What should have been a dream holiday, very nearly turned sour for Maria, a 57-year professional from Sydney, who suffered a severe injury to her ankle while at a yoga retreat in Bali on only her second day of arriving. She found new inner strength to cope with her injury via ancient tools for healing and pain relief including meditation and earthing. This is her story.
‘I was overseas when I dislocated my ankle. I broke a bone completely in my foreleg, broke another bone in my ankle and I damaged a bone in my heel. I had surgery to fix the complete break and the ankle. I’ve got pins and a plate as a result.’
‘Pain after surgery was about 10. There was a lot of internal bleeding and a lot of bruising as a result of the surgery and broken bones. I was in hospital for 48 hours after the operation and I was completely immobile for 5-6 days afterwards.’
After being released from the hospital, Maria returned to the yoga retreat. Although she was taking medication for pain, she found that the pain was constant and nagging. As she didn’t want to become dependent on pills to cope, she began to experiment with using meditation to get away from the pain and witness it.
‘It was good for pain relief to be in a meditative state. I could transcend the pain most days or at least part of the day. If you can do that and you’re not clinging onto pills and or people helping you, that’s a really empowering thing. I did find a profound inner peace that week when I was in Bali. You have to keep going back to those tools like meditation, all the things I’ve learnt with yoga nidra to withdraw your senses and get into that point of concentration so you can meditate.‘
The flight home from Bali to Sydney was a challenge.
‘Pain level went up. I was in a lot of pain and the pain medication wasn’t very effective.’
As soon as she got home Maria lay down on her bed with her earthing undersheet and pillowcase.
‘I felt immediate relief when I lay down on the earthing sheet.’
The next day she realised that the swelling from the flight was part of the problem.
‘As soon as I got on the earthing sheet with my compression sock, the pain came down from 10 to a 5. Then it got steadily better. At 3 weeks after the injury, I was still in a lot of pain but it was manageable with ordinary pain killers and sleeping on the earthing sheet.’
At week 4, Maria began to experiment with earthing during the day as well. She sat on an earthing mat and draped an earthing wrap over her ankle.
‘Earthing during the day as well seemed to relieve the pain a lot. The pain probably went down to about a 3. My ankle was still throbbing a lot and I had to keep it elevated. But the pain did go down. Now 5 weeks after the operation and I don’t have any pain and the wound has healed completely.’
Maria found earthing was still valuable for boosting circulation to the injured area. She discovered this by accident after inadvertently having a break from earthing for a few days.
During week 5, Maria went to Canberra for a few days to stay with her daughter. She didn’t take earthing products with her.
‘I felt that my circulation hasn’t been as well supported this week in Canberra. At home on the earthing sheet, my circulation was better – I’d wake up in the morning and the circulation in my leg was almost normal. But here (in Canberra without regular earthing) I wake up my ankle is almost a bit puffy. Yesterday I was sitting at the dining room table for a couple of hours [without having my leg elevated] and my ankle became really uncomfortable. It went a really angry colour and bit blotchy. I thought I can’t feel any worse than this so I got into the pool. After a paddle, my leg went a normal colour. It seems circulation was the issue. I think perhaps earthing was preventing that kind of thing from happening.’
Find out more about how earthing supports better circulation in our article Earthing for Blood Circulation.
Maria used the combination of an Earthing Wrap and an Earthing Mat during the day and an Earthing Undersheet at night support her recovery. You can find out more about these products in our shop.
