Push Through the Pain

As dancers, we are taught about how to prepare for and reduce injury. However, injuries are apart of our career and just apart of normal life. I could go into injury prevention and the recovery process of the physical injury, make sure you warm-up and cool down correctly, use RICE - Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation, have a healthy diet and lifestyle so your body can repair, etc. I have sat through many lessons on the importance of injury prevention and how you can recover from a physical injury but that isn't what I want to focus on. My first idea came from looking at short-term and long-term recovery and what the difference between them was. A key aspect of my experience with injury was how I felt. What was I thinking, what emotional journey did I go through? Did my mindset help or hinder my recovery? How did external pressures affect my recovery, Did I make good choices? 

 Through my vocational training, I experienced a couple of injuries, as well as watching some of my peers go through some serious injuries which resulted in operations. We work within an industry where our body is our product,  for us a lot of our ability is held against our fitness and our technical ability in terms of movement. Without this, we could be easily replaced or miss out on important opportunities. Due to this environment, we as a performing culture have developed the notion to push through the pain. We often define pain a good or bad. Comments such as "if you aren't feeling it, you aren't doing it right" and "no pain no gain" create dangerous conditions when your mindset can lead to an injury. 

Once injured there can be a lot of pressure to get back in the studio as soon as possible. Returning to physical activity from a minor injury too soon can result in making such injury worse equalling more time out. However, the mental stresses of missing out and wanting to do what you love can sway judgment. It takes a lot of mental resilience to be able to take time out to recover from an injury, and to take the time to build back strength that was previously had. 

 One key part of my mental health that was affected by an injury was anxiety. I developed fear around certain movements and putting too much weight through my right arm after a dislocated collar bone. The confidence which I once had to throw everything I had into a routine had vanished despite the almost full physical recovery. It will have been 2 years since my injury in May of this year and I would still say that I avoid certain exercises that I probably could physically complete but the mental fear is stopping me.

I want to look into studies around the mental health of dancers and the idea of mindset around physical recovery. I think that this will be a good area of learning for me to look into and expand on further.