What Can You Do?

Even after all of my home-made doctoring last night, I woke to the same pain and stiffness. There was no denying it — training wasn’t an option today. So it was time to visit the TCM doctor.

As expected, the moment I showed him my foot, he placed a finger directly on the pain point. No hesitation. He just knew. Yet, as always, the first needle he pushed into me was nowhere near the injury.

Right foot injured.
Left hand worked on.

It never stops amazing me how the body functions, and how deeply these doctors understand its connections. As the session unfolded, I could feel tension, stress, and anxiety slowly draining away. That familiar sense of quiet returning. From there came the hot mud wrap — thick, heavy, and warm — followed by more needles, this time into the foot itself. Not enjoyable, but unquestionably necessary.

The final advice was predictable: rest. No exercise.

I knew it was coming. I just never like hearing it.

The idea of not being able to train always hits a sensitive nerve, but I found myself thinking back to something my coach once said: you may not be able to train in the way you want — but what can you do?

It’s a simple question, but a powerful one.

Yes, my foot needs rest, but there are still things I can work on. Strength. Flexibility. Structure. Awareness. All things that will serve my training long after this injury fades. The path doesn’t end — it just bends for a while.

Time and practice have changed me more than I sometimes realise. Not so long ago, this situation would have left me frustrated and flat. Today, I instinctively look for the opening hidden inside the inconvenience.

I like this way of being — finding opportunity where there once was only resistance. And yet, I notice that this mindset hasn’t fully integrated into every part of my life. That raises a quiet question.

Are the old stories — the ones about how life should be — still strong enough to pull me back into familiar reactions? Or is it simply that this way of thinking is still new, still settling, still finding its place beyond the mountain?

For a long time, I believed I had drawn a clean line under my old life. A full stop. A new sentence. A fresh beginning. But life doesn’t really work that way.

There is only one life.

What happens inside me now will shape what comes next. Which means these lessons — these small upgrades in how I think, react, and adapt — need to be carried back into every part of who I am, not just the parts that live here.

It won’t rewrite the past.
But it will quietly change the future.

And that feels like work worth doing.