How People Heal

In the past two weeks, I did have a bad situation with my left foot, and slowly, I find it healing (pardon an unintentional pun). And it did seem miraculous to me in a sense, because about a week ago I thought that I was in very dire straits. I went through panic, and now I am just feeling the need to take better care of my body and know that any mindless twist or turn might send it into injury again. But I think what this experience taught me was how many emotions and thoughts come to be associated with being physically challenged in some way.
   I also notice that whenever I have an unexpected situation come up, my tendency is to try to seek whatever help I can. But I notice that there is no magic cure except for what the body can do to care for itself: better rest, for example, and finding more adaptable ways to move the body without upsetting the painful spot. Does the body, then heal itself? I think that only the body can cooperate in the healing process. If for example, I continued to ignore the pain, I would only make things worse. But it's somehow a good thing that nature endows us with an inherent low capacity for pain tolerance, since pain can alert the body to slow down or find more safe ways to move in the world.
  Another thing that this experience has taught me, perhaps to my detriment, is to be really vigilant about future injury. If I feel even the slightest bit of discomfort in my leg or knee, I will now start to shift position slightly, as though anticipating that it might worsen the condition of the body in some way. There is a tricky part to this, however, and that is not to let pain get the body into a frozen state. If this happens, then the body will continue to get stuck or immobile in some way, all due to the previous memory of the pain.
    A lot of what I am describing somehow has analogies to the mind. To be mindful itself seems to be a balance between care and not getting paralyzed by situations which demand care. If I am too attached or sensitive to pain, I start to develop armor or defensiveness, including thoughts only make the situation worse, such as "I will never walk again." On the other hand, being insensitive to pain is also not quite the way, because the pain gives a person good information on how to move more carefully and re-engage muscles of the body, or perhaps emotional resources we didn't think we had. Pain can open up new avenues of resources as well as close off ways of being that are reckless or unappreciative of the body's gifts. The same is true of our mental pains and ailments.