Most of us have wrestled the question of our own intelligence based on performance at school, the complexity of jobs we have performed or scores on formal intelligence tests. Similarly, we may have questioned our emotional intelligence based on our ability to read others emotions, influence others, and maintain a strong social circle. I wonder how many of you have ever questioned how physically intelligent you are?

In the book Physical Intelligence, Claire Dale and Patricia Peyton describe physical intelligence as that which underpins both cognitive and emotional performance.  It’s the degree of mastery we have over our own bodies to ensure we maintain a healthy balance of essential chemicals such as dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, acetylcholine, testosterone, adrenaline, DHEA and cortisol. After all, if our bodies aren’t working properly, or we have a chemical imbalance, it’s difficult to think or feel with any degree of sophistication. Back to the question of how physically intelligent you are, consider this:

• Right now, are you aware of your posture? How you are sitting? Are you are experiencing any tension?

• Do you notice your breath? Is it fast and shallow? Or are you breathing deeply into your diaphragm?

• What about your muscles? Can you switch them on and off at will? Are you able to quickly activate them to perform both fine motor and gross motor tasks? Or are they unresponsive and sluggish?

These are just some of the cues that you can notice in yourself right now to help you evaluate your level of awareness about what is going on in your body. While it might seem a bit hippy woo woo or the sort of thing you might talk about in a yoga class, we all need to be aware of what’s going on in our bodies if we are at all interested in performing at our best in whatever it is that we choose to do.

As a kid, I was always very good at sports and athletics. I was also very co-ordinated so it enabled me to excel in complex tasks such as juggling. In hindsight, however, I wasn’t very physically intelligent. I was barely aware of what was going on in my body and how it translated to my performance on and off the field. I just ‘showed up’ or ‘pushed through’ like everyone else. If I was in pain, I got the ‘you’ll be right mate’ type response. At 12 years old I remember my very first job required me to lift cartons of beer, two at a time, from the storage room to the beer fridge. Not wanting to appear weak, I would carry hundreds of cartons with poor posture following the advice of my overweight 26-year-old boss who used to say, ‘put your back into mate’.

Fast forward a quarter of a century and I’m a whole lot more physically intelligent nowadays but I learned the hard way. I recently experienced the excruciating pain associated with a ruptured disc in my lower spine…. commonly known as a slipped disc. I’ve had a sore back before and it usually goes away after a couple of days or at most, a week. This, however, had me barely able to walk, unable to drive, sit, or do anything really. I couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t exercise, couldn’t even read a book without discomfort. For the first time in my life, I understood what prolonged chronic pain can do to your cognitive and emotional performance. Simply put, I was emotionally fried, cognitively impaired, and physically disabled. The energy required to process the pain left me exhausted, and depressed. I also didn’t feel like connecting with friends or family because I was feeling miserable and a whole lot sorry for myself. I didn’t go to Karate because I couldn’t do the moves and I skipped yoga because I felt annoyed that I wouldn’t be able to do it properly. For about two months I was at home, hobbling around trying to do the rehab exercises that I learned from my Physio. My emotional state and cognitive ability were being hijacked by my physical state. The only solution was to get my physical state right but for what felt like an eternity, it seemed to be getting a whole lot worse.

While I’m well and truly on the road to recovery now, I’m still not fully recovered and probably won’t be for another three months until I’ve completed all my rehabilitation. While many of you have experienced much more significant injuries than I sustained, I wanted to capture what I’ve learned to help anyone going through something similar. Obviously I’m not a physician so please follow the advice of your doctor or physical therapist first and foremost. What I’m putting forward are psychosocial factors that I now recognise were significantly influencing my recovery time.

Coping with Chronic pain and physical injury

1)      Take the meds. I initially thought that if I could ‘tough it out’, I would get better quicker. This was a massive mistake and only made my recovery time slower. The pain messed with my sleep, affected my mood, and made it very difficult to concentrate. If you’ve got medication, take it as there is no point trying to be a hero. Pain is debilitating for mind, body and soul.

2)      Let your body inform you about what to do next. I spent a great deal of time worrying about what might happen if I didn’t get the feeling back in my foot or if the pain got worse, or if I wasn’t able to drive anymore. None of these thoughts were helpful and mostly got in the way of me resting or focussing on my rehabilitation program. When your body is broken, keep your mind out of it.

3)      Keep doing what you normally do. One of the biggest factors influencing my recovery time has been social contact through my normal activities. Before my back injury, I would attend Karate twice a week and yoga at least once a week. I would also work-out at least twice a week at the gym. While it makes sense to not attend any of these classes or activities while injured, I now know how important these activities are in maintaining my physical and emotional state. Oxytocin is a powerful hormone that is released when connecting and bonding with friends or family. By not attending these activities I was missing out on a regular dose of oxytocin to keep me connected and happy. In the future, if I sustain an injury, the moment I’m able to walk or stand, I’ll be back to my usual activities. Even if I can only stand in the corner attempting the moves, this will restore emotional connecting while speeding up recovery time.

4)      Prevention is the best medicine. It’s ancient wisdom, but I now fully appreciate how important it is to master the very basics of posture, breathing, strength, and flexibility. I now know what it feels like to have no other option than to focus on my breath. Being able to masterfully influence, restore, and rebalance your body is the most effective way to unlock your cognitive and emotional capability.

5)      Keep moving. This is true of both body and mind. Stillness in the body is in fact, not very still at all. While you may not be moving your body with large gestures, simply breathing represents a constant expansion and contraction in your body. When you experience nerve pain, simply breathing can hurt quite a lot. I became very much aware of how much we are moving when we aren’t really moving at all. Stillness in the mind is quite similar. There are always thoughts popping into your head however your ability to simply observe them and not follow them is what stillness is all about. Unfortunately for me, rather than focus my practice on keeping a still mind, I let my mind stagnate which is another way of saying that I got fixated on my injury and ruminated over all the possible negative outcomes. This threw me into a depressive state that was very difficult to break out of.