Health & Exercise: Learning to Read Your Body

So, this is an odd blog post, but it was something Kevin and I were talking about and he suggested I blog about it.

The photo that brought Vietnam into American homes.

I have always been amazed by some of the worlds most exclusive societies.  Mostly, that of devote monks.  I'm sure you've heard stories of them: those that can control their heartbeat down to almost deathly levels, those that can control their body temperature regardless of the temperature outside, those that walk on hot coals, those that can withstand any pain, etc.  The most infamous in our time would be Thich Quang Duc who set himself on fire (also called self-immolation) to protest the treatment of Buddhist's in South Vietnam by the Catholic government in the middle of a busy town square.

The amount of self-control these people have generated and the degree to which they are in tune with their bodies has always fascinated me.  The ability to manipulate the body with the mind is astounding.  Even something as simple as the placebo effect shows how much power the mind has over the body.

But I am actually starting to learn that this is far from the realm of only achievable for the extremely devote, it's for anyone. Maybe not at the "set yourself on fire in protest" level, but at the very basic one.  My bouts into massage therapy and yoga have started me on this journey without me realizing.  I'm not going to go into my reasons for needing trigger point massage since I blogged it before (see My Journey into Alternative Therapies) and I know I have blogged a couple of times about my journey into yoga (see Yoga Daily and Yoga Update), but ultimately, these two things have helped me become more in tune with my body and how it feels.  Because of the massage therapy, I am starting to be able to identify which muscles are tight and causing me problems.  I don't know these muscles by name, but i know where they are and where they go (like the muscle that is currently giving me trouble starts in the back of the leg and comes up around my hip towards my abdomen, which, by the way, is very difficult to stretch).  The yoga also helps in this.  While I am stretching, I can actually feel when my muscles aren't opening up and creating circulation properly.  My flexibility has improved, but I am still not fully able to reach each yoga position.  Yet even still, I can tell when my circulation has increased properly in certain muscles, when I need to spend more time in a position and when the stretch needs to go deeper.

I was talking to my massage therapist about this and she told me that this is actually the natural progression for those doing yoga.  (If you are doing yoga and are becoming more flexible  but you aren't more in tune with your body, you are probably doing something wrong.)  But the odd thing was what she told me next.  Parker told me that next I need to work on sending my breath to the areas where I know I need more oxygen rich blood.  Now this is still weird to me, but it is basically identifying which muscles I want to send my breath to, really considering as I breath in and then think about that breath as it enters my body and sort of push it to the area I want.

This is still really odd to me and I haven't really figured it out at all yet, if I even can, but I figured I would give another update and share how far things have come for me.   I will write another update if I manage to figure out how to really direct my breaths and hopefully then I might be able to explain it better.

Health & Exercise: Yoga Update

So, after a week of doing yoga, I thought I would give a brief update.

I am already finding my flexibility improving.  Aside from missing a couple of sessions, I have been pretty good about staying consistent and I am already noticing an improvement.  Now, obviously, it hasn't been miraculous and the splits are still totally out of the question, but I can already feel myself being able to reach farther and stretch more.  I am also at a point of having both the Sun Salutation and Moon Salutation completely memorized.  Last week, I did 2 Sun Salutations and 1 Moon Salutation daily.  This week, I will do 3 Sun Salutations and 2 Moon Salutations daily and see how that goes.

After more work with my Parker, my massage therapist who does my trigger point massage, she says that my muscles are much shorter than they should be in some places.  That happens after lactic acid builds up (from improper stretching after exercise) and then calcifies.  This pushes muscles fibers out of the way and causes them to shorten from the tension.  As those muscles shorten and pull, it is going to pull on the opposite muscles too.  So, for instance, likely my issues started in my pectorals (the muscles in your chest).  As they shortened, they pulled my shoulders forward causing my aforementioned shoulder pain.  My shoulders no being properly aligned pulled on my back muscles and my back muscles pulled on my hips and neck.  

Thus, part of my therapy needs to be not only breaking up the lactic acid and increase circulation, but also stretching and lengthening my muscles.  This is going to make it so that my recovery lasts longer and my body heals properly.  There are many forms of exercise that increase flexibility and give a good stretch but I chose yoga for one reason. It's all stretching! I work out to build muscle and increase endurance but what I really needed was a good stretch and so that is what I am going to focus on.  And so far... so good!

Health & Exercise: My Journey into Alternative Therapies

I mentioned in my yoga post that I see a massage therapist and thought I would share about the alternative medicine that changed my life.

My pain began probably somewhere between my junior and senior years of college.  I had experienced joint pain in my knees (mostly from running long distances on hard surfaces and years of improper running shoes) before but I started to experience pain in my shoulders, especially when doing push ups.  Slowly the pain grew and I occassionally had painful popping in my right shoulder and then the left.  My treatment... ignore it! Suck it up! Rub some dirt in it! Drink water! And every other terrible piece of Army advice.

Then about a year ago, I started having neck pain.  I thought it was from bad pillows and some lack of sleep.    I tried some Aleve and of course, that did very little.  So I ignored it some more.  Then in January I had the worst headache of my life.  I was sensitive to light, my right hand went numb, and I was slurring my words, when I could find them.  I went to see my doctor after and she was concerned that it was either occipital neuralgia, migraines or a stroke.  I was having lots of what I called residual headaches (basically two weeks of minor headaches constantly) and so she gave me medicine for that.

At this point, I had never considered that the shoulder pain was related to the neck pain was related to the headaches.  So, I kept ignoring it.  Then I had another crazy headache in May.  I took two fast dissolving pills that are over $100 each and it did nothing except make me nauseous and sick the whole next couple of days.  So I went to see my doctor again.  Though still concerned about occipital neuralgia, and about why I wasn't going to the ER about possible strokes, she knew that since I didn't respond to the migraine medicine, it wasn't that.  So she wondered if it was tension headaches.  And, being the best Army doctor I have ever met, she sent me to Acupuncture and a Chiropractor to see if some of the tension in my neck, shoulders and back could be causing the headaches.

Both the chiropractor and acupuncturist believed this to be the case.  My chiro explained it like this: The muscles in the neck and back are connected to the nerves at the base of my skull.  There is so much tension in my back and neck that when it gets too tense my muscles are pulling on those nerves causing terrible headaches.   So I started seeing each of them weekly.  The chiropractor's adjustment helped more than the acupuncturist's needles, but both were only causing temporary relief.  I was still in so much pain and it was really interferring with everything by that point.  The little relief I was getting made it feel that much worse when the pain came back.

My chiropractor then told me that really what I needed was a massage therapist who could specialize in trigger points, because I have so so so many of them.   Unfortunately, massage therapy is one thing that Fort Carson doesn't offer, so it wouldn't be covered by Tricare (the Army's medical insurance), like acupuncture and chiropractor were.  

However, my husband's flexible spending account (FSA) would. Anyway, seeing Parker at The Shade Tree Massage in Colorado Springs changed everything for me. She is a neuromuscular massage therapist and I see her for trigger point massage. It is a very painful type of massage because it goes deep into very tender areas, but Parker helps increase circulation to the areas and always keeps moving around to cause less pain in the trigger points. After all the pain I have been in for months, I am finally reaching a point of being pain free. I am certainly not there yet, but there are many days where I have little to no pain. And most of the time, even when the pain comes back, it isn't as bad as it was before I started massage therapy. I was in so much pain that I pretty much quit doing outdoor activities, couldn't clean my house without pain and headaches, and simple things like laundry became nearly impossible. I needed so much more sleep and rest and I was begining to feel like I couldn't do anything else. But with Parker's help and a lot of trigger point massage, I am truly getting my life back! *For more information about Parker and The Shade Tree please visit her website at theshadetree.massagetherapy.com.