How I Tore My ACL and Accepted Healing Immediately

A Resonant Attention Guest Post

This post was written by Kendra Marie Hoffman, owner of Lady Bug Earth Care. She joined my first class and had the presence of mind to put what she’d learned to immediate use. So cool!

It was a gentle rainy kind of day, perfect for planting. I am an ecological designer and regenerative landscaper. I was planting the very last flowers of the spring season, around Summer Solstice in June. A friend was with me, and we had been planting for several hours, determined to finish that day, and be done before summer heat settled into central PA. 

Near the end of the day, I got confirmation from the client that we had permission to remove an old shrub, a Japanese spirea, to be replaced with a native hydrangea we had brought along. We were tired, but knew it would be best to get this task accomplished. So we set ourselves to the mission of trimming the branches off first. As my friend went to the truck to get a tarp, I cut the last branch and decided to grab the bundle of sticks all in one armful, to haul to the compost bin more efficiently, rather than wait. I was getting weary with how long it was taking and just wanted to be done. 

My pace quickened, as did my breathing, heart rate and mindset. I think I even set my jaw a bit more firmly during that haul back to the bins. When I got back to the shrub, I assessed the root ball and started using the broadfork to loosen the soil around it. It was huge, but it was budging slightly, so I knew we could get it out. On a mission to make this happen fast, I repeatedly thrust the 20+ pounds of metal tines into the earth, pressing down on the handles to lift the roots up. It was only drizzling a little, but I was working up a sweat. 

Finally I got the roots as loose as I thought I could with the broadfork (with a wall and another 2 shrubs on either side) and set it aside. I turned to the shrub with my gloved hands. The next part of the story takes longer to tell than anything took to happen. All I remember was grabbing onto the trunk of the shrub and lifting to pull it out, when my left foot slipped on wet mulch. 

Bent over, my ear was closer to my knee as that foot slipped. I heard the loudest tear (from both inside and outside my body) come from the outer edge of my left knee. My knee instantly buckled as I cried out and fell forward over the shrub, in nauseating pain. The only other feeling I recall was panic—the kind that makes you want to vomit. I don’t know how I turned myself upright, but suddenly I was sitting on my bum, legs out in front of me. At that moment my friend, who had witnessed all this, and deductively knew I wasn’t ok, asked, “What do you need?” 

I looked up at her, white as a ghost I’m sure, and instinctively asked for water. She took off to the truck, which was just around the corner of the house. Immediately, and oddly automatically, I laid both my hands on either side of my knee and practiced resonant attention. I’ve only learned this phrase and the associated techniques in the last year, but it’s similar to “hands-on healing” I practiced long ago, only way closer to the way I now imagine Jesus and other healers did it. 

Initially, I was nearly filled with fear and panic, but somehow my mind went straight for peace, like finding the eye of a great storm. I took deep breaths, closed my eyes and started accepting every possibility:  all the way from the immediate moment and aftermath, up to a peak of worst fears and back down to a set of more realistic, but devastating outcomes.  

I accepted the possibility of not being able to finish the job (ok, that was easy). I accepted the possibility of going to the hospital (a hard one for me). I accepted the possibility of surgery (another wave of nausea). I accepted the possibility of being mishandled or abused on the operating table (in a multitude of ways, but some maybe only women think to fear). I accepted the possibility of that resulting in my death (peak). 

Then I accepted the possibility of being crippled (changing my life path intensively). I accepted the possibility of having to close my business or change my career (I felt a little more openness come in) and I accepted the possibility of being unable to work the rest of the year (which felt relieving physically but devastating financially). I accepted the possibility of going through rehab to build my strength again (ok) and I accepted the possibility of all these things both happening and not happening, because I accepted the possibility of not knowing. 

In a split moment between big breaths, I felt my entire leg RELAX and heard a loud POP. 

It was so intense that I cried out again, vocally, and my friend came running around the corner in that moment with a water bottle. I later asked how long she had been gone, and she said it was only about 30 seconds, which maps correctly with how far the truck was from my injury spot. It couldn’t have been longer. But it felt like I had been meditating for hours. 

Right after that loud pop, I felt hot tingling in my leg and foot. I drank some water, and used my arms to move onto the grass from the wet mulch I’d been sitting on. Every time I recalled the loud tearing sound I got a wave of nausea so intense that I had to take big gulping breaths and focus on acceptance of all possibilities. I wasn’t out of the danger zone yet, but I knew something had taken a turn for the better with that pop. My leg actually felt better and stopped screaming in pain at that point. The burning tingling feeling was concerning me, however. 

I spent at least a half an hour just holding my knee and practicing resonant attention in its most minimal form. I was giving all my presence and gratitude to my knee, accepting all possibilities and allowing the potential of a miracle as well. But I don’t recall begging god for a miracle. And I don’t recall actually praying, like I have a habit of doing sometimes when I’m in an emergency, or afraid and alone in the dark (lol), because I was raised and trained to do that, which is fine. 

This space was almost more sacred. 

I felt in a holy trance, just purely open, and totally focused on acceptance. 

Lately I’ve been trying to heal my nervous system. This requires slowing down, taking deep breaths and letting things go when stressful scenarios occur, among other things. I have trained myself to apply these practices when I feel anxiety and panic, because I don’t even want to experience another panic attack again. I’ve also been taking milk oats tincture daily, which I highly recommend to anyone recovering from burnout. So I was in this very relaxed state, just willing to wait and allow my body to do something not even my mind understood. 

I was resting in Trust. 

Slowly, I started to come back to awareness of the smallest things around me, outside the knee scenario, haha. My friend was willing to remove the shrub (it was loose enough by then lol) and plant the new hydrangea in its place. I was even able to offer guidance, while I sat, hands on my knees, just relaxing my whole body. While she was working, I realized we needed to consider how to get home, or where to go next. I was still unsure if I would need an ER visit or not. My friend went about gathering tools and cleaning up the job site, giving me space. 

Sometime earlier, between the injury and the current time, I texted my partner to let him know I had injured my knee and didn’t know what would happen next. He was at work, but sent a quick link about a meniscus tear before my phone shut off. That was a good thing, because it gave me time to just be with my knee instead of panic googling, lol. 

In a much calmer state, I asked to use my friend's phone, so I could check some of the symptoms I was having (tingling in my foot) before deciding if I should go to the hospital or not. I really wasn’t sure what to do at that point. I never want to go to the ER, but I had also accepted the possibility of surgery being needed to repair my ACL. As a former athlete I knew what I heard and felt on the outer side of my knee was that. But I had increasingly less pain, and no swelling almost an hour later, so I was really intrigued. 

As I read briefly about how one tears an ACL, I became more convinced that’s what I had done. The same exact motions and forces had been applied to my knee as occur most commonly with that injury, and the tearing sound was undeniable. The outside of my knee still hurt, but nothing felt wrong to the touch, and there was no bruising or swelling happening. An ACL injury can swell the knee double in size within an hour or so, commonly. I’ve seen it happen in soccer. 

Reading about the differences in a torn meniscus, I thought that could be a real possibility too, mostly because the meniscus has little to no blood supply to it, so it doesn’t really cause that much swelling. Most commonly, however, this would cause the joint to be blocked, when a piece of the torn meniscus gets caught in it, preventing mobility. I tried bending my knee, and had no problem doing it slowly and carefully. I was scared to go too far, but my mom had torn meniscus in both knees and I witnessed her pain and problems most of my life. This didn’t seem similar. 

I then read about the popping sound, and deduced that I had likely dislocated my knee (which often happens during an ACL injury). When I fully relaxed, it was able to pop back into place. This aligned with my experience and my internal knowing (which I trust more than doctors at this point in my life) very much. It still didn’t explain the loud tearing sound I heard and felt both audibly and internally. It was a mystery. 

With no major swelling after an hour of sitting, I decided to let my friend drive me home. I would monitor things from there and decide the next day if I needed to go to a hospital. 

Fortunately my friend was also an herbalist. I asked her to make a thick tea for a compress with fresh comfrey, yarrow, turmeric and ginger. While she was doing that, I massaged my tender knee and leg with a most precious salve from Susquehanna Apothecary: the Sore Joints & Muscles Salve. It is loaded with healing herbs, including one I had been recently interested in learning about, after harvesting from a native plant buddy’s garden: Solomon Seal. Perfect. 

After many applications of the salve, along with a little of their Rosemary Hemp Salve (containing cbd), I packed the warm herbal compress around my knee, held it in place with a towel, and wrapped it with an ace bandage. I propped it up on a few pillows too. 

Comfrey has healed many internal wounds of mine before in record speed. As long as the wound is not open, it’s a really great ally. If the wound is open, the comfrey can cause healing so rapid that the wound seals on the surface before it’s had time to push out bacteria, by healing from the inside out. This is problematic, and can cause infection or sepsis, so it’s important that I mention to use comfrey mindfully, only for internal injuries and bruises, not on open wounds. 

I chose turmeric as a powerful anti-inflammatory, in hopes of keeping the swelling at bay, to allow blood flow to the innermost reaches of my knee joint over night. If it was a meniscus tear, and it wasn’t the kind on the edge that causes joint blockage, then it could’ve been the more rare tearing of the center of the meniscus where there is no blood flow, and therefore “no chance of healing” without surgery, so the google says. I had other plans. I would use turmeric to reduce inflammation, allowing more possibility for blood flow, and add ginger to increase it. Yarrow was a catchall addition, because it can go both ways! Plants are so intelligent! 

I also chose not to take pain killers so I could monitor things accurately, and went to sleep. I never iced either. I don’t agree with icing most injuries right away. I think cold therapy is useful in other applications, and for chronic issues, but not immediately injury unless swelling itself becomes a threat. In general I want to encourage blood flow, which brings oxygen and essential nutrients to the injury site for healing. 

By morning, I unwrapped the compress and touched my knee. No swelling, and no bruising. Mobility was fine, only a little tight under the back of the knee, so I didn’t bend it too far past 90*. I was honestly shocked, and delighted, but knew it wasn’t quite over. I decided not to even try standing that day, and set about the task of canceling appointments and gigs for the next week. I decided to clear space for my body to rest and do the work of recovery. And I still wasn’t sure if I would need surgery, so I told a few key people in my life what was up, but no more. 

For 3 days I rested, reapplied the salves and wrapped my knee with a fresh comfrey, ginger, turmeric, yarrow compress overnight. I was experiencing pain up and down my leg, along the IT band and down to the calf, likely from being extremely overstretched, but no increased swelling and no bruising at all. Only increasing mobility and weight bearing capacity. I am still amazed. 

Just to double check, I had a PT friend come do tests for ACL and meniscus injury and nothing seemed torn or broken, but she did confirm that my story sounded like an ACL injury story! She gave me a few simple, gentle exercises to do to keep things moving, but encouraged a lot of rest, which I had already prepared myself to indulge. The next few weeks brought a big shift in my business and my approach to physical work, which was much needed. I am still adjusting, but I am nearly 40 and this was a big wake up call. 

Looking back I realized where the “incident” began. It wasn’t when I slipped. It was when my mindset shifted. When I started rushing and pushing to get the job done, and get that shrub gone. There’s nothing wrong with making those two tasks happen, but the way my mind shifted, the way I set my jaw and grumbled internally, opened the door for an injury to my body. It’s happened before. 

Like a broken record, a mindless mantra can operate like a curse, keeping you trapped in a repeating cycle of consequences, based on the belief behind the mantra. For me there are many, but the one I heard clearly in play that day went like this: “You’ve just gotta do it all yourself, and get it done yourself, if it’s ever gonna get done.” Even with a hard-working friend by my side, my mind goes into this mantra often, because it got stuck in there long ago. 

When that mantra gets triggered, I go into a kind of automaton beast mode, especially when the work is physical. My body responds to my mind’s demands as if it were limitless, and adrenaline gives me that extra boost to reinforce the belief that I “can” actually do more than I should. Something about being in that mode feels really good, really powerful. And it’s dangerous. 

Fortunately, I’ve been practicing other mantras and mental states as well. I haven’t been meditating regularly in a while, but I did it daily for many years, and I’ve always been able to access a deeper mindset or mental space relatively easily. But I don’t think what happened that day was due to a long standing practice of any sort. I think it’s accessible to anyone. 

In this case, I fully believe the state I allowed my body to go into, the restful grateful state, allowed my parasympathetic nervous system to be in control. I let go and I got out of the way. And I fully believe that being in that state allowed my body access to an infinite supply of healing, which is the source from which all miracles flow. 

I believe I tore my ACL and I may have ended up in the hospital with surgery, if I had let my mind run away with the panic and fear of such a nightmarish outcome. I know how my body gets when I allow stress and anxiety to take over: it tightens up. That tension could have caused the ACL to fully completely tear or continue tearing in those precious moments after I fell. 

Instead, somehow, by grace and instinct (I believe this is our natural state, and we’ve been cultured out of it), I softened. I relaxed. I accepted all possibilities and allowed my body to do whatever it needed or wanted to do in those moments. 

And.. it wanted to be whole. Whew!