Whisper #16Violence With Better Manners

I didn’t stop training because I injured myself.
I stayed injured because I didn’t know how to stop.

For years, I thought that was strength.

For seventeen years, discipline was my identity.
Martial arts. Daily training. Preparing for competitions.
Locking in, no matter what.

Pain wasn’t a signal.
It was background noise.

So when my wrists gave out — both of them — I didn’t stop.
Tendinitis turned chronic.
My back followed.

There was a period where I couldn’t even hold a fork without pain.
Doctors told me I’d have to live with it.

I listened to them.
I just didn’t listen to my body.

That injury is how I found yoga.
Not as relief
as interruption.

It asked for something I wasn’t trained to give.
Listening.
Pausing.
Letting the edge soften.

And at first, I resisted it.
Not consciously
habitually. And yet, slowly, something cracked open.

The body softened.
The noise dropped.
A different kind of silence appeared.

And underneath it, a question I couldn’t outwork:

What are you trying to prove?

I learned to rest.
I learned to modify.
I learned not to push through pain.

But that wasn’t the end of it.

Because the pattern didn’t disappear.
It adapted.

The violence simply changed form.

Instead of pushing through injury, I built structure.
A very rigid structure.

4:30 a.m. wake-ups.
Two-hour long practices.
No exceptions.

If I woke up late, the day felt wrong.
If I missed a session, I wouldn’t practice at all.
Fifteen minutes didn’t count.
Thirty minutes didn’t count.

It was all or nothing.

Yoga didn’t remove the distortion.
It revealed it.

I hadn’t stopped hurting myself.
I had just changed the method.

What finally shifted things wasn’t force or willpower.
It was allowing space instead of resisting what was already there.

And slowly — not dramatically —
the pain let go.

This is the part we rarely talk about.

Discipline isn’t automatically clean.
It can come from devotion
or it can come from fear.

Fear of slowing down.
Fear of feeling what’s underneath.
Fear of losing the identity built on I push through.

Discipline can be love in motion.
And it can be violence with better manners.

They look almost identical from the outside.

The difference isn’t in the routine.
It’s in the relationship.

One listens.
The other overrides.

One adapts.
The other demands.

One comes from care.
The other from the quiet need to prove something
to yourself, before anyone else.

I don’t write this to argue against discipline.
I write it because many of us were never taught how to recognize
when discipline stops serving life
and starts replacing listening.

The body always knows.
It signals.
It whispers.
It tightens.

And when it’s ignored long enough, it forces the conversation.

The question isn’t whether you’re disciplined.

It’s simpler than that.

Where is your discipline coming from?

From love
Or from fear
the need to stay in control,
the refusal to stop?

You don’t need to answer it perfectly.
You just need to answer it honestly.

That’s where things actually begin to change.

With Love & Stillness,
Saf