The Key To Understanding Your Body's Resilience—“As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.” - Alexander Pope 1734 Part 1
There’s a phrase: life is all about living experiences, each with their ups and downs.
I don’t know about you, but growing up and into my early adulthood, I would often lament and drown myself in self-pity or self-blame, when life dished me a sour lemon.
However, through the years, I’ve learned to appreciate the silver lining behind those not-so-optimal life experiences.
Don’t get me wrong, I am still a work-in-progress. And like any human being, my panic button goes off and sirens ring in my head when those unfortunate events arise.
The difference now is, I am at least able to work through it by reasoning a sense of mental calmness and talking myself off the ledge of pure panic.
This new way of managing stressful times has really transformed my life, and I believe anyone can learn to master it
As you become aware of old patterns of reaction and gain trust through experience of your own resilience to change/trauma/illness, you learn to become malleable and adaptive to each twist in the road, and can continue functioning with your chin up.
I love the analogy of a tree for this.
As a tree gets bent and twisted from weathering uncontrollable conditions/circumstances each day, it continues to grow, live, and thrive as best as it can; even though it may no longer be growing upright.
It is no less of a tree nor is it not capable of thriving, rather it’s learned to adapt and continue living.
My beloved mentor, the late Dr. Frymann, hung this tree with that quote: “as the twig is bent, so grows the tree” as a reminder that the body will endure through all the different weather conditions of life.
And with Osteopathy, we can touch all facets of a person—physically, emotionally, and spiritually to encourage its unique optimal health and function.
Why children are so resilient in the face of adversity
Throughout the very beginning of life, while we are growing inside our mothers, we are evolving in our consciousness and developing an intelligent network of systems we call our body.
We are both receiving information through our different senses and sending out information.
Some of us may have had a rough entry to life with a roller coaster birth, while others may have experienced rough childhoods with bad falls, illness, and/or emotional turmoil.
However, we all know children are extremely resilient!
And it’s that resiliency, that life force that is so powerful within children, that allows us to adapt and maintain a sense of continuity with our body without experiencing many aches, pains, or setbacks.
What changes as we age...
As your body gets a little older, that resiliency of our adaptive compensatory nature weakens as the many layers of physical, mental, and emotional dysfunction build up over time.
One of the first ways we typically experience this alarming shift as adults is the first time we get injured
I remember slipping on a stair step and landing on my bottom in my early thirties and being shocked how my low back stayed locked up until my Osteopathic friend helped removed the restriction. It just didn’t bounce back the way it did when I was a teen or child.
And of course, falls and injuries are even more impactful as we reach our 30s, 40, 50s, and so on.
When injury or imbalance happens, your body then will quickly show physical, emotional, or psychological signs of those experiences.
But, no matter how old you are, so long as you are alive your body can draw on that life force and will always work for you to restore function.
The moral of this short story is: not to give up on your body, mind, or spirit no matter what type of adversity may come; because they will always adapt to support your growth and life force…
“as the twig is bent, so grows the tree…”
Wishing you well-being,
-Dr. Julie Mai, DO