Awareness

​Every day since more than four years ago, I’ve been doing exercises morning and evening, one day after the other. Following the guidance of the therapists at the outpatient rehab center, Eric and I organized the exercises in different groups, depending on the region of the body and the actions they targeted. My working day, then, is divided into different stages, and I do them every day. Every day I concentrate hard on swallowing without choking, on singing at the right volume, and on pronouncing words correctly. When it’s time for the body, I try to wake up my sleeping limbs: left upper arm, forearm, wrist, and hand, up to my fingertips; and left buttock, thigh, lower leg, ankle, and foot.
And every time I do my exercises, I have a goal in my mind: to strengthen a special muscle that was paralyzed after my injury. To fulfill that goal, I’ve had to focus my mind on that muscle; in my friend Elizabeth Castagna’s words, I’ve had to make my mind speak to it. When I’m resting, I meditate following the directions of the guide’s voice (as I tell in another chapter). And as I’m breathing, I focus on each muscle or organ of my body that the guide indicates.
So, every year, every day, every time since the injury, my mind has had to concentrate on my body’s different elements. That’s why wherever I am, a sense of my body is there with me: a sense of my whole body, of my whole self. I feel my body; I know where every part of it, every muscle, is. Every muscle is speaking to me, and I can hear it.