How falling off a wave taught me where I need to heal

Mike Patterson
Jul 10, 2017 · 6 min read

10 years ago I had a surfing accident. I was surfing in a charity event and about 30 minutes into my shift, I caught a nondescript 3 ft. wave that tossed me forward onto a sandbar in about a foot of water. As I raised my arms above my head to brace for impact, the sandbar rushed up on me and I landed directly on top of my head.

Not too long after I met up with Mr. Sandbar

Picture slamming a bobble-head doll right on the crown of its little bobble. Well that was me meeting Mr. Sandbar.

I instantly knew something was wrong, but kept surfing, my head ringing, my neck quickly stiffening, my mid-back feeling as if someone had just taken a baseball bat to it. I got out of the water about an hour later.

I iced, I heated, I got massage…the only thing I didn’t ever get was an x-ray and a diagnosis… because I’m an idiot… and I figured the doctors couldn’t tell me anything I didn’t know anyway. “You compressed some vertebrae and there’s not a lot we can do about that”, I figured they would tell me, so I decided to work it out on my own.

Flash forward about 8 years and my back starts to go out.

Now, you hear about people’s backs going out all the time, but until it happens to you, YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THAT MEANS!

If you’ve had it happen to you, you know what I’m talking about, but if you haven’t let me explain…

YOU CAN’T MOVE.

No seriously, you can’t move.

At all.

A nuclear explosion has gone off in your lower back and the rest of you is in post-apocalyptic-armageddon-mode, splayed out on the floor feeling like Mike Tyson in his heyday has caught you with one of his massive uppercuts.

At this point you think I’m going to explain to you how my back went out as I was diving for a baby stroller that slipped from its mother’s hands about to face the onslaught of rush hour traffic but…

No.

In fact, I was (ironically) putting my surfboard in my car and I felt a small twitch in my lower back and the next morning when I woke up…

I COULDN’T MOVE.

For a week, I didn’t leave my apartment. Simply getting out of bed, getting to the shower or getting something to eat was a Herculean effort.

Now I hear you saying, “Mike, I think you need to just stop surfing”, but that’s not the point of this story.

The point is in the healing process.

Here’s what I’ve learned in the past couple years as I’ve been in treatment for my back and working out this injury:

My body absorbed the blow of the injury at very specific, vulnerable locations in my body in the most amazingly intelligent ways.

The blow to my head acted like a test-dye injected into my body to bring all the areas that needed my attention — physically, emotionally, psychologically — into the light of day.

What do I mean by that?

The consistent areas of pain that I’ve been working through are located in my lower back, my neck and a very, very focused point that feels like it’s about the size of a pea right behind my heart.

Quick flashback in the story: I lost my mother when I was 12 years old. She died of cancer.

My very foundation was rocked to its core and I spun for many years, not even knowing I was spinning. My body absorbed that blow, and I held the trauma very deeply in my body — insecurity and instability lodging itself within me.

25 years later, I’m pitched off a wave in Santa Monica and I fall square on the top of my head.

My lower back, specifically my sacrum, the foundation of my spine takes the blow, tries to stay strong and firm, but 8 years later starts to go out, it can’t take the pressure.

The spot right behind my heart, a heart that I’ve guarded and continue to guard from future emotional blows begins to ache and scream out, so much that my entire chestplate feels like it’s going to crack at times.

And my lower cervical vertebrae, specifically C-4 and C-5, which I’ve come to learn are connected psychologically to trust in relationships, ache so much that sometimes my head rings just like the first day I landed on my friend Mr. Sandbar.

Through injury, my body is telling me and showing my exactly where I am blocked in my life…and where I need to let go and heal.

Another, and possibly even more important, lesson that I JUST saw the other day after working through this injury for the past 10 years, is this:

When we get deeply hurt, we take a snapshot of it. We take a picture of the trauma and we imprint that trauma onto our physical, emotional and psychological bodies. And we pack away that trauma very deeply within us. Then, when anything even slightly triggers that hurt again, we tailspin into a traumatic reaction as if the same trauma is happening all over again, right now. We’ll react to that hurt in any number of imbalanced ways because that imprint has physically lodged itself within our beings we’ll consistently overreact to the triggers.

The other day, I was working out on a set of stairs and I felt I small twitch in my lower back again. I instantly went all the way to the place of not being able to move for a week. Did that happen? No.

We absorb trauma, especially when that trauma occurs early in our lives, and we project that exact same template onto our present day situations when we face challenges even though the initial trauma is clearly not happening now.

We catastrophize. Because catastrophe may have happened in the past, but it’s not happening now. It just FEELS like it’s happening now. It feels familiar because the imprint is within us and we’ve reacted to that trauma subconsciously most likely, for a long, long time.

I know when I’m faced with challenges that trigger my most sensitive areas I go directly to the catastrophe:

“It’s just all messed up and it’s never going to work out!”

“It’s over, might as well face it now because this is not going to end well”

Trauma is a very real, deep and incredibly sensitive area where many trained professionals solely focus, and if you think you’re working through a traumatic experience, seek the help of a trained professional.

I DIDN’T seek the help of a physical trauma specialist for too long, but now that I am, the physical, emotional and psychological lessons are showing up and working themselves out:

Lessons like:

  1. Learning to let go of a core bracing in my belly against a perceived, invisible blow that’s about to gut punch me.
  2. Turning my attention to the small pea-sized point of pain that’s behind my chest, relaxing and opening my heart.
  3. Trusting in the beauty and the healing power of relationships rather than seeing them as a burden and something that’s holding me back from my own freedom.

Our physical bodies and where we hold tension are a mirror of our own blockages in our inner and outer worlds. If we are to work through them, we must look at how we have held these blockages in our bodies and draw a direct line between those blockages in our bodies and how they relate to blockages in our lives.

Where has physical trauma lodged itself within our bodies and what are the emotional and psychological implications of those blockages in our lives?

Who would have thought that getting thrown off a wave could teach me so much?

See, I told you I shouldn’t give up surfing…

Mike Patterson

Written by

Part writer, part philosopher, part businessperson, mostly clueless. Lover of surfing, meditation, yoga, cooking, and other journeys of the heart.

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