Living With Injury: A Phenomenology of Sport Injury Rehabilitation

The aim of this work was to phenomenologically grasp the bodily ways in which rehabilitation from injury, specifically anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction, is expressed and found. We draw upon the first author’s experiences of injury rehabilitation in the form of diary notes, memory recall, and subsequent interviews between the authorship team. The descriptions offered temporally chart how various bodily tensions are announced during rehabilitation and the subsequent attempt(s) at restoring of the body. The findings raise awareness to how body parts that are not functioning become othered, the response to such othering, and how injury reveals itself as a dysfunction. The significance of the work lies in repositioning how the injured individual is always with injury, even if this is etched into their history. Although providing a comprehensive, human experience-orientated reading of injury and rehabilitation, this article shifts the body from being absent and background to appreciate the subtle ways in which the body dis-appears and dys-appears.