Colleen Jennings on Effort, Ease, and Awareness

My story is not a story of injury and recovery from injury so much as it's a story about recognizing pain and injury as tools towards developing awareness. It's a story about learning to access an interconnectedness with the physical world which in my case led me to a spiritual awakening of sorts. My story is about learning to accept oneself and seeing unique traits as no less than superpowers that are needed in the world. Like all superpowers, they are performed with an ease that feels effortless. Behind my journey towards ease is a great, long history of effort.

From a very early age I came to believe that unless an activity felt hard it was not worthwhile; it had less value. I have a memory frozen in mind of coming out to the playground in elementary school and telling my peers that the math homework was “so hard.” I breathed a deep sigh and mimicked the sound of effort I had heard from my elders many times and which came to signify integrity and a job well done. I remember noticing that my peers barely took notice of my exasperation but instead turned to the fun of recess and play. This memory is one of many I have of not only denying myself ease, but often making things harder than they were in order to fit the model I had created in my mind.

Over the course of my career as a violinist I have had multiple repetitive stress injuries from playing the violin. I have played the violin for forty-one years. My body has been shaped from the age of five to maintain a posture which is largely asymmetrical and to do it for long hours and in high intensity situations. The body was not designed to maintain this kind of asymmetry without restoring itself to its natural equilibrium. Without learning how to undo this asymmetry the body will eventually break down. 

In the fall of 2018, after a particularly high intensity few months at my job, my left index finger became so inflamed I was not able to play. A trip to a hand surgeon told me I had something called trigger finger. A relatively common overuse injury, trigger finger occurs as a result of the sheath around the tendon becoming so swollen that it causes the tendon to get stuck before it releases in a sudden burst…lovely. While the diagnosis was trigger finger, I didn't have this characteristic popping. I was told this was because I had caught it early before it had progressed to the far end of spectrum. I could try a course of cortisone, but likely I would need to have surgery to widen the sheath and relieve the condition. 

Still, I kept thinking that if there was a spectrum to the injury, what was keeping the sheath from healing with enough rest and reduced inflammation? It was not an irreversible condition and clearly it was something I was actively doing that was causing the inflammation. But the months went by and, while the inflammation did seem to be very slowly receding, I still wasn’t able to play without pain. I knew that the way I was playing was part of the equation, but those habits were so deep that even the thought of practicing triggered the tension that induced the pain. Through the help of a brilliant Alexander Technique teacher/movement specialist I could catch glimpses of a new direction. I would practice for her in front of a mirror and, even if it was only for fifteen seconds at a time, there were moments of ease that were not only pain free but were accompanied by a free, released sound that made us both get goosebumps. This was not just a promise of relief from pain and return to playing as I knew it, but a new direction into a greater sound world with physical and mental ease. I wanted that!

Here was the crossroads. It seemed clear to me that this was the way forward, but it was at a glacial pace. How was I ever going to be able to get back to my job and continue this kind of work? I enjoyed my job, and it was a humbling feeling to know that I did not get to choose the timeline back to health. It was clear that the process of returning was going to have to be fluid—not easy when one has a concert schedule to maintain. Also, I was dealing with the secondary effects of stress within my body, from massive digestive distress to a case of shingles. This stress was brought on by a sense that I was on a timeline and was letting my colleagues down by not giving them more definitive feedback and a clear plan forward. I was quite literally tied in knots. 

The end result was that I did end up resigning my position. Although my colleagues were willing to let me take more time off, I knew that I had started on a trajectory of healing and relearning that needed to have fewer boundaries. It was a solo excursion and where I ended up needed to be unmarked and not directed towards a specific end. 

From where I stand now it’s hard to say I am “recovered.” I am in un-chartered territory. Like the rest of the world I have been living in a Covid bubble and not actively performing. I play every day for myself for short stretches and am highly tuned into what I call a panoramic awareness of my senses while I play, namely my hearing, my vision, and my spatial awareness. Looking back over the last three years I can see see that I have had a huge shift in my mentality and goals as a musician and creative artist. Physically, I am deep in the process of returning my body to a state of equilibrium that it has craved for decades. I do this primarily by practicing the Alexander Technique daily using the tools of inhibition and direction while lying on the floor, taking a walk, or even standing up or sitting down throughout the day. Mentally, I’m learning to undo this idea that effort has to be a part of good work, at least in the way that I have internalized. In fact, the real effort comes in redirecting my thinking and learning to undo old habits so that what can emerge are ways of doing things that are full of ease, not effort. The effort comes in the discipline, the discipline to keep believing, trusting, and most importantly practicing this state of awareness daily. Also, I’m learning that I am much more connected with the physical world than I realized and that, rather than work against it, I can join it in a way that feels more like being lifted on a breeze. This feels like a spiritual realm to me and is deeply nurturing and supportive, like having a spiritual helper.

Perhaps the biggest lesson I have learned is that owning my superpower has led me to a life of more ease and that living with ease can lead to a life of integrity and creative inspiration. My superpower, namely my acute sensitivity, became defined ultimately from being injured. I have always been a highly sensitive person capable of feeling things very deeply and not able to ignore stimuli. This quality is unique, I have learned. It can be labeled as “hypersensitivity” and like anything, superpowers included, has two sides. But through this process I have seen its gifts. I have learned to use it to help myself and others, namely my students, by expanding my awareness and being able to be truly present by reveling in the slowness of life.

I love letting things come to me through my various practices. It’s not a hard, narrow focus which solves problems, but a soft, wide open one that responds to the world—less control, more awareness. The practice is one that rewards through feeling less physical pain, creating more resonant sound, and releasing a spirit which is wide and curious, joyful like a kid on the playground. It has to be hopeful, this kind of practice. It can’t be finite, as in accomplishing tasks or looking for success by collecting a list of accomplishments. It comes with a belief that wisdom comes with time and with persistence in the awareness. The courage to notice and to let be.

To connect with Colleen Jennings and learn more about her work, please visit her website at www.colleenjennings.com.