When I finished wrestling in college, I suffered from chronic lower back pain as well as persistent ankle and knee pain, which felt like they would never go away. The pain started with acute injuries while training and competing, and I kept re-aggravating the injuries without giving them time to heal.
When I retired from college athletics, I would obsess over the pain, and it prevented me from doing things like exercising and being outdoors. This spiraled into poor eating habits, bad sleep, weight gain and mental health struggles.
Fortunately, a friend convinced me to try yoga. Within five months of attending classes regularly, the pain subsided. I began to forget about my back pain, I slowly returned to exercise and spent more time socializing with new friends in the yoga community. The pain that once took over my mental bandwidth was gone, I was able to think clearly, and I felt like myself again.
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