief. The fear. The identity wobble.

I built strength to feel safe.

And suddenly, I don’t feel safe in my own body.

Chronic pain is more than physical discomfort. It’s psychological weight. It changes how you see the future. It makes you cautious in a way that can feel like shrinking or slipping backwards.

I hesitate before deeper ranges of motion.

I pause before swinging into the saddle.

I want to go to yoga. I want to ride my horse. I want to go for a walk.

And sometimes I don’t.

Not because I’m lazy.

Because I’m afraid.

Afraid of making it worse.

Afraid I'll let someone down. I'll let myself down.

Afraid of accelerating something already outside my control.

Afraid that this time, the effort won’t be enough.

That fear can spiral into heaviness. Into quiet depression. Into questioning my own identity.

Grief isn’t reserved for death.

There’s grief in losing effortlessness.

Grief in realizing my body has limits I didn’t consent to.

Grief in losing the version of me who could move without calculating the cost.

I’m grieving the long-held belief that effort guarantees outcome.

There’s a quiet whisper underneath it all: Was it all for nothing?

And then the loop:

Wanting to move.

Craving movement.

Being afraid of it.

Tension. Paralysis. Heaviness. Shame.

“Why bother if it’s just going to hurt?”

But what I’m beginning to see is this:

My body didn’t betray me.

I’ve been resisting it.

I’ve been questioning its signals. Negotiating with its pain. Trying to outwork it. Cross-examining it as if it’s on trial.

What if this isn’t punishment, but information?

What if my body carried me exactly the way I asked it to for years, and now it’s asking for a new kind of partnership?

Pain is not rejection. It's not failure. It’s communication. Sometimes clumsy. Sometimes loud. But not abandonment.

Right now, I don’t need to conquer arthritis. I don’t need to fix degenerative disc disease. I don’t need to prove anything.

My body is asking for something slower. Softer. Still.

Just be with me.

And that is terrifying for someone who equates movement with safety.

Because holding myself means feeling the grief.

The anger.

The fear.

Without turning it into productivity.

I don’t want to pause and soften.

I want to push. To burn. To rebuild.

But I’m learning that sometimes the bravest thing I can do is not reach for the mat to escape myself, but to meet myself.

Strength doesn’t look like depth right now.

It looks like restraint.

It looks like listening.

It looks like partnership.

And partnership requires honesty.

I'm realizing how many years I moved on autopilot. Compensating, favoring one side over the other, muscling through imbalances. Forcing symmetry where there wasn't any. Chasing depth and complexity instead of integrity and sustainability.

I was strong. But not always aligned.

Now I'm learning to move differently. How to hold the body that holds me. That has held me for the last 37 years.

Smaller ranges. Slower movements.

More awareness.

Actually using the muscles that are meant to do the work instead of letting the loudest ones take over.

It's humbling. There is nothing glamorous about rebuilding patterns you thought you had mastered.

But this is what support looks like now. For this body.

Not pushing past signals.

Not overriding asymmetry.

Not performing strength.

Practicing strength through sustainability: a deeper kind of power.

I'm learning to move in ways that support the body I have now, not the one I'm nostalgic for.

I am grieving who I was while learning to care for who I am becoming.

And maybe that, too, is a different form of embodiment.

Not wondering how far I can go, but how honestly I can meet myself where I am.

xoxo,

Katie Cousins

e-RYT Certified Yoga Instructor

Pittsboro, NC

FireforgedYoga.com